I desperately, passionately and vehemently feel the burning desire to connect. Connect the thoughts in my head to the words that these thoughts should shape into. It should be natural I’d imagine. After all, isn’t that precisely what I’ve been doing all these days, months and years since you walked into my life? You walked, waltzed, hid, scuttled and ran, in and out of my life a few times now. Over time, I got used to that.

The absences, the hurt, the angst and the smiles that forgot the tears.

The laughter and the screams.

The declarations and the curtain of lies each of us hid under.

The truths that couldn’t be called truths anymore coz they morphed into lies that breathed honesty in every syllable uttered.

Confusing and confused, the web got darker, thicker and stickier.

Yet, through all of that maze, we reached clarity. Both of us had it. We did, didn’t we? Yes, we did. There was this spark of clarity that threw blinding light on us, drawing us into the other’s nakedness. I could see you, and I know I didn’t hide from you.

You, am sure found your peace, coz you wanted this. You wanted and I gave it to you. Sure, you’ve asked before and I have given you, and trust me, I want to give you whatever you want, but up until now, couldn’t give it you wholeheartedly. There was a selfish streak within, to be happy despite causing misery. See, am not so noble after all. I craved you for selfish reasons.

I was the happiest with you in my life. I am not sad now, but evenly happy.  Yet, it isn’t the same kind of abandon and reckless happiness that makes me sparkle. The stars in my eyes as I look for you. The sheen in my skin, my face glows with the thought of you, the heart races just a bit quicker in anticipation, and the words.

By God, the words. My precious words. They flowed. Abundant, thick, luscious and juicy. Angst, love, lust and wisdom vying with each other. They danced to the tune my heart sang in. They scampered into little couplets, sonnets, arrangements that I never knew I could put them in, all by themselves.

Orchestrated by everything within me ignited by you.

You left.

The orchestra’s disbanded itself.

I drop a tear or two some days when I can afford the luxury to mourn.

For my babies, my words. My muse.

These months, I have nightmares. My letters mock me, full of scorn and anger and an occasional revenge. They threaten to leave me if I don’t do something quick. They lay in a pile, tired, bored and rusted. Lethargic, fat and unhealthy. Almost sick. Breathing their last few moments before they leave to find a better home.

I am going to have to let them go. Can’t have blood on my fingers. Not the blood of my words.

The trade off has been fair.

Your peace for my muse and words.

It’s bittersweet.

Like Belgian dark chocolate. The kind that I sent you last and ones that dried up and tasted like hard rocks in the cold? Yeah, they taste bittersweet. Like how my tears would taste, if you’d kiss me. Now.

whispering the same
in repetition
silencing a misty cacophony

waiting
yearning
pining

to awake in the music
to dance in the echos
to shimmer in the ripples

to be alive

an orchestra in order
bows bent
backs straight
in attendance
in anticipation
in repetition

to wake up and dance and shimmer with life

for
his breath to surge
his eyes to rove
his finger to trace

to render her
tactile

Flirtatious and flippant, she moved with purpose. Unaware of the effect she had amongst the row of men that waved from across the lines. It didn’t seem to faze her. It didn’t seem to make her heady. Her dancing feet firmly rooted, she pranced in and out of his life a few times now.

A whirlwind with every entrance. Leaving him breathless and harried. A high that was at once sexy, heady, thrilling as much as it drove him up the wall.

She was a child-woman. Excitedly she’d waltz into his life, with a bit of a tear threatening to flow down her rounded brown cheeks. He’d succumb. As much as a strict front he put on, he let her have the power on him. Every single time.

Every time she revealed a little bit of herself.

Animatedly she’d pull herself aside and show a secret. One. Each time it was just one, or maybe two. Not more. Guarded secrets. Ones that she treasured with great pride and a sense of urgency to protect.

He’d peeled away at her childishness one day. She let him.

Next it was her enthusiasm.

