The absurd..

The man asked me indeed, if I had ever loved, lived, felt, hated or tasted the various forms of passion which thus (supposedly) made us human.

And I was frank-I said I didn’t know, for I had no measure. I would never know what it was to be human for I had no measure but myself…and I had stopped trusting myself a long time ago. I could not be, and therefore could not taste another’s being-their passion, their hopes, their highs, their lows and their gods. Where was the measure?

The man gave it a thought and reasoned (and reasoned well) that so it was for us all. None could taste another’s being and therefore taste another’s ‘humanness’- but that did not stop one from asserting (and did not cause one to question) oneself. Where did such absurd doubts take root?

I pondered…and I said again that I did not know, that sadly I knew nothing and could affirm nothing. It seemed to me that I was thrown in the world half-baked-without a spine and without a soul; with nothing concrete but these doubts and this strange numbness which remained of me..

The man was silent for a while. I too, was silent and stared at him with the same numbness with which I saw the world.

Then he slapped me - “Did that hurt?”

I screamed- “Of course it hurt!”

“Well that’s a start.”

In a dance.

We'd be in a dance I do not understand

and I'd be as human as inhumanly possible.

My back upright, my hair well done

and I'd smile at the right places, might just be witty.

And you'd laugh-reaffirming my wit and humanness..

And we'd talk-for silence stuns us both.

It makes you awkward and it makes me numb.

And as you'd flow, I'd stutter-

A piece of me with you.

Another censuring what i say.

Another marvelling at the dynamics and the apparent spontaneity of it all.

Yet another concious of this fragmentation, of the hollowness from which I stem..

And if we're lucky-we might just end up revealing ourselves.

And though god wills this rarely-

but I might just lose myself in the dance..