The shadow and the substance

 

We keep believing that our paths are strictly separate and totally different. The apparent separation of substance on the surface is an illusion in reality.

The shadows—the real ones, more real than the surface substance—keep mixing in weird patterns, creeping into each other, encroaching, eclipsing, transforming in buffer zones.

It’s a ghostly flare of the shadows on substance, making it dance to its tunes. The shadows, casting squinting looks into human hearts, always chuck out the little clumps of substance (truth and beauty) huddled around like a clutter of privies, drooping with sorrow, whispering in silvery soft voices.

And multitudes of mirages (of opposites) are born due to this interplay of shadows and substance.

There are long-shimmering mesmerizing folk forms of life in troubled neighborhoods across which the tamed, hypnotized self treads with civic courage.

In the young self, there lie the shadows of his derelict grandparents.

Miles of metaphysical voyages cluttered around a single physical self.

The rigid, calm skeleton under the flesh brimming with volcanic tantrums.

Financial shenanigans on expansive real estates—highly ornate and mellifluous—shadowing squalid seaport slums festering with rottening abalone, fish, scallop, crab, clam, eel, prawn and some broken rice cooked with thrown-away chicken bones from the costly apartment not too far away.

The ambivalent heroes submitting to the divinity of desire and disgust.

All due to the mastering shadows riding the strong horses of substance.