The way she held her pen while she wrote volumes to him.

Then came her spunk.

The sensuous curve of her neck.

The eyes that spoke volumes with different shades.

Peel by peel by peel.

His fingers trembled with every reveal.

She in turn glowed under his touch.

The finer fluff done, he probed further and braced her jealousies and insecurities.

Fascinatingly repugnant, yet strangely goading him further, he delved deeper.

The layers got difficult to navigate, murky, there was no clarity in where he was headed. Common sense told him to retreat now, but he was curious. He wanted to know everything about her. He felt that when he first met her and now there was a hesitation. A voice floated down “Be careful for what you wish for, you may just get it” He wondered briefly if this complication was necessary at all.

Outside his mind, the game continued. He stopped asking in hope that she would stop revealing. He was no masochist.

He exclaimed one day,”You are crazy! One day you surprise me, the next you shock!”

She smiled shyly. “There’s more. Just one last one”, she said with a twinkle in her eye.

With a sense of finality and relief and a sadness that accompanies the revealing of the mystery, he stood waiting. With a deep breath and a smile, she opened her palms and it shone. Clear and radiant, it lay there dazzling against the pinkness of her palm. It was her final treasure. It was herself.

Shielding his eyes to the brightness, he says with disappointment “A shiny clear stone!”

Her eyes drop, and she closes her palms. Her pulse raced and before she fell to the floor in a heap, she held onto her diamond just a bit tighter.

]]> http://cesmots.com/2009/09/27/peel/feed/ 8 http://cesmots.com/2009/09/14/name-this/ http://cesmots.com/2009/09/14/name-this/#comments Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:08:50 +0000 rads http://cesmots.com/?p=615 Hey you,

I’ve always been meaning to ask you this:

What is that thing that continues to propel someone to keep opening up to the same person?

• Despite the said confidante not wanting or caring and has explicitly said so.
• Despite the confidante who once welcomed warm open thoughts now has nothing more to offer but a cold shoulder.
• Despite the fact that the confidante has completely shut down every part of themselves to this person

What do you call that overwhelming feeling that consumes a person’s rationale, logic and lessons learned and without a thought or hesitation continue to trust and lay bare the heart and mind. Open. Raw. Vulnerable.

What do you call the person?

What do you call that moment in time, when that moment can last a long lifetime? Or that’s how it may seem. When the mind throws itself back and it’s lost in a black hole coz there really is no discernible starting point to it all.

Stupid? Is that what it is? Naive, gullible and stupid?

Can one be selectively stupid? Like a choice?

Like “I’d like to be stupid with just you please? Nope, not you and you and you, but just you. And if you don’t mind, I’ll have a bagel with that as well.”

What if the trust is so far beyond the threat of the outcome of stupidity? Hurt. Continuous repetitive hurt.

What if being hurt doesn’t hurt anymore?

What if all you wanted out of all of this was a touch? Touch across the distance, with the words that quickly stand in attention and form a line. A phrase. Perhaps one day, I dare dream of a touch for real. Maybe I am getting ahead of myself. Let me just be for now.

You see that overwhelming thing I spoke about before? Yeah, it’s a lifeline. The vest that sails it all through, the thing that the world calls pain, and the people living in it call you stupid.

I think.

In overwhelmingly unknown terms,

R

A repost of an older post, this time with audio.

Stay_fable

Stay.

Stay
Just a bit longer, stay
I want to kiss you once more

The night as a witness to our desire
Hush,
Close your eyes,
Can you feel me?
Like I did just hours ago

In the silence of my darkness
Your breath as my beacon
I caress you with my fingertips

Stay
Just a bit longer
Make love to me once more

Brushing wavy tendrils away
Your stubble grazes my chin
A passion on a sway
Yet again
Your lips cradled in mine

In the crescendo of our heartbeats
Your voice as my refuge
I echo you with my eyes

Stay
Just a bit longer, stay
I want to kiss you once more

The night’s growing old
Dawn’s stealing quietly through
My spine feels a cold
Hold on, don’t let go

In the warmth of this raging amour
My dream as my anchor
I shut my eyes tight

As you must know
I wake with the dawn,
Poof!
There you go.

