Hold your breath and count to ten.
Scris: Joi Mai 03, 2007 10:14 pm
- So tell me..
- My mother told me one could never have everything, she interrupted.
- How forward... but please, continue.
- She told me many things, but the one which she accented the most was that I should not aspire to have everything. As much as she tried to implant this belief in me, I do believe that the reason why I stand here today, why I am as I am today, is the fact that I denied this specific teaching of hers and I clung to the hope of one day attaining all that I thought was necessary to lead a fulfilled life.
The man sitting before her was old, yet his features refined, reminding her of a portrait in oil on canvas whose age shows only in the fine, irregular cracks of the surface. He wore glasses, small and circular, unfashionable but fitting and smoked an expensive brand of cigars whose smoke filled the air between them. Seated in a large armchair, he seemed laid-back and relaxed, in such contrast with her anxiousness and discomfort. He puffed on the rather large cigar and urged her to continue.
- I’ve never been much of a faithful, religious person. I’ve always believed that the single most reliable thing that one should put one’s faith into is themselves. Thus while others rejoice in having a God to pray to and hope to receive help from, I can only hope to find strength within myself and when that bastion of strength and hope fails, I am left without nothing. And God knows, she chuckled, yes, perhaps God knows, that I have failed myself countless times up to now. And what is strikingly strange is the simple fact that no one seems to take notice. So many people appreciate me, and learn from me, and compliment me, and look up to me, and yet I cannot see anything within myself so important or wise to be worth such attention. But I digress. As I was saying, I’ve failed myself. And it has everything to do with what I was saying in the beginning. The dream of having everything. The dream of being all that I could, of conquering all that I saw, of having no enemies, of the absolute. How foolish of me, no? How foolish to believe in the absolute of one’s own destiny. I had read so many books on the matter and not in one did I find a story of one who took on the absolute and succeeded. Death, spiritual or physical, ended all these stories, leaving their protagonists empty, vacuous. May I borrow your lighter?
- Please do.
She searched nervously in her bag for the pack of long, cherry flavored cigarettes and while balancing one between her lips , extended a frail hand towards the lighter. She lit it and took a long drag. Her exhale sounded more like a sigh.
- Where was I? Ah, yes. Vacuousness. And the absolute of course, ah, what a mockery of sorts, this quest for the absolute. I should have listened to my mother on that one. For you see, too late did I realize that there is no such thing in the tangible world. The nature of my existence, of my entire life was against that principle of perfection. My body, she looked herself up and down, is far from perfect. But at a point I started believing that this is the least important thing that should concern me. My professional life has always been erratic, I suppose because of my natural inclination towards procrastination. There were times when I was nothing short of successful in everything I undertook, and there were times when failure was a constant companion. Nevertheless, I put my faith in the romantic. Ah, yes, the wonderful romantic. Love, passion, and all that. What a glorious thing, no? I fell in love with love, however cliche that may sound, from the first blossoming signs of it. At perhaps an early age, I fell in love for the first time, and I truly believed that all the stories and novels that wrote of the all-consuming flame of passion were no less than dead accurate. The butterflies tumbling in my stomach, the shaking hands before the first kiss, the need to never let go from his embrace, ah, all those and so much more, so much more that couldn’t be perverted by putting it into words. The only absolute that I could ever achieve, or so I thought at the time, was mine for the taking, and I relished in it, I loved it.
- So why do you speak of vacuousness? Surely you must be aware that most people live their entire lifetimes without ever knowing such feelings.
She took another drag from her cigarette and carefully searched for her words.
- Because, you see, after several years I realized that what I had felt was purely in my imagination. There was no all-consuming passion. It was just another relationship, filled with many things, good and bad, but a plain relationship nonetheless. Those feelings I had exaggerated, yearning for something more I simply fabricated it in my mind and lived with it just as if it was real, tangible. Like my lover’s body. Like our embrace. But I’ve had my share of bodies and embraces. I’ve felt that way a thousand times, each lip I kissed in my mind was that absolute passion, yet the morning after, I found only emptiness. I shrouded myself in a lifestyle of recklessness, drunk on the moments of simple pleasures like fine wine, tobacco and unslept nights. I danced in the rain and tasted the sweet taste of so-called freedom. And in return, I always awoke to the same barren world.
The smoke from the man’s cigar and her own cigarette grew thicker, hovering like a cloud above them. She sighed and extinguished hers in the small bronze ashtray on the table. She sat back in her chair and breathed in deep. As if to repress her feelings. He drew his armchair closer and stared at her attentively. After a few moments of silence, she sat upright and started:
- The truth is, that this story is no different from the one’s I’ve read about as a child. I’ve become a character in the books that I told you about before. My emptiness spawns from the abandon of the search. No, there is no absolute. There is no way to attain something even close to it. For the people who try, there is nothing more than the hope in the search. Once it is given up, there is nothing. There is nothing more for me. Only my daily existence. My daily, puerile problems. The bills, the car, the cigarettes, the lovers, the haters, the friends, the work. This discussion.
- Perhaps, my dear, perhaps. But what gets most people talking like that about their life is a lack. Perhaps, my dear, there is something missing in this equation. You might simply be missing something...
- Oh God, she interrupted again, do I miss something. I miss the excitement, the verve, the incessant toil. I miss the rush I got when everything I did was wrong yet seemingly for a cause. I miss the days when all that was irrelevant to my quest for ideals did not seem important to me. I miss myself before becoming old. Before settling down, and caring for things as plain as when to take the dog out, or Sunday coffees, or boring dates in the same places with the same person, devoid of excitement, of passion, of any true feeling. The only way I can put it into a single word is “warmthâ€Â
- My mother told me one could never have everything, she interrupted.
