The purity, and such.
Just. Blank.
And though poised to appear in your mind as some sort of elegant endeavor towards simplicity, to me it is something else. Something closer to terror. A rippling echo through your own hollowness. The absence of expression. Of form. A harsh reflection of the invalidity and pointlessness of being. The blank page kills you, every moment it sits before you. Only slowly. And void, emotionally.
Perhaps that ideology is not widely approached. That makes it no less real to the point of view I throw at you now. And as a self-fulfilling prophecy, no less. Once you see the page as blank, you are blank. And it fights to hold you there. Tossing away every scrap of an idea, when all they needed was a bit of care and love. The page will stop at nothing. Until nothing.
But fear not, children. Your humble narrator shall not succumb.
Bare feet brought me to warm stone, while painting my face in rays. An orchestra of sorts. A quasi-urban scene. Tweet. Tweet. Poo-tee-weet of all sorts, rambling on and on. The mumble of words walking down the other side of the block. Mechanized rumbles passing more passive just before, or roaring past yonder hill.
And just a little way away from the communal road. Folks of near and far breaking fast in a fashion traditional of home. For some. For those with a specific place. And those who just know a vague attraction. Insatiable and unidentified.
Alive. Not blank.
So, I beg you please forgive me. I just went through a break up. I was an emotional wreck, without realizing that I was so. I knew it was coming. I’d known for some time. But in the evening that led to this morning, it finally ended.
It’s not easy when your first band breaks up. It was one of those things that you think will happen to you when you’re much younger.
Apologies. Did you think I meant something else? Oh no, romantics are still on the fritz. I fail to professionally handle butterflies these days. Gets me quiet and stupid. And I stare. Probably too much.
No, this break up is something else. Plutonic, which lends to its great and yet unknown ripple of stability in one’s life. The band I started when I wasn’t cool enough to be in a band. Blood, sweat and tears with no metaphor needed. A place for all the glory and ugly in my heart. The place I could sing to wide eyes with the only thing standing in the way was the head of some bumbling being, not knowing what they do.
But the whys of it need not, and shall not be gotten into. We shan’t play with how the past has come to today. For this day, it is onward. It has been onward for some time. All time, really. But the person that writes to you now, is not lost for what to do. He just needs to feed on the symbol of it for a bit. Since we were all small humans, they gave us shapes and instructed that we make sense of them. It takes no effort at all for the mind to make what it will from what it sees. How it is seen. Because there are those who do not quiver when given a square peg and a round hole.
And some day perhaps, this feeling just shy of satisfied may kill me. But for now, it is fuel. Failure is not as harsh if you always reach for grander success. A sense of duty towards improvement. It beats in me, and assumed for you. And to each one, a different means. Different skills and varied scales. Your humble narrator, for example. Set with sense of necessity to perform. To both put on a show, and say his mind to the world. And say so because the chance that the listener may be moved. Moved in a way to move others. To create the initiation. To be a tide.
A lunatic. A total egomaniac, but to not be, may be worse. I cannot say because I have not stopped. Nor will I, as far as I can tell. Slowed, sure. Many a time. Stalled? Far too much. But never ceased. Never conceded.
And so shall I say some things. For it is nice to be alive. Though not always and not everyone- to exist is at the very least the opportunity to be bored. And just as much so to be exciting.
And with this life we go up and down and find out it is what we like. What works. What makes sense. And from the guts of our past, we retain those symbols.
Me? I’ve always had a thing for spring time and Irish girls. And though likely not truly divine, when afternoon sun cuts through window blinds, hope crescendos in my soul towards some big benevolence.
An instance about four years ago rings to the later. The last class before I was to graduate a bachelor of arts. I hadn’t done the papers. I hadn’t done the assigned reading. Most friends that shared the class stressed. It was the final review. The man with a pen to pass me through sat behind his desk. I, in the chair before it. I recall wearing sandals.
There was a tremendously formal looking form with my name and boxes for checking, and some place for a big rubber stamp. And as we spoke, he did not look once at the paper. He spoke only to me, or gazed out the partially blocked window. Upon the spring scene. And we spoke and spoke and spoke. This man was the first professor I ever encountered in higher education, and easily more influential than I may ever fully comprehend. Most other folks thought him an eccentric. And accurately so, though the misunderstood the intention. I had as many classes I could manage with him.
So, I did no final paper, though all the rest of the class did. Instead, I gave him the first whiskey dripped chapters of a novel I’d been writing while everyone else was doing their homework. And we spoke of that and my future, and though he’d been changing my life since the day we’d met, that day the words final came as I believe he hoped they would. And those words are for he and I, but know they were beyond profound. As he took off his glasses and closed his eyes, a man well into his sixth decade on earth could still recall the young man he once was. After all that had gone to make that impossible, he could still hold a sliver, if nothing else. And enough to share with the likes of me.
The school fired him, I was told. Some folks just don’t want to understand.
The novel is not complete, but it is progressing. Life goes on, and gets in the way of some things, sometimes. But with each day I age, and with each day, I can still feel the spirit of a younger man. And the hope he held for the future. The hope.
The hope I still hold, even as the simplicity grows blurred. And the hope I shall fight for, even if it consumes my last living breath.
The Veracious Facade 