VERNAL VISUAL: MELBOURNE DIURNAL
The diurnal and the nocturnal gyrations of the earth, the magnetic and gravitational attraction and repulsion of the celestial spheres affect grandma's moods. Physiologically speaking, her eyes absorb sunlight to charge the batteries of her brain, but, electronically, like the alert night-owl eerily hooting in the midst of moonlit forest foliage, grandma's mind is wired to become fully functional with the energy emitted by lunar incandescence. It is now the witching hour, the middle of the night, three hours past midnight, three hours till dawn in Melbourne.
A smattering of light vernal shower hits the oblong window pane, and grandma's eyes click open. She looks at the distant vista of the sky through the glass, at the grey- blue wisps of slinking cumulus fluffs, and peers upward at pinpricks of starlight winking through the clear ether. The raindrops are whisked away in a quiet transcendental moment, and all she hears is serene, miraculous silence.
Grandma composes her thoughts with her fingertips caressing the square iPad screen.
Spontaneously, rhythmically, these words well-up from the fount of grandma's heartfelt sorrow at being left bereft of her beloved father's bodily presence. His soul had returned whence it came, trailing clouds of glory, in Falgun. Two weeks and two days before Pahela Boisakh, a mere six months ago, an eternity for her, a grief- stricken final parting took place in the crowded city of her ancestors. Day before yesterday, and yesterday, on the the twelfth and thirteenth of September, grandma's soul went on a seamless pilgrimage across vertical longitudes towards sunspots of joyful memory of happy days with her indulgent, dynamic, genius of a father. Fair seed-time had I, her fingertips declaim, nurtured alike by father's loving teaching and mother's guiding discipline. Perchance, too happy in that state, she broods in a swift mood-change that brought fateful disfavour upon herself. Had she unknowingly erred through forgetfulness of the misery of those less joyous? Had she unwittingly sinned? Forgive me, Father, she taps out the prayer, as in a reveille Grandma has known divine retribution , but now her pilgrim soul knows the peace of divine grace. She has new knowledge with the gift of new eyes. All is not as it seems; there is a grand design, a greater purpose hidden from mortal eyes. She knows now that the great epic songs are true: the hero is a survivor. The hero of the thousand faces of grief and joy rises from the ashes with a new mental landscape, a new visual perspective. Beyond the diurnal divide, behind the nocturnal veil, grandma can see the glimmering horizon of a vernal inscape.
Day before yesterday, and yesterday, on the the twelfth and thirteenth of September, grandma's soul went on a seamless pilgrimage across vertical longitudes towards sunspots of joyful memory of happy days with her indulgent, dynamic, genius of a father. Fair seed-time had I, her fingertips declaim, nurtured alike by father's loving teaching and mother's guiding discipline. Blessed indeed to have been destined to be born their offspring. Perchance, too happy in that state, she broods in a swift mood-change that brought fateful disfavour upon herself. Had she unknowingly erred through forgetfulness of the misery of those less joyous? Had she unwittingly sinned? Forgive me, Father, she taps out the prayer, as in a reveille Grandma has known divine retribution , but now her pilgrim soul knows the peace of divine grace. She has new knowledge with the gift of new eyes. All is not as it seems; there is a grand design, a greater purpose hidden from mortal eyes. She knows now that the great epic songs are true: the hero is a survivor. The hero of the thousand faces of grief and joy rises from the ashes with a new mental landscape, a new visual perspective. Beyond the diurnal divide, behind the nocturnal veil, grandma can see the glimmering horizon of a vernal inscape.
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