The End of Heroism

This is the latest version of my short story, "The End of Heroism."
***

I sink into the murky waters of the bog. I can get out and be free but I need a reason. I grab hold of a cattail but I cannot pull myself out.

"What is my purpose?"

The mud seeps into my skin. I feel unclean for I fight only for myself.

"God, if you shine above the clouds of night like I once believed, give me a reason!"

I choke on black water. My throat burns and my eyes sting.

"Why did you create me if only to let me waste away?"

Fire envelops the lonely swamp and I am awakened and I am clean. I soar into the sunset with angel’s wings.

I am free.

The cold wind carries me around the pink clouds and under the rising moon but it does not chill me.

I have everything I want but not what I asked for. Where is that God who has still to give me a mission?

I fear the swamp which remains far below; if I return thereto I will not be able to fight it still. God gave me my arms to fight for others and for me they cannot act to their full potential. 

They cannot save me.

My fear alone, like the hunter’s arrow, sends me down. Down to the demons who would devour me.

I wake from my dream to a reality somewhere between the heavens and the hells: a place of decision. 

My choices have yet to take me either way.

I get out of bed and walk to the kitchen. It's 4 AM but I am no longer tired. I eat a bowl of cereal and cold milk. My throat aches like my dream was real. Maybe it's the milk and the cool night air. I open the front door and look at the moon, another onlooker who couldn't care less about my pain.

I play with the thought of suicide but it is neither in my nature to run from a fight nor is my pain so great that I would find relief in death.

Down the mountain road I walk and I feel a new wind stir the trees.

At the bottom of the mountain I stare into the lake which I played and swam in when I was a child. The reflected moon lights the memories of swans that used to glide over the water. They had died and never been replaced like my past heroism.

I had been needed and I had risen to the need. But now I am lost.

I walk through the willows, their leaves swaying in the wind, their bark witness to countless winter snows and spring thaws. The branch's burden lifts each year as the ice turns to water and rejoins the lake.

They live on. Year after year they witness birth and death, marriage and divorce, young people lost without a purpose that they later find.

I once had a purpose. I was a soldier and I fought for my people but they need me no more.
I was out of place among all but those departed swans. I had been happy when I was young and unaware that I had no reason to be happy. Maybe ignorance is bliss but once removed it seldom returns.

The moon shines on through the branches of the willows. I approach the lake and find my reflection beside the stars that were once glorified as constellations in bygone days. Now most people have forgotten the stars and the legends have become myths.

The world lives on before my eyes in black and white. The plants grow and the people learn to become more than what they are.

I cannot find a place for myself among them. I have no reason to change my ways if only I will benefit.

The ghostly swans swim away across the lake and my soul follows. I am no longer part of this world.

I had wanted to die a hero still but I lived in a utopia that had no use for me. I wanted to change but there was nothing in me that needed to be changed.

I walked through the willows once more and this time I knew was my last. I breathed the night air and it tickled my throat before I joined the shining stars.


~ fin ~

In Mono Basin

Ellery Lake, Tioga Road

 We drove out of the Sierras and in hours we descended four thousand feet. We passed Tenaya lake but it was cold so we did not stop and then we drove through Tioga Pass at ten thousand feet. I stood with Ellery Lake 20 feet below me and photographed the mountain and the water which glittered in the sunrise. 
Yosemite was a dream behind me and I touched the slimy, sodium filled water of Mono Lake at the outer foot of the Sierras. The landscape was sparse and barren and the strange Tufa Towers were like large drip-sand-castles and interested me far more than the giant trees of the Mariposa Grove. Blue water met monoliths and yellow rabbitbrush flowers at the base of the hostile mountains in a way that alienates this valley from Yosemite Valley. 
We left the lake and proceeded south and to our left loomed another wall of mountains and behind them lays Death Valley. The road veered west and the mountain before us and behind the desert valley, though not as high as the Sierra-Navada, stood dark and foreboding   unlike the face of El Capitan, which even from the sheer cliff of Taft Point is a kind and familiar face or Half Dome, which can be picked out at Sentinel Dome like a friend in a crowd.   

Mono Lake, Tufa Towers, and Rabbitbrush

We stopped at the southern end of the Sierras for fries and ice cream at a ranch house restaurant that sold nothing else but meat. Then we were moving fast through the 100 mile desert that must be hiked in five days when it is crossed by Pacific Crest Trail hikers because there are no cities to replenish food supply. I saw the occasional Joshua Tree and once when we stopped for gas a tumbleweed trapped by a fence and abandoned when the wind stopped. There was a moist breeze uncommon in the dry region and many clouds overhead when we left and continued on our desert road.

The Battle of the Crosses

I make sheets of paper covered in words that are covered in crosses. I want to write but my mind wants to edit and I realize that all I have ever done was to make these crosses over my life itself in the name of viewing life as art. I have never truly created before and all my pen is good for is making these crosses. All my life I have merely recorded thoughts and feelings and so I am lost and cannot write what I do not know or what I cannot see before me. I was never a great writer and certainly not so much as I thought. I will never be a great writer if I don't write now and abandon these crosses.
They say I am only as good as I believe and so I say I will be the best no matter the cold wind that I do not feel nor the wars which I have not fought.
The fan blows my pages and a battle against crosses has consumed my mind. I fight to keep on creating these sentences and they are about the battle but they have been crossed out.

