I remember now. I built a mile high stadium. Stupid show, look what Hookah did in the center of your program. We’ll always have that voice.
I would murder in words anything I tried to say. We have our long lists of hurt that’s been put out there. It’s how we tax the world. It’s how we feel better about ourselves. Would an actor see that?
And if I reduce it to a role, do I bleed responsibility? Do I reduce it to an abstraction in the places I’ve bleeded reality, the places I’ve burn?
I’ve grabbed the sun, live on a height of thought and life I write about all the time. I see the representation, the symbol we all are. It eves my day. What then?
How is it possible to hurt someone and not know their pain because you’re a writer of sky dreams? I communicate with the dead, have them all around me, each little life I’ve lit on fire in the bucket of intimacy.
I don’t think the possibilities of healing surround your room. You are not stark walking the symbol. You know the outer lair. An inside all day long, you don’t approach that.
You don’t know what it’s like to love the world in those places you’re sorry, breathing those words all day long to a you know you’re heard way beyond man. I don’t think you’re aware of the price you pay when you become aware of man. The pain you feel humanity.
But on the cutting edge of this is who I make it up to, a little boy growing in time. He represents you. He represents the world’s eyes, and I am there for him.
We can take joy on the Earth, sweet, innocent and kind, holdin’ our humanity close. It’s not all a razor blade. We can get sweet on the Earth, and when you get home, you can love the world like a little boy, and your representation grows.
I will not speak. My inability to speak keeps this bottled up inside me so I don’t feel it. Do you trust me? Some day I will touch this pain again and tell you how much I love you my very precious daddy. I cannot do that now. I’m sorry. It hurts too much.
Signed, Nithish
Okay world, you got your answer. The boy will not stand up for me. He will simply let me die without saying a word, if I choose to do a hunger strike. That is powerful pain I have to deal with, my boy’s denial of me when I am doing everything I can to help him, as I promised I would when I spoke to you on the phone Nithish, not long ago. Has it only been two weeks?
Okay Sandiya what can I say but I’m sorry? I made a very big mistake in challenging your pride, and no there was no blackmail with the intention of putting you or your husband in jail, no matter what the boy said the day you took him from my home. He was confused. Throughout these two months, in everything I’ve done, in everyone I’ve spoken to, I did not try to put you in jail. I made no attempt to file a case of any kind. The video lies there unopened. It’s never been used to get you arrested.
Will you please forgive me? If not for me, then for the sake of your son? He needs me and you know it. His heart is a battlefield, and he’s just lost a major battle of the war. You don’t understand love, how it can’t be killed, and it only hurts your child to try.
Do you know how much time together we have spent? Many years of his childhood, formitable years, influential years. We have been so together for so long, and he can’t just wipe that out of his life, like it never happened. It’s too big a hole in his childhood. He can’t get rid of it. What you are asking of him is too much, and it is too cruel.
I can only ask you again to forgive me for this boy’s sake. Where does this go? Let me see him, and we can avoid this drastic measure I’m about to take. Can you see that? Can you see that with your heart?
After all the years we’ve spent together Sandiya, since you yourself was 12, you do not want to let me die refusing to allow me just two hours alone with your son, after all that we’ve been through together for so long. Please Sandiya listen. For God’s sake listen, and let us avoid catastrophe, let us avoid more pain. Lay down your arms, and I lay down mine, and let us make peace for children’s sake, and I do not have to lay down my life for the sake of this boy. It is not just me seeing him; it’s about letting Nithish be Nithish, what I will truly be fighting for.
Will you accept my apologies? And we can move on, get through this, and give Nithish what he truly needs, and he needs both of us for that future. Listen to his English. Listen to his ideas, his manner of speaking, his manner of thinking. That is my stamp upon him not yours. You are not an intellectual nor someone culturally refined. I am sorry but you aren’t. I have sophisticated this boy, cultured him, in things that are the high pass of humanity, and I have shown him God reaching down into his life, and I have shown him the opening to the well of soul.
Listen to his poetry very carefully, and you will not find the stupidity of a child. That is not a baby there rattling off with no will of his own. It is a very alive and mature soul wanting this boy to fulfill his purpose to manage his destiny, and that is not my destiny nor yours. It belongs to Nithish alone. Grant that to him and let us pass this brush with death. I beg you Sandiya. What else can I do?
I can give him America and U.S. citizenship and what his future could do with that, anywhere in the world. You can’t give him that. You are limited to India for this boy. Why can’t I open up the world to him? Because you need him to fulfill your life? Isn’t that what you told him I wanted him for? Please Sandiya, think on yourself. Doing evil to me with no goodness involved is a grave sin, and it will haunt you for the rest of your days if we cannot make amends, and my death will be between you and Nithish even unto the afterlife, if you let me die and do not let him to speak.
Let us put his future together, as I am not a mean man, unlettered. I have the college education you want for him, and I have the experience of an unusual and varied lifetime that reaches for humanity’s heart. I do not believe you are filled with so much hate you will let me die. I do not, and I stake my life on that belief. It is not my folly that I hunger strike. It is your folly, your heartbreaking refusal to let the boy and I see each other. Okay Sandiya, where do we go from here? It's for Nithish.
This is like fire.
This is electricity,
horses, I don’t know.
Take the sound off.
You have a pay by go guide,
a living tree.
What do I do with it?
It’s not of public interest.
You hear me?
Magical,
it broadcasts the sun.
I just sit here and read it.
It’s got lives in it.
It’ll tell you anything you need to know.
So much to hear.
I’m not fond of it
where poems are concerned.
It’s like a tunnel I have to go through.
It’s got me until the end.
Can you say it?
Let’s twist the words around I’m sorry,
can you meaning?
No, it’s not a broken muse.
I’m godawful sorry
for things.
I don’t know how to show this to you.
Do I take my hat off?
I think about you a lot,
where feeling meets life.
I don’t drag my wrong through my mind at every moment.
I think about how you feel.
I put myself in your shoes.
Remorse has this as a gun.
Repentance means these words
and a lifetime of service to humanity.
I gut feeling this.
I’m racked by your pain,
sit at my computer and cry
when I encounter it,
or in my mind’s eye when I rove around the world.
Your loss rents my breast,
the pain of the tortured child,
the destroyed city,
the puppy dog that’s lost its owner,
the man that’s done something wrong,
terribly hurt somebody.
I want to gather you all up in my arms
a power of God to heal,
but I have not God’s strength,
and I can only feel my inadequacies to help.
Let me tell you my strategy.
I have a world
in front of my face,
all these people I care for,
tend to when they’re sick,
encourage them when they’re down,
counsel them when they need,
cook for them when they’re hungry,
shop for them when they need things,
carry their dreams in my heart
to help give some interpretation.
I listen to them.
I hold their hands.
Half of them are dogs.
A puppy is to me a human child,
and I spend all day with one,
giving her that special attention,
and with a human child,
giving that concentrated care.
It’s how I take care of you.
When I look in their little eyes I see all the world.
Can you feel me here?
I am a servant of mankind.
I am my brother’s keeper,
and I love you so very much.
Have you heard me?
Forgiveness is a model
for the road to understanding.
It’s not something you do
like a magic out of thin air.
We know not yet the issue of our deeds.
We cannot see their fount.
We have a whole ride to do that,
a great big storybook to learn.
It takes inner searching
to a degree most are uncomfortable with.
Understanding comes that way,
in the middle of forgiveness.
Can we learn forgiveness?
Can we bring peace on earth?
Harm's End 