धर्मो रक्षति रक्षितः

The only thing this Godforsaken world has taught me is that sorrow follows you like a stray dog. It slinks behind you, tiptoeing between shadows, and only pauses to peer up with heavy eyes when you stop to have a cigarette or an after-dinner drink. The Lucky Ones turn their noses at the matted hair and flea-bitten ears. They become accustomed to the soft whining behind them, and move forward regardless. But the Wretched Ones, we see the mangy thing as symbolic of some unrewarded grandeur. We can’t resist glancing over our shoulder and beautifying the solemnity in its constant moans. Coloring it muted shades of blue and lending it poetic voice, we incarnate it. We are the authors, the painters, the sculptors, the playwrights, befriending misery and romanticizing our relationship through blended words and hues. Feeding it scraps of immortality with each artistic endeavor, we instigate its unfailing devotion. And parasitic as it is, we surrender to this symbiotic existence because we are unable to quiet our emotions into the ignorance mastered by the Lucky Ones. This is our tragic flaw, our Grecian hamartia, by which we are martyred for the attempted upholding of Keatsian philosophy: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty…”. We ignore social opinion and look instead to the dark corners of the world – beneath the shaded alcoves of ghetto alleys, within the down turned eyes of unwashed vagrants – to find our definition of splendor. Goddamnit, that’s where it resides.

My writing