Open City

I have no particular mission in mind as I walk the streets. But as I go by the unchanged buildings plucked out of my memory, part of me feels like it is almost taunting them for a response: I have come here unarmed, and don't mind if the past defeats me; I am just curious how far along I have gone in this game. Each footstep into a prior battleground however sees no victor either way. Sometimes, there is a brief moment where I feel my throat constricting as I recall some forgotten horror, but it usually passes quickly. Most times, there is hardly any reaction at all, just a mutual acknowledgement of continued existence. I'm not naive enough to call that a victory, but from where I was three years ago, a truce is good enough.

Though they do not mind my presence, I can feel that I have become a stranger to the streets that were once a home. There is nothing beyond the reach of time, I conclude, but not with sorrow; at least, not today. Today, I'm just glad to be able to walk the streets with no expectations. I don't have particular illusions about all of this signalling anything significant. But the tangible proof that life can go on, both for me and my onetime tormentor, leaves a trace of hope I'm not above being grateful for. My heart feels lighter, having to carry around one less burden. For a moment, though I'm just a stranger walking alone, the future seems a wide open space.

Longtime readers will know the careful secrecy I've attempted to maintain as to the real-life events forming the seed of my writings, no matter how strongly the events in question long to be named. It may come as a surprise then that I recently took it upon myself to share a subset of these writings with someone patently outside the sphere of suffocation that produced them. What triggered this was, I think, two recent developments. First, the realisation that at the parade's end of the glorious 20's, there is only so much time one has to find a welcoming hand in the dark. Second, the insatiable curiosity, harbored since this blog's inception, to see how an ouevre borne of impossible longing and isolation would seem to an unspoiled pair of eyes*.

On the latter point, I might as well add to the reader's entertainment by mentioning that I have thought on occasion of selecting some of the works closest to me, and seeing how they would fare in something approximating the public marketplace. On this note, despite my confidant's protests to the contrary, I see that not everything makes the journey from my mind to the outside world unharmed. But a few slivers do. In the endless hours of darkness that seem to be my public life, this at least gives me hope that the Sun may yet rise.

* Oh, eh, right, and so what did those eyes see, you ask? Frustratingly, but in hindsight unsurprisingly, it's somewhat hard to tell. Receiving something so blatantly personal, I would imagine that the only non-sociopathic response is to profess how the work reveals only the deepest and most universal of truths. But at least the words, and the sickness that created them, have germinated elsewhere. Within one other mind are now fragments of the life I have led, a source of mirth if nothing else.

"I once thought that time
Accentuates despair
But now I don't actually care"

I spoke of the separation of concerns a while ago. This appears to be still in effect, with the consequence that I no longer find the desperate urge to put to paper feelings that would inspire any student of literature or psychology. To be sure, I'm frequently filled with the sorts of grim existential doubts that have made up the vast body of this outpost; but their nature seems frustratingly quotidian, and patently uninspiring as far as writing goes. As far as trade-ins go, it's a little early to tell whether this one is acceptable. On the one hand, I do like the normalcy of my new turmoil. But I can't say I don't sometimes miss drawing a bucket from a deep well of sorrow. It's just that these days, I find I'm just not thirsty anymore.

Never have I ever

"Have you ever had a...", he asked in earnest. How to tell him? No, blessed friend; Pasolini is me. If ever you should start to doubt yourself, or think low of where your life is at, spend a moment thanking fate that you did not end up like this. A look of embarrassment crossed his face, as though he asked the question merely to confirm that, bad as things were, at least I had something to hold up as a badge of honour. No need to feel sorry for me!, I pre-empted. "But did you ever have the chance?", he asked. My rehearsed answer was all good to go -- Now that you mention it, do you remember that one summer when we were young... -- but at the moment it seemed like the most profoundly idiotic thing I could have uttered. Silence is the truest reply, I realised, all the while wondering if ever there was a more pathetic soul to have inhabited this planet.

Withered Hand

I'm sitting in silence, pretending to be in a state of utmost concentration as I slowly sip a glass of water. But I have to put on the act, because I need something to occupy my thoughts other than what it is I fear to say: these are the people I held on to for so long, through years that I lived for a week or two spent in warm embraces and fond reminisces. So how can we have nothing to say to each other? How I once wished that we could all be reunited, and that those happy times we spent in each other's company could live on. And then, all of a sudden, it became an actual possibility -- happy day! But as I near three years on from that landmark, I am coming to terms with the fact that, as ever, I'm in search of something that cannot be. It'd be unnecessarily callous to say that everyone has moved on; it's fairer, if less dramatic, to simply say that the context of those relationships has been disrupted, with the past serving as the only real tie of strength. That's not to say that the right conditions can't be nurtured; but nurtured by us, that's a different story. With a heavy heart, then, I must add to the list of all that is lost to me these dulled roots of a friendship, one that once was the entirety of my existence.

