Life with Serendipity & Eternal Sunshine

For some unknown reason, these two have been my favorite films. Maybe its the idea of an unknown and non-designated journey of romance that gripped my heart like any romantic fools would (which I don't consider myself to be, sorry!). And at the same time wouldn't one like the option of simply getting rid of bad memories...just ask some heartbroken person and you get your answer!

Watching the film, Serendipity, has always always always moved me. Maybe, for a change, giving up controls of your life in the hands of destiny, fate, kismet (or whatever you would want to call it) and letting it ride you, is an exhilarating thought. A movie is, although, a controlled environment, where kismet cannot play havoc as it often does in real life. It can be a place where flowers bloom and never wither, a place where lover's meet but never part, where things go right irrelevant to the fact that you made a wrong turn.

But at the same time, a film can also be a place where it can be chaotic, raining shell-shocks rather than petals, with people parting ways without knowing the whys. Such a film, that gave me solace at one time, is the Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (ESSM). The film is based on the idea that the memories of a love turned sour can be erased allowing you to seek love anew and afresh. What an experiment on life...simply marvelous!

I find both these films opposite to each other and yet so similar. In Serendipity, one gives up controlling one's love-life....only to find it with its memories winding back to them. ESSM takes the cake with trying to do the opposite, to control and erase the memory and the experiment failing with re-uniting the lovers and they in turn take a chance on love...again!

I find Life to be an anti-thesis with intricate layers of decisions. Decisions that run the course of our life and yet we are led to believe that despite everything life is decided. In my years lived, I have been playing a constant tug-of-war (or tug-of-love, however you would like to see) with life with me trying to go the opposite at every turn of my life. One thing I have begun to understand is that life makes the allowances, which we believe to be our effort, to make our own path. Or maybe we are walking along with life to build the path for both of us to walk together. Neither of us know it just yet.

The Avalanche of Time

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone, said George Eliot, the English novelist and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.

Time simply gushes in seldom giving an inch to be anything else but what is to be. For us to just breathe. We live at the mercy of Time. Heartaches and Happiness', joys and tragedies are entangled with the process of the journey and all the emotions appear and leave with the permission of Lady Time. I call her a Lady because it has always been the prerogative of the female of the species to not know where they are rushing and yet find it extremely important. But then our Lady here is not so vain; she knows where she is traveling. She spreads her wings and sometimes flies with her flow trailing behind her. Will she take us by her side and fly? Will she tell us her stories? No. What she does is puts us on the canvass that is her trailing flow for us to see her voyage making us a part of it forever.

Lady Time gives us a glimpse of her world through the momentous experiences in ours. She goes on forever taking us along with her to some unknown, some dark and dangerous, and some delightfully colourful places. Sometimes I wish for her to stop and let me savour this moment and not be the Rabbit of Alice in Wonderland. And just sometimes she listens and quietly smiles to leave behind 'my' piece of Time. I take a vacation from everything in life to find solace within. She loves to be embraced, to be romanced with and paid attention to. She would harbor you, fan your dreams never letting the worms of doubt be your friends. She will give you the wisdom to find your purpose and choose your friends. She will not yield until you give your best and will coax you in believing your potential when you are in doubt. She is known to be a hard task master imparting harsher lessons and yet is gentle like a mother's loving gaze.

Greg Hickman remarked that 'It is time to break through the barriers that have held you back and held you down for such a long time. It is time to reach out and indelibly etch your place in history'. Only a woman like her will allow you to break her boundaries and move beyond your own shallowness. Will you deny her that exciting finish? Or will you doubt her and yourself? She loathes such obstacles in her way, because her way is your way and you are not building the bridge to go over them or seeking a way around but stopping to admire the tiny crackes that it brings when you go ramming yourself into it. Time wants you to move on and grow to prosper and not sit with your back to her. She will not tolerate such insolence and leave you behind to be forgotten in that stopped lifeless picture. Because where Time moves is where you will see the ripples of activity and life.

With all the wondrous of the world, Time is then God and if God made man in his image...then really it would be 'her' image. Call me a feminist but it is the woman of the house who wears her heart on the sleeve, she takes the cuts and bruises and turns them into wonderful war stories. It is her that bothers when none will and it is her that gives a house its own warm fuzzy feeling. With her permission, I salute and respect Time for all the lessons she has imparted and the many more yet to come. And with that I realise that Life will follow the Time that is 'ours' and she will take us to places we never knew. We just need to look around, enjoy and live the moment to move on to another one. Time stops for none.

Dashed

it clouds my mind;
these obsessive thoughts of mine.
random and abstract; making me experience the truths, the ups and downs.
i see pathos here;
for me to dissolve this abstraction
and for him to reach out further.

i laugh with him and cry for him;
emotions for reason unknown.
hovering and hyperactive; like a butterfly, ready to take off when it suits them.
i see a longing here;
for me to soar higher in the sky
and for him of a never ending hope.