Stay
Just a bit longer
Make love to me once more

I can account for about 10 of my regular readers who came forward and let me know, but the rest are left un-named so far. It is indeed gratifying to know that there are readers out there for their own reasons remain silent and watch from the wings, quiet and appreciative, like little content shy guardian angels.

For a blog of perhaps 30 odd subscribed readers, 19′s a fine number. It brings a smile to my face to the kind of endorsement this “contest” has brought to the surface. Not that one needed a “contest” to prove one’s mettle or capabilities or loyalties, but these are the bridges between the said and the unsaid.

My fables mean the world to me. Each is born of a different need, all sharing the same sentiment of wanting to be expressed in a language that speaks the truth to me and interpreted differently by everyone else. They originally started off as a vent, and have now morphed to mean a lot more.

My fables own me. The words that charge out do not come out of careful deliberation, something that’s very evident for a fine-tuned reader as I tend to publish un-edited pieces. I, Rads am not responsible for the premise of most, they appear when they wish and of their own free will. One just has to look at the dates and the frequency to know that one doesn’t plan such writings. They do not stick to the traditional ‘Short Story” description. They aren’t grand, they don’t always tell a story pretty, they do not have an ending, never mind a happy one, and they do not always leave the reader wanting more, or spellbound even, but they are my fancies and I write for me.

Please do not misunderstand my intentions. I am no snob by saying this, and am surely not treating my reader irreverently. The whole intention of jotting them down on a public blog is that what gives me joy and a satisfaction, I love to share. It’s out there not for accolades or for praise or even critique (all have always been welcome however) but purely for the need to leave it out in the open. Closed containers eventually stink.

As a few of you are aware, I am averse to online contests. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, but this is my take. Real life has its share of challenges, competitions and races. Blogging (both my blogs) has been a hobby to me, and will always be. To ones who see it the way I do, am sure you understand that mixing the two adds stress and kills the creative spirit that should remain unblemished till that point in time when the artist is ready him/herself. Also, there’s this need to better oneself each time. Race within and the rest takes care of itself.

So why did I ‘nominate’ myself? On a whim, and to prove a hunch I’ve had all along. I had no haughty notions of winning. In fact, I didn’t think I would even gather more than a handful of supporters. This is a pleasant (and a little unsettling to an extent) surprise. As many of you have said, my fables are difficult to understand and even require a few reads to ‘get’ them. Even then, many are unsure if they interpret it the way the fable was meant to.

What the reader should understand is that what the reader perceives could very well be different from what I have in mind. I love that option. Where one can take a bunch of words and make it their own. It’s fantastic. There is immense happiness when one does ‘get’ it the way I wrote it, but when  give room for interpretation, and people run with it, it speaks volumes of the readers themselves.

I stop.

Thank you once again for reading my fables.

So she suffered through the health, unable to miss school, and get pampered like the other two would. Once she even tried getting completely drenched in the rain. Came home and hoped the next day she’d be burning with fever. No such luck.

..and then one day she looked up the papers for her number. The Engineering and Medical entrance exam results were out. She searched frantically, willing to see the order of her numbers on her ticket would match the ones strewn all around. There was a 7 in place of her 6 and then there was a 1 instead of her 2. Hers didn’t display. Her heart now sank back into place and kept sinking. She wasn’t the chosen one despite her 98.3% at her boards and 47.4 in the entrance test. She sat still in the corner and waited for the screams and the shouts that would echo for the next few days to come from her mother. Miserable, she waited.

