The Questions

The cloud full of rain hangs heavy above the horizon, but I can see the small edge of sun that is setting down.  Its feeble rays make their way to greet me, standing alone in the balcony and watching the world, that huge anthill with six billion ants on it.  Six billion ants, that do not know each other, and would never know, running their infinite paths, collecting little colorful pieces of paper called ‘money’, and trying to survive.  I ask myself, would it be possible to greet every person on earth the way the lonely ray of light greets me?  How much time would it take to say hello to all six billion ants on Earth if one hello takes only one second?

I look at my watch. One minute has sixty seconds.  One hour has three thousand and six hundred seconds. I become involved in counting.  One day has eighty six thousand and four hundred seconds. One year has three hundred fifteen million and thirty-six thousand seconds. The answer is one hundred and ninety years if to do that every second of my life.  I cannot greet every person on earth.  And it does not matter at all that my greeting might give a hope and a life to someone.
 
I stand in the balcony, hidden in the thicket of grape branches.  I gaze at the remote stars calmly radiating their cold and constant light. The thousands of stars, thousands of suns with their own planets at a distances of light years… I watch the Milky Way, that irregular luminous band completely circling the sky.  It’s the galaxy in which we live.  But there are thousands of millions other galaxies, each with its thousands of stars, which probably have their own planets, and there possibly exists some form of life.  Maybe somewhere at the other end of universe is another Earth, and there is a girl very much like me who stands in a balcony just like I do at the very same moment, watches her world and wonders why she does not understand so many things.  But I cannot greet her, nor she can greet me.  That vast space between us, these billions of light years separate us, separate our so similar dreams, longings, and expectations.  We are left alone and lonely in our little corners of the Universe. 

It’s cold here in the balcony.  The grape branches do not protect me from winds, and their cold hands stiffen my body and tangle my hair.  Although here I’m a bit closer to the stars, I go back into my warm room, wondering why to be lonely and worry about the life on the another end of Universe, when it is impossible to greet every person on Earth?  But why would anyone want to devote his life only for greeting everybody? I could not imagine myself doing that.  Maybe, it is just the fear that if I try to do that, finally someone for sure would place me in the booby hatch.  I know, people like ants tend to be uniform.  Red ants look like, smell like, and behave like all red ants do.  The same thing is with black and brown and all the other ones.  It’s the law of nature: if an individual differs in one or the other way from other individuals of his kind, he is expelled, often destroyed.  The only way to survive being different is to be stronger than every one else, to make others follow and accept that difference as a new norm.  Strength is a natural key to the victory in life.

Am I strong?  I always seem to be in conflict with everybody else.  My thoughts and ideas are so often rejected, my interests are so often laughed at that I sometimes allow myself to believe that I have to be like everyone else, just to be left in peace. 

But I want to be different. I want to have something, to know something that would distinguish me from the crowd.  Maybe, I am already different and original?  I think differently, or it just seems to me that I do so.  I can not stop wondering why there are so many things on earth that I cannot understand.  I cannot stop asking myself multiple questions. Why there are conflicts and wars, why the Jews are so hated and persecuted?  Why people starve and why they cannot resist the floods and droughts while in the movies they show how mighty and powerful they are against all the elements?  Why the East so much differs from the West? Why the clouds look different every second?  Why the leaves on the trees are not every year the same?  Why the swans are white and black but never green?  Why my hair is blond and curly, but not black and straight? What is the purpose of getting up in the morning, brushing my teeth, combing my hair, eating my breakfast, going somewhere, doing something? Why the life is set the way it is? Why do I live?  Why do I have to communicate with people?  Why to spend my time in complete loneliness, meditate, philosophize and write down my thoughts might look strange to a certain people?  Why should I be ashamed of this strong wish to spent maximum of my day in a complete loneliness?  I mean – loneliness from the point of view of others.  A person is never completely alone if he thinks, if he perceives the world, and if he feels the life.  And diving into the complete nirvana – the state when I am finally able to reach that unreachable – what can be more enriching, strengthening and giving the greater insight about who I am?

