People Always Leave

Remember this anyone?

And this?

For my wedding…

Before the Storm by Stridsberg

Something made me remember promises I made to myself a long, long time ago (maybe even in a galaxy far, far away) and it reawakened my belief in the possibility of love. You know, the kind that lasts. I’m, at this point where I am coming to terms with the fact that there may not be a happily ever after for some of us. Sometimes the most deserving of love are the ones who are ultimately deprived.

And then I read something that really shook me. A quote from Dante. I may or may not find the perfection in the words I am to share with you, but by some slim chance that I do… these are the words I would want to hear and say. Because if the possibility does exist, it will be nothing short of this…

Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always

A promise, like a reward for persisting through life for so long alone

A belief in each other in the possibility of love

A decision to ignore or simply rise above the pain of the past

A covenant which at once bonds two souls and yet servers prior ties

A celebration in the chance taken in the challenge that lies ahead

For two will always be stronger than one

Like a team, braced against the tempests of the world

And love will always be the guiding force in our lives

For tonight is a mere formality

Only an announcement to the world of feelings long held

Of promises made so long ago in the spaces of our hearts

How does that happen? Being able to take a chance with love when life has given you every reason not to. It’s a biggie for me, that one. But the words to make a world of difference to my perspective on possibilities. Hope it does with yours too.

You know you’re addicted to Unawatuna when…

1. People start asking you to broaden your horizons in terms of your vacation spots

2. Random beach boys know you by name, offer you cigarettes & ask you how your dogs are

3. You know random beach boys by name and actually enjoy their company

4. You even know the names of the beach boys dogs

5. You sit your ass down, slap bang in the centre of the bay and can stay there forever

6. You suddenly find the down-south Sinhala dialect creeping into your conversation. Gedara yanawei?

7. Paying for a room is at the rate you decide

8. You actually get a good night’s sleep irrespective of the fact that you’re an incurable insomniac

9. It seems strange not to fall asleep or wake up to the sound of waves lulling

10. Your wrists & ankles haven’t seen the light of day because of all the friendship bands you’ve tied on them, marking the number of times you’ve come here

11. Sand between your ass cheeks seems perfectly normal

12. You have a gag reflex at the smell of bananas, but you eat banana fritters as your staple diet when you’re here

13. You think wind-surfing looks like having sex, only better. Poetry in motion, I tell ya.

14. It’s only June and you’ve been outstation 11 times this year already and 10 of those visits were to Una.

15. Oh yeah… and you refer to it as Una instead of its proper name. If you’re nicknaming something, it’s gotta mean something.

Belated but Tagged

5 things. 5 bloggers. I humbly apologize for the delay RD. Things have been a little hectic here at sandwich inc. I guess it’s a tad late to tag anyone since everyone sems to have got their 2 cents, or in this case, 5 words, in.

Here I go. 5 words about the recent events in Sri Lanka.

1. Suspicious

2. Questioning

3. Hopeful

4. Doubtful

5. Mulativu Beach Fest 2010!

Whoo hoo for the last one! Although it did contain more than one word and the likes of Pada Show might have concerns about my lack of knowledge in basic arithmetic too. Some of us take things far too literally I tell you!

One thing that I have been finding as a common thread with this tag is that irrespective of all the other negative words, hope seems to ring through. I guess that’s the one thing we can all hold onto huh?

Contentment is Death

Walking on Clouds by Gilad

A little boy told me once that there’s always one sandwich missing in a sandwich basket. Apparently it was his philosophy in life. I laughed at the time. But as I began to get older I realized that truer words were never spoken. He had the most original way of telling me that nothing in life is complete. That there’s always something that stops any situation from being perfect. It sounds pessimistic in a way.

But it also reminds me of something someone else said. Mr. George Bernard Shaw said that “as long as I don’t have what I want, I have a reason for living. Contentment is death”. I’ve never been content. I guess that means I’m still very much here. It’s an affirmation that I am alive. That I still thirst and hunger and need for more than I have, greater things than are possible.

People tell me I’m too much of dreamer. That in the midst of my pessimism, hope always managed to creep in. Every time life beats me to the ground, I realize that that’s as low as I can ever get and I rise up. Time after time.

