It was a day of mourning. Of what was lost, and of a life of an individual. When death comes too close to your door, it makes you wonder many things. There are too  many questions and no answers and too much misery for the human heart to bear.

But one thing is true; the heart’s capacity to bear tragedy is infinite.

There’s no escaping it, no escaping from the madness. There are days when she tries to keep it calm, to keep it sane. To tie everything up in a neat bow and package it just so, so that all the worries, all the fears, all the questions, all the doubts, they are kept at bay, allowing her to walk that fine line between giving up and continuing.

It’s a constant struggle, a silent struggle.

The words are starting to choke her, bit by bit, day by day. The emotions, the feelings, all of which have to come out, which should have been given some attention a long time ago, are starting to fester like an infected wound, a cold sore. Getting uglier, and uglier by the day.

There has to be a release, right?

The pressure builds; she bites her teeth, takes a deep breath and keeps it all in, knowing that sooner or later, it’s going to explode. And what’s left of the scattered pieces may be unrecognizable.

For sounds, for music, for making music.

She’d never really understood how big a part of her life it was, until she’d completely stopped. She’d wanted to step away from the performing arts when she entered college because she had wanted to try something different. She’d wanted to work on her fitness, on traversing new boundaries, of challenging herself. In the process, she began to lose a part of herself that she had forgotten was so, so dear to her.

Since the age of 6, she’d been surrounded by strings. Plucking, getting the fingers on the correct notes, digits moving as if they spoke a language only they knew. With practice, it had become second nature at a point, to pick up her instrument and play. After 6 years, she stopped. “Other commitments” had gotten the better of her.

Thinking back, now, she shakes her head at her foolishness. If only she’d had more discipline. If only she had been wiser. If only, if only, if only…

Then on a whim, she’d started on something completely different. She didn’t think she would adapt to traditional musical instruments as well as she did. Oh how she’d enjoyed being part of an orchestra, how she’d enjoyed working on pieces tirelessly, focusing on getting the tune, the pitch, all of it right, working over and over, till her fingers had started bleeding, till perfection had been achieved.

She’d learnt then, that pain was just another feeling to be dealt with. That continuous pain created numbness, and once numbness took root, then it was possible to push even faster, strive even harder for perfection. It had been glorious, glorious fun, being part of a musical experience as big as that.

And then, that too had stopped.

After all those years, she was touching strings again. She was nervous, because she was revisiting notes and symbols that she had not been acquainted with for a long, long while now. Staring at the black and white, she felt that she was starting to learn a foreign language all over again. It was another challenge. One she was willing to take up if it brought her the solace that it had always given her before.

She touches the strings, gently plucks them, hears the sounds resonate, loudly at first, then softer, softer…

She picks up her glass of wine, takes a sip. Rolls the taste of the crisp freshness in her mouth. Swallows. Deep breath, now.

Slowly, she runs her fingers over the strings, presses down on them, begins to play.

She thinks of those that she has grown up with. Almost like family, but not quite. How her family became intertwined with theirs. How she ended up in a different continent from them, and yet, despite the distance, despite the fact that she hasn’t seen some of them in years, they are still a part of her life, defining pillars of her existence. Supporting her. Helping her through. Being the memories that create new memories. Coloured polaroids that retain their youth and vigor.

Then she thinks about other ties, ties she misses, ties she regrets untying. How those ties have changed, some infinitesimally, some drastically. Individuals who were once considered an extension of her soul, have now become forgotten figments of her past. She shakes her head, laughs as she looks at old photos of fires that used to light her from within.

Letters. Six pages, eight pages, pages and pages of scribbles between him and her. She remembers the excitement of reading the letters in the sanctity of her home, trying her best not to be discovered by the elders. Letters from her sweetheart, about the smallest, simplest things that life had to offer, then.

Those were the days when her innocence was an untainted virtue, and when she believed. In fairy tales, in happy endings. When she had infallible faith. When naivete was part of her very nature.

Then there are recent ties. Ties which she is baffled by, ties that have been misread, misrepresented, miscontrued. Mis-tied, as she thinks on days when she attempts to make light of them. And on darker days, ties she knows she has to amend. To untie the complicated tangles to make simple, unknotted ties.

Her mind drifts again…

A word comes to mind: Yuanfen. Of Chinese origin, with no English equivalent. It refers to :

A relationship by fate or destiny. A complex concept drawing on principles of predetermination in Chinese culture, which dictate relationships, encounters and affinities, mostly among lovers and friends.