Why people do not understand each other?  Why to speak the different languages?  And why do I care of all those things?  Why there are other people who care about the world that they live in, and why do they seek the enlightenment? They do not understand the things that had happened and still are happening in the world, they do not understand the changes that take place, just like I do not understand.  They do not see the ultimate purpose of everything, thus they spend their lives trying to find the answer to the ultimate question: WHY? There are people who care.  They stand out from the crowd.

I lay on the orange carpet in the very center of my room facing the large bookcase where quietly sit the books. The books by Theodor Dreizer, Aragon, Fiodor Dostoyevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernest Hemingway, Antoine de Sent Exuperi, Thomas Mann, Charles Dickens, Sharlotte Brontё, Stephen Zveig, Erich Maria Remarque, Lev Tolstoy, Kuprin, Solzhenytzin, Bulgakov, Stephen King….  They are carefully lined up and ranked according to their size, content, and the color of their back.  I grew up with these books, I read them several times, in different periods of my life each time finding something new, something that I have missed.  Each time reading them I got the deeper understanding of what the authors wanted to convey in their stories.  Each time reading them I got older, my inner I got older, and it was the experience that could not be replaced by anything else. 

These books were written by people who care about the same things that bother me, and ask the same questions that trouble me.  And the very fact that there exist the people who question about the world, its order, the people that live in it, the relationships among the people, everything – it was helpful by giving me more strength to stand for my own right to question.  It also gave me a notion that in that huge anthill called Earth there are ants who are different and that it is possible to live and be a success for being different, for asking questions, and for constant looking for the answers.

Of the entire rows of books my sight picks “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen W. Hawking.  It’s a fascinating book about space and time.  I stand up, take it and slowly shuffle through its leaves.  In the very beginning the author tries to explain the causes why the people are so eager to explore the unknown, why do they develop so many theories, why do they make hypotheses and assumptions on various subjects of life and the world around us.  I read, “Ever since the dawn of the civilization, people have not been content to see the events as unconnected and inexplicable.  They have created an understanding of the underlying order in the world.  Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we come from.  Humanity’s deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest.”
 
I crave for knowledge.  I ask questions.  I look for the answers.  As I look back to my own life, I see nothing else but the trying to understand who I am, why do I live, why am I here, and what is the purpose of my life.  I want to know how to communicate with other people, how to build relationships, how many relationships to build and why…  I want to know why I am mortal.  I want to know why particularly that understanding that I am mortal evokes so many questions in my mind.

I began to look for the answers very early. At the age of four or five I fully understood the temporality of my own life and the lives of others.  I saw dear to me people dying, and the pain of loss left its dark marks on my childish soul.  I could not agree with the fact that one day I myself would be dead, that my body, full of energy and vitality, would lay and rot.  I feared the death; I wanted to understand why I must die, how it feels to die.  I questioned whether the death would be an end of my existence. I questioned why I was born.  As the time passed by I told myself that there must be a cause why I am here, alive, ready to learn and explore, create and find the answers. 
The wish to know the unknown burned me from the inside.  Being a preschool kid, I read the books that were written for adults.  I did not completely understand them, but still they attracted me, giving the insight so much different from what I got in my family or later in the school.  Here they sit, in a pinewood bookshelf, patiently waiting to be taken and read again.  With a wet duster I carefully clean the thin layer of dust on them.  I touch each one of them, but it is not the books that I touch.  I shake hands with those who wrote them.  Each dust that I remove from them is a part of my greeting, a part of thanks for knowledge, for truth, for teaching me to articulate my own thoughts, for inspiring me to write, to pour on the plain and patient paper all the confusion of questions, ideas, and answers.

I wrote my first line into diary when I was nine years old.  Here it is - my first diary, a thick green notebook, which for years kept in secret my first joys and disappointments, first questions, and first answers.  I keep it, as well as my other diaries, among the books, in the very same bookshelf.  I take them all out, and they form a pile of a respectful size on my table.  A little amazed, I look at that pile, at my years written down in colorful notebooks, with different ink, with different writing style that changed depending on my age and my mood… 
As I look at the pile of diaries, I understand that writing down my thoughts into them was a mean to find a truth, the TRUTH, which hid somewhere where I could not reach it, where it was safe while I burned with a wish to find it.  I lived and found it hard to live.  I wanted to read the books, write, and draw my dreams while my schoolmates wanted to sport, party, and have fun. I wanted to be with them, but I did not want to be like them.  I needed friends, but I could not call anyone my friend.  We were too different.  They would not become like me, thus I struggled between my own interests and being like everyone else.  My teenage years were the loneliest years in my life so far.  I trusted my cat more than I trusted anyone else.  I blamed people for who they are, thinking (hoping?) that myself I am perfect.  But I read the books written by the same people.  And with the years passing by I slowly learned that I should try to change the world around me not through blaming and condemning, but by wise and careful intrusion into the others’ lives. 

