WHEN ASKED , WHAT IS LOVE LIFE ??

It always comes back to her.
She is not impossible, I thought, she is not too much to hope for !
What would Shimoda* tell me, if he were sitting here, if he knew I hadn’t
found her yet?
He’d say something obvious, is what he’d say. The strange thing about his
secrets was that everyone of them was simple.

What if I’d told him I’d failed, searching for her? He’d study his cinnamon
scroll of inspiration, he’d run his fingers through his back hair and he’d
say, ‘Nikhil has it occurred to you that’s not the way to find her, looking
from town to town, that’s the way to lose her?’

Simple. And then he’d wait without a word for whatever I had to answer. I
would have said to that, if he were here, ‘Ok flying over horizons is not
the way. I give up. Tell me. How do I find her?’

He’d narrow his eyes, annoyed I’d asked him instead of myself.

‘Are you happy? Are you doing this moment, exactly what you most want to do
in the world?’

Habit would have me answer of course I am, of course I am running my life
just the way I please.
Came the cold of that night, however, the same question from him, and
something had change. Am I doing this moment what I most want to do?
‘No!’
‘What a surprise!’ Shimoda would have said. ‘What do you suppose that could
mean?’

Slow, quiet shock. A buzz of questions.

For a moment I tasted my new ignorance, sifted it on my tongue. What an I to
do? Whatever will become of me?

When one door closes, they say, another opens. I can see a door just shut
and behind it are crates and boxes of adventures that changed me from who I
was into who I am. But it’s time to move on. So there’s the door that just
opened?

If I were an advanced soul right now, I thought, not Shimoda, but an
advanced me, what would I say to me?

A moment passed, and I knew what I’d say, ‘Look at everything around you
this moment Nikhil, and ask, “What is wrong with this picture?”’
I looked around me in the dark. The sky wasn’t wrong. What could be wrong
with stars exploding diamonds a thousand light-years overhead, and me
looking out at the fireworks from a safe place? Nothing wrong.

* retired Messiah

What’s wrong with this picture is this: She isn’t with me! And I’m going to
do something to change that now!
Slowly, Nikhil, I thought. Be uncharacteristic this one time; please not so
fast! Please. Think, first. Carefully.

And sure enough. There was another question in the dark, one I had not asked
Shimoda, on he’d not answered.

Why should it be that the most advanced of people, whose teachings twisted
into religions, last for centuries, have always been alone?
Why we see radiant wives or husbands or miraculous equals with whom they
share their adventures and their love? How often do we find their soul
mates, glorious and powerful beloveds right close by?

Sometimes? Once in a while?

I swallowed, throat suddenly dry.

Never.

The most advanced people, I thought, they’re the ones most alone!
The sky turned slow frosty clockworks overhead, uncaring.
Do these perfect ones not have soul mates because they’ve grown beyond human
needs?
No answers from the blue Vega, shimmering in he harp of stars.
Attained perfection would not be any problem for a lot of lifetimes, but
these people are supposed to show us the way. Have they said forget about
soul mates because soul mates do not exist?
Crickets chirped slow: could be, could be.

Against that wall of stone my night crashed to its end. If that’s what they
say, I growled to myself, they’re wrong.

I wondered if she’s agree, wherever she was this minute. Are they wrong, my
dear unknown. Wherever she was, she didn’t answer.

Thus I hit the streets on a planet of four billion five hundred million
souls, and in that moment I began looking full time for the one woman who,
according to the best people who ever lived, wasn’t there at all.


Nikhil sharda [I don't really think he knows that this was lying with me, anyways i'sm using it, because this is what explains, what i want to say]..