let go


Waiting for a stranger in a strange place with a strange smell and the thing that strikes me is human frailness, human weakness... I see no strength in people including myself and I want to reach out to the tragic and console them and cry for all the bad things we've done and seen and have had done to us.
            The stranger arrives and looks more beautiful than I remembered. The thoughts of weakness and suffering temporarily depart and we make our way, like young lovers in love, to a restaurant. I feel a sense of amazement that she has come to my part of the city… we’ve only met once and she trusts me enough to come to my area.
Her confidence overwhelms me as she speaks out powerfully to everyone and anyone she encounters. She requests things that normally people would not request… two courses at the same time… she is tiny, beautiful, and fierce. She is fourteen years younger than me, speaks three languages, and has travelled all over the world. Fourteen years my junior and she makes me feel like an uncultured little boy.
Yet, later, after we’ve walked around the neighbourhood and had wine on the pavement outside of a bar, she sends me messages to tell me that she loves talking to me and that she feels confused because there is such an age gap and yet she feels something. I play the hypocrite and tell her not to think… the very thing that I do incessantly about such situations.
I know it is disconnected… I know I need to let go before my hopes grow.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

San Diego & Las Vegas

Image
  The flight to San Diego was delayed, but only after we were in the plane. At first, there’d been a terminal change that I almost failed to notice, but I made it easily to the correct gate just as boarding was beginning. Upon boarding, I couldn’t get the arm to retreat into my bag, so I couldn’t get it into the overhead locker the way it was supposed to go. After much fuss and, finally, a guy somehow hitting it back in, we were told there was a delay due to a maintenance issue. After 45 minutes, the issue was resolved and the very same second of the announcement we had a lightning strike. The captain informed us that each lighting strike triggers a fifteen-minute wait period to ensure the sky is clear. In total, we sat on the runway for just over two and a half  hours before finally taking off. The morning had been one of joy, for I was on vacation and my ear infection had almost entirely disappeared. I could hear for the first time in seven days. I made breakfast and then a ...
Read more

winter

Image
  The winter wind howls outside. It explores the windows, looking for gaps and fragilities. The temperature drops and I find myself thinking of the stray cat who has become my friend. Where does he hide? Why will he not come inside? What has he been through? We spend a few moments together each day and I feed him. Then it is time for some human interaction… but, you see, most of them are not listening. Most of them don’t care at all. It’s seven weeks since my mother passed away, I miss her each and every day. For others, it seems to be forgotten history. And, I suppose, it is not reasonable for me to expect more than that. I remember the day that my grandmother, my mother’s mother, died. We made it just in time to her bedside. We’d driven from the south of England, where I lived, up to the north, to the town I was born in (the town all of my family had been born in). I walked into the ward first and saw a lady lying in a bed with nurses nearby. I asked the nurses where Winnie was a...
Read more

a bright sunny day in Spain (ten years ago)

Image
  He lay alone in the darkened room. The blinds were closed to the maximum in order to block out any potential light breaking through from the dazzling Spanish sun. It was the day after his birthday. He had spent the previous day with his girlfriend. But that now seemed an eternity away. Lifetimes had passed since then. It was a Tuesday morning and he simply did not know if it would be possible to get out of bed and go to work. Life seemed empty. Everything was lost to him except the deep throbbing pain reminding him that he was alive. To be alive like this… in this space of black desolation and despair… was it even to be alive? He had found something, something worthwhile and meaningful… something that brought light and hope, but it was now lost. It was inevitable. It seemed as if it was surely, at the very least, the end of his Spanish adventure.
Read more