I feel scared. Every single moment I spend in her company makes time irrelevant and space insignificant. The future becomes reducible and the past a forgettable inevitability. Seconds coalesce into minutes, which in turn melt into hours. Yet time stands still. The hands of the clock might tick away bowing to the pressures of Physics and logic, yet the elemental aspects of time do not observe neither Science nor Standards. It is just serendipity. That is what scares me.
Untouched by Janus and blessed by Dike, she is a symbol of fascinating truth and fecund transparency. Shouting out her views yet subservient to reason, she both shocks and soothes. I feel scared. She is the Portia of dogged resolve, and the delightful Elizabeth Bennet of immortal fame. As insecure as Scarlett O’ Hara yet possessing the steely nerves of Sonya Marmeladova, she is a delightful paradox. This is what both inspires and scares me.
Bringing out the child in me and yet making me aware of my hesitant and insecure conscience, she conflates my triumphs and tribulations into one moment of surreal peace. It is this very peace that makes me scared. Oblivious to pain and ignorant of pleasure, I am transported to a realm that is so pure that no conflicting emotions are allowed entry into that sacred domain. This is precisely why time stands still and space loses significance. It is this purity that scares me. It is this very domain across whose threshold I am wary of stepping. Yet with hands spread apart she beckons. With eyes brimming with meaning she reckons. But I feel scared.
She is so near yet so distant. I know not whether to fear the proximity or the aloofness. While the remoteness makes me crave, the immediacy produces a chill that runs right down my spine. What is it that I am afraid of? The fact that I will never be able to possess her or the possibility that she would invariably be mine? Hell is when she moves away from my vicinity, but is it heaven when she beseeches me to spend a wee bit more time with her drinking and not head home in a haste? It is this conundrum that scares me. With sparkling eyes speaking a thousand words, having for punctuations a luscious cascade of wavy hair, she is an epic of indelible meaning and irrepressible form. It is this very form that makes me vulnerable and this very meaning that has me in a bind. Yes, I feel scared.
More intoxicating than any brew, yet possessing an influence that is sobering, she leads me into territories unchartered yet traversed from time immemorial. Bestowing me with the license to dream, she also reigns me in when those dreams take on proportions unrealistic and dimensions unconstrained. It is this very balance that scares me. In her presence I am an eagle that soars uninhibited with regal wings spread apart; In her closeness, I am an idea whose time has certainly come; I see my future in her smile and chart out my destiny in her laugh. Each time she throws back her head and loses herself in her peal of uninhibited, unrestricted and unshackled laughter, it is as if I am holding a mirror to my very conscience. And it is this conscience that has me all scared.
I think; I conjure; I ponder; I speculate; I surmise; I despair; I pine; I judge; I deign; I decide; I wander; I shirk; I expand; I wither; I blossom. More than anything else I HOPE. It is this very hope that drives and demands; propels and pleads; enthuses and enervates; motivates and mars. But ultimately it this very hope that keeps me going and makes me live.
I feel scared.