Popular song, preferred medium of all manner of charlatan and poser, and yet always the opiate of choice of your humble writer. Realise that I listen, think, and write of a special type of it, though; one which chooses to blight not one but two forms of high art. You will not be surprised to know that I'm expert in neither, and that I do not care that that may render all my pronouncements void. If the goal of (note the lowercase) art is to please, inform, entertain, and spark thought, then this medium succeeds for me. Perhaps such delusions are precisely why the marriage of melody and lyric is an affront to its parents. But I trust such delusions only harm myself.

But why does such a trivial thing consume so much thought? If one is to write off existence, then it must be based on something deeper than this. Society, I am led to believe, sees it as a pronouncement on your character; this, under the bluster and sickening sanctimony that occupies most discourse, seems a deeply regressive view. Not that there is nothing that can be gleaned about one's character from this, of course. But to champion this as a mark of achievement over any endeavour under the Sun seems most bizarre.

So I've failed at this challenge. So what? There are many more where where I have shown no special expertise or proclivity. Why do these not fill me with shame, pin down my chest every morning, and leave me walking the street with a blank stare at the ground? (Ok, may be sometimes they do.) Is it the thought that this now is the one true incontrovertible proof that I do not belong amongst civilised society? It cannot be, because it is something I've known all too well for years. It seems better to simply chalk up another failure, and focus on the few remaining endeavours where I have some hope yet.

Sadness, anger, bitterness, these all still exist, but compared to the Time of No Reply, there is at least now a separation of concerns. Where once every ill and flaw appeared manifest in my self image, and left me reeling under their combined weight, now at least I am better able to place the origins of every dark thought that comes this way. A poor choice of what to do with my mind no longer occupies much thought. I seem to have reached a stage where I can accept any future employ, without the toxic mix of inadequacy and futility that marked those earlier times. A poor choice of what to do with my heart occupies considerably more thought. Ironically, this is a disadvantage of having less time to worry about the former. But as with many things that once seemed insurmountable, perhaps it is just a matter of framing a better set of surroundings. I cannot shut out hope entirely.

As I skirt on the edge of sleep, I am revisited by that recurring sorrow that fixates on your absence. That much is true. But is this really what I feel? Or is this an illusion, my self unknowingly acting out a part it thinks appropriately dramatic and incontrovertibly human?

It is hard to make out anymore. So assaulted do I find myself everyday by dictates as to what is normal and expected. The first axiom in these pronouncements is that to live alone is to waste the gift we were given. I fought against this seemingly arbitrary dictum for many years, till at one point the pull got too strong. The interim years you will remember as one where I found myself in a pit of pity, sorrow, and bitterness. Even now, the thought that so much time was spent struggling to accept a seemingly trivial matter makes me baffled, and a little disappointed.

This disappointment makes it an appropriate time, then, to revisit my opposition. Could it be the road to peace? To admit that, while life with you would likely have been special, quite possibly richer than the one I live out these days, in truth, there are still things to like about this one. Whatever claims of emptiness I throw at it, most of them are out of a desperate sense of wanting to belong, and the remaining few of them are quite likely easy to correct. My biggest concern with the matter, if I am being honest, is simply what others would make of me. But so what if I am seen as an object of pity, or even scorn? There are many experiences that will be shut to me; I do not burn up with tortured thoughts on most of them, and this matter, I think, should be no different. I mean this not an assertion of nihilism or self-pity, but rather, just a statement of the way the world is. Accepting this, I can at least hope to move forward.

I sometimes worry I have developed too suffocating a taste in the arts: one which only accommodates works that mirror my internal life, however approximately, so that I may see in the fractured reflection that greets me some temporary solace, and a likely misguided hope of more permanent respite. All things in moderation, I have to repeat to myself, as I see elements of a troubling spiral that cannot lead anywhere good. Even assuming all my talk of how this is certainly not wallowing is accurate, I cannot escape the fact that I'm certainly not gaining much more from constantly revisiting the same themes and tropes. Right, the past is a minefield, I had a chance and lost it, &c. There's considerable material to sift through here, some of it genuinely worthwhile, but perhaps not enough to become the sum total of one's existence. Beyond all the philosophical arguments is the simple fact on the ground that it gets, well, boring. Here, then, is to a sliver of new ideas and thoughts making their way through the curtain I seem to have erected without knowing. And who knows, perhaps the real road to recovery is to hear of other lives, other voices, reminders as they are that the future is never quite as rigid as one might fear.