I marvel at how differently each of us may see certain things in life and accordingly have different feelings about it. I marvel a lot more at how people spend hours engaged in some petty talk whose script is quite predictable. It is bizarre that this could be happening in a world where uncertainty is the only certainty and change is the only constant in life.

It is no wonder, you will find some other people drawn to a solitary corner enjoying the 'skepticism party' in their heads. They are more often devoid of human company at this wild party, popping their own champagne and spilling taste and color on the ever-changing reality. What is party to the skeptic is discomfort and trouble for the nonchalant. The latter will prefer some small talk under a superscript.

For me life is beautiful, for it offers us plenty of riddles and a clever mind will relish this plethora of choices. Prescriptive texts, however, ruin the party transforming the thinker into a believer, converting the traveler into a waiter. With all the questions answered, there is no party for the believer. With all the treat put on the tray, they will suddenly find themselves holding the snack tray to others enjoying the party thinking that they are a still guest.

So, whose party, whose dream?

This is on a live, Bragolin version of Mona Lisa I saw and have ever been haunted with: a version with eyes pooling with chagrin yet in a cryptic Seraphine chemistry. 'Bragolin eyes imbued with pain.' Yet, both serenity and desperate anguish which I have little idea as to why it was there pooling in the eyes had somehow managed to be in the same two pools altogether.

Ever since my curiosity had the better of me to steal a furtive glance at this person, who I knew wouldn't rather me to have seen them in the plight, I have been cast to a bitter mental tempest, rudderless, at the sporadic hauntings of the moment.

We were in a place with other people, and they were summoned to go out. When they came back, they went to their place as if wading in the blur of their eyes. Ignoring would have been unkind, yet seeing, not even watching, would have been heartbreaking. What would you have done? Walking out was not an option. You knew nothing -nothing more than you were the best person to help, but the last one to do so all the same.

My furtive millisecond glance was met with a steady poignant gaze, screaming volumes from across an unknown sea at me. It had been there for a time and I don't know how much it lingered afterwards. It was not meant to be seen but it was necessary all the same.

Not being able to help, my conscience has ever been in a bottle at a troubled sea with the deafening silence of the scream.

Human expressions are so subtle, or as far as we prefer to look at the world with blind imagination, they will always be poetic. The real question is about where we would rather live. Not in a rabbit’s hole, but not without emotions, either.

Some Cultural Notes about the Images I Used:
Giovanni Bragolin is the Italian painter famous for the haunting portraits of crying children he painted.
Venusian locks are inspired by Boticelli's iconic painting of the Greek Aphrodite (one born from sea foam) under a Roman name (Venus)
Apollo is referred to for his poetic prowess
Other mythological images include Sibylline for mystery, Promethean for the pain knowledge brings, Seraphine for angelic, Lethean for slipping into oblivion, Pandoran for chaos and destruction, Babylonian for forbidden nature of things, Olympian for divine qualities and Sirenic for troublesome nature of things.

A dutiful reaction to Patty m on her 'Frantic', whose vibrant voice has ever been well carried above all tumult and thunder cajoling many fellow poets.

Inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche's Amor Fati: "I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor Fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly.”

The more we write, the more we learn about the hodgepodge ensemble and discover a voice within; then, the less we start despairing and the more we begin to love. Thus, we raise our voices above the cacophony.

How our ink strikes to and fro;
Above dark skies wielding light,
no one is alone!