where my heart open, where my fingers danced and where my secret shared
If life is composed by good white-lies and every great things you wanted to hear,
why bother with the truth?
why bother to get hurt?
why does truth even matter?
Let’s just flush it down the toilet,
flush it, flush it,
away with it.
Shut the eye lid, shut the mouth, and kill the brain.
Bang! dead.
Life would be so much easier without the truth.
pardon my french.
300 pages of the tale of a lost love imbued with philosophy of love and marriage. A beautiful opening about the journey to Ithaca. A concept of male-female relationship which I daresay, I would agree completely. But the ending, yes, the ending, completely changed my view. Only 1 sentence, 1 friggin’ sentence, which completely turns my mood off.
I think Paulo Coelho would smile to me and say,
“But you don’t get it, that is what the journey to Ithaca means. That is what the book wanted to tell you”
Aaah, phooey Mr.Coelho, phooey.
The bottom line, The Zahir is a story of a famous novelist who were searching for his lost wife. The novelist then embarked on a journey to find himself and the meaning of love, because he believed only by doing so, he will also find her. In the end, he finished his journey only to find that the Zahir, his ideal, his reason, his role-model on the whole journey of love and self-finding, is pregnant with another man. And that wasn’t the only man in her life.
No. No. No.
I just don’t get it, and I would probably never get it. Probably that is what Ithaca means, there is nothing you can found there. But found nothing is far far better than finding your wife is pregnant with someone else. Yet you will still love her? Maybe that’s what the ideal love should be. Transcending far beyond common sense. If this is the case, I am afraid I won’t be an ideal lover. I care too much about the other person’s feeling to be pregnant with someone else while I am still married!
To my naive eyes, the Zahir is simply a coward. A coward who can sense that the love between her husband and herself slowly fades away. Instead of owning up to it, she ran away. Without notes, without goodbye. Leaving her husband in a state of chaos.
Let me say it again, She.ran.away. She is just too scared to own up to it.
Here is the part where, I stomped my feet impatiently. Where I have the courage to blurted out, what a slut. The stomping has awakened the tiny voice in me, which in return whispered mockingly to me,
aaaahh…but i thought you knew how she felt. i thought you said you’ve been in her shoes.
Oh I did. I can assure you, I did.
doesn’t that make you a slut as well?
BAH! Maybe I am! but at least I was owning up to it. I was leaving with words and goodbye. At least I didn’t ran away.
oh..but you wanted to. And someone stopped you.
I froze. A piece of conversation echoed in my memory,
y: Why would you ran away? It’s the same as breaking up, except that you have an extra burden of relocating
me: LOL
y: I am dead serious
Let me close this discontent with a thought of love. After a few years love will go away, or it will transform into something else, or maturing. The passion will slowly fades away and all is left is a comforting feeling that you have someone with you. In the end, Love will turn to security, as passion turns to comfort.
Given comfort and security, would you, then, still yearn for the excitement, the giggles and the warm feeling of “falling in love”?
Here I am, Wednesday lunch time, lying in my bed with my laptop.
I have phoned ill to the office, because I am having an uncommon mash up of stomachache-headache, and a painful sting on my right leg. My lovely man was out 10 minutes after making sure I am completely fine being left alone at home. He made a joke, I laughed, that was all the confirmation that he needed. He went downstairs, yelling goodbyes, and I heard the door went click and clack.
Soon, I was alone. I blinked my eyes couple of times, wondering what to do.
rest, of course, for I am ill.
but what kind of rest? I don’t really know what happened to me (and with the pain in my leg, how am I supposed to rest?)
a tiny voice in me said, rest, you needed a rest.
oh but I do rest, I rested last weekend, the whole sunday.
again the tiny voice whispered, ah you rest, but you don’t relax, dear.
Somehow I don’t know what to do, I look at the time and I saw it was 10:00. I thought about the office, the buzzing sound of busy people, my usual biscuit, a smart exchange of hello’s and good morning’s to my colleague, when I realized, something in me wants that buzz.
So trying to dismiss the yearning for the buzz and still having no clue on what to do, I grabbed a book lying closest to me(The Mysterious Mr.Quin, A.Christie’s). I read a couple of pages, when unconsciously my hand starts to massage my right foot. I suddenly feels a fringe of what went wrong with the foot. I put down the book, get some balm and start to massages it even more. Slowly, the pain is gone. I still feel a bit of a pain, but I know it just need some more massaging to it. I started to what the voice called, relax.
I looked at my laptop, wondering if i should got online. I partly know, or guess, that my headache has something to do with my overall time behind the monitor. So it might not be a good idea……
Ah the heck. I’m checking my mail.
