Exit past to the present

I saw an old radio today, the kind that spanned the entire length of a room, with three foot high speakers, and a cabinet full of old fashioned valves and cores. The kind that made the warm sound of the pasts so rich and alive with history and adventure. Radios that once were the centre of family get togethers as we gathered around to listen to Binaca Geetmals, and serialized stories ... with the hiss and cackle and static of frequencies that came winging from places that seemed wondrously distant those days of ambassador cars, and smokestack trains ... and it reminded me of the radio my granddad had, which was always immaculately shined and maintained ... a radio I have no idea where it disappeared to, after my grandmom died ... a radio that could have been the centerpiece of our house today if we still had it, a radio that could have galvanized into memory a past that can no longer even be held in imagination easily, a past that seems almost like a fairytale world, when we think about the adventures they had then, just living their day to day lives ...

When i visit my dad, which is usually once every year or the other, he always has some stories to share, some from the present ... and invariably he also ends up going back in time to his life in Malaysia, to the days when he'd drive 300 kilometers through dark roads to get to work, managing a few hundred chinese laborers during the height of the civil war between the chinese and the malays in the 70s ... and my mother used to be the same, always ready with a short story or a long one about how they met, how they fell in love, how they moved to Butterworth, about us, how I lost my two front teeth when I  fell from a showcase bringing it down on top of me, and how I once walked out from school, missed the bus, got lost and how some kind stranger managed to help me find my way back home again and dropped me off on the motorbike ...

But unlike our stories which they capture in albums, and which they relate back to us as we grow up, we don't have any thing similar to capture their lives. When they are gone, we don't have videotapes of them growing up, of an edited version of their life stories ...

So my plan this time when I visit with dad is to try and get all that down, write it up, see if I can put together a collage of the photographs that survived to punctuate and accent these stories ... because for sure our lives haven't been half as interesting as theirs ... and also because I feel that we also need to know who their fathers and mothers were, who their grandparents were ... and by understanding their history begin to see how much change they've seen ...

We've seen a lot of changes too, and one day our stories might inform our children as well. Show them how much further they have become because of how much we've all had to leave behind ... these stories somehow become more precious when you realize how much sadness there is when you lose someone for good without ever having fully understood them or their lives ... 

Becoming *real*

... In "The Velveteen Rabbit" Margery Williams talks about a little boy and his toys that become *real* ... but really the lesson is about how people become *real* to us, and how once they are real, we easily see beyond appearances ... Anyways on with the story 

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

Saviour saviour where art thou?

“I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty.

You don't grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house;
and you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!

Kabir will tell you the truth: go wherever you like, to Calcutta or Tibet;
if you can't find where your soul is hidden,
for you the world will never be real!”

- Kabir

"But you don't understand ... I want to save him" went a conversation I had with a friend this morning between coffee and kahlua bars. And like all conversations that raise more questions than it answers, i was left wondering what happened with Jesus then. If he indeed was trying to save us all, why did he end up being crucified for his troubles?

You cannot save anybody or help them fix their problems. You can only love them. When you love them unconditionally you're giving them the space they need to find themselves, feel affirmed as a valued person, you're giving them a reason to reach inside themselves to their deepest longings and you're giving them a lifeline to find their way back to the life they're created with their past decisions. You're giving them a reason to understand why they were hurting, and what they were doing to deal with their pain, and what they need to do to stop hurting ...

But how does one love somebody? Can one be deeply aware of somebody else if one is not in touch with their own nature or their motivations? Can we make the difficult decisions moment to moment that make life easier and easier if one has not learned to value one's own self enough to enforce the discipline required to stay true to the difficult path of sticking with a difficult decision? If one is not centered, if I don't  know my own feelings, my beliefs, then can I even begin to value what you value?

Wouldn't one of us then be in danger of being submerged by the other person's feelings, their needs, their ability to orchestrate one's emotions to meet their own ends? How can one love another when you have to stop being authentic and learn to guard what you're feeling or thinking because of what they are trying to do with us?

So to come back full circle, how can you save that person from their own manipulations? How can you help them fix their problems?

You can't. But you can begin by understanding what they mean to you. Why you are in a relationship with them in the first place. And what your priorities are in regard to this relationship. And how you feel about what they've done to you in the past. And what you want from the future from them. And if you find that your motives are clean, if you find that your needs are healthy, if you find that the way you feel about them is very healing to your past hurts or your future fears, then you are ready for love. Until then, you need to stay focused on what's going on within you, what you think about yourself, how you react and personalize what others say or do ...

The politics of relationships always begins and ends with understanding that the problems always begins ... and ends within us. When we seek to look outside or make somebody else the focus of our efforts, all we're doing is finding a way to run away from the mess inside ...

When you look in the mirror do you like what you see? When the mirror looks at you what does it see? Who's judging whom? And who is lying? When you stop seeing the surface of these truths, do you become aware of what's shaping the realities that binds you from finding love? Again I would like to quote Kabir to end this journal entry

“The guest is inside you, and also inside me;
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.

The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.

I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
inside "love" there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.
The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love.
How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies!

Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love.
With the word "reason" you already feel miles away.”

It is time to put up a love-swing!
Tie the body and then tie the mind so that they
swing between the arms of the Secret One you love,
Bring the water that falls from the clouds to your eyes,
and cover yourself inside entirely with the shadow of night.
Bring your face up close to his ear,
and then talk only about what you want deeply to happen.”