“I should have … but I haven’t.”

Unfortunately, my list of should-haves is endless and a sore chapter in my life. And because of it, I often watch myself in utter dismay. Until the terror subsides for a while before it begins anew. My unaccountability at present is ominous.

I never intended to write about this. The fact that I do anyway shows how distressed I am. And that I still have a quench of faith somewhere that I can maybe pencil my way out of it.

For years, I’ve been pondering about life, love, the ideal work, my place…

The word “Thwarted” popped up in a recent meditation. I didn’t know where it came from or what it meant. Yet, there seems no better term to explain the present blues. Because we’ve literally been thwarted from our well-trodden way of existence.

Thwarted.
Within a split second, we’ve been derailed from what has defined our lives to this very point. From the urge to pursue whatever we felt like doing—jointly or alone—whenever. Instead, we suddenly see ourselves exposed to an overpowering and paralyzing force. Some call it bondage; others control. …

They lie before us — the majestic Himalayas with their innumerable wind-whipped snowy peaks. It’s a sight that causes many travelers’ hearts to beat a little faster.

There are the ones that can’t be summited. Someone has canonized them, and it has stayed that way since. They are the preserve of the divine, who take their rightful abode and watch over mankind from up there. We often peek up longingly, hoping to spot one of them — and sometimes we quietly wonder what the world would look like from above.

While we’re marveling at the Himalayas from afar, we’re currently…

Hope’s a frequently used term of which I’m admittedly guilty. Many of my prospects start with … “I hope”… It’s like a dull plea that endlessly sails off my praying lips. Like a craving for a lost jewel, I don’t seem to own anymore. When I’m in need of hope, I’m blinded by my faith in lack rather than feeling blessed with knowing.

.

Hope’s a misused word which I, too, have abused at times. Because I often dive in with … “I hope” … and then proceed … “that it’ll get better soon, that it won’t rain, that people…

offline, a longing unquenched
with crooked fingers on sore hands
nimble and tirelessly darting away
to and for across the tiny consoles
vanishing in distant cryptic realms

eyes red-rimmed by numb fatigue
yet glued to the simulated beams
talks vigorously nipped in the bud
lost minds off to occult wastelands
trapped in loops of false realities

night’s rest now ever interrupted
a gnawing hunger unappeasable
just one more glimpse this time
in search of some divine chalice
or maybe even malevolent sages

willing to leap alike a savage beast
towards facts of fraudulent roots
and no longer able to discriminate
the many claims…

“Even an obvious fabrication is some comfort when you have few others.”
― Margaret Atwood

We often say yes, when in fact, we mean no. Surrender long before the battle has even begun. And we now gaze into an unknown eternity, which, strangely enough, no longer seems defined by us. While we keep searching for the world’s greenness, exuberance, and the old way of life, we suspect it may come differently — without knowing exactly how.

Virtually unnoticed, it came creeping in. We sense it with every single cell of our distressed bodies. The frigidity of countless devices that relentlessly…

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise — Oscar Wilde

There’s something inside of you that doesn’t belong there — it’s like a shadow on the wall. Opaque and powerful. An alien object that has taken up residence within your body. It steals your vital breath away that you so desperately need to get up those trodden stairs.

.

It still smolders at the other end with its penetrating vapor clinging onto you like a second skin. For a long time, it followed you around wherever you turned. Rarely left your side. Decades have gone…

Camila was tossed into life in a small village at the foot of the Himalayas without grasping what to do with it other than following her mother’s example. It was a gloomy existence that would eventually belong to an abusive husband.

The way things were.

Gradually, she started to discern something very remarkable. Void of any formal education, she realized she held a power that came from within, like a beam of light. A power that would bring healing instead of more misery.

If she stood up together with the other bleeding souls in her village. If they united in…