The Sunset and the Clouds

A dark blue and stormy cloud swallowed the plane. Then we rose above it and left the city lights behind. Then we sank and were next to it, the tops of the clouds loomed above us like the peaks of mountains. The sunset was gold and once we came above the cloud again I could almost believe that the cloud was something I could walk on, that it was the land and I could almost forget the land below. Every so often a small hole would open up in the cloud and I could see the city lights like stars except that they shone below me.

I could almost believe I was above the stars but I could not.

I have seen some of the most beautiful things while in planes. Things that I would die to take a photo of, but the window is always too small and too dirty and the light too dim for my camera. High above the cumulous clouds that were below the plane and on the horizon where they met the sunset there was another cloud, a stratus cloud, a quilt that almost covered the sunset but it did not.

Far far below I could still see the Dallas lights and knew there were millions of people there ignorant of the profound beauty that was above them all. It is a beauty that is reserved to travelers who experience it as special because it is not ordinary to them, and so it is beautiful. I am one of those travelers.

I had not taken seriously what my father had said that a change of scenery would be so good for my writing. I realize now that before even arriving in San Diego I already feel that my creativity has been refreshed and I shall be happy to describe the great valley that is Yosemite. I hope to write not only journalism but also fiction while I am there, though I am having fun with my entries on this trip. 

Dallas

A baby cries. Two pilots carry-ons thud across the tile floor. A blonde lady runs to catch her flight. The tv, volume turned down, displays the latest news on the Batman Shooting. The man at Taco Bell remembered me when I returned for another burrito.

I've been in the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport for two and a half hours. The last time I was here I had arrived from Kolkata and the TSA agent stared at my dhoti and in a Texan accent inquired where my pants were. I had laughed but not said anything.

I am on my way to San Diego now. From Gainesville to Miami I had listened to my iPod and patiently waited for the flight to be over. From Miami to here I napped on and off and less patiently waited for the plane to land. I had to use the bathroom but I had a window seat and both people to my right were asleep and I didn't want to wake them. The pilot announced that there would be turbulence and ordered the stewardesses to make the plane ready to land ahead of time. We weren't to land for another 30 minutes, normally they ready the plane 15 minutes before arrival. The stewardesses told us to stow our tray tables and turn off our electronic devices. I didn't turn off my iPod, I wasn't about to sit for another half an hour doing nothing and wishing the seat belt sign was not on so I could use toilet. Finally we landed.

A blonde girl on the television talks about how people who have been on the battlefield together share a bond that can't be understood but by those that have had the same experience. Marines are interviewed, one who lost his sight and another his legs. I have an hour more here in DFW and not much to do. I ate one burrito too many and I don't think I'll be hungry tonight. That could be a good thing or a bad thing.

I ignore the political forecast on CNN and put in my headphones. It's time to edit this entry. 

I Want to go to Bed

It's 1AM. I want to go to bed because I have to get up early at pack. Chances are I will only get 4 hours sleep and fall asleep in the Dallas airport while trying to find my gate. I already wrote a post but accidentally deleted it.
It wasn't a very good post and this will be worse. My typing sounds like gunshots on Gettysburg Hill because I'm hitting the keys so hard  I have a crick in my neck. I'm listening to a song that I've heard a thousand times before and it's repetitive and too fast and too electronic. I used an -ing word just now and I don't plan on fixing it, I'm too lazy to maintain my standards. (I try not to use continuous tense verbs as well as adjectives and adverds, though the last two are harder to avoid so I keep them to a minimum. I also reject the words like and as, to keep Hemingway stable in his grave).
I'm truly sorry for the dud of a post today, it's hard for me to write everyday but I know that every time I see a page view on this blog I know that someone took the time to check my daily work, and that they undoubtedly had better things to do than read a post like this. So I'm sorry, and I thank you for bearing with me.

Goodbye

I stood with the boys next to the bus before they left to Mississippi. I must have looked like I was one of them, but I was only there to say goodbye. I had wanted to go on the tour since I was Mayapur, but we didn't look into it until too late because we were worried about the money. The tour is expensive, I told myself, I probably wouldn't have gone even if I had not waited until after it was full. 
I had promised my good friend Ambi that I would come to the temple to say goodbye. I didn’t want to go; I even tried to text Ambi to tell him I wouldn't make it because I needed to pack for my up-coming trip to Yosemite. But he didn't get the text and I knew I had to say goodbye.
I walked past the cars and to the bus. I saw the boys, shaved heads, duffel bags, saying farewell to their parents. I found Ambi and we talked for a while. I said hello to my other friends. 
It's accepted by my friends that this has been the worst summer ever. I couldn't agree more, my friends were leaving and I had only done a fraction of the things I hoped to do with them. They at least have the bus tour, a month of traversing the U.S., Canada, and Mexico while living on a bus with their friends.
It started to rain. A drop here and there, a steady drizzle, then it poured. They had to go onto the bus to avoid getting wet. Water rolled down my cheeks like tears and dripped off my chin.
I said farewell to Ambi and we hugged. I climbed onto the bus and walked down the aisle and looked for my other best friend. I stepped over bags and legs. Finally I found Nay on one of the lower bunks and I said goodbye.
"Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye,” we shared a smile.
I stood in the rain again. Water soaked my shirt and they were gone.