The blows came, from her father. Just like that, out of the blue, he yanked her up by her long braid and slapped her hard. Shocked, she watched him mutely. The anger in his eyes mixed with disappointment shaped the blows that kept coming. She fell on the floor, and he would lift her up and push her down again. The broom came, her dark legs bore surprising brown welts for weeks together. The stings were painful, but the tears didn’t come very much. Still in shock, she kept saying this to herself. Daddy? Really? Daddy was angry? She had let her daddy down. Mom was supposed to be angry, not Daddy.

The next morning, she woke up with rashes all over her. Fever at 103, her bony frame could barely move from the bed. Mom got her some milk, and she lay cowering in bed cursing her luck about that seat. That afternoon the fever went up and her friend dropped by with the news on all who got in. A fresh set of pain and shouts and disappointed frustrated withering looks from her daddy.

Daddy never shouted at her. She was daddy’s little girl. She must have really disappointed him. She remembered that first breaking of the news, the rest of the days after that were a haze.

***

As a young woman, she managed a beautiful home and children and her husband was a gentle soft man. So much freedom she had and the curious cat in her continued to explore and enjoy the little adventures the world kept throwing at her. So she made friends over the net and played scrabble on Yahoo Games. She was awesome at it. There were the silly message boards and she would make sillier rhymes and call them poems. Nicks loved her. She became the most well loved ‘aunty’ on the board. A few young boys doing their graduate studies here felt an affinity towards her. She’d call them her “boys” and she would send neat little packages of pickles or some sweets she made. They were after all so far from home. A loving respectful bond developed and she found a new sibling love through them.

Unfortunately for her, one particular boy didn’t reciprocate similarly and in his dazed hormonal state thought he was in love with her. Young boys act on their hormones and he immediately produced a long winding document professing his love for her. She chuckled at it while reading and instead of admonishing sternly, she reasoned with him and forgot all about it.

That evening, she left her inbox open and ran to pick up the kids.

After dinner, she cleaned up and went to bed. A rude jolt wakes her up and it’s her husband beating her and dragging her by her hair, slapping her, pushing her. Called her a whore. A cheap woman that would sell her wares to grad students. Mutely, she looked at him shocked. Really? It’s him? Her dear husband, who would never ever raise his voice with her, who accommodated all her needs, he was actually inflicting pain onto her. It went on and on and she reasoned and wept, but he felt letdown.

The next day she woke up with a fever of 103 and miserably in pain all over. When she went to wash, she saw a large zit on her face next to her eye. It hurt. By afternoon, her torso and back was filled with tiny pustules. She remembers him taking her to the doctor, and being declared that she had the attack of the chicken pox.

She remembers shuddering at his voice that day. Really? How could a gentle soft man do this to her? She had let him down. She should never have spoken with all those young boys. ..but she was a married woman. After the doctor’s visit, the rest of the days were a blur.

***

Many years later she befriended a nice man. Sharing similar tastes and likes, the bond grew strong. A friendship that not many would understand, but which she prided in. It was beautiful. She knew she could never replicate it nor try explaining it, so she enjoyed it in her privacy.

During a particular vulnerable moment, she let her guard down and confessed a few private details to another. One thing led to another and the words changed meaning and course and hell broke loose.

Just like that she heard a loud harsh voice going on and on at her. Nothing he’d screamed. I feel nothing towards you. Nothing. You heard me? I’ve gone over this multiple times, I have nothing for you. She stood listening, shocked. Shocked at the mellow laughing voice that had taken a rasping grating edge. Anger in supreme form. More words were thrown at her while she stood in the hallway outside the restroom and whimpered. Her heart raced, and an already fragile state rattled.

Really? It was him? He is actually angry at me and shouting at me? It can’t be happening. I don’t understand, how could he act this way with her?  He was disappointed with her.

That night she shook violently in bed and was hot to the touch. Delirious she kept denying she said any untruth. Her husband couldn’t make much sense of what had happened to his wife, but he was a responsible man. Her temperature touched 104 and not knowing what else to do, he dragged her to the tub and doused cold water over her to bring the temps down.