In common usage yuanfen means the “binding force” that links two people together in any relationship.

A small smile graces her face. Yes. She’s had that too. Some ties that she can never run away from, no matter how hard she tried. Ties that are better off left unexplained, because finding definitions would only crumble the fragile nature of them. She knows what these ties do. They tie people up in the most complicated of knots, and then vanish into thin air, leaving the individuals gasping, fighting for breath, and wholly affected.

No one gets tied down, or tied down. But something in each person shifts, and they are never the same again.

Ties. She has been caught in a fair share of them.

Caught, tied, knotted, drawn thin, untied, with loose ends fluttering in the winds of time.

There are so many things in this article that I wish I could talk about, but I think what I’d generally like to chorus, in complete and utter agreement, is AMEN. Yes, yes, yes, to all that he says No about ( see what I mean by saying I have a problem?).

I think the most important point brought across by the author is that, not being able to say no ultimately leaves you, the yes-man, in the doldrums. Not just in any doldrums, but in the deepest, lowest, darkest of doldrums there possibly could be. And if there is anything that a self respecting individual can do in saving oneself, then it would be to stay clear of said pits of doom, by learning how to reaffirm the negative, not once, not twice, but repeatedly.

I don’t claim to know much about life. Truth is, I probably know less than most of you who read this blog. I’ve barely been long enough in this world to have seen all that it has to offer, both the good, and the bad. But in my few short years here, I have gone through several significant experiences that have molded me as an individual – success, failure, love, heartbreak, cancer, more cancer, eating disorders, etc etc etc. They may not be colossal issues, but they have been colossal enough for me to deal with. And with age, and with experience, there comes a point in your life where you get completely and utterly sick of being the do-gooding yes-man.

To quote the author (who said something along these lines), there is nothing sweeter than the liberating freedom of uttering the negative. It’s still something that is difficult for me to do; I have spent far too long putting others before myself to expect any significant changes in my character. Once a MT (figure out that acronym for yourself), always a MT. It’s a complex. And some complexes are pretty much part of the DNA, truth to be told.

But we all have our breaking points, and even I believe my threshold has hit its maximum capacity. If there’s anything I am glad about, it’s the fact that I realised it at a relatively young age. All the more time for me to make amends to the character flaws that lie within.

I feel like my thoughts have been quite…airyfairy today. It is an apt description of the general state of the mind, truth be told. One of those days where the self’s existence is deeply questioned time and time again…

If you got nothing else from this post, then at least think about this: how many times have you said no this week alone?

I am not sure how it is for you, but writing for me is the only way I know how to communicate. I can see you rolling your eyes, and laughing at me, because you tend to call me a big chatterbox, annoying on a good day, and choice of other colourful words on a bad day. But it’s true. All these other things I say, none of it is ever as honest, or as raw, as when I write.

Writing has always been my solace, ever since I started my first diary, which was a gift from my aunt. I still remember how it looks like. Black and pink striped, furry, with a lock, so that no one could break into my inner most thoughts. I worshipped that diary. It was my best friend, my sole confidante (you know how us only children are like, we need a confidante, usually imaginary, because we don’t really have anyone else to talk to), my constant companion through my daily moans and groans (I was quite the opinionated child, even then) and all round solver of problems, just because it accepted me for who I was, no questions asked.

That was the beginning of my love affair. One which has grown with time, strengthened, becoming almost maddening in its intensity over time.

I remember writing many, many things. With my overacting imagination, I did all sorts of thing. I was the neighbourhood journalist, trawling through the corridors of my apartment block, on the lookout for the latest, and the most exciting of news. I was that local reporter in the block, the one who was waiting for her biggest investigative piece, because she needed that breakthrough. Everything that I saw, everything that I felt, I wrote. Writing was my solace then, writing is my solace now.

Even now, though, I still feel like I haven’t grown much as a writer. Sure, I have developed some form of maturity, but that comes with age, not with the sophistication that is the honing and mastery of the written word. I haven’t gotten there yet. I don’t know if I have made steps towards it but I don’t think –

You are staring at me with that strange look again. The look you always get when you say I am not giving myself enough credit. See, that’s the thing. This isn’t about credit. This is about selfawareness and –

Don’t cut me off like that! And don’t roll your eyes at me! It’s rude.

I can hear you laughing in the background as you walk away.

I shake my head, and settle into the sofa with my laptop. I’m going to continue what I do best. Attempt to put my thoughts into verse, fill a blank piece of paper with as many combinations of words as I possibly can, and hope against hope that someone out there makes sense of the patterns that I create.

