By the lake

Fate should have it that I would spend an hour sitting by Lac Leland silently meditating. Some erroneous booking meant that mum and I could spend one more day away, and Evian we decided to go and stay for the extra night. While mum did her message, I wandered down the bay, and found a quite crop of rocks by the shore and sat.

For perhaps the first time ever, I striped to only my jeans, and was naked on top. I wanted to capture some of the sun, and receive the healthy vitamins that people often speak of. At first I was alert, constantly aware of the waves, the sounds, the dampness from the sprinkles of water that splashed against the rocks, bothered by the humming of planes overhead or boats speeding past. It took a while before I could sit there, close my eyes and observe my breath, my feelings, my emotions and thoughts. It was not for long, but it was the first time in a long time that I could sit down and calm myself, collect myself and try to be at ease and rest.

In the distance, a few guys lay sunbathing. I could not but look and wonder, at times even fantasise about their bonds and that sense of friendship, just guys at the beach, half-naked in the sun in a romantic setting. Swans swam by, sometimes really close by that I was awakened by the sound of their feet splashes against the water. They looked at me, and made me wonder whether the temporarily calm and solitude I had managed to recover was the source of their attraction. Or perhaps they were just looking for food…

Such tranquillity, if only temporarily, of me and the waves, the sound of the waves, and the warmth of the early Summer sun. If only I could bring those moments with me wherever I go, and be with such tranquillity and calm wherever I am.

After the storm

Kitty fled, hid and eyed out of the window at the flashing lightning. A violent and thunderous storm invaded the land, unleashing torrents of rain, deafening echoes through dense, dark clouds the whole night long. I remember waking up at various instances, only to fall asleep in a dreamlike state of mind amid the din and the terrible flashes of light. I thought to myself how others in the house must have slept…

In the morning, mum told me that she dreamt of dad. A strange dream, of him coming to her, and resting his head on her shoulder. She felt her shoulder heavy and sore in the morning, but this feeling of having someone rest his head on her shoulder is nostalgic, refreshing and brought back memories. Dad used to do that, she said, but it’s been a long, long time. She said she felt comforted seeing dad the same way, in his old self, as if nothing had changed. Moreover, it was comforting to have someone rest his head on her shoulder… it’s the comfort and protection that you seek when you come home at night… now that’s all gone. I tried to recreate that feeling, but I knew I could not…

Nostalgia

Outside, it was thundering. A pre-summer storm, brewing, grumbling and flashing. Kitty was scared, or perhaps intrigued, by the curious suddenness, loudness and bright flashes. I lay in bed next to mum, as she recounted stories and memories of times gone by…

…how when I was so little and took the train to school everyday on my own… how mum took up driving lessons because she wanted to be able to bring us to school before… how I was left here to fend and feed myself when I was just 14… how cruel it must have been to leave me, to leave us behind… how easily I, we, could have turned out badly, but how luckily we did not…

Feelings of nostalgia washed over us, as we recounted old days. Then I was so small, and those days now seem so far away now. How big I have grown, and how also very distant I have become from this place, this home.

I feel it especially this time, as I come home to the Netherlands, and see that so many things are still the same… the way brother is, the way things are placed and organised (or not…)… the way the houses and people appear to be the same. To someone like me, who has flown across the world, lived a new life and lived new experiences, it feels constraining, somewhat frustrating too to be back in my ‘old’ life, in my old surroundings.

What can I say when brother is still the same moody self? What can I do when all he does after coming home from work is sit down and watch movies or play games online? I see mum, disappointed and bitter, despite repeated attempts to get him out of the chair, to get him to move, or to get him to be engaged in conversation… yet, almost nightly I see him, back faced to us, hunched over his computer in the living room, lost in his own little world.

Perhaps brother is suffering, brooding, and escaping this world, this loneliness and frustration he feels deep inside… perhaps he cannot express what he feels, cannot put into words the touchy-feely emotions that trouble him, because he has been socialised to be strong, to be a man, to be devoid of weaknesses like emotions, and indeed, the very fact of having weaknesses as such… I see him, unhappy, somewhat lost, and lonely, unhealthily getting bigger due to his diet and the incessant smoking… I wish to help him, but I do not wish to ruin him by continuing an old and unhealthy pattern of allowing him to be dependant on others… he must stand up on his own, learn to live life alone and learn to take care of himself, love himself and be content with himself…

Otherwise, like today, like so many times and days in the past, mum goes to bed, full of worry, full of stress and pain and frustrations at the fact that his son, in whom she and dad have invested so much time and effort, is losing himself in old habits, in depression and unexpressed and unspoken anxieties…

Perhaps, it is I that need help… for I am forever being critical and being unaccepting of the circumstances here. But when I come back here, and see that life continues as if I have never left, I am left with a sense of responsibility, of guilt that I left, that I will leave again soon to pursue my own life, to declare my independence. Yet back here, in the minds and lives of my family and loved ones, things still remain the same.

The unspoken silence, the untouchable distance, the reality of calling and talking merely based on whenever needs and wants arise… are we family still?