The next few days her fever spiked and her faculties swayed in and out. She doesn’t remember much of what happened in the days after that, it was a huge blur, but she remembers every word that led to it. She knew she was at fault. She had let him down. She had let her friend down.

***

The three wonderful gentle important men in her life and she let them down individually. These random acts did not define them, they were just disappointed with her. She loved and respected them all, differently. She knew they cared for her too. Cared enough to take the liberty to admonish her. She was very fond of them all, and when she thought of them, a smile played on her lips.

***

She now sits in her dim study staring at the blue computer screen. Her brain a pudgy mush. Blind barren spots around the sharp ragged edges of the events.

The multiple virus attacks were vicious. The CPU needed work. Anti-Virus should be installed.

The doctor however told her son that she would most likely not recover from Alzheimer’s, and the onset of it went way back.

She looks at her son from the corner of her eye and waits. He was the last important man in her life. She convinced herself that she’d let him down some day. So she waited for the attack to come. This time she was learning from history. She would at least not be shocked, and she had a large dose of Tamiflu and Acyclovir stocked away in her dresser drawer next to her bed.

One would imagine my job to be simple. All I really had to do was to put the humans into a state of slumber, peace and rest. It seems easy enough when you think about it, as sleep is considered a natural state that a human body would fall into. Equilibrium and rest, something that all forms settle into after periods of inactivity.

I’ve been mocked by my brother Thanatus (God of death) as he thought it was stressful touching just one human a day. Epiales (God of nightmares) showed disdain. My work was supposedly not as stressful as how much he had to drum up each day to create the nightmares to the few he visited. Morpheus (God of Dreams)boasted of his creativity. He had to work with humans’ sub-consciousness and create a different dream each time, to all who slept. Occasionally, he’d cheat and ask me to not visit a few, so he could skip on his job. Nevertheless, his was constant work.

They did the heavy lifting. I did the mundane. They scoffed. I bore their mocks in silence.

They do not know the trials and tribulations I face on the job. Let me assure you, what I do is hard. Not always, but yes, there’s always a human out there who makes my job just a bit more challenging than I’d like. I have no trouble taking the mockery of my brothers, I like to sleep myself but not always is my path without hindrances.  Once you’ve heard of the stories and tales I relate, you’d agree too.

There are always the babies. The colicky ones and the ones who were restless from the beginning. The hormonal pregnant mothers not allowing their bodies to relax and get themselves and the husbands into a frenzy over the slightest diet, puke and water retention. Antsy moms have antsy babies. Then they go complain why the babies don’t sleep. I try my best, lullabies and warm baths help and I do my sprinkling towards the directions, but hey, am just a lesser God!

Have you seen all those bankers, stressing about the millions that float in and out of their sight and now they refuse to sleep in the worry that a wink would cost them more. Alcohol’s my help then.

Drinks help me in most cases. I nudge the humans towards the bottle. All I have to do is get them to have a few sips, then it’s just a matter of time. Half my job is done by these liquors, and I dare not breathe a word of this outside lest the envy I bring on to myself is turned to jealousy! It is indeed a dulling of the senses that’s required for me to get working on them. The resistance to rest, to allow the body and mind some rest so that their stress is not a stress anymore. Then again, I have to be careful too. In my haste to hurry the process I must not be unscrupulous. I should do what’s best done, with patience. With care, and patience.

Humans are a funny strange species. They carry backpacks of varying sizes. Within they carry little wishes, dreams and fears. The minds are constantly at work. The gears turning, changing, picking up speed and tempo, changing from one emotion to another, almost always in a state of unrest. It’s as amusing as it is sad. They fight what I offer in peace. They hold onto their emotions with a vehemence. It’s almost like they derive great pleasure in refusing to succumb. Misplaced notion of strength from where I stand.

