Black and white

(in response to Black And White, a poem by Imtiaz Dharker)

The paisley like shape of the yin yang symbol reminds me of something I saw on a documentary regarding the patterns within a leaf and how it related to eternity. There were these geometric shapes like paisley that repeated over and over again infinitely. It fascinated me and went into my subconscious filing system where all the revelations that resonate with me go. I somehow deeply know these things while I'm learning them though I don't try to understand what isn't fully discoverable as I feel this would bring a halt to my personal evolution. Instead I embrace all things that resonate allowing them to co-exist. The Yin and the Yang, the positive and negative are all part of the same entity, the thing that is life. Water will drown a human and air will drown a fish, that's another Yin to a Yang. Why opposites are often reduced to moral arguments I don't know, I find it to be a stagnant argument. Black and White should remain what they are and not diluted as they are what they are in relation to what they are in relation to. A thing may have many sides that hold definitive meanings to each and everything and this is how every thing relates, every bit of existence from the minute to the all encompassing like a paisley pattern on a kaleidoscope.

There's nothing black and white about my personal world. It's overcast by a dull greyness, under which I have an identity that I've not yet been able to identify. Compromise is demanded, to be Chameleon-like, to be able to blend in, not boldly stand out, like black and white. Adaptability is a valuable asset that can lead to the blandness assumed by many politicians and which the people now reject. Black OR white is what I'd like to be, distinct, not black AND white, an amalgam. I hanker after a black cemetery headstone with white letters proclaiming, ' Here lies a man ' not a wimp!

The title of this poem and words like 'scrambling', 'running away', 'struggling to understand', 'blurred' and 'coming out,' make me think about events leading up to and after the referendum. Pandemonium. Anther word that springs to mind. Things are rarely black and white.

Although I have lived in this country for 23 years, I am not a citizen. It is simply a formality, at least that's what I thought until I was voted out of Europe; but at times before the referendum, I was glad I didn't have to make a decision, because I couldn't vote. There were too many issues to consider in the argument... A big mass of grey, I would say. Not for everyone, of course. There are many who misunderstood what the issues at hand were, and now think that foreigners should just leave, and are happy to shout about it. I have never thought of myself as a foreigner. I moved into a foreign country but I joined its culture, its beliefs and ways of life. I think of myself as British, but I am not. My passport doesn't say so.

So I've had to ask myself some questions... where do I belong? I belong here, of course, because this has been my home for all of my adult life. But someone out there doesn't think it matters. It is scary how possessive we, as humans, become: of cities, countries, jobs... is it survival? We never really learn to share, I guess. Our parents try to make us believe it. "Sharing is good," they say, but they don't believe it themselves, so how can their children?

If we are better off than someone else, we rarely land a hand... Depressing.

This is my country.

My country is better than yours.

I don't want you here.

Go back home.

...Where is home?...

So many words and pictures in my mind, scrambling, scrabbling for a foot-hold. Black and white, black and tans, Ireland through the ages, gym hall lined with climbing frames I yearned always to set free; they hung there, beckoning me, but it seemed as if they were just for decoration in the minds of the adults who guarded their swing. Straw painted rooves hovering up above, closer than the stars, denser, tracing their intricacies with my eyes. Warm and inviting, enticing, way beyond the sterility of the classroom. White chalk on blackboard, so often seeming admonishment, stricture. Arriving at class with a temporary teacher one day to find she had sketched breath-taking beautiful images from a Narnia book we must have been reading. So rare these moments in my childhood when someone would step outside the lines, dare to be different, allow there to be a world beyond the black and white of rigid right and wrong.

Black pools of ink. Fresh, moist on sensuous paper, fingertips alert to vibrations, echoes of words timelessly falling from a firm nib, pressed urgently onto the page, gliding sometimes, sometimes dragging effort-fully but always with something to be said, to be heard beyond the hollow confines of my head. Words not meant for my ears alone. Words for ears. Whose ears? Whose words do we listen to? Whose words do we allow? Who defines black and white? Who defines the borders and the sense of belonging? Wild nature rampaging across all paths, all lines drawn. Mayan jungles reclaiming ancient civilisations, cradling or “de-civilising” us, as if we could descend beyond our own making. Keep moving or they’ll come for you, clamour all over you, bed you down into certainty. Force you to take root, to roam yes but only so far, you must stay with your own kind, this is your terrain, not that. Why? Why? Why? Whose words, whose lines? Lines of marching feet, marching together, in unison, to what purpose? Break free! And roam far.