I have learned those truths that help me to adapt.  Now I know in most of cases where I may speak out my mind, where I have to remain silent.  I know where stating my opinion would benefit me, and where – not.  Now I know much more than, for example, in 1988, the year which was written in Lithuania’s history as the beginning of separation from the Soviet Union. 
I was eleven years old then.  With my blue eyes wide open I looked at those changes that the whole Lithuania was facing.  The ideas of communism and socialism, previously so exalted, became subject of jokes and those who defended them were condemned to the public derision.  All around me I saw people quickly changing their attitudes to the commonly accepted ones.  The most shocking thing was to see my highly respected teachers doing the same thing.  At school, they taught us the old soviet values; we learned the anthem of the Soviet Union, we had to dress our pioneer uniforms an parade on the certain days, such as the October 17th or May 1st and 9th… 

But at the same time the very same teachers told us that those things they are teaching have no value to us as Lithuanians.  We have to know that time and values are changing now, and we have to be aware of that.  I was aware of those changes.  But I could not understand one thing – how come, that it is possible to refuse one’s beliefs in one night.  I knew that there were people who were persecuted by the Soviet System, I read those poor quality newspapers published by the famous Lithuanian movement Sąjūdis, and I found lots of information on that.  I understood that there were people who had to hide their true beliefs under the mask of a follower of soviet ideology.  But I did not believe, and it was not possible, that all Lithuanians had been faking their beliefs.  It was not possible that the teachers had been pretending to be the devoted communists.  As I viewed that change of beliefs and opinions, I saw my teachers more as pretending to be driven by the national spirit than refusing the old communist convictions. 
In spring of 1989, in our literature class, we were asked to write an essay about Lithuania.  All that was expected of us was a good praise of our motherland, its beauty and its magnificent history.  What I did was a shock to everybody.  Again.  I wrote about political changes in Lithuania as I viewed and understood them.  I wanted everybody to understand that it is not fair to act as if the life were just a performance, or, even worse, just a rehearsal.  I called Lithuanians the chameleons, changing their color from bloody red to a convenient yellow-green-red pattern (these are the colors of Lithuania’s flag), which helped to survive, to keep the jobs, to be accepted in a changing world.  I blamed them for wearing the masks.  I just blamed.

I asked my teacher to read my paper to the whole class.  Unwillingly, she did that.  My classmates seemed shocked a bit by the way the paper was written, but they did not understand at all what I wanted to say.  The issue that I touched was not the one that interested them.  We were just twelve-year-olds.  The only reaction from them was the replica that I just wanted to show up as I always want to.  However, the teacher took the rest of the class time to discuss the issues I mentioned, and I am still thankful her for that effort to explain from an adult perspective the things that troubled me.

It was a very important event in my life.  I understood that I could not trust my immediate reactions about events or people.  What newspapers publish is not necessarily true.  What is written in the books is not necessarily true.  What it is shown on TV must not necessarily be taken for granted.  I saw that it is much more to that which is published, shown, or spoken.  I learned about propaganda techniques, about the brainwashing that is constantly happening all around us.  I learned to think, learned to absorb the information by not taking everything for granted, and not criticizing anything.  I almost stopped questioning others and limited myself to questioning myself.  The amount of questions that I asked increased significantly, but the amount of answers was less than satisfactory.  There were no absolutes in my life.  I did not have anything that could help me to measure the truthfulness or erroneousness of my answers.  All I knew was that everything is relative, that everything may be true if explained in a certain way.  People can be convinced anything, and there is a number of means that can be used to achieve that.

