Tag: Jesus

Brownness

Image: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Love of Beauty, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image by Glenn Franco Simmons via Flickr

mage by Matthew Stillman
Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mess up your hair. If you are wearing makeup – smudge it. If you have a pair of pants that dont really fit you – put them on. Put on a top that doesn’t go with those pants. Go to your sock drawer. Pull out two socks that don’t match. Different lengths, materials, colors, elasticity.

Now two shoes. You know the drill.

Need to add more? Ties? Hair clips? Stick your gut out? I trust you to go further.

Take a picture.

Get ready to post it online.

Are you feeling dread? Excitement? Is this not the image you have of yourself? Write about the fear or the thrill that this raises in you? Who do you need to look good for and what story does it tell about you? Or why don’t you care?

(Author: Matthew Stillman)

So the last prompt is here and its about your image and although it focused on the visual, I realize my dread is more for the lack of future prompts.  The image in my head for myself is ugly in terms of lack of focus and the emptiness of desire for being better.  Physically. I have finally come to terms that while I used to nerd in High school, I have grown up and not the dark, skinny ugly kid anymore.  A particular images comes to mind when I write this.  I was in Junior high and 2 kids were mocking each other and then suddenly one of them says atleast your not him! (point to me).  That moment was one of the only times where I truly felt ugly but the reason was more than physical, it was the realization that the first time anyone in that class had even acknowledged me even thought we had been together for year!  Wow, it took my ugliness to be mocked for me to get any attention, a life lesson that stayed with me a while and made me think I could never get with anyone remotely good looking.  That is the power of bad words, to inflict pain well after the mocking is done.  That’s what my image has come down to, being in that room being repeatedly made aware of how ugly I am.

 

Today, that image has faded away not because it’s not true, but because I no longer give it the power it had on me before.  The image is now that of someone committed, someone who knows what he wants, and someone who will achieve more than what those idiots were going on about in that small room.

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Truth

Sanjay Sabarwal

I spent 20  minutes trying to copy an image that perfectly captures my feelings and in my quest to get that picture right, I lost sight that I needed to write.  There was a reason I am at an unholy hour on a Sunday night.  A need to get it out all out.  But the truth is, I am avoiding writing because this year will perhaps be the culmination of something I hadn’t dared to think about in years: Marriage.

In a way, I am already married, and the vision of being with the one I love for the rest of my life not at all daunting, in fact even exciting.  Yet I do not want to cross this path alone, and I do not want to do it in darkness.  No more hiding.  No more lying.  The truth will set us free, but more importantly allow us to live.

Lately, I have become superstitious that what my beautiful love is going through can be cleansed by the truth.  I no longer want to lie to anyone about anything.  Yes, to answer the ones wronged, I am trying to be AN ANGEL because I am willing to do whatever it takes to start a life partnership on a path of clarity, reality but best of all honesty.

It’s not easy as it looks.  Recently, I told a dear friend about her fiancée (who also happens to be a good friend of mine) who I felt cheated on her (a mere two weeks after he proposed to her) based on what he told me.  Yes, I broke the man rules because the truth is that I am not one of the boys, and I can no longer keep quiet on what is wrong.  As someone pointed out, as long as your know you will lose one friend, then go for it.  And I did, and the only thing I really have to show for it is that my conscience is clear, I am less one friend and discovering that the person I thought to be “saved” has decided to go back to the friend. So now I am less two friend, full of the feeling that determined people will hurt themselves no matter what anyone does, and perhaps nothing will change in life except me.

And then there is Preeti’s cousin who lives 15 miles away but has not bothered to call, or even stop by even though she’s fighting for her life and future.  Sure, he can go see his girlfriend but heaven forbid he actually check on a supposed close family member.  And then I caught myself.  I could do this all day long.  I could begin to stop talking to everyone that I think has done me or Preeti wrong but then there wouldn’t be many friends left.  The reality is, people are selfish, dishonest, indifferent but they also happen to be dearest to someone in our lives.  What do you do then?  Quit friends?  Quit life?  Quit the truth?  No, I realize.  You move on.  You forget.  The ones that mean something stick around, and the ones that do not, vanish.  The truth makes certain of that.

photo

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Perhaps

Sanjay Sabarwal
Jemal Y

Perhaps the window to my soul closed a long time ago.  perhaps, I have been dreaming a long time, and now I am awake.  Perhaps what I thought to be my world, my life was nothing more than a string of moments and memories put together so I can say I lived.  Perhaps I am the homeless man on the right, fantasizing I am the writer on this post.  Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

 
Those 7 letters have become ingrained in me, telling me nothing, give me no direction just a vague vision of what is to come, but perhaps that’s all an illusion.
 
I sit like that man, looking down half asleep, hoping, wishing, prayer for perhaps a better day, life or illusion  or perhaps not.
 
I do not know where I want to be.  I do know where I shall be.  I just know that perhaps it will all work out
 
Perhaps
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