It makes you wonder though sometimes. Am I asking for too much to be happy. I look at what I have right now, the opportunities in front of me, the people in my life who love me, my job, my muse, my two amazing canine kiddies and I still want more. Different things than the obvious.

My English lit teacher wrote me a little note when I was leaving school that I know by heart. I see you longing for the finer things in life. Poetry in life and love and in everything you long for. It’s going to be lonely up there. But remember… the air up there is sweeter, rarer.

I think she got the 18 year old me down to a pat. And since I doubt I’ve grown up very much since then, other than to let my search beat me down time after time, I think I still won’t settle for anything less. I owe it to myself to move every mountain in my way. I owe it to myself to never stop searching.

In the midst of it, what really scares me is finding what I’m looking for. What if I find my missing sandwich? What happens when my picnic basket finally becomes complete and all I have left to do is, spread my gingham blanket on the ground and enjoy my day in the sun? Will it be the death of me? (can you see how that wretched pessimist in me creeps in through the cracks in the conversation?)

My teacher was right, my search, my chase has been a very lonely one. It’s an utterly depressing place to be sometimes when I stop and evaluate what I’ve had to come through. I’m still climbing my mountains but sometimes when the route gets a little rocky, it’s nice to have someone give you a hand up.

It’s an infinitely lonely place when no one sees into your soul and really gets you. But that’s not the point of this post. I just wanted to tell you in my own words, the other facet of why my blog is thus named.

I am the missing sandwich because I feel that my purpose is to complete someone’s life. But my blog is also called the missing sandwich because it’s a declaration of my final destination. My desire to be complete and the fact that it’s ok that I’m not quite there yet.

The Hunt Is ON!!!

House Hunting by artforvenn

I humbly apologize for the absence but I have been literally going mad trying to find my own version of RD Towers. Only in this case the tower bit is not necessary.

If anyone knows of a 2 – 3 bedroom house with parking and a canine friendly environment please  do let me know. Or if anyone who has a large house and is looking for housemates. I come with two canines, one large, one medium sized, both friendly. And I also come with a jaded one who ain’t all that jaded these days. He he.

Furnished, semi furnished or unfurnished. All ok. Parking essential. Small garden needed. Lemme know.

It’s URGENT though.

I wanna do bad things with you

The Motorcycle Diaries

I had the most amazing weekend, despite the fact that I opted to shy away from company and sulk because it was going to be the first weekend in a long time that I wouldn’t be in Unawatuna. But to get to my present story, I need to give you a background about me and how significant parts of my life have involved motorbikes. From the time I was but a wee embryo in my mama’s womb infact!

When my parents first got married they went about on a bike. And I don’t just mean to work and back and the usual places one goes about to when living in Colombo. For instance, when my mum was 7 months pregnant with me, she and my dad and a bunch of other couples when on a road trip around Sri Lanka. I’ve seen the yellowing photographs to prove it, the ones with my parents and bikes and historical sites all thrown in. My mother of course, with a giant tummy to boot. It kinda explains some of the insanity in my system now. I must have been pretty shook up, huh?

Then as a baby, my parents found it very difficult to put me to sleep. I would howl or just gaze at them, refusing to get any shut-eye or give them any. Like most parents, mine found the precise thing to get me to finally knock off. You know how some kids need to hear a specific song to fall asleep? A cousin of mine needed to listen to “I’m nobody’s child” over and over again before she reached dreamland. With me, it was nothing quite so simple. The only way to put me to sleep was to wrap me up, put me on the bike and take me for a half an hour spin in the dead of night. I’d knock off like a dead man, feeling more comfortable over the engine of a bike than my comfy little cot at home. Strange child I was. Still a strange child at times. It all makes sense now though.

The longest relationship of my life was also with a man who rode a bike in the early stages of it. I remember him dropping me home late at night as we’d whiz past the lonely lanes between Dehiwala and Nawinna way past midnight. It was just the two of us on the bike, but I used to always see a third shadow when I’d look down on the streets to follow the shadow of the bike as we passed street lamps. When I told him about it one day, he didn’t even wince. Told me that bikers have a special guardian angel which was probably what I saw.

