murky waters

I find myself thinking about the brown muddy water one finds on a clay ground after a bashful of rain. I do not want to dwell on the reason why I suddenly felt the impulse of thinking such weird thoughts... as I am more pre-occupied of the feelings it creeps inside me whenever a picture of a puddle returns to mind.

No, I am not easily put off by dirt and nor do I squirm when I see mud. There have been times when the warmth of the wet earth between my toes soothed my aching feet and calmed my bruised soul as I faced an endless road with only my thoughts to keep me company. Where my companions are also busy keeping their shaky spirit sturdy as they wipe their brows with the back of their hand.

The thoughts of those long walk makes me smile and sigh at the same time. But the mud between my feet were alies... friend to the weary traveller... comforter of battered thighs and weathered bodies...

The golden color of the earth as it squish between my toes changes hues and everytime I try to look at my feet, I see more of the mud than of the flesh I am made of. But ashes to ashes, dust to dust -- or so the saying goes...aren't we all, in one form or another, as muddy and as dirty? just like the earth we step on?

When we take our last breath and our carcass thrown to the ground... after the last rite symbolizing our return to the womb of mother nature, don't we all crumble to become the same dust and mud we walk on? are we not every bit earthy as every bit of soil that makes up the earth we live in?

and so I tell myself, why feel uncomfortable of the thought of a muddy puddle?

I don't know.

It is one of those moments where we feel something we cannot explain. I bet you also had that experience of just feeling something strange,

like being happy without a reason,

feeling fear without knowing why,

feeling uncomfortable when there is no obvious reason to be so...

and you just do...

You don't ask why...

sometimes, you don't even stop to acknowledge the feeling...

happened so suddenly... so fast, that it throws you on a wheeling spree of emotions that only you could understand because YOU feel it.

But you understand and you don't understand at the same time. Coz you can't seem to find the right words to explain it... You cannot assign a language to verbalize it. And every attempt to verbally reconstruct that feeling you cannot explain always end in failure...you find it to be a feeble move...for to bottle something that is fusing profusely, knotting you almost is physical discomfort, even to the brink of pain...to bottle something that makes you wanna explode...is just an impossibility...

and so you end up frustrated. You feel alienated from the people you want to share it with. Misunderstood by the few who tried to reach out... Everyone feeling disappointed and useless.

And so when you feel that confusing mixture of feelings, that cartwheeling emotions that threatens to destroy your little comfortable bubble... you tend to keep quiet.

Lost in your own thoughts. Drowned in your silence. Overwhelmed by the experience... Regretting your inability to patch others in the moment. Disappointed how they cannot get to you.

You feel alone but not lonely.

You become tired but somewhat satisfied.

You become fearful, because the unknown always bring the fear in us.

Surprises, good or bad,and that uncertainty of feeling and not feeling, knowing and not knowing, living and not existing. Of being fearful and intrigued, of being bashed and battered and feeling satisfied despite of it all, always make our hearts jump.

Just as the muddy water and the thought of it splashing as a pair of feet steps on it makes me hold my breath, I find myself bathed in this crazy experience of finding and not finding -- not that I know what it is that I am not looking for in the first place.

A splash of mixed and construed emotions that makes me want to run for the fear of being mad. But for sure, I haven't lost my mind (or have i?)...although, it is a possibility that it was my mind who have lost me.

Incapable of understanding the moment I am in and the experience I find myself swimming in the middle of, could it be that it decided to leave me behind to wander off towards normal things it can grasp on?

Like me, my mind fears everything it cannot understand.

Everything it cannot accept just cannot be true... or so it insists.

Until proven...sanity must be grounded on a level whereby it can be defined, determined, dissected and discussed.

The swirl of emotions and the shock of understanding and not understanding, of feeling and not feeling, and merger of being there but not really existing...is...like groping in a deep puddle of muddy murky brown water.

You instantly fear, you suddenly think about things you normally wouldn't think about...after all, you do not know what vile things plagues the bottom and the bottom, you can only feel but not see.

You y try to guess knowing you cannot fully know.

You grope and you shiver with excitement of promised unspoken adventures as your mind opens a chest of treasures of endless possibilities while it dictates that the unknown almost always cannot be trusted.

The mind will step on it, just as the pair of feet will put its weight on the brown slimy soil... splashing the brown water sideways, parting the earthy paste...but no matter how many times the feet tries to part it, it seeps back to its place in the earth. Just as the mind might try to discern, dissect and understand, the confusion of having contradictory emotions will always find a way to throw the balance of our once stabel thoughts.

The mind, like the feet, may try to feel the warmth the murky muddy earthy confusion of the moment offers... but neither can stand eachother for so long.

No, the feet can only stand the mud for so long before it starts to itch, before it starts to look for the fresh refuge of water... And no, it doesnt matter that they are of the same composition. It doesnt matter that the feet that moves in the muddy puddle is made of the same earth the brown slimy mud is made of...

So no, the mind might feed from the mixture of emotions and experiences it receives, sharpening its understanding of how to go through the world...but just as the feet would shake the muddy existence of the brown earth off it, the mind will find a way to construct a sane explanation of things and feelings that it is confronted with...It will try to shake off the confusion and disturbing emotions unti it succeeds.

yes, until it shakes off that uncertainty of feeling and not feeling, knowing and not knowing, living and not existing. Of being fearful and intrigued, of being bashed and battered and feeling satisfied.

Don't ask me why.

It's just feels so.

It just seems right that way.

For it is also not right for mud to overly fester on the feet, nor do abstract emotions to forever distract the sanity of thought...

That's how things are.

It just is.