It’s admirable too, if my primary purpose was not to bring sleep to them. That’s how my brothers think at least. They mutter and scratch their heads in astonishment, wonder how the humans manage it all. The tenacity, the perseverance and the marvel of survival. They are occasionally very simple too. Take for example a lady whom I have been trying to bestow some much needed rest.

She’s actually not complicated nor does she carry heavy backpacks. She has little whims and fancies I agree, but nothing that her own mind can’t reason and dream it up to bring satiety. Easily satiable she was. Then apparently, she fell in love. No, not the romantic-let’s-sit-on-a-gondola-on-a-starry-moonlit-night kid, but the silent kind. The one that would just be. I could never understand that kind myself, but I believe it exists in rare little pockets within the human community.

In the state that she was in, she fought me for just a bit longer as she wanted to think of conversations and situations with her eyes open. I let her. It was sweet watching her. She brought a tenderness into my heart, a smile on my lips, a hypnotic trance as I watched her in return. Happy and dreamy she stared glass -eyed. Morpheus took extra trouble creating fragile gentle tales for her to dream up. She was our little muse, and we protected her every night from Epiales. Wicked imp that he was, even he melted seeing her child-like face lay on the pillow, almond eyes closed under her sharply drawn eyebrows.

One night there were whispers in the trees. Untoward happenings were taking place and she was never the same again.

Epiales took over. As I watched, he wept alongside of her. I have never seen him lose heart over his duty. He was summoned against his will to create the ripples from her own fears that she had just faced. The fear was going nowhere. Morpheus tried nudging in, but the strength of the fears that Epiales held on her was too strong. Agony spread within all of us. I used all my power to bring her rest. I even tried getting her to drink more liquor. She would drink, and I’d take over. Epiales was always summoned. She would wake up sweating, soaked in her whimpers. Her nightmares always had her worst fears confirmed. The trusted one felt nothing for her anymore. The void was getting larger with her own rotting fear and guilt. A black hole emerged. Recurring nightmares of her being pushed down as the hand that she held, let go.

She would wake up with a start and then sink into a pool of her fears and tears. We would stand and watch helplessly. None of us could help her. Not bearing to see her smiling face in such pain, Epiales suggested we bring Thanatus into the picture, for which he has not heard the end of. The nerve!

Did I tell you how humans are a strange lot? Especially their women? Between you and me, I believe they give too much importance to the men in their lives, which the men do not understand, get or even deserve at times.

After a few months of such grief that she took us along on, just like that one night she slept even without my assistance. I had taken Morpheus with me as I no longer could brave the trip to her room alone. We reached the window and there we saw her in repose. A sight that needs detailed description so you my listeners will believe me.

She had a thin pink cotton tee shirt on and a white duvet with marigolds edged along the borders. Like she was laying on a fine spring lawn. Her black hair lay thick and loose across the white pillow. A few strands tucked under her ear, reaching up as if to kiss her full lips. She was on her side, curling her knees into herself, her toes curved and together. Her face rested on her left palm, while her right arm rested across the bed on the pillow. Almost like she was reaching for someone. Her chin tucked into her chest, her lips parted slightly, closed eyes drawing deep wedges on her smooth brown face. A forehead smooth with no vestige of the furrows of the past.

Epiales thought he saw a smile on her lips. Morpheus’ face cast down as he knew he was not needed, she was engrossed in her own dreams, and I knew. I knew that she deserved this sleep, and whatever it was that gave her, her rest, I hoped the peace would last.

See, sometimes my job’s easy, sometimes it’s hard, but there’s a perk that comes without me asking. I get to see miracles. There is hope in this world, and it is always beyond the call of the divinity. It’s within these humans themselves. Wish they understood the power of their own actions and words.

At least until they do,  we brothers have our jobs cut out for us.

She was a tease. Sexy, strong, beautiful and a fine tease.

