:: Running on Faith ::

My dreams must have been raped by Hera's wrath last night, because I woke up feeling like I was dragged by the hair from Dante's fiery pit and flung back into consciousness with my skin half burnt.

My body was screaming with exhaustion. Every joint, every muscle, every nerve―every part of me―was alive and inflamed with fatigue. I was bleeding―Eve's eternal curse, so they say―and I was in pain. I didn't want to wake up―take me back, Morpheus―I didn't want to shave, crimp, preen, contour, brush, and colour myself into the respectable and presentable corporate slut I have now become. I just wanted to fall back into the black hole of sleep, cradled by the eclipse of emotions.

But my alarm jarred unsympathetically into my ear. As I jerked myself awake and my shortsighted world blurred into focus, I felt as though a gun had gone off at the back of my throat, because my tonsils were burning their slow, sickened fever. My breasts ached―a defiant, definitive flag of womanhood.

Call in sick, said my Temptress. But I thought about the lives washed into choiceless nirvana by the tsunami disaster, and every bit of sensibility I had―I have―clicked into place. The cold shower threw my system into shock, and my morning song carried on its exercised tune with methodical efficiency.

There is nothing admirable about perspectives gained through innocence lost. But nature cannot care about its gruesome inflictions―because it takes no credit for its beauty, it can't be blamed for its destruction.

As I flicked on my laptop and allowed the robotic start-up tune herald in yet another day, I almost wish I have the a certain deistic faith, because everytime I was shattered and split at the seams, I find myself wishing for a magical cure-all. But perhaps my bohemian piety and my words are enough. Under the corporate facade, there is a maverick waiting to fly.

Where is my muse today?

***

I felt a tinge of near-religious sentiment as C presented her homemade Bailey's-Oreo cheesecake in girlish flourish and T sheepishly admitted to engineering the purchase of the elusive chocolate-hazelnut cake from Goodwood Park hotel.

All that, just because I turned another year older. I had done nothing; birthdays merit no celebration because they come by no matter what, and I felt almost embarrassed when the chorus of happy birthday rippled through the group gathered around me.

But I was touched. And the strange sentiment became a sacrosanct echo: what life takes away, it will compensate in kind. As our group―a Motley crew of different personalities living out different lives―erupt into giggles and easy companionship over cakes and crass jokes, I was inexplicably warmed by the serendipity of circumstance.