Sunday, February 25, 2007
♥ Sunday, February 25, 2007
THE QUOTIDIANA play just ended. 'Longings and Belongings', they called it: one's mental instability culminated in a murder and ultimately a search to reconcile the past.
He walked into the crowd, a sea of blank faces. Its strange how we can feel alone even in a cherpy crowd.
A light brush, a polite smile, a bouquet of flowers: behind gestures he hides through feelings of alienation. How is it that one could be so impossibly out of place? Is it possible that God made too many creatures for all so many things, he forgot to give one, one?
Longings and belongings. We long to belong, and yet we long too long, sometimes. Times places too many restrictions on far too many things.
An average person has 7 years to successfully enter the education system, another 18 to successfully leave, another 4 to cast a career,32 years to make a living, and another 20 years to rest.
Miss one of those, well, you just die more tired.
And yet, we ask for more. More within the quotidian. From sunrise to sunset, there has to be an illusory beauty that captivates. Is it friendship? Is it love?
Is it anything we can possibly find, whilst living?
He walked along. Today is the day, after 25 years of being. Being what? Being who? It was sheer being; it wasnt living and he knew it.
Leaving the crowd, he gathered speed and let his thoughts bring him into the fine darkness. Here, he leaves in truth, for its when we barely see anything, that we get to focus on the neccesary.
He stumbled upon an open patch. Here was where they said lay a cemetary. A cemetary that was to be built over. He wondered how strange it was that some would go all out to retain memories, whilst others would go all out to destroy them. Would love be a memory to retain, or destroy? He wondered
Today, he visited someone. She used to be a huge person, larger than life. But time caught up with her. The time that reminds all, biblically, ashes will become ashes and what was from dust, will become dust.
It caught up with him. In such twilight, it was ironic that he was at his most lucid. Who was she? What was she like? If death comes to all, what makes a good death? Frailty, adversities has an enormous power on keeping us held to the ground. Keeping us real. Psychiatrists remark that a good percentage of patients who resort to hurting themselves are involved in what is more philosophical than psychological- they need to realise that they are around.
For him, that image of complete dependance, on regurgitating whatever she ate, on looking on listlessly, dealt the same effect. Reflecting on it made him realise he was around.
Words had so much power. Words like "cancer' sealed fate. Words like "terminal", and "last few days" and "sorry" changed philanderers and drunkards into guilt-stricken, deep penitant philosophers.
He wondered which was his word, that sealed his fate. Which was the word that could really change. which was the word that described his 25 years of pathetic existence?
Ahead a sight loomed into focus. A group of devout worshippers gathering and making what looks like a pilgrimage: from a certain end to another, holding candles and singing hymns. Curiosity gripped him.
There were something in those woshipper's eyes, that he'd seen in his own a long while back. Was that a smile he saw? Was that a tear? What could move these people to reveal so much of themselves? He moved closer.
There he stood, in growing awe of the spiritual. People came together, without the veil of gestures, handshakes and smiles. People came together regardless of what they thought of each other. They were together, to be together.
Ahead, the candle light dispelled the darkness.
Ahead, the hymns filled melancholy with melody.
Ahead, he didnt understand. He only felt. It didnt matter the reason of what they were doing. It mattered what happened during what they did.
Ahead, the entire day replayed itself in a different key. The musical, the crowd, the time in the dark, the reflections in front of the cemetary, took on what could only be described as 'light'.
Light that broke through loneliness, monotony and morbidity.
Ahead, for possibly the first time in his life, he thought he saw a glimpse of himself.
