Unsung Songs

The ball of yarn falls from the chair onto the floor and bounces off the floor gathering momentum from the impact. It rolls unperturbed towards the door and slips out. A thread gets caught on a splinter peeking from the doorway and the quintessential story begins. The ball of yarn keeps rolling down the stairs, pulled by gravity. The single thread tries to exert a stopping force, but the ball of yarn is after all, a long rolled up string of threads. As gravity and momentum beckon it, the string unravels, leaving the ball to become smaller and smaller until it eventually ceases to exist. All that is left is the string; the mess of an inopportune event. It may get rolled into a ball again and put to use or simply lay forgotten or may even be discarded in frustration.

Such is our life. In popular expression, we say that it happens during adulthood (but it can strike at any moment) when we are stretched to limits such that we are barely recognisable any more. We are left to speculate like the mile long string extended by circumstance and eventuality. The individual is expected to roll back into the ball of yarn by herself/himself. It is a proposition that seems improbable, but it does happen. We are living beings with spirit. All it takes is one helping hand, one dialogue, one text message, one audio recording that tickles the right nerves and we start by rolling ourselves up. We gather one piece by piece, we climb up the stairs, and finally we cut the string that was our undoing. We do all that and then we find that the room that we had left has changed irrevocably.

There are no poets awaiting our return. There are no butlers with a cup of tea and a retinue to welcome us home. At the most, if we are lucky, we will have a friend who will ask us to dust ourselves up and offer a night’s respite. Then the friend might find out that she/he is a stretched out string too and they start to gather themselves up. It is a cycle that carries on and on. Yet, at the end of the day, it is all up to us. No one is going to roll us up for us. We have to do it ourselves.

The dust that collects on our shoes is ours to clean. The stains that collect on our white shirts are ours to wash off. The bruises on our chests are ours to heal. The world will sing no songs for our own struggles. The world wants us to write them their songs and then they will sing for us. It is a cruel reality, yet one that gives us hope to live on. The songs that emanate from the depths of the heart come only when we have added value to another life. Life may seem ungrateful, but a grateful deed deserves a song.

A quiet verse dances in the staleness of the room and we gaze at it. We say the words in the silence that encases us. One moment, a thought appears, and then another. A refusal, an agreement, a conclusion: the myriad of judgements are passed seamlessly, each argument more fallible than the other, It pursues us until we begin to chase the light of day. As the night proceeds, the shape of the world as we see it in the day changes. The love that we harbour turns to doubt as well as the hate. The passions of our self thrive and thus we exist in a state of limbo, at the edge of being a phantom, clinging on to our recognisable self. We pick up a book and begin to read and the world transforms again. We may save ourselves or simply waltz into the gates of nocturnal madness. Life as we know it, ceases to be. In its place, is a white lie.

The morning streaks across us and our eyes are red. The time for reality is upon us but our passions have left us decrepit. The world is ready for us, but what does it matter? The body crashed like a pillow on the bed, landing softly and vanishing into the realm of rest.

The ball of yarn maybe whole and vibrant, but let us not forget that it was once a string. It all started from it. It always does. You and I, and all of us deserve credit for our struggles. They are all relevant even if no one stands to sing our songs. Let us sing them ourselves.