My Own

There is a land I possess – a world I alone own. A rugged island amidst roaring seas. An exquisite paradise whose pulchritude is cloaked in grey clouds, an Eden whose beauty lies in her ruthless harshness. I own it all, the solitary cliff, on whose crown stands my proud abode; a mighty fortress of ancient stone, it’s unyielding bulwarks, my shield against the unrelenting, cold wind that blows upon its buttresses. I own the craggy, barren moors that surround it. The island’s sharp fjords that rise above its half-frozen rivulets are mine. And I possess the ivory coasts fringing her hem, that are kissed and caressed each moment by the waves of the vast, infinite ocean that cleaves my world from that which lies beyond it.

For me, this world is an exceptional alliance of strangeness and familiarity. Here, every step I take leads me down paths that I have frequented and known intimately, but which startle me with their astonishing novelty. And there exist endless nacreous beaches on whose virgin sand I tread, while knowing in my heart that I have chanced upon their magnificent beauty before.

Blissful Solitude

For several years now, I have lived a life that is not unlike a long, cloistered path that periodically opens onto colonnades, sometimes lush and welcome, and sometimes harsh and jarring. I have had to, at times, leave that secluded island I live on, and embark on cold, lonely journeys into that world so distant, so far from my own, inhabited by fellow humans whom I seldom understand, that I ache to return to my own soothingly familiar world. Looking back now, I realize that my confinement from the world of others was broken bravely at times, when I ventured into that alien world, ever hopeful that I would find, like others had, through my association with them, that calming essence, which would infuse my soul with peace. But I never have.

There exists between me and the inhabitants of that world a chasm that cannot ever be bridged. If you believe that loneliness is grief, I fear that you will never truly understand what I mean. I prevail yet, one of the last bastions of that sublime, unyielding solitude; mistress of the magnificent ruins of long-forgotten dreams, that now rise in glory, consuming in entirety any sorrow that might have been, and exalting every hope ever conceived in my heart. And I remain here, reveling in the bleak, desolate wilderness, which through it’s very harshness has made me feel so acutely the spine-tingling pleasure of being so alone and yet, so alive!