AC 691
She was halfway through, but there was no sign of tomato or mozzarella. She paused, sipped her cappuccino and smiled at the thought that her panini had chosen to rearrange itself just like her entire life had, 5 months ago. Asmi had these thoughts often these days. When hurt, the human soul tries desperately, to look for a reason, a deeper meaning or connection to anything that replicates the sense of chaos it experiences. These days, she found this connection in the most random expressions of the human spirit. She found it in the graffiti she saw in a foreign city, where people wrote things like "Freedom" and "Just let me continue dreaming" on the walls of a parking deck. Asmi didn't dream, and all she wanted was to stop thinking or feeling, but she understood what the artist felt as he defaced public property in a manner so bold. He just wanted the world to leave him alone. He wanted them to let him go though his grief and take as long as it took him to feel it, process it and hopefully file it away in an irretrievable corner of his mind. Asmi knew it was grief, because no happy person would choose to express their happiness so painstakingly, in ink, on brick.
You might have called him a hoodlum. But Asmi thought he was an artist, because he was able to connect to her soul more powerfully than some of the most exquisite art she had seen. And she had memories of hiking for an entire day to stand in front of and admire 2500 year old stone carvings in remote and ancient caves. She had paid hundreds of dollars for seats in performing arts theaters around the world, gone to school in a heritage structure and stood on holy ground and bathed in holy waters. All these experiences had awed her, humbled her and inspired her. But the hoodlum's art touched her. It was the purest and most raw expression of one's inner self she had seen, and inanely priceless to her.
As Asmi got close to the end, she finally found the tomato and mozzarella she was looking for. She thought again, if that meant that her life would eventually fix itself. And then she realized how silly that thought was! Life can never be predicted, certainly not by symbols in sandwiches. She realized that the reason these symbols have meaning is because they are how we express our desires. She realized that she had the desire to be more than what she was and was slowly aggregating the willpower to be it. Today, Asmi was on her way to the Shangri-La halfway around the world. She was headed to a place so remote, that only six planes went there and only ten people in the world were qualified to land a plane there. She wasn't going to run away from something as she first thought when she bought the four plane tickets that would get her there, and the other four that would bring her back. She was going there to find the strong person she knew she had been and could be again. She was going there to feel everything that life's crazy turns had prevented her from feeling. She was going there to dream a little, feel a little freedom and be all that her name signified. Asmi. Happy, strong-willed, and in the present. As she thought these strange thoughts, they started boarding Zones 4 and 5 on AC 691. She finished her cappuccino, fished out her passport from her bag, extracted her boarding pass from the book she had been reading, and headed to Gate 8.
You might have called him a hoodlum. But Asmi thought he was an artist, because he was able to connect to her soul more powerfully than some of the most exquisite art she had seen. And she had memories of hiking for an entire day to stand in front of and admire 2500 year old stone carvings in remote and ancient caves. She had paid hundreds of dollars for seats in performing arts theaters around the world, gone to school in a heritage structure and stood on holy ground and bathed in holy waters. All these experiences had awed her, humbled her and inspired her. But the hoodlum's art touched her. It was the purest and most raw expression of one's inner self she had seen, and inanely priceless to her.
As Asmi got close to the end, she finally found the tomato and mozzarella she was looking for. She thought again, if that meant that her life would eventually fix itself. And then she realized how silly that thought was! Life can never be predicted, certainly not by symbols in sandwiches. She realized that the reason these symbols have meaning is because they are how we express our desires. She realized that she had the desire to be more than what she was and was slowly aggregating the willpower to be it. Today, Asmi was on her way to the Shangri-La halfway around the world. She was headed to a place so remote, that only six planes went there and only ten people in the world were qualified to land a plane there. She wasn't going to run away from something as she first thought when she bought the four plane tickets that would get her there, and the other four that would bring her back. She was going there to find the strong person she knew she had been and could be again. She was going there to feel everything that life's crazy turns had prevented her from feeling. She was going there to dream a little, feel a little freedom and be all that her name signified. Asmi. Happy, strong-willed, and in the present. As she thought these strange thoughts, they started boarding Zones 4 and 5 on AC 691. She finished her cappuccino, fished out her passport from her bag, extracted her boarding pass from the book she had been reading, and headed to Gate 8.
posted by Pearl @ 6:48 PM
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