The Labyrinth of the Heart

Since I emerged that day from the labyrinth,
Dazed with the tall and echoing passages,
The swift recoils, so many I almost feared
I’d meet myself returning at some smooth corner,
Myself or my ghost, for all there was unreal

- from the Labyrinth, by Edwin Muir

I thought I'd try to write something different today. Since this is my blog and I am writing mainly for my own pleasure, I shall do what I like. I've been writing too many topics that focus on the mind. Let me for try to tap the heart for a change and sees what comes up.

There was a time when I used to write poetry. Being a fan of the romantic poets, what I wrote often came out in the style of Byron, Shelley or Wordsworth. During my university days, I had many of my poems published in the local tabloids. I shudder to reread them again for they are full of amateurishly lyrical lines, written in imitation of the masters. So much of them were on nostalgia for childhood and the solitude of city life.

Passions reign supreme when you are in the flush of youth. I had often thought that life was like fireworks: the sole purpose of life is to dazzle, to soar high and to express the innermost soul, no matter what the consequences. I believed in Romanticism perhaps to the extreme.

Sights and sounds consumed me. Music and movies were a big part of my life. To live was to be intoxicated by the senses. In Thoreau's words, "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life". I wanted to rediscover that Noble Savage within that modern life had forced us to conceal. I was bedazzled by the lyricism Wong Kar Wai's movies. The effect of watching Days of Being Wild for the first time, at the Majestic Theatre in PJ Old Town, I remember, was quite life-changing.

I read Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being, and felt the heaviness of my soul--the burden of responsibilities, the imprisonment of a soul that yearned to be free. I read Bertrand Russell deep into the night seeking to find a glimmer of insight from the philosophers of old, and in my darkest hours, I found mild solace in Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga.

Every night, I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again. The heart trumps the head all the time for the restless heart is ever-urging one to move, to strive, to sacrifice. Oh, the heart with all its intrigues and treacheries!

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. And I had complete faith in the wisdom of my heart then. But then the heart is an organ of fire. When it is inflamed, it is often beyond our control. And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Oh these deceits are strong almost as life.
Last night I dreamt I was in the labyrinth,
And woke far on. I did not know the place.