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Writer's pictureAishwarya Jayal

Guide to a Self Portrait

All you really have to do

Is pull.

And once

Out it comes,

it will be devoured

by the vast nothing that surrounds you

and then effervesce into

just that nothing.

Pull hard.

For just getting a hold on that emptiness

is never absolute.

It often feels like nothing,

as if you were jesting

with your own self

about the monster under your bed.


You see,

emptiness tries to not make a sound.

It's very existence

is like the bacteria

that crawl unseen on your hands.

And yet,

drop a thought,

and you will hear

the intermingled echoes

off a vast void;

till your thought is disfigured beyond recognition

and lost to the soothing lull of

soft echoes.

And the disintegrating matter

will be left perpetuating exactly

that,

which it needs not.

To exist.

Here you are today,

a lot of incoherent buzz

and some regurgitated coherence.

Yet you're not one

to lie comatose

in waves of static.

So pull.

PULL.


Hold on to whatever it is,

we'll figure out what,

later.

Pull.

It will hurt,

it will burn with friction

it will stick under your skin

till it rips.

Let it rip now,

lest it sag later.

Pull.


And you will pull out

what will look your very innards.

Everything you thought was true,

Everything you believed was real,

and the very substance

you are,

unequivocally

wearing your name tag.

And let it go.

Oh it will hurt.

To blow away bits

of you that

you had once carefully accumulated.

The hoarded piles of

collectibles,

unceremoniously buried

in a hence unopened carton,

you left behind when you moved.

Old notebooks,

fluffy bears with a lost eye,

some worn splotchy letters

and the fungi it silently grows

under dust covers.


The dust will sting your eyes

and you will cry,

for days.

Till the salt

has taken all that was

into the purgatory.

And now,

the you,

you know,

is the You,

that will be.

Picture credits: Soft Self Portrait With Fried Bacon - Salvador Dali


As you all know, surrealism interests me greatly, as both an ort form and psycho-philosophical expression movement. Surrealist artists, in all their extreme forays into their unconscious mind truly leave behind memoirs for everyone, in ways unique to the one who percieves.

At the end of another 365 days around the Sun, I continue the tradition of writing a short note to self - to commemorate all that is.

This time around, I commemorate all that is, and burn it into the ashes a phoenix needs to immortalize. A phoenix does not fear the one great truth - death; but in accepting it, is reborn into another life. Here's to knowing truths, and rising out of patterns of fear.


There will always be someone, or something building walls around you, or burning you at the stake, or simply, sadistically intermingling in your life. Here's to knowing that their walls are your trampolines, their burning stakes are your warmth and their sadism is just that - theirs and not yours; and rejoicing in gratitude with those that severely outweigh everything else - in love, support and good intentions.

Here's to discerning beyond the static, pulling out the weeds and starting off with a bare ground again. The mind-blowing part - you can sow anything you want here.


From the subconscious to the conscious - Happy Birthday!!

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