The Nature of Myself
by Shome Dasgupta
Metaphorical in mind—the Doppler effected owl, the sonar rings of the red bird in morning solar shields, the mobile housed turtle along the banks of fallen mossed ponds, and a majestic magnetic egret, shining white in carved air; I try to make meaning of it all in the twists of the waxed sun, a dew dropped skin, my body feels a presence of the centuries of time. There was an era when I escaped the world, not wanting a nature—either of myself or that which was around me, and I prevailed, but in my success, I was lost in a tunnel of whirlwinds and swirling scars, hitting the concrete walls, bouncing and falling and collapsing and dragging myself toward more that which fed my chasm with more hollow sentiments. Tumble. Tumbling. Tumbled. Stumbled and stumbling.
That was a life—that was a life no longer, and I’m still here, when I’m not supposed to be existing. That was how it was going, to not be here, and now I find the symbols of life in the world around me. I name the realities I see to acknowledge myself in an environment that feels new to me every day, and every day, there are signs in the patterns of it—sound and touch, in waves I find myself floating in a city on a leaf and in the plains of clouds yawning across a tilted sky. I recognize their purpose now and put them in my mind for a nature of myself when once I ran away from my surroundings to lose myself in distorted prisms.
Meditations in the definitions of belonging and connection—seeking solace and love in the middle of the earth where when the rain falls, I am clean, or when the chipped mud jumps to my shins, I am embedded in a land which once scared me: here, not there. River melodies and the songs of fish, and the way the hush of it all creates a ground for me so that I can define myself amid the histories of an identity which fades away or rather, translates into the being of now and in the present. There will be times, I know—there will be times when the echoes will come and go, either as reminders or tricks, but either way, I know, and I know that when I don’t run, then I can access all that is given to me and all that I can give. It is the essence I’m coming to, and I will dance into the night to find the moon, knowing that this is the core of myself. If you speak in whichever form, I will listen, for I am a servant to the world, no longer a nomad—a creation from no longer that was in my mind, but with the purpose of nature. Do you hear it? That’s the hum of the world.
BIO: Shome Dasgupta is the author of The Seagull And The Urn (HarperCollins India), and most recently, the novels The Muu-Antiques (Malarkey Books) and Tentacles Numbing (Thirty West), a prose collection Histories Of Memories (Belle Point Press), a short story collection Atchafalaya Darling (Belle Point Press), and the poetry collections Cajun South Brown Folk (Belle Point Press) and Iron Oxide (Assure Press). His writing has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, New Orleans Review, The Emerson Review, Jabberwock Review, American Book Review, Arkansas Review, Magma Poetry, and elsewhere. He lives in Lafayette, LA and can be found at www.shomedome.com.