He knew it the moment he saw her picture the first time. Of course she had that extra layer of fat hanging off her chin, the cheeks that bulged on either side looking like she had stolen marbles within, and the neck was hard to define what with it joining teh chest squarely. Yet, there was an aura about her. He imagined it was the fact that she spoke in a casual stylish tone, and the fact that she was aggressive, accomplished and had a pizzazz about her. Glamorous. She was glamorous in his eyes.

The next time she sent him a picture of hers, his breath stopped short.

The smile and the eyes offered continuity. There was an intensity in her look as she stared at the camera. Her lips, dark and full, slightly upturned at the corners, and there was that scarce dimple just barely seen in the low light. The dimple that teases when she did. The one that disappeared as she smiled broader or grinned. The warmth that turned searing as he stared at it just a bit more.

The face chiseled down to the sharp angular chin and the cheeks now narrowed to a slope. Brown ringlets tucked behind her ears, a few wisps framing her. The neck stood out, long and regal, flawless and clear. The columnar patch of brown skin leading down to a more fairer expanse. The zippered green sweatshirt hung open across her defined shoulders. Little jaws that opened wide ensnaring his path, edging him to follow the tracks, goading him over the edge with each brass tooth. The skin on her upper chest smooth and velvety. The light from the lamp on her side exposing the bubble of sweat frozen in time. Glistening, the light caught in its spherical glory, it sparkled.

The mounds rose gently on either side. Their shadows chasing all imaginations away. The brass teeth keeping them in check lest they broke free. Curving and tempting, it took all of his resolve to remind himself that she was indeed 1000 miles away. Not that distance mattered, it was all in the mind anyway.

Egyptian.

The regality of the pose, the eyes, the demeanor, and the darkness of her beauty, it all snapped together. She reminded him of a queen of Egypt. An enslavement thriving on masochism.

Distracted from his reverie, he read the few words that popped up on his screen.

Thoughtfully, he switched his gaze back to her. There she stood, in her robes, a clean shaven head capping an emptiness onto her sunken face. The smile remained, the dimple nowhere to be seen, the gaze however dull and tranced. She seemed peaceful.

The vision stuck. Despite his intensely strong atheistic principles, he’d never be able to make love to her again. He dragged her to the recycle bin and with just a moment’s hesitation, emptied the trash.

Tomorrow’s another day, and it came none too soon.

With a few special folks, she’d go the extra length. Their reaction didn’t matter. It was her heart she followed. She felt a belonging, a bond. Like one does with family. Family is almost always treated differently than the rest of the world, even if you’d rather not live with them, they still shared a kinship. He wasn’t family. Yet she had felt that kinship. Only she did. Something that she realized after the ship had sailed.

It hit her strong, it hit her hard and it her well.

It was July 4th and the History channel was showing a documentary. The words called out to her.

The very essence of her life as her father had raised her.

“Mistrust before you trust. The world is a selfish, hard place for a young girl like you to grow up alone and unprotected. I won’t be around forever, you’re going to have to build those walls and moats and allow access only after the person’s proved himself worthy of it.”

The words “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” rang in loud and clear.

She had worked hard and long to reach the point she was in life. The nicety would always be there, it was hers and no one could take that from her, but gears she had to shift accordingly. She decided she had the right to happiness. To the pursuit of happiness. The freedom to pursue that happiness. The life that she lived to be free to pursue the happiness that she deserved and had a right to.

For now, she had to survive. And she had to do it all by herself.

Businesses and people around her, they were sinking. The ones who survived were the ones who put their needs ahead of the rest. It was a dog eat dog world. Heck, even in the flights one was asked to put the oxygen mask on before turning to help the co-passenger or their own child. No, their selfless story didn’t cut it in the present revelation.

Corporations or people, there was just one thing that was needed to survive. Who else could say it better than Gordon Gekko

The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good.

Greed is right.

Greed works.

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.

She declared “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness; and no matter the kind of jungle am thrust into, I’ll survive and I will live long, free and happy to tell the tale.”