Who is the third that walks always besides you?
—T.S Eliot
The average attention span of a human in 2013 was eight seconds, a second less than a gold-fish and I can see how that is right. However, I’m not sure if that is all there is to it, for someone who is suffering from anxiety (because all of us are, even if they are small breadcrumbs on a large plate), we all suffer from it and sometimes without knowing. Perhaps what I’m saying is that anxiety in the only semi-intimidating feeling that we unconsciously concentrate on and reach an attention span of hours. It is funny as it is sad. Why do we focus on things that are unhelpful? Of course you may argue that one thought leads to another and that leads to another and we spend all our day at different stations of endless thought. It’s the third person that walks always besides you. It is the one that isn’t separate from you. I see shadows all the time; always within earshot and never quiet.
The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel came out in 1964 and to this day it is still relatively perfect for the world we live in. I looked for its meaning online, a while back, despite having an opinion about it and so I looked it up. One of the sources talked about Plato’s The Allegory of Cave and how the song maybe interpreted likewise. It’s a concept of shadow that is based on reality, three men are tied towards the wall in a backlit cave and all they see is shadows passing behind them. They learn to figure out certain shadows and grow to accept a world like that. However one of them is set free to discover the world as it is, upon his discoveries he goes back to the cave and explains to the rest of the prisoners the wonders that lay just outside the mouth of the cave and when he tries to yank them free and pique their interests with his discovery, the call him mad and preposterous. They choose ignorance over truth. The line of reality here becomes distorted; you either believe that the shadow is an actual object or the object is a shadow in itself. These realities intersect each other, Simon & Garfunkel were the ones that looked outside the cave and told the world about it. Are we the shadow or is the shadow us? In darkness, neither exists except the sense of being. Who is the third that walks always besides you? Is it you or your shadow?
“Fools” said I, “You do not know.
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you.”
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence.
***
Our house, it does not have brick walls but metal sheets vertically stuck in concrete to give you the illusion of a wall. Ammi has planted roses in the flower beds that are adjacent to the supposed wall; it has been over a couple of years and when they’re in a full boom our wall is an analogy in itself. The rose boughs— like long unbound hair of women, like the receding wave of an ocean catching a stormy breath by the shore, allure all the evil eyes within their thorns and sweet sundry red petals.
I don’t have any walls, I’m a decimated place and I’m fond of shadows. I harbor life where the light falls, I am a garden and I’m tarnished; broken marble, sandstone and silica. I have a sun, miles away in the fading cloud cover and sometimes it’s all I ever feel.