Meditations from an auto ride

Sense/sensory/sensations

As the rickshaw sputters its way across the roads, I look down at the vanishing ground and I am struck by its its material existence, its state of matter in the scientific sense of the word. I have never seen these tar roads as I do now. Something that always seemed so hard and unyielding seems to now be blurred into lines, like crepe paper. I imagine a god pouring tar on the ground, only to have me come and change its composition, Between me and that soft carpet is only a half-ounce of air.

I don’t usually think in new ways like this, so it excites me.

Maybe this idea occurs to me now because last night, the family Whatsapp group was celebrating my niece’s PhD in polymer sciences. It felt to me like she had been studying for years in some European city, and I was taken aback by the specificity of the celebration.

It reminded me of a movie with the most beautiful songs. In that, an old man holds a young one by his shoulders and tells him his best future lies in plastics. Beyond environmental considerations, I am thinking about plastics and moulds. The state of plasticity.

I don’t usually think about the future. My mind is captive to a mob of daily worries. Every day, they wear their best suits and hold placards outside my conscience’s doors. I try my best at just existence.

For a long time, I thought the worst thing would be to be left in between. Even a sad life draws sympathy and love (like a happy one). What if I was never going to have either?

To be a bird suspended before take-off or before landing. To freeze with my ankles held straight for so long they would fear even the gentlest breeze. What if I became like a flower that stops blooming just before the sepals split wide open, that dries before its real season.

My mind always felt like it would explode in these gaps.

But today, as I suddenly become hyper-aware of everything that separates matter, I am feeling less anxious. What if I jumped out of this rickshaw and stopped there, right before I hit the ground? What if I could just exist in that line between gas and solid? What deeper appreciation of the world would I have?

Other states (of plasticity?) come back to me now. An oil massage with me lying stomach-down, my face turned towards a window.

The botanics in the oil had made my eyes water, and, as the woman kneaded my neck, a single strand of my oiled hair fell over my eyes. As the glare from the window widened in diameter, the strand of hair turned into something like a prism, into an optical lens.

It was as if I was summoned to read the light for the very first time. It was as if I was the very first person in the world to do so.

And then, the woman, who was as strong as a wrestler, started to draw across my back with her fingers. She brought all my veins into convergence at the nape of my neck and I was astonished to feel the blood pressing through them. When, at last, she finished and tapped me, it was gentle and sure, as if to say, you are done. She had sealed my boundaries that were splitting.

Now I could contain everything: veins, muscles, pain, every sliver of light.