Yours,

Me.

There’s never been a lie that hasn’t been caught out.

Maybe not immediately, but in the long run. In a lifetime. A lie is always caught out in a lifetime.

Some lies are subconscious, almost like the darkest workings of the inner mind, trying to convince, trying to change the truth, knowing that the truth cannot be changed. The definition of what is true may be ambiguous, but lies provide a smokescreen for even that fog of tangibility.

Lies are painful to be told. But it’s even more painful to be on the receiving end of lies. On the receiving end of untruths. Whether these untruths are conscious, or subconscious products. Whether they sound real to you, or real to the receiver. They are pain-full.

When you un a truth, you are removing, piece by piece, the bridge of trust between you, and yourself. Between you, and your honesty. Between you, and your values. But worse of all, you are unwinding the rope that binds you to someone else. And there’s never a chance that that rope can ever bind the two of you in the same way, ever again.

There’s nothing to do when a lie is caught out. Being caught out by someone else when you’re lying is bad. But being caught out by yourself for your own lies you say to convince, that’s inexplicably disastrous.

It will make you question a lot of things about who you are, what you are, and what you are capable of. Or rather, what you are incapable of.

That was the problem with these places; there were never enough teachers to give the children the care they needed, the attention they deserved. It angered her sometimes. Usually, she was too busy helping out to focus on her emotions. In that place, it was dangerous to think about emotions; one could easily start drowning in them.

She slowly walked towards the little boy, still watching, still observing.

She realised that he wasn’t just humming, but also rocking back and forth, back and forth. And his humming wasn’t monotonous, but had the tiniest of octave changes. It was all about details.

That’s what she’d soon learn about the little boy. It was all about details.

Thin, straggly looking character. Buck teeth, deep sunken eyes, eyes that refused to meet hers, staring at a point somewhere between her ear and cheek, as if meeting her eyes might undo him. She tried to get him to focus, but he unfocused. Or rather, his focus was just different from hers.

Still that humming, still that rocking. He complied with her gentle touch, turning when she asked him to. She knew he understood most things that she was saying. Best to be gentle. He was like a little lost colt. One harsh movement, one loud sound, and she’d startle him.

She didn’t want to startle a soul that might not be able to get back from the fear.

She wondered how to engage him. There was still some time left. The teacher was still too busy with the other kids. It was almost like he had been abandoned.

She wondered if there was a reason to this.

The little boy did seem different compared to the rest of them.

She finally spotted something that might intrigue him. Picking up a toy truck, she motioned with her hands, made the sounds of a moving truck on a bumpy road. It was always about exaggerated actions. Sometimes she felt too condescending, but she wanted to make sure they understood. They had to.

She had to try to reach out to them.

He still wasn’t looking at her. She knew she couldn’t force him. She spoke to him again, loudly and clearly, looking at him, even though his attention was focused elsewhere, almost inside him, like he was involved in a conversation with himself.

She left the truck beside him, turned away.

She heard the mimicked sound of a toy truck moving on a bumpy road. The same sound that she had been making earlier. He was moving the truck along the surface, making the sounds.

It wasn’t the fact that he was responding that had her transfixed.

What had previously been the canvas face of a human being, now had the smallest of smiles gracing it. Just with the two front teeth showing, casting the shadows of his face in a brighter light.

She watched him, the little boy who made the humming sound, the little boy who couldn’t stop rocking.

Boxes, by Charlie Winston

More lyrics: http://www.lyricsmania.com/boxes_lyrics_charlie_winston.html
All about Charlie Winston: http://www.musictory.com/music/Charlie+Winston

He continued playing his pipe, watched, as the movements of her body changed with the different tones of his music, lilting, tones, octaves, pitches, all displayed in the lithe and grace of her feminine self.

He wondered if she knew how easily she was moving, how quietly he was convincing her to play with him, to move to his music, as if he was the hypnosis of her soul. It gave him control. It gave him too much of control, control that he knew he could use to hurt her. What seemed beautiful now could morph into something terrifying and monstrous. He knew it lay in his fingertips, and in the quiet of his breath.

The knowledge of that power sent a thrill through him.

He knew it was there, that it was always hidden right there, that slight possibility of crossing over into the darkness. It was that knowledge that kept him straddling the line between the shadows, and the light.

All he needed was one wrong note.

As the Pied Piper, all he needed was that one wrong note to change the life of another.

***

Disclaimer: I’d just like to add that this is my own personal take on what could have been the tale of the Pied Piper.