It was only a month ago that I buried Jessie,
\nShe was only seventeen and wanted to go all the way.<\/p>\n
I was told I was born in a hill country in Tulsa, New Whitman many years ago,
\nMy parents were Baptists but had not required that their children follow a faith.
\nWe grew up free spirits but tethered to our home and town,
\nRelatives and friends, hills and streams.<\/p>\n
Life thus lived evolved into an open-ended possibility but without a vision.
\nI dropped out of college as I felt it was a waste of time to get educated in a structured way,
\nFor me all there was to learn was easily available outside it.
\nLife to me was to discover one\u2019s soul and then living with it \u2013
\nRest was all hokum.<\/p>\n
In 1997 I met a young man called Jerry Robinson in the Tulsa bowling alley.
\nHe was smooth but with a big guard over him.
\nAfter several meetings he gradually loosened to an extent,
\nWhat I could see was that he felt he was on a special mission in his life.<\/p>\n
Our friendship evolved to a level of comfortable affection \u2013
\nBut structured with some hidden barriers.
\nWe were like an asymptote and a curve \u2013 getting closer as we progressed but never touching.<\/p>\n
I joined the job market in my teens and the slavery has continued on without an end,
\nExcept for a time in my third decade I hit the rocks of poverty as I lost the job.
\nMeeting two ends meet became a struggle.
\nTo my shock it started affecting my spirit \u2013which I had thought to be imperturbable.<\/p>\n
A woman\u2019s place in society is still a spineless principle;
\nShe is regularly trampled on,
\nA continuous prey of sexual infringement – never secure anyplace;
\nIn social, political, and economic fields she continues to languish in 2nd class.
\nEqual rights are a good slogan but still away from the ground.<\/p>\n
The cruel pace of the modern life was insane as well as spiritually suffocating;
\nThen there was the ever-present shadow of loneliness,
\nThe tyranny of which remained an inscrutable malady.
\nStressful days merged into lonely evenings which melted into blank nights,
\nThe stream of life thus engendered was without a theme \u2013 a song without harmony.<\/p>\n
What to believe in was the single most challenging thing in the modern times,
\nAs the shell of the old faith had been cracked by the newfound \u201cfreedom.\u201d
\nMechanical living \u2013 without a thematic emotion \u2013 was the curse of the age of technology.<\/p>\n
I lost Jerry to his mission and cultivated another friendship,
\nBut raising a family was a huge risk that scared me,
\nBut with pained trepidation I decided to take a plunge.
\nFrank and I joined in matrimony with open eyes,
\nWithout the star-crossed romance and wonder of the earlier times.
\nWe started as good friends with the intent of serious commitment.<\/p>\n
Jessie was born four months later.
\nShe was an exuberant and fun-loving child,
\nMischievous and demanding but with a presence and grace.
\nI dreamed of my failures to adjust her vision of her life when she grew up.
\nFrom generation to generation human beings readjust their dreams,
\nOften faltering but never ceasing to have them.<\/p>\n
In the tenth year of our marriage Frank started drifting to another woman.
\nA woman\u2019s immorality is generally overlooked
\nWhile man is singly blamed for matrimonial infidelities.
\nThe marriage finally broke down –
\nJessie and I survived the shipwreck as a new family.<\/p>\n
Jessie seemed to grow up well even after the separation from her father.
\nShe was learning to live in the world as a woman.
\nWe maintained a cool but stable relationship.
\nYears rolled by and she ripened from girlhood to young womanhood,
\nWith apparent ease and grace,
\nThough I cannot tell how much of it was natural
and how much of it was a put on
\nTo make me feel good.<\/p>\n
One day she returned from school complaining of body aches,
\nBut as times passed they pointed to a malignancy in her liver.
\nEndless testing and consulting confirmed it to be a cancer.
\nA new darkness descended on my life, even as I was still absorbing the old one.<\/p>\n
After two years of struggle with her destiny, in her seventeenth year,
\nJessie gracefully walked to death,
\nLeaving a large gyrating black hole in my life.
\nIt is a strange paradox of nature that to find liberation
\nOne has to first go through the vortex of a deep sorrow.<\/p>\n
But once you have seen a beautiful sunrise,
\nMissing other eternities of nature is less painful,
\nIf a person has soulfully greeted you,
\nSour expressions of others are not upsetting,
\nIf you have had a dream of liberation,
\nShackles of this world are not hard to bear.<\/p>\n
Now I have only one dream \u2013
\nTo touch the point where the earth meets the beyond.
\nThe world is just a background to my journey,
\nMy flesh a wax to the flame carrying me on.
\nI walk alone toward the crimson horizon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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