And then tragedy struck. You know the cousin in whose memory I write a post at the end of February every year? He was a dirt bike racer who met with a nasty accident on a street bike. He had never met with a single accident whilst racing and then he headed off onto the streets one day to test his new baby. The gory details aren’t necessary. Needless to say, he died on the spot. And for years after that I couldn’t even look at a bike, forbidding the people I loved to never go near one. When I finally was ready to get back on a bike again, I think I felt him smiling down at me.

Now that I’ve set the stage, I’m ready to tell my present story…

I wanted nothing but to stay home and sulk with a book this weekend. And then the one friend who I just couldn’t refuse called and asked if we could have a beer. He picked me up on his bike and we headed to BuBa. I was fine with it, thinking it’d last an hour at the most. When we were done, he just got up and declared the night to still be young and asked what we could do. Jokingly I said, let’s go to Unawatuna.

There obviously seemed to be no two words about it with him and before I knew it, we were riding “into the night”, cutting through the cold air, heading towards Unawatuna. I couldn’t half believe it during most of the journey. I kept telling myself that I was asleep in my bed and having the nicest of dreams. The other half of the time, I kept remembering my promise of taking a walk on the wild side. This must have been one of the wildest things I’d done in a while.

You see, I randomly make wild suggestions like this when I’m with my friends and none of them take the bait. This friend and I certified ourselves to be the last two crazies left in the world. He was the first person to take my cockamamie schemes seriously. But then again, he always had and I think I’ve always done the same. It had been a while since we’d really hung out together. Over the years our lives have taken us in such different directions that we don’t get to spend as much time together as we used to. Doesn’t mean that we aren’t still there for eachother. And that night proved just how in synch we still are with eachother, even after all these years. We’d hand out in groups or get together for a casual beer once in a while, but that had been it.

And then it began to rain. Soaked to the bone, we took shelter under whatever we could find on lonely roads, past 1 in the morning. Stopped occasionally for a smoke. Spoke to eachother whilst riding. Froze our faces with the cold, cold air that seemed to be slapping us as we sped on. It’s not like travelling in a car, I realized. You don’t just get to see everything, you get to feel everything this way too. We stopped for Kottu just before Boosa. Even something as simple kottu tastes better when the company rocks, I think. In my head a soundtrack started to form. The Beatles were singing Ticket to Ride. And then The Doors were playing Riders on the Storm. Even Amanda Marshall wanted her share, so she came in with her song, Ride. And then my beloved Smashing Pumpkins started to croon Tonight, Tonight. Simply perfect I tell you!

We got to Unawatuna, discovered nothing was open and headed onto the beach in front of the Happy Banana. My happy place, after all. When it started to rain, we took shelter inside the restaurant. I was confident no one would mind, considering the people who run it have now become my friends. We sat on the stone-walled ledge and had the most amazing conversation that lasted for hours. Two stray dogs that had made friends with me on my previous visits decided to curl up with us and enjoy our warmth while the rain was beating down on us. Our conversation seemed to follow the pattern of the rain; non-stop then stilted and then jabbering again and finally silence as we just listened to the rain cease and the waves take over the majority of the sound. We remembered songs we used to listen to and relate to. Crash & Burn. A song that reminded me that it was ok to cry. Bring me to life. A song that I held close to my heart like a promise, only to realize that it had come true at some point. Unwell. A song that brought back the madness I had given into at one point in my life, knowing it was the best thing that ever happened. We talked about the old days and in my head I remembered what Niobe constantly kept repeating in The Matrix… something along the lines of some things change and some things always stay the same. Before we knew it, day break was upon us and I got to gaze at that amazing view once again, this weekend too.

We rode back, singing the strangest songs, he changing the words to compliment our little adventure. We stopped for inguru plain tea just outside Beruwala and listened to a radio announcement that peace was nearly upon us. I smiled somewhere deep inside my heart. I had already found peace just passed midnight, somewhere on a lonely stretch of road, to the sound of a bike engine, with probably the best company in the world. Someone so intrinsically like me and yet so different in some ways that the combination was perfect for a night like we had.

