It is a strange feeling.
There are many wonderful books to read,
but the thought of seeing pages and pages of
strings and strings of
words and words on
a flat tablet (or a flippy book, both are flattish)
instead of drinking in life itself on the outside
is stifling and
Flat. It is a strange feeling.
There is so much life to breathe in,
but somehow the lush of the green garden with purple accents
fades away into the reality of
the hard-metallic, hard-tiled balcony
Prison. It is a strange feeling.
I’ve been to the most amazing ‘live’ events online –
a play on migrants to the UK,
Meryl Streep reading poems,
Rowan Williams speaking,
Indonesian pendeta‘s rousing the soul;
minus the smell of a hall full of people,
wondering who I might bump into,
picking a seat,
plucking up courage for small talk with a stranger nearby,
sweaty palms waiting for the programme to begin,
a couple of false starts from the emcee:
A disquiet ingratitude that stems from a life sucked into the screen so
Flat. It is a strange feeling.
There are so many interesting things to do,
facecare recipes to concoct,
belly recipes to attempt,
macramé patterns to bring to life,
candle wax to pour,
all in a secluded hideout called home
with guests banned and
options curtailed-
all while wondering,
“Isn’t there something better to do with my life?”
Prison. A strange feeling, perhaps
not unlike the flat prisons of the fathers of old
Antony and Evagrius,
except they were truly flat prisons in
endless scorching deserts
devoid of the gluttony of sights and sounds,
and projects to do and keep busy with.
Free they were from the open graves of noise and
compulsions,
vain FOMOs, while the
invisible ticking of a clock
waves the whip of a philosophy, where
life is an aggregate of tiny units of making and consuming
that over time accumulates to form a vast land that is
Flat. A strange
Prison.
reflections 