- How forward... but please, continue.
- She told me many things, but the one which she accented the most was that I should not aspire to have everything. As much as she tried to implant this belief in me, I do believe that the reason why I stand here today, why I am as I am today, is the fact that I denied this specific teaching of hers and I clung to the hope of one day attaining all that I thought was necessary to lead a fulfilled life.
The man sitting before her was old, yet his features refined, reminding her of a portrait in oil on canvas whose age shows only in the fine, irregular cracks of the surface. He wore glasses, small and circular, unfashionable but fitting and smoked an expensive brand of cigars whose smoke filled the air between them. Seated in a large armchair, he seemed laid-back and relaxed, in such contrast with her anxiousness and discomfort. He puffed on the rather large cigar and urged her to continue.
- I’ve never been much of a faithful, religious person. I’ve always believed that the single most reliable thing that one should put one’s faith into is themselves. Thus while others rejoice in having a God to pray to and hope to receive help from, I can only hope to find strength within myself and when that bastion of strength and hope fails, I am left without nothing. And God knows, she chuckled, yes, perhaps God knows, that I have failed myself countless times up to now. And what is strikingly strange is the simple fact that no one seems to take notice. So many people appreciate me, and learn from me, and compliment me, and look up to me, and yet I cannot see anything within myself so important or wise to be worth such attention. But I digress. As I was saying, I’ve failed myself. And it has everything to do with what I was saying in the beginning. The dream of having everything. The dream of being all that I could, of conquering all that I saw, of having no enemies, of the absolute. How foolish of me, no? How foolish to believe in the absolute of one’s own destiny. I had read so many books on the matter and not in one did I find a story of one who took on the absolute and succeeded. Death, spiritual or physical, ended all these stories, leaving their protagonists empty, vacuous. May I borrow your lighter?
- Please do.
She searched nervously in her bag for the pack of long, cherry flavored cigarettes and while balancing one between her lips , extended a frail hand towards the lighter. She lit it and took a long drag. Her exhale sounded more like a sigh.
- Where was I? Ah, yes. Vacuousness. And the absolute of course, ah, what a mockery of sorts, this quest for the absolute. I should have listened to my mother on that one. For you see, too late did I realize that there is no such thing in the tangible world. The nature of my existence, of my entire life was against that principle of perfection. My body, she looked herself up and down, is far from perfect. But at a point I started believing that this is the least important thing that should concern me. My professional life has always been erratic, I suppose because of my natural inclination towards procrastination. There were times when I was nothing short of successful in everything I undertook, and there were times when failure was a constant companion. Nevertheless, I put my faith in the romantic. Ah, yes, the wonderful romantic. Love, passion, and all that. What a glorious thing, no? I fell in love with love, however cliche that may sound, from the first blossoming signs of it. At perhaps an early age, I fell in love for the first time, and I truly believed that all the stories and novels that wrote of the all-consuming flame of passion were no less than dead accurate. The butterflies tumbling in my stomach, the shaking hands before the first kiss, the need to never let go from his embrace, ah, all those and so much more, so much more that couldn’t be perverted by putting it into words. The only absolute that I could ever achieve, or so I thought at the time, was mine for the taking, and I relished in it, I loved it.
- So why do you speak of vacuousness? Surely you must be aware that most people live their entire lifetimes without ever knowing such feelings.
She took another drag from her cigarette and carefully searched for her words.
- Because, you see, after several years I realized that what I had felt was purely in my imagination. There was no all-consuming passion. It was just another relationship, filled with many things, good and bad, but a plain relationship nonetheless. Those feelings I had exaggerated, yearning for something more I simply fabricated it in my mind and lived with it just as if it was real, tangible. Like my lover’s body. Like our embrace. But I’ve had my share of bodies and embraces. I’ve felt that way a thousand times, each lip I kissed in my mind was that absolute passion, yet the morning after, I found only emptiness. I shrouded myself in a lifestyle of recklessness, drunk on the moments of simple pleasures like fine wine, tobacco and unslept nights. I danced in the rain and tasted the sweet taste of so-called freedom. And in return, I always awoke to the same barren world.
The smoke from the man’s cigar and her own cigarette grew thicker, hovering like a cloud above them. She sighed and extinguished hers in the small bronze ashtray on the table. She sat back in her chair and breathed in deep. As if to repress her feelings. He drew his armchair closer and stared at her attentively. After a few moments of silence, she sat upright and started:
- The truth is, that this story is no different from the one’s I’ve read about as a child. I’ve become a character in the books that I told you about before. My emptiness spawns from the abandon of the search. No, there is no absolute. There is no way to attain something even close to it. For the people who try, there is nothing more than the hope in the search. Once it is given up, there is nothing. There is nothing more for me. Only my daily existence. My daily, puerile problems. The bills, the car, the cigarettes, the lovers, the haters, the friends, the work. This discussion.
- Perhaps, my dear, perhaps. But what gets most people talking like that about their life is a lack. Perhaps, my dear, there is something missing in this equation. You might simply be missing something...
- Oh God, she interrupted again, do I miss something. I miss the excitement, the verve, the incessant toil. I miss the rush I got when everything I did was wrong yet seemingly for a cause. I miss the days when all that was irrelevant to my quest for ideals did not seem important to me. I miss myself before becoming old. Before settling down, and caring for things as plain as when to take the dog out, or Sunday coffees, or boring dates in the same places with the same person, devoid of excitement, of passion, of any true feeling. The only way I can put it into a single word is “warmthâ€Â