Thursday 9 October 2014

Monologue

When the walls of the day press down too hard on my chest, compressing the heart and squeezing the mind, and when drops of molten worries find release from my tired eyes, there isn't much that I allow myself to depend on to make things better.
A warm cup to ring my fingers around for company when no one else shall hold them, and the haphazardness of jazz to remind me how topsy-turvy the world truly is- these two are my saviors from such particularly nasty days.
Jazz, to me, is the perfect marriage of the unexpected disorderliness of the saxophone, the loud pompous bass of a trumpet, the unassuming presence of percussion, and the minor falls of a piano that was made for the spotlight. I find my anger evaporating like camphor on a hot stove and my worries seeming relatively insignificant when I listen to some Coltrane. With every chaotic melody, I feel more indifferent to the negativity that seemed all-encompassing not so long ago to me.

We crave all our lives for warmth, familiarity and acceptance, and I find myself getting all three in generous quantities from my coffee mug. No, it does not make me demented to assign such importance to an inanimate object, because a person may let you down and turn their back on you without so much as a second glance, but the coffee mug shall stay with you through that stormy night and remind you with each sip that courage and strength actually exist in that brilliant black liquid that caresses your mouth and soothes your heart, elevating you to a happier plane of nonchalance.

Sometimes, the easier solution to a problem is to simply not care, and to retreat back to that island where you'd been living on before the rains came and turned your lands into happy forests where the squirrels played, the robins chirped and the roses bloomed. But that won't lead you to the paradise that you've always dreamed of; specially not if you know that it's within a walkable distance.

The goal is to live a happy life, isn't it? I must remember that happiness, ironically, doesn't come easy. We need to chase it, woo it, win it, and cherish it when we have it in our lives.

Like The Beatles said, "Take a sad song and make it better.."

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