S-T-O-P

I wanted time to stop. I wanted all those moments I had stolen from eternity for an eternity lasting as long as my mind could hold them and beyond.
That time when the sky was so beautifully perfect and that impromptu phrase which came unbidden –“God’s weather”. The weather they would have everyday in heaven. If I would have shouted out “stop” all aloud would time have stopped? Is it a combination you have to crack? Often has this thought crossed my mind- if you stay “stop” at all the right times for the right number of times in your life with all your heart and soul, would time stop? Is time an especially difficult password which can be only cracked by brute number crunching force?
I don’t want to grow old or lose the security of this temporal solitary respite I have from this world, replete with its usual humdrum wanting to pull me away from my desired cocoon of absolute absorption in the beauty my surrounds hold. As I stood and looked out of the window today, or as I stood underneath the cloudy evening sky with the sun a huge globe of embers with a wisp of clouds right across its middle just like they show in all the paintings you’ve grown up on or made as you grew up casting a bright blinding warm and so utterly desirable light into my eyes. I wanted time to stop. I wanted that moment to go on forever. Or today while talking of the rain, how I yearned for all those times that could have been brought to a standstill…
Will my heaven have portals of all those images, my stolen golden bubbles from the pages of time beautifully inscribed on its innumerable windows swaying as if live, gliding and changing positions, or would my heaven bestow my eyes with the power to recreate and relive all those moments when I shouted out stop and give me the permission to stay in that moment as long as I wished, not caring if eternities passed in that one moment for there would be endless eternities and only a relative small stock of the stolen treasures.
Will my heaven come with a degeneracy that will blind me to all that is real, living forever in a suspended reality of my own universe or will it come when I evolve from this three dimensional world to a higher plane, to a realm of higher beings whose actions have been our lives as our lives became the source of all the two dimensional paintings and stories captured in jagged bubbles drawn above the sometimes rough and shoddy and sometimes elegantly drawn caricatures.
Will this higher plane give me the picture of my life as a complex and elaborate flowchart highlighting all the options I took and opening possibilities of the being of my life if I had turned my steps on the other road. Would these higher beings, the denizens of these higher planes be creating programs at random? And our lives a mindless result of these programs’ processing and a very real but seemingly imitation of the outputs produced as a result of the whimsical choices of a much saner lot.
“No matter what I say, no matter what I do, I can’t change what happened... I can’t change what happened. You just slipped through my fingers………….”
And more than anything in the world I wanted to fly, unsupported, levitating at will to heights proposed by my will alone, or floating a few feet above the ground. How do I even begin to tell you of the unsated void which grew slowly and then quite rapidly inside my very essence as these dreams slowly and then quite rapidly slipped away from my waking conscious? How I wanted all those dreams to not disappear with the morning mist as I woke up. How I wanted then to go on forever. And this unsated void I was talking of making its irrefutable presence felt all throughout the day even as I got involved in the usual complexities of daily ‘survival’. And when these dreams would impinge on the call of duty the mind with a will of its own and deriving satisfaction from being stationed on those moments more precious to me than anything I could have learnt, supporting the feeling that all of them were worth the sacrifices that brought them into their being.
Stop, stop, and stop... is it that... or is it stop pause stop pause... or is it a long ssttttooooopppp…or an s-t-o-p.
What is it what will make this time stop? What will make these days last forever. I am tired of reliving them in my mind. A poor replica inducing worthless hallucinations that take you nowhere. An illusion of going to a place you desire while the feet are firmly planted and slowly sinking in the quagmires of the desultory time.
I said stop... Why won’t you listen? To whomsoever these queries are directed... I know to all those in the supposed fourth dimension it would seem as it would to us if a character in our books of our own making starts laying down criteria, conditions and asking the author to shape their destinies according to their preference.. a Romeo asking to be reunited with his Juliet before the sharp claws of death pries them apart forever at least in that plane, in that tragedy…
Now if I talk about my relationship with you, despite the very famous adage that a rift even if mended will end in a knot or an ugly tear in the cloth I would say that despite everything we did, we managed to embroider the torn part with beautiful colorful threads, making a beautiful sunset, embroidering a glorious sunrise. And all these pretty embroideries where every stitch signified the compromises and the understandings requiring all our patience and love, seal the torn patch beautifully, reminding us not only of the reasons that could have torn us apart but also the care that we took to make it into something more beautiful than before.
And what if you met your soul mate in the street today with the strains of all your past lives clamoring to go and unite with him, knowing that you might never see him again and again a Romeo will be lost to a Juliet who couldn’t stop her hero hurrying away from her in even in this life just because of some stupid protocols the society laid down. You can’t kiss strangers in the street and if you went ahead listening to everything except what this life tells you and kiss the stranger. Direct on their lips. And with that realization of the purpose to this life being resolved- would time stop then… and history rewind and poison be snatched from those virgin lips… will their heaven unfold... the purpose to their this existence being completed…
And did I for a moment wish to be captured in the open gaze of the subdued orange lily as it slowly opened itself and looked at the world, inquisitive and beautiful and proud in its candid stare. Or do I want to be captured in the trust of the squirrel daring to venture close enough to my coffee cup and eating samosa from my hand. Did I for a moment wish to be captured in the cracked mirror, the crack being the portal for me to go into the topsy turvy world and come back again whenever I wished flitting to wherever life would seem more interesting at that moment.
Did the wind sweep me off my feet… and how can I forget that moment… the wind touching every part of me, so tell me did u sail across the sun...
Or the time this song played in his car as we drove towards my home and I sang along… him too…
And even though I knew that the journey would soon end wishing that this song would go on forever...
Or the cataclysmic beats of “can’t stop” as he raised the volume in his car this winter or the remembrance of the time spent, the warm feeling rising above below mere comradeship and much less than that of love as 1973 would play and I would remember him……..
Music and cars… In fact music in cars and music pouring out of the small square radio which I tried to put as close to me as possible as I would eat my lunch on the dining table, luxuriating in that one hour which belonged to me alone, in all totality. No interruptions. And hoping against hope for that particular song to play, waiting often for days and rejoicing, the heart dancing to its own jubilant tune as the fruits of patience paid off and the much awaited song would finally play.
And wishing to hear the “Lady, I’m your knight in shining armor” just once more and desperately searching for that song once I had the resources to do so.
“You just slipped through my fingers and I feel so ashamed. You just slipped through my fingers…”
Yes, you all just slipped through my fingers but I don’t know if I would have wanted all of you for more than what you were. And if someone is spinning a story up above or in some other permutation and combination of this same universe, we all will meet again, yet in different forms, and create more desires for what wont be there in that lifetime..
And that is my dear friends, a vicious infinite loop…