It's 7 am in my country, and I am in love. Before the world starts accusing me of cheating, let me add that the person I have fallen in love with is – Myself.
Having slept at 2 am last night, when I was woken up at 5 am to drive across half the city, I didn't know what was in store. As I drove through the city, through the same roads which are a mental torture to any sane man, I realized that something was different. The air had a lustful gentleness to it, the kind that is not polluted by man's blindness of mortal achievements, the roads were empty except a few stray dogs, who for a change did not bark or chase me which they usually do when man tries simple, innocuous things as driving back home, and the only sound in the air was the gentle murmur of the engine of my motorcycle, a playfully occasional grind of the road against an unloaded truck which passed by at surprisingly gentle speeds, and for once not intending to kill you simply because you dared to venture on the road. The gentle darkness slowly dissolved into varying shades of blue with such slow speed that you would wonder if you were a superman flying in outer space, watching the orb of the world rotating gently and breaking the bonds of the darkness which envelops half the world at any given moment.
If such peace existed before in this city, I never found out for I was always too busy hating it for what it doesn't let me have. But the morning changed everything. And just while I drove through, searing the air and the much wanted moments of loneliness, singing on top of my horible voice, I realized that something effused out of me – like a stream of water breaks the surface of hard and unrelenting earth – a happiness I had never known, a comfort I had never realized, a peace which I knew would never go out of me – and all this, I knew, only and only belonging to me. And I fell in love with me. Like many others, I had made my mistakes of wondering with a heavy heart as to why my troubles would not go away on their own, why couldn't I hide somewhere so they couldn't find me. But this morning, I realized that the only happiness that exists in this world is the friction of my breaths against my nostrils, the expansion of my chest a couple of times a minute that keeps me living – that I live. All else has no value. Never have a I felt so happy, never so much at peace.
So now, the loner who fell in love has this much to tell – give into a morning of your choice and let the city love you back, take you in her arms like a seductress waiting to please you and seduce your senses. Sometimes, you don't need to feel lonely to seek an escape.
Though unrelated slightly, just after I had dared to challenge millions of poets and writer who lived before me, and who said that romance and love thrive in the secluded darkness of the nights or the crimson skies that preceded those nights, I remembered this poem by William Wordsworth, which I believe he wrote one a similar morning of 3rd September 1802, gazing at the beautiful, legendary city of London, while standing at the Westminster Bridge. One of my favourites, no so much for the description of a legendary city in its true grandeur, but for the fact that the poem, and the city would have been incomplete without that effusive morning on which it was written:
Earth not hath anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This city now like a garment doth, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
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