The flood - a homage

This text establishes a dialog with Katie Melua's The Flood. You could listen to it while reading.

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"Broken people get recycled
And I hope that I will"

The boy feels trashy all over. Heart, body, mind. He doesn't feel sick, neither broken. He is just figuring out, adding one to one. He is trying to derive some logics out of so much nonsense. He is afraid of the process, as recycling means destruction followed by rebuilding. But he hopes.  

Sometimes we're thrown off our pathways
What I thought was my way home
Wasn't the place I know

He doesn't feel completely lost. But he looks around and does not make out the place where he is standing. He is no longer that smiling boy, since he was pushed out of the platform, into the tracks. Luckily, there was no train. There was just some reaching hands, helping him out. But he dropped something there. Something he just cannot remember what.

I'm certain nothing's certain

What we own becomes our prison

We are imprisoned in our reactions, thinks the boys. He had named his diary prison notebooks for a good reason. He had always been free, so free, but free inside a cage, in a cage of fears and hopes. Of vices and habits. Of expectations and disillusionments. He knew he was not a barbecue afternoon nor a day on the beach. But he knew he was something not to be cast aside. He learned (the hard way, or tried anyway) about no certainties, no tomorrow-I-know's. 

My possessions will be gone
Back to where they came from

He was aware, poor boy, he had nothing. But he played having a house and a pet named rex. He played he could hold his breath for more than 3 hours, or that he could breathe without feeling any smell. He saw himself with a car, a table at the smartest restaurant in town. And he saw himself living in More's Utopia, or Anarres. Mattapoisset. He could almost touch the deprivation of whatever he called his.  

Blame, no one is to blame

As natural as the rain that falls

Here comes the flood again

He hears the distant thunders roaring. They make a long noise, so frightening, yet, distant. He sees and hears the raindrops falling and splashing on the dirty soil. The clouds gathering and darkening, one against the other. The wind chills his spine and the drops lick his face and he knows all that storm is beautiful and is home and he is there, in the middle of it and it's inside him and he does not feel guilty. It was nobody's fault. It was just life.

See the rock that you hold onto

Is it gonna save you

When the earth begins to crumble?

He tries to hold to something and the current is strong. He is swimming forward, sideways. He is looking for a fixed point but the flow of water comes and washes everything. He tries to stand up but he is dragged here and there along with rocks and debris of what had been before a neat, grandiose set of edifices. He sees only fractions of what was and what he had dreamed of.   

Why do you feel you have to hold on?
Imagine if you let go

And he sees it first time crystal clear. He stares at beyond and releases a scream. He doesn't know if that scream emptied him or if it was a sign there was nothing else in there. He understands what is easier. What is the best way to suffer less. He stops swimming. The fight is no longer in his nerves, his limbs rest. Nothing in his eyes. The sparks turn to embers, which turn to a dead bonfire. His heart beats but it makes no sound and there is no pulse. Darkness envelops him. But there is a light. Some annoying warmth lingers. 

Blame, no one is to blame

As natural as the rain that falls

Here comes the flood again

He tries to put a face to the enemy. The boy is so afraid and his fear is eating him for dessert. He feels some bites in his thighs. His groin hurts. He is devoid of his virility, he is a boy no more. He is just an angel. A fallen angel. He despised the laws of universe. He forgot where he had come from. And more rain, more fire, more cold, is this hell?

Wash away the weight

That pulls you down

Ride the waves

That free you from the dusk?

The storm is giving way to some feeble sun rays. The boy sees himself floating. The water is calm, there is nothing touching him, but the wetness and the perception of himself, whose body is immersed but whose face is burned by the timid sun. Some bird flies by and he tries to reach it. He moves almost imperceptibly and his delicate movements create small waves on the water around him, crescent circles getting away from him. A cloud again but now he can sense the silver lining. Is that a rainbow?

Don't trust your eyes

It's easy to believe them

Know in your heart

That you can leave your prison

The boy feel the water is lowering. He can smell the mud, he still cannot stand up, his body is still hurt. But he feels energies filling him, overflowing, he is invigorated and his face is placid. A surge of hope striked him as a lightning. He is euphoric almost, or is this an enchantment, a sweet illusion? He tries to listen to the world around since his eyes are so deceiving. He is half blind, blinded by his prejudices and his dramatic personality. He builds new words and rehearses speaking it. A new language. One where freedom can mean something. Where he is no longer helplessly in love, hopelessly involved. He is protected. Inknower. No shields or cocoon.

Don't trust your mind

It's not always listening

Turn on the lights

And feel the ancient rhythm

He is home again, he roams from room to room, turning on all the lights. He wants to be enlightened. He is afraid of the darkness inside him, and out. He doubts his reasonings, his self-control. It is so unstable. He is emotional from head to toe and sense tries to strive somehow. He is all drama and explosion and fireworks and he dives in, two feet in... he thinks and the more he thinks the slower his thought fly and are his neuropaths clogged? He is helped by songs new and old, is he dancing? He is moving awkwardly, to and fro, is he lending his body to any otherworldly creature? He thumps his feet and shouts go away! But one thump follows another and he is clapping also. He is a vessel, unsteered. 

Don't trust your eyes

Its easy to believe them

Know in your heart

That you can leave your prison

He repeats it like a chorus. He wants to believes those words so badly. Is he saying them because he belives them or because he is trying hard to do so? He notices he was so sure about the darkness but the lights and freedom (from himself or whatever, whoever else) are so unclear, blurred, frameless. 

Blame, no one is to blame

As natural as the rain that falls

Here comes the flood again

Or not... Or definitely not.