Nostalgia

Watching Les Miserables the other day managed to stir an on-going, deep-rooted longing... perhaps little more than the vague remembrance of a past life. Sometimes I miss France, but it’s more like missing something about the air, the culture, the landscapes… childhood.

I used to be so sure that nothing would ever change. I remember so well sitting in my bedroom in Paris as a moody teenager, looking out the window dreamily and thinking that this would always be my life. I remember how certain I felt. And even when my life changed overnight, it felt more like a temporary glitch rather than a new constant. I spent several years believing, or wanting to believe, that we would somehow go back to the way things were. This was of course a delusion. Things are never the same twice. With the advent of things like social media people from my past started to spring back into my life, always asking the same questions: “what happened to you?.... where did you go?... Why didn't you tell me?...”

It makes me feel cornered, at a loss for words. What do these ghostly faces from the past want to hear from me? Their adult faces now shock me: my memory of them was frozen in time and I remember only the faces of children. I want to flee, have them forget about me, this person I was that is no more. I want to tell them that this is wrong: we lose touch with people for a reason, surely. We lose touch with people throughout our lives as a sign that things change - that nothing lasts - but today all these lines are blurred. The past is pulled out from the dark recesses of our minds to haunt our present and the future is erased in favour of instant gratification. 

Seemingly useless questions like “why? What’s the meaning of all this?” come to mind often, only to be greeted by a wall of silence. Sometimes I’ll make an effort and focus on an answer, only to realise that there are as many potential answers as I can possibly create or think them. But meaning is all that we have, and so we must find one. Whichever one we pick is still better than having none at all.

I woke up this morning with a start, thinking: "Am I too proud?"

I lay back against the pillows, thinking harder about the past, forcing various memories back to the fore as though they were supposed to play witness in this silly little game of self-blame. And then I felt tears warm up the length of my cheeks before drifting back into a dreamless slumber.

Pride

Do not ask me to love the world

For I hate it.

Whatever lesson you wish me to learn,

I shall not learn it.

And even if you lavish me with pearls

Of wisdom to be attained

Still I will turn my back away.

For every sigh, for every failed sign,

I will turn a blind eye and swear,

And I will not break the boisterous resolve

That has coursed my veins since birth,

This I promise I will not even when,

Thrown out from the womb of a world

You force me to embrace,

The convenient excuse of Youth wanes.

I will make you watch me grow old and bitter,

Accused, pushed against the ground,

Hating the world as passionately as the first day,

Having learned nothing.

A Worldly Gloom

It seems a lifetime has passed since the year 2000. 12 years ago I was still a teenager, frightened almost to death at the prospect of turning into what society calls an ‘adult'...

Sick and hopeless throughout my early 20s, only to fall into more despair, bad luck and hurt, without forgetting my inability to read people properly and thus too often having surrounded myself with the worst kind… that is the look-back that gives me shivers of dread today. And as I approach the next decade of my life, I find myself half-relieved to be leaving behind this ‘youth’ people naively envy, regret, wish for or worst of all embellish to the point of grotesque fantasy... for youth is nothing but the state one must go through involving the loss of one’s innocence one white feather at a time through worldly experiences (more particularly those linked to other people).  

'Tis trully a time of loss, this youth… when one must slowly turn away from their dreams to accept ‘reality’, and in that one is often obliged to read the acceptance of second-bests and compromises.  And so as I reach the threshold that is to lead me to full womanhood – even though I feel so much like a child inside – I still clutch the tatters that once formed my dreams close to my chest…  for so long as I still hold even mere tatters and cinders of what once was a flamboyant youth’s dream, I remain with something to long and hope for… 

And as I lay in bed feeling sick and sorry for myself my thoughts lingered once more on the elements that shape us into 'who' we ultimately are. This time, the crucial impact of judgement came to the fore. Below are the thoughts I jotted down quickly on a piece of paper earlier:

It all comes down to the fear of judgement. After all, isn’t the fear of what others may think of us - their esteem, and ultimately the rank we are given by our peers - the strongest weapon Man has ever had against his fellow Man? It comes down to whether one manages to overcome or transcend that fear or not. Indeed, it seems that the outcome in terms of who we turn out to be in the end depends mostly on whether we transcend that fear, and as such the outcome can vary greatly to the point of reaching completely opposite life outcomes. This means that a man who remains enslaved to his fear of judgement will be shackled to a life of atrophy, limited in what he achieves throughout his very existence both in essence (inner life) and action - an outcome as opposed to having freed himself from the fear of judgement as day and night. And so it is that Man’s greatest - or ultimate - means of control over himself and others has always been at his feet under the guise of this fear so intimately nurtured by our very need to survive and evolve as part of a group – within societies.

This last paragraph is arguably little more than a so-called note to self.