The fake images around me drove me to rebel and look for the ways out of this natural unnaturalness of pretending, acting, and wearing masks.  I began to write poems.  The world of poetry was that terra incognita that I had to explore. I used everything that I could find in this new world to express my emotions and feelings evoked in the reality.  My pain turned to fire, hatred became the thorns on the tiny branches of a bush, and my tears were no longer tears but dewdrops calmly sleeping on the emerald-green grass…

Some people engage themselves in writing because of their wish to escape the reality.  They fantasize, let flow their imagination into the unexplored worlds, where nobody’s foot has stepped into, but all they find at last is the deserts.  The absolute deserts where they are forced to face the very same problems that they have encountered before they tried to escape from them.  I believe writing has to be used as a tool that helps to know the self much better.  How a person could better know himself?  While writing, the emotions, feelings, thoughts are put on paper, they become clearer at last, after more or less struggle.  Sometimes it is painful to write the confessions, but we have to do that, for otherwise we would never dare to think of the issues that cause us the pain, shame, sorrow...  We simply do not let our thoughts to humiliate us, and therefore we choose to avoid such thoughts.  While writing, we at least have to finish the sentence, or paragraph, or the page even. And thus we learn to overcome the discomfort of humiliation.  It is also true that often we are more honest to a paper than to the other people, we can write about those things of which we do not dare to speak.  And the poems – it is really sophisticated way to express those feelings and emotions that are the most acute.
Sometimes I feel like every stone is alive, every tree waves me hello not with the branches but with the hands, and every house smiles to me with the shiny eyes of their windows.  When I sit on a dune in the seaside, it seems that this is not the wind that blows, but a gentle lover that plays with my hair, tenderly breathes into it, and makes me to plunge into some strange state of mind, similar to nirvana.  I let myself float on the top of my uncontrollable thoughts, like the tiny piece of wood on the salty wave.  I let my thoughts carry me the miles away from the reality...  And everything becomes so relative then.  I am not longer I, but a strange mysterious creature, which possesses the features of a swan, tiger, dolphin, snake, and butterfly at once.  I begin viewing myself from another perspective; my understanding and perceiving moves two or more levels up. I seize to exist.  That is, every second is born new me, who is somewhat similar to the previous one, but yet somehow different.  That difference is never seen at once.  It might be felt, but not very strongly, it is like a smell of watermelon – you smell it, but you are not sure whether it is not your imagination only.

When I get into that strange state, it is impossible to keep inside all that mixture, that raging storm of feelings.  The ordinary speech is not able to translate my emotions, I have to find some other way to express them.  I use symbols, allegories, rhyme and rhythm, alliterations, assonance, and all other poetic devices that help to create a completely new way of communication, a way that appeals to emotions and feelings, longings of heart and imagination rather than the pure logic of common sense or rational thinking. Everything that I put on paper in a form of poem comes from the depth of my heart, my knowledge, and my ability to understand and interpret the surroundings, the life as a whole.  All the information that I absorb from life is filtrated in my mind through my consciousness and subconsciousness; I add some imagination, fantasize a little, and mix all of that in a pot of my dreams.  This is how my poems are born.

I shuffle the leaves of my diaries; I list my life.  I see me, growing together with a pile of paper, changing as a person together with my style of writing; me becoming older and the letters becoming smaller and more even.  I see how I mature, how adult thinking overcomes the child in me.  I see many things, and many of them are in between the lines.  I read the short and long entries, I let my sight enjoy the lines of poems written years ago, and what I read is not only the words, it is also memories, some of them very clear and bright, others dimmed with a soft mist of time…  I remember how I felt when writing some of the entries; I remember what evoked particular thoughts.  I see recorded the funny and sad situations that I got in.  Similar situations, but different responses… 

My mind is overwhelmed with memories and thoughts.  I run to the balcony and hide myself among the grape branches.  I heave my sight back on the stars, and all I see is the different worlds that I have lived in.  Each day another world, another terra incognita to explore. The infinite number of stars rest on the dome of heaven.  I ask the infinitives of questions.  There are only a certain number of people, whom I may greet over my lifetime.  I can find only a certain number of possible answers to just a little part of those questions that trouble me. Too many questions but too little answers.  I close my eyes and the darkness covers my mind.  The clouds that hang above the horizon release the rain and it falls softly, covering my face with the cool drops.  The starlight meets the moonlight; they shake their hands and pierce through the veil of rain making it look as a torn cobweb. I am the light under the shower of rain. I am the midnight rainbow.