But I stopped for a while to listen to the dance of the knights, a piece from Romeo and Juliet’s Ballet. I turned on my IM, got a message from my older sister, about how I have gained weight and how she can see it in my Facebook picture. I replied to her, that she probably couldn’t found anything better to say than that. Nevertheless, I summoned my gtalk and complained to my lovely man (i just have to do so). I knew he won’t reply, since he was still in a meeting. A minute later I found an email from my best friend in my inbox, I read it and smiled. She now found a place where she belong. And that is what she always wanted to, to belong somewhere.
Somehow I got distracted by the thought of ice cream as I read the mail, but my mobile vibrated and i stopped thinking about ice cream. It was a text message from my mom, asking why I have been so quiet lately. I put down the phone, smiling, I was busy, mom.
I looked at my monitor, now a bit confused on what was I am doing. Oh right, reading my mail. My lovely man is now back from his meeting, and replied sweetly to my complain. I told him what I replied to my sister, then asked him how did the meeting went. He was quite happy with the meeting.
I sighed, when suddenly I realized the house has fell into silence, a very comfortable silence. I enjoyed the silence, before letting myself getting distracted again with thoughts. This time, a craving of writing. Wasting no time, I pull out my notepad and starts writing. I stopped in the middle of writing to answer my mom’s text message, sent it and immediately received her response. I didn’t bother to open it yet, I am still writing.
So this is what the voice has been called “relax”. I still have my headache, but most of the pain are gone. I am thinking of lunch now, followed by a pain killer for the headache and maybe a light household chores, not too much, since I am still a bit weak.
Another thought came to me, about my quest of happiness. I told my dear brother yesterday, I have rest my quest of happiness, as I have chosen to enjoy the path to happiness. And he gave me the most wonderful answer, a quote from a book,
“you still don’t get it, you still think of a target, and you don’t realize that it’s the way of the peaceful warrior, not the way to the peaceful warrior”
Ah, suddenly I feel really glad with my choice.
The other thought intercepts my brain, it’s Paul Coelho’s the Zahir. I have been reading it lately and have been struggling to finish it. The book talks a lot about love, marriage and happiness. Every page has woken up the old scars of me. It is like he has told the story of me, of the feeling on how a man that you love didn’t listen to you. When you are prepared to share your dreams, your deepest interest and thoughts, he would nod and say, “oh that is interesting”. Oh, I know how that hurts, I know why the Zahir chose to leave. I know how the Zahir feels, how the superiority of the “I” character, has driven her into inferiority.
But again I smiled, as I remind myself of the tears I shed yesterday and the lovely man who has been listening intently to me while lending his shoulder. Ah. I still can’t understand how he managed to turn my worse possible day into one of the best one.
Oh and finally to conclude my train-of-thoughts for the day, here comes another thought for all Adam’s Son (and daughter),
listening does not mean only using your ear to process some sound.
listening does not mean you nod, smile and throw random opinion.
listening means you process the word, the sentence, the facial expression, the body-language and for once, use the brain to actually GET the meaning of the conversation and GIVE a proper response.
if they tell you a story, see if you have had a similar or comparable event in your life. and tell them about those events. if you don’t, also tell them that.
if they asked an opinion, please, do use the brain and think about it before you gave an answer. they honestly and sincerely asked for an opinion, so you have to do your best on giving one.
if they asked about your feeling, do tell. But always carefully assess them first.
And I better go get my lunch.
When you started asking what is happiness,
what is love,
what is freedom,
people will answer with no mere than questions.
“Why are you asking? Are you unhappy? unloved? not free enough?”
“You’ve had a job, a house, a husband, you should know what happiness means, no?”
“Love? What, indeed, is love?”
No.
It’s not that I am unhappy, or unloved, or un-free.
even if I do, I know I am the one who keep me from all those feelings (are those even called feelings? or those are concepts? invented by human to keep their life..meaningful?)
Maybe,
It’s funny isn’t? If you think about “Maybe” it’s a much destructive word than a “No”,
why?
Maybe, gives a person a hope in the chance.
a chance of 50-50.
In the end, if they got the unexpected half, they would despair more than if they would’ve been told right from the start, a simple word of “No”
but Maybe is all I can offer right now,
because like most people, my hopes are in the chance.
Maybe,
each person have to have their own definition of happiness,
like each has their definition of success.
and so does love,
and freedom,
No one else can free you, but yourself.
If you can’t love yourself, then you won’t be able to love others.
or maybe, as dear brother, told me, happiness just an illusion.
Illusion that does not make the feeling less real.
Ah, I am stepping to the dangerous zone.
but I have to admit, the view is quite something 
.
You might ask, why is it dangerous?
Because, indeed, once you have asked the questions, you would start to question yourself,
of the life that you had,
of the love you adores and admires
of the simple question,
Am I happy?
“And thus, they lived happily ever after..”
