Mibae

The earth is in constant motion, and so are we in her saddle. When something moves, it is moving away or moving toward us. How do you love something that constantly needs to be somewhere else and invariably changes every moment? 

With our heartbreaks, we are running away, sometimes unknowingly, from the brokenness. But we, too, move towards pain in our imagination, in our hopes, and in our dreams: to heal wounds, mend brokenness, undo wrong, serve justice for the unjust, and only magically wipe clean all the ill and misfortune. We, the earthlings, return to the bruises along with her rotations but neglect the notion of what injuries do. It changes the future; a journey with scars is a one-way street. We don’t return to the same state as the person we left. We become another being.

Day in, day out, all seems unchanged—it is an allure to an illusion we fancy to believe, but otherwise. Look no further than yesterday, and you will meet the stranger in the mirror! When we travel with the earth’s rotation, we don’t realize the person we returned to or have become. As it were, we are strangers to our own senses. In fear of losing touch with reality, our mind immediately creates narratives, fascinating us with seductive feelings of control and knowledge. We keep moving with cataract vision: silhouettes of shapes, colors of faded liveliness. As the brain sees, not the eyes, it grapples while drowning in “Mibae.” No alarm goes off in my mind! Moments become yesteryear, eon slips. The urgency to have a conversation with the person we have been accompanying all along eludes attention. And only accidentally do we discover how we both aged, even though we have been inseparable during our journey.