Daily Archives: 31/12/2021

The River

  • Post author:

Right where the river flows into the lake, see? That’s the perfect image of contentment. I do not think a human being can achieve anything more than what comes to the waters naturally, the release that is a completion of a journey the river is not even aware of.

You would not believe from the surface that my love drowned herself in the lake only a year ago. I should probably stop coming here every day, but the truth is that this is the only place in town that is truly peaceful. I never noticed it before, although I knew she liked to come here when she felt sad.

Sitting here I have too much time to think about her, and sometimes it feels like her spirit must still be in the waters with many others like her, looking at us from just below the surface.

She did not believe in her existence without the help of others, their gazes, their praises. No wonder she was unhappy. I realise now that I should have tried to make her find an existence of her own, but of course she only saw a reflection in my eyes, my words, my smiles.

But how could I have made her whole without ruining it all through my own perspectives, as much as I loved her? It is such a difficult thing to encourage someone so lost because she would have attached herself to any views I had of her. The hunger was too great, she was too impatient to find anything else.

Maybe I was too sure of myself and she should have been with someone equally lost, someone whose passion is not so overwhelming. It was never meant for someone like her, she was engulfed and disappeared into my love, and what first was bliss quickly turned into a total annihilation of hope. How destructive it is, wishing that the space between two people disappears. My boundaries should be mine alone.

But if anyone had told me then that my love was too great to heal her I would not have believed. How can love be too great? Now there is nothing left to do except to watch the river flowing and every now and then letting my eyes wander on the lake, not too often lest the dead might be disturbed or my mind becomes the blank slate it always should have been.

My passion has been spent now and yet I long for a release, not that of death but merely forgetfulness. I want to forget I existed, that there was indeed a journey which brought me to this place. Perhaps the river can teach me something. Listen, can you hear it singing?

Comment. This was written on the same day as the previous one. I can’t remember my intentions anymore, but in retrospect it looks like the two pieces could be connected, the same event seen from two different perspectives. The themes of disappearance, sacrifice and suicide are present in both, even if ostensibly they’re about love. It’s not supposed to describe healthy love, but rather this strange confusion of self-sacrifice and narcissism, which is fascinating while disturbing.

Simple Minds – Someone Somewhere in Summertime

  • Post author:

Another song of longing that yet feels like it’s for someone specific, with images and feelings that are so clearly defined that it’s almost like the loved one is already here. When there is already love within, the line between songs of longing and love start to blur.

There is something cinematic about this, and I associate the tune with scenes that felt like that. One is from the time I used to listen to this song a lot: a tiny street in a small town in Wales, the buildings looking taller than they are because the houses were so close, with just enough room for one person to walk and one car to pass, and the street curving so that I’m reminded of a maze, even if there wasn’t enough complexity to get lost. There one evening I was walking briskly in the rain when I saw a couple kissing, oblivious to anything that happened around them. The rain didn’t exist, and the drab little town was transformed into something special. The blue and the gray suddenly more vibrant, full of life, the rain all the more romantic.

I have seen a similar scene only a couple of times. The rain makes it special because it reminds me of what love can be like, how it makes us forget anything that we normally deem bad, like being wet and shivering, because we suddenly have the confidence that no matter what happens, there is someone near, someone who cares, holding hands or kissing. It doesn’t matter if the world is cold and people are indifferent to suffering. If there’s only one person, that is enough, “Burning slow, walking in the soft rain”.

It’s a simple thought: “Somewhere there is someone who can see what I can see” – whatever we see, there is the wish that we could share it. But it’s not at all evident that sharing is possible, because what we hold dearest may be something that others do not even see, at least not in its full significance. Be it kisses in the rain, an iridescent beetle on a forest path, the softness of moss, the shape of a stone perfect to hold, whatever we find beautiful, what makes the world meaningful, we want to share it. There might not be any intrinsic purpose, or even intrinsic beauty: it is all subjective, and thereby we cannot take for granted that others will understand our view. It is such a great experience to feel the beauty of the world, but right next to it is the feeling of loneliness if we are led to believe that no-one else understands, no-one sees it the same way, or even pays attention to it.

And that’s what the song reminds me of. The sounds, the scents of summer: they may be different in each part of the world, like all the things we find significant in the landscape. Some people look at the hills and the horizon, others listen to a blackbird, want to smell the bark of a pine tree. And the most significant thing of all seems to be the moment when you can share these things, experience beauty together. And when a relationship ends, one of the hardest things is that when you have got used to sharing everything, it’s difficult to return to finding significance in all these things in themselves, without the extra jolt from finding wonderment together, in the world, in each other, in yourself.

Golden lights, dreams so real they feel like memories of the future, of all the summers spent together, knowing not who it may be, what forms your journey of mutual discovery may take, where you might find all the beauty that this connectedness, this communication entails. The recognition of hope, intangible, though the dreams take specific shapes only to fade away. The thought remains that it must be real in some form: someone, somewhere in summertime.