Sand and Time

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

When I read this poem in March last year, I was fascinated merely by its literary connotations. The combination of infinity and eternity was a wonderfully bewildering dimension where I occasionally allowed my mind to wander for brief moments.

Looking back on yesterday (16th June, 2012), this poem has an entirely new meaning to it. Language is among the most simple yet beautiful things our minds have woven. It's power to to surprise me with the rush of several indiscernible emotions remains unparalleled so far. This poem is just another reminder.

We often find the most extraordinary happiness in moments, hours or days that begin with the lazy shadow of bluntness and the opposite is also true. Yesterday could be added to the opposite's list.

Sunlight wrapped the greater part of the morning in a pleasant game of hide and seek. I found myself willing to reciprocate the sun's kindness. How could I not? The energy seemed to be buzzing around me with the promise of a productive day.

Around noon, struggling with the neurovascular supply of the leg left us quite exhausted and in the hopes of tracing some excitement we took a stroll along the Dow courtyard. To my utter dismay, all that aforementioned energy had buzzed to death by that time, leaving that fiercely sunlit, yet gloomy courtyard gaping back at me with no signs of familiarity. The place was empty - not a single face we recognized could be spotted. Please don't think I'm trying to build the atmosphere preceding a zombie invasion here. I wasn't stuck on a sand dune either. I was in Dow, which is my med school and for some bizarre reason it was devoid of people we would like to see.

Desperate times call for desperate measures so we decided to escape into the world of movies. Unfortunately the wifi in Dow does not cater to 'media' sites and hence I ended up wasting my phone's credit while checking the cinema's show schedule, all to no avail - the movie we wanted to watch was not showing anytime soon.

It was one of those moments when retaliation wells up within me, perhaps in hopes of exercising some control over my life. I convinced my friend to retaliate by having an ice-cream we found unsuited for our tastes. A walk along the courtyard and a few squabbles later, I emerged victorious. With jaws set in determination, lips twitching under the tug of smiles perched at the corners, we stalked off to the cafe and almost ran with the ice-cream to hide in some corner.

It was a battle - our opponents being the ice-cream and the sun. Our inability to gorge it fast enough to prevent it from leaving its destructive trails along everything in its path was more embarrassing than imagination had permitted. However those action packed five minutes were the closest we got to excitement. So a day that began with such promise ended with walks with friends as the only moments of solace.

Later that night I saw a picture of a friend junior to me in A levels where she was poised in a graduation gown. That is when it clicked. Last year on the 16th of June, I was graduating from Nixor in the same graduation gown and at the time I was viewing this picture I had been enjoying my farewell. I couldn't help comparing this year's 16th June to that of the past year. It's exhilarating how life can change so very much in the span of a year.

During the same time when I had resorted to battle with a mass of frozen milk, last year I had been on my way to Nixor to receive a tribute from the juniors after the graduation ceremony at Golf Club's convention centre. The contrast of how happy I had been in those very moments last year to how numb I felt now shrouded the past and present in a dreamlike quality.

Last year this day had marked the ending of a chapter of my life and this year it depicted my struggle to settle into the chapter that has followed. The irony is that I wanted exactly this chapter to follow the last one, yet the struggle. So this is where Blake's poem has focal importance:
Dow might not be what it should have been, what I wanted it to be but it is still a major part of my world at present. If it's possible to see a world in a grain of sand (and it must be, that's why Blake wrote about it!), then it must be possible to see beyond the world Dow presents, if I continue believing.

Each moment of happiness we've lived through can last an eternity if we hold it close enough, all we need is a reminder to continue believing. Believing that life is God's gift and every part, whether good or bad, is a link in the chain that binds our souls together.


Note: "We" in this post refers to me and my dear friend and kindred companion, Yus. Also this post was originally supposed to be published on Sunday, 17th, hence the constant mention of 16th June as yesterday.

Of A Historical Iceberg

My blog has been orphaned for quite some time now, I guess spring is the time when my heart wells up with forgotten affection for this wonderful virtual bank of my words. Love is the least I owe my blog for the tedious task of safekeeping my words in its bosom, without a hint of complain. It has remained loyal to me throughout all the universal conspiracies and served as a window to the forgotten parts of my existence, a bittersweet reminder of who I could be compared to the pathological morphology that is now emerging like a skin rash.

So dear blog, I hereby announce my return and request the pleasure of your honourable company. And now that you have cheerfully complied, I shall proceed to other matters of concern.

This world has so much sadness- that's something we all know, a fact that cannot be emphasized enough. You would think that I'm writing this in just one of my despondent states, perhaps triggered by some massive blow to my heart (God forbid but med school has elevated the connotations of that phrase by a thousandfold).

So let me clarify that this post is not a mountain of some dying embers of a distant fire but a spark that gave me a minor jolt in a community medicine lecture upon the sight of the following table and the information associated with it.



If you have trouble viewing the picture, just double click on the image.

The first thought that came to my mind was diabetes or heart disease. However, it struck me like a whiplash when I found out the following.
"The previous slide shows death rates by class of ticket on the Titanic, a large ocean liner that sank after colliding with an iceberg in 1912."
With that knowledge I got flashbacks from the movie by the given name and I couldn't help imagining how those people might have felt when their death was dictated by the order of their social class, if they even realized the existence of the order, that is. I failed to imagine.

Their death was due, it came for them. The point of consequence however is the irony that their tragic, social class-endorsed deaths now mark the epitome of undying love.

According to a bunch of my acquaintances, the 3D version of the movie could refuel their romantic fantasies. I shall forever remain blind to that (with an inward ugh) but what I can see is the fact that leaving the heroic manifestation of undying love aside, Di Caprio, representing a class 3 ticket holder got lucky enough to meet his end.

I know what the movie was about but even a nicely painted memoir like that is incapable of concealing the bitter aspects that haunt history and our present. A century down the road to evolution and our morals still haven't evolved much. We're often told that people change - true but their basic natures don't. The weak and poor hence naturally remain worthy of oppression and the iceberg still stands, as strong as it used to be in 1912.