notes on survival

Vuong calls survival an art. In this particular context, he talks about the war. I found it while reading, and since morning I am reminded of how people survive and how creativity or some means of expression saves us when it feels like the end of hope.

If at all it makes any sense, Kubler-Ross’s stages of grief never occur one after the other, they are jumbled, and they re-iterate themselves in no particular order when one least expects it(or that’s just me). I cried while reading, and this time I knew the reason even if it seemed obscure and meaningless.

I was interrupted by a serious urge to have coffee. I describe timescapes of mountains to my partner because that’s all the thought I have most times these days. I haven’t been to the mountains since last June nor do I have any plans. But they are in my thoughts, even their winds and sounds.

Years ago, one of my wisest friends said, because there is love there is grief and pain. We were in our early twenties and used to share our new-found or to put it correctly voice-able wisdom with each other to survive the world, that then seemed too cruel, which was unimaginable for teenagers who lived happily with their music, books, and discoveries through big little wilderness-es. Years later, I think about this in a different light, the presence and absence of love or tenderness in a human, in a much more basic way, not caused or affected by romance or relationships.