The Swing Girl

 

When we are not travelling...

There’s this girl I know who swings. She stands on the plank, holding on to the chains that link the pendulum and an endless stretch to the unknown. He hair glows under the moonlit sky, her lips curves into a wistful smile, her eyes sparkle with lots of courage, and fear, and uncertainty of her prospects.

I can hear the chains squeak each time she swings by, suspended in time at one point, then fall with a speed accelerated with gravity. Her dress thrashes as the wind brushes upon her.

Beneath her, is profound darkness, abysmal, distant; you can hear the running water and its ferociously echo. Home is just steps away on the shore behind. It’s one of those things that you know it’s there but always out of reach; she’s too much in the action to really turn her head now. A familiar force pushes her up against the invisible obstacles every time she swings back to that shore. There’s mother’s embrace and friends’ fist bumps. “We’ll catch you whenever you decide to let go.” They say. They’ll be disappointed, surely, but they will catch her, surely. In front of her, a light shimmers through the darkness, from a path that leads on towards the future. She’s just one risk away from it, as long as she let go when she swings up towards the other side, she would let go, and leap, before gravity pulls her back down again.

Yet gravity pulls her back down again and she skims across the night sky, her feet rip apart the stillness of the atmosphere. She starts to try different things, picturing in her head, that the next time the force propels here upwards, it’d be the chance of flight. And on the grassy shore there’s serenity, optimistic plans, and lots of next steps.

There are spectators all around her, passing swiftly across the air. She’s suspended in an absolutely open space, yet simultaneously amidst a crowd of strange figures, with blank faces and movements as light as a feather, weightless, almost floating, almost transparent, surrounding her, omnipresent figures. And patterns made up with passages and words, chopped up and reassembled together, bustling about and filling her entire spectrum. She would hear voices, murmuring a familiar melody that she couldn’t seem to recall.

And she keeps on swinging.

At least the last time I saw her, she was still there, suspended between past and future, living her every moment pandering whether to let go of herself to the unknown, or to the deliciously dangerous temptation called, failure.

Both options take courage. And I heard one of the spectators say: “what a wonderful performance this has been!”

II : LX - LXVI Things Don't Change That Much (Unless We Do)

Ramazani = Ramadan

I often find fasting as an observation of a certain religion excruciatingly obscure. During Ramadan, the 9th month of Islamic calendar (it varies every year but happens somewhere around November), devotees refrain from eating, drinking, or any other means of pleasure from dawn to sundown. And then, described by our poet, is followed by a pomp of celebration at night, at least in the house of Ali Pasha.

People practice fasting across cultures and religions, and for the most part, consists of an endurable length and is followed by excessive consumption of food and alcohol when the "fasting" is over. It's hands down ironic and hypocritical if you ask me. Isn't moderation the key to finding enlightenment of the soul and getting closer to the spiritual awakening? Fasting is truly for the purpose of remembering the suffering and cherishing what we are bestowed by the world. It should be rewarding, spiritually and mentally, the result of which shouldn't be cancelled by wanton zest.

Sometimes things don't change for the better. There are women whose eyes are covered under black veils although their spirits are of rainbow colours. I remember watching Persepolis, in which through the perspective of an Iranian girl, we see a whole world crumble because of war and rotten traditions. A world dominated by male and a tyrannic government. There are images from the not-so-distant-history that can make your heart ache. 

People make sacrifices in life. In some religions sacrifices are considered the accumulated points for one's afterlife, as though the fasting, for example,  they accomplished during their lifetime will become feasts when they enter Elysium.

Women are defaced, considered possessions, objects of the men in power. They were deprived of their voices, their freedom of making choices in life, their individuality, their power of saying no. It's such sorrow, and simultaneously quite moving to see Islamic women who have taken up so much weight on their shoulders because of a life destined for them since birth. For a long time they have been creatures of pleasure when men needed them, they have been servants and slaves of the houses, yet have never been asked for when opinions are needed to be heard. There isn't any equality, for nothing has been questioned. Everything seemed so common, everything in place and life goes on. Those enslaved women don't even know they deserved much, much more.   

Ali Pasha's feast comes night after night as he sent to Byron many a rarities to be enjoyed. There had been exotic beauties and local tunes strange to foreign ears.  The old man is feared by all because of his status, not because of his personal strength. Tyrants enjoy their oppressions when the oppressed are ignorant of their fate. The most tragic society is not one that is in chaos, but one that seems calm, and discrepancies between classes becomes a norm.

In God's words they rule! Those tyrants never change. In the past it had been different religions: east and west, here and there. They tell their people that they were sent by the gods, and are divinely employed to be the dictators. Today those tyrants got other jobs. They runs corporations with net worth of multiple billions. There's less blood and violence, and they've also got  

There are pictures from the battlefields: the young and the absent minded, answering their calls of duty, picking up riffles and kill for the glory of their armors. They then go back to their mothers no longer children, but monsters with unimaginable pasts, or worse, if the war was taken by pride rather than shame.

There are pictures from the war zones: the young and the innocent, their faces stained by blood and dirt; they lie in the trenches, trembling with fear, with love for their homeland and hatred towards the enemies. On the other side, the a similar group of youth, darlings to their own mothers and siblings. Their only differences are the shapes of their helmets and the patterns on their coats.

Those pictures are still their today on CNN and BBC...

My macbook pro, like the chieftain's tower, is a shield between reality and elements of tragedies that seem so far away. These are the trophies of peace and crowns of silicon accomplishments.

Yet we hear gunshots and bombings from merely miles away, and people are calling out in pain and living in fear. The danger and destruction are closer than ever: a world partially maniac, partially depressed.

Childe Harolds are everywhere, watching the barbarians destroying the beautiful, all at loss what to do. There's a always another cycle of awakening and redemption – the ray of hopefulness is saying: it's time to pick ourselves up. Things will never change, until we write our own history.