I needed an adventure to shake up my soul a bit. This May madness was getting a bit too much to handle. And who better to shake up my soul and share a perfect moment with me than the person who inspired the name of this blog?

in May

Crimson Winds by Pestilence

I shall love you in December with the love I gave in May
- James Alexander Joyce

May I make a wish? May I make many? Simply because it’s May…

May your find the resolution to all your fruitless searches

May the May winds blow through every lock of your hair as you stand up to the great ocean and tell her you’ve been cheated

May you laugh in the face of your pain tonight

May you find strength that you would never find if you were standing alone and may you battle the world together

May you smile for longer than just a moment this time around

May the rains that come begin to wash away the hopelessness in your soul as you awaken to a Gypsy promise come true

May you dance carelessly through the darkest of nights

May the sensual touches of a lover be such a constant that you know of nothing of what it is like to be without any longer

May you sleep cocooned and spooned in love

May you feel every colour of the sunset and be bathed in its potent glow for all the days of your life

May your fire never cool in the presence of contentment

May every grain of sand beneath your feet, encase you and grip you so that you stop & stare at what you have, learning to be still

May the promises made to you never be broken

May it last at last

And may it all happen in May

I Crossed the Bridge!

Remember the book I was looking for since I was 17 which I found a few months ago? I started reading it and even quoted a part of it for you here. Since then I haven’t quite been able to read it until my many journeys to Unawatuna came about. I took the book along with me and realized that it was the perfect setting to read it. Usually I read a book a week and this one took me months to get through and as a result I haven’t been able to pick up another book. I’m finally ready to read again.

I finished The Bridge Across Forever by Richard Bach a few days ago. The book that I wanted to read as an optimistic teenager and finally read, albeit grudgingly as a cynical adult. A book about soulmates, written by a man who divorced his. I expected to find a bunch of bullshit in it considering that he and Leslie Parish said adieu to there so called discovery. But in the process I remembered one thing I held true through the years… who said soulmates were supposed to end up together anyway? Or even if they found eachother, who said they were supposed to stay together forever? In that sense the title is completely useless to me now and so is his explanation as to why the book was this titled.

But I didn’t throw the baby out with the bath water and found a few precious gems that even the somewhat cynical bitch I’ve turned into can like. Jotting a few of them down for you here…

• We think, sometimes, there’s not a dragon left. Not one brave knight, not a single princess gliding through secret forests, enchanting deer and butterflies with her smile. What a pleasure to be wrong. Princesses, knights, enchantments and dragons, mystery and adventure …not only are they here-and-now, they’re all that ever lived on earth! Our century, they’ve changed clothes, of course. Dragons wear government-costumes, today, and failure-suits and disaster-outfits. Society’s demons screech, whirl down on us should we lift our eyes from the ground, dare we turn right at corners we’ve been told to turn left. So crafty have appearances become that princesses and knights can be hidden from each other, can be hidden from themselves.

• The opposite of loneliness, it’s not togetherness. It is intimacy.

• There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they’re necessary to reach the places we’ve chosen to go.

• The only thing that shatters dreams is compromise.

• That’s what learning is, after all; not whether we lose the game, but how we lose and how we’ve changed because of it and what we take away from it that we never had before, to apply to other games. Losing, in a curious way, is winning.

• Boredom between two people, doesn’t come from being together, physically. It comes from being apart, mentally and spiritually.

• Why my weakness for, my joy in the singular turn of this one mind, in the singular curve of this face & breast in the singular merry light in her eyes when she laughs? Because those unique curves & sparkles, Richard, we carry them with us, lifetime to lifetime, they’re our trademarks, stamped deep in what each of us believes, and without knowing, we remember them! When we meet again!

There’s a lot more, some more significant than the ones I have quoted here even, but I don’t think I’ll be turning the pages of that book for a while. My thirst of 12 years is finally quenched in a way. So I suggest you get the book and read it yourself now.

I would have liked to say that the book returned all my psycho-babble, childish notions about love & soulmates and there being only one person for you out there in the big bad universe…but I can’t. What it did do was probably lower my armor for a little while and I sincerely hope it’s for the best.