epiphany

Do you ever feel that way?""Lonely?"I search for the words. "Restless. As if you haven't really met yourself yet. As is you'd passed yourself once in the fog, and your heart leapt - 'Ah! There I Am! I've been missing that piece!' But it happens too fast, and then that part of you disappears into the fog again. And you spend the rest of your days looking for it."He nods, and I think he's appeasing me. I feel stupid of having said it. It's sentimental and true, and I've revealed a part of myself I shouldn't have."Do you know what I think?" Kartik says at last."What?""Sometimes, I think you can glimpse it in another.

There are those who are legitimately corrupt, who cannot admit that legitimacy allows them to corrupt legitimacy, and to legitimately corrupt others.

Well, sometimes love seems easy. Like ... it's easy to love rain ... and hawks. And it's easy to love wild plums ... and the moon. But with people, seems like love's a hard thing to know. It gets all mixed up. I mean, you can love one person in one way and another person in another way. But how do you know you love the right one in every way?""I'm not sure, but I think you'll know. I think if it's the right person, it'll be better than rain and hawks and wild plums. Even better than the moon. I think it'll be better than all that put together.

I've never known before what it feels like to want someone - not to want to hook up with them or whatever, but to want them, to want them. And now I do. So maybe I do believe in epiphanies.

These are maybe the most exciting stars, those just above where sky meets land and ocean, because we so seldom see them, blocked as they usually are by atmosphere_and, as I grow more and more accustomed to the dark, I realize that what I thought were still clouds straight overhead aren__ clearing and aren__ going to clear, because these are clouds of stars, the Milky Way come to join me. There__ the primal recognition, my soul saying, yes, I remember.

I had travelled from Spain into Morocco and from there south to the Atlas Mountains, at the edge of the Sahara Desert_one night, in a youth hostel that was more like a stable, I woke and walked out into a snowstorm. But it wasn__ the snow I was used to in Minnesota, or anywhere else I had been. Standing bare chest to cool night, wearing flip-flops and shorts, I let a storm of stars swirl around me. I remember no light pollution, heck, I remember no lights. But I remember the light around me-the sense of being lit by starlight- and that I could see the ground to which the stars seemed to be floating down. I saw the sky that night in three dimensions- the sky had depth, some stars seemingly close and some much farther away, the Milky Way so well defined it had what astronomers call __tructure_, that sense of its twisting depths. I remember stars from one horizon to another, making a night sky so plush it still seems like a dream.It was a time in my life when I was every day experiencing something new. I felt open to everything, as though I was made of clay, and the world was imprinting on me its breathtaking beauty (and terrible reality.) Standing nearly naked under that Moroccan sky, skin against the air, the dark, the stars, the night pressed its impression, and my lifelong connection was sealed.

God's voice is usually nothing more than a whisper, and you have to listen very carefully to hear it. But other times, in those rarest of moments, the answer is obvious and rings as loud as a church bell.

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it__ impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.

And like an epiphany just landed on my shoulder, everything feels right. A calming acceptance settles over me, and I know, that even through the twists and uncertainty of time, it's okay if my heart sometimes leads me.

Sometimes we get stuck in patterns or reoccurring themes in our lives that require a shocking epiphany to give us the opportunity to see new possibilities and notice the obstacles that keep us from moving on.

Looking into the spirit of others is sometimes like looking into a pond. Though we aim to see what's deep in the bottom, we are often distracted by our own reflection.

So I learned two things that night, and the next day, from him: the perfection of a moment, and the fleeting nature of it.

Now, what__ stirring in this murky sea of complexity and foolishness is an almost suffocating need to breathe fresh history.

Whenever the sadness got too much, I would hire a rickshaw and go to the Upper Bazaar. Those little rickshaw trips to the market and back, shopping for lipsticks and imitation Gucci bags and wind-chimes and what not, are some of my happiest memories today. You know, one day, during one of those trips, I sold all my well-thumbed copies of __nside Outside_ to the Tibetan guy who ran the old book store on Netaji Road for seventy rupees, six Tintins and a disarming smile. And all of a sudden, that moment, standing at the corner of Netaji road, I found out who I was._('Left from Dhakeshwari')

...Helen sipped peppermint schnapps and considered the world made of her design. My religion is keeping peace, she thought. It hadn't begun that way, was nothing she'd planned, but now she saw that's how it was. I just ran a grocery, she thought. I don't want this. I ain't the one to make the world right.

As I turned to leave, I looked down. Beside my foot, a sprout of greenery was clawing its way through the pristine nothingness to begin anew. It was later that I realized my haven had sent me a message, and it had shown me that nothing is ever completely lost, unless you cease searching.

She seems to always get itTo have become adept at empathyAlways giving excuses for people who__e aggrieved herTo the point it__ hard for her to hit back when necessary All because she assumes she __nderstands__hen, one day . . .She finally stands up for herselfAt that moment, she revels in the natural instinct of self-preservationShe realises all this while the power she__ been withholdingIn a transcendent moment of epiphanyIt__ all beautiful __auseNow, she can get back to empathy with understanding, rather, than without.