GLASS WORKS

The darkening garden (BLISS)

Well, before we get onto the serious stuff, I'd just like to say that my works are not just my responsibility but they belong to the reader as much as they belong to me. You can interpret the lines in anyway you like but this is what I as a writer wanted to convey to the mass readers.

 The darkening garden was basically just an essay I wrote when I was super bored back in high school (I'm talking like I'm a fifty year old woman-I'm still in high school tho. lol)

Initially, it was titled "cuts and thorns" but i planned on changing it because I was reading this poem "Hide and seek" by Vernon Scannell and the verses went like;

"The darkening garden watches, nothing stirs

The bushes hold their breath, the sun is gone

Yes, here you are - But where are they who sought you? "

And I thought that it would sound dramatic so I went with the flow. There wasn't much behind the title. It fit into the essay like a puzzle piece and it sounded good so what the heck?

As for the actual essay goes, I made use of religious allusion and imagery. The basic concept was of this old woman who was strolling in an abandoned, withering garden in Autumn and the leaves were red and the winds were dry, the usual stuff. She walks down her memory lane and she relives "the days of innocence" and youth. 

Anyone who has ever read any semitic religious text would definitley know about the concept of vice and virtue, onsequently heaven and hell. Now, this woman looks down at her plot of weeds and thorns-as, the saying goes " You reep what you sow" and "the world is a cultivating ground for the hereafter"

One fine day, in our Urdu class, we learned about Mir Taqi Mir's poetry and he said a rather interesting thing and that was "Lovers forget to live their lives and accomplish the actual goals of life beacuse they are too darned busy mourning over their loved one"

I held onto that and incorporated the main message into my essay. The woman is viewing her past through a tiny lens or a window or a rhinestone. She realizes that she was too busy fawning over this guy that she sacrificed everything she had for-a guy who wouldn't even bother looking at her or "The guy who changed his mind" [This is a generalized statement, since there is a guy in every girl's life who changed his mind] 

She (the woman) ends up with a furious ranting. She blames love for all her miseries but she signs off saying that love is deathless. The woman was dying but her love had been immortalized in the memories she was leaving behind. Her love never perished. 

~Eraj Ejaz~