Friday, October 06, 2006
EIGHT
Tanzania, to me, represents the foundation of my story. And for a large part of my life it has been the past AND the possible future.
A symbol of my desire to return to unencumbered-ness: a cocoon which nostalgia has turned into a soft, mild space of perfect ease: the place where I can get off the racetrack, which offers escape, anonymity, another begining.
I had rationalized all of this some years ago: mount Kilimanjaro was the destination: a 12 day trek through all the climatic conditions that existed on earth: Amazonia like heat soaked jungles to the snow covered crater. And then I had bunged in the cities I had grown up in as icing: reversing the priorities had made it easier for the adult mind to accept the possibility of working at going back.
But that was then, today I have come to believe that I can never go back, what I want to return to is in my mind: in reality it’s a different place and if I want to, I have to learn once again to belong in it: cause nothing remains the same, within me or without me. Its almost like the fear of spoiling the picture perfect past has made Tanzania fade out of my mind map. So much so that I have given up on planning for it: believed in the futility, the vulnerability of dreaming, preferring the numbness of no-anticipation to the pain of disappointment.
Tanzania remains with me, but only in conversations, as and when I find someone who is curious enough to ask about my ‘golden years’. A backdrop for my stories of brushes with death, relegated to an interest-fueling context.
And true to all non-nurtured dreams, going back to Tanzania has withered away; the harsh rays of reality has dried it up and killed the hope that came with it.
Tanzania, to me, represents the foundation of my story. And for a large part of my life it has been the past AND the possible future.
A symbol of my desire to return to unencumbered-ness: a cocoon which nostalgia has turned into a soft, mild space of perfect ease: the place where I can get off the racetrack, which offers escape, anonymity, another begining.
I had rationalized all of this some years ago: mount Kilimanjaro was the destination: a 12 day trek through all the climatic conditions that existed on earth: Amazonia like heat soaked jungles to the snow covered crater. And then I had bunged in the cities I had grown up in as icing: reversing the priorities had made it easier for the adult mind to accept the possibility of working at going back.
But that was then, today I have come to believe that I can never go back, what I want to return to is in my mind: in reality it’s a different place and if I want to, I have to learn once again to belong in it: cause nothing remains the same, within me or without me. Its almost like the fear of spoiling the picture perfect past has made Tanzania fade out of my mind map. So much so that I have given up on planning for it: believed in the futility, the vulnerability of dreaming, preferring the numbness of no-anticipation to the pain of disappointment.
Tanzania remains with me, but only in conversations, as and when I find someone who is curious enough to ask about my ‘golden years’. A backdrop for my stories of brushes with death, relegated to an interest-fueling context.
And true to all non-nurtured dreams, going back to Tanzania has withered away; the harsh rays of reality has dried it up and killed the hope that came with it.
# posted by goldfluke @ 9:37 PM 
