The sun sets for me. I am the epitome of
definition, every act or move I make is delivered with exacting precision,
conveyed with absolute faultlessness. My ideals of beauty, love, death, and
life are the only ideals; the rest cease to exist at my whim. I breathe life
because I am, life flows in my veins because I am, life will never cease to be,
because I will never cease to be.
It
was raining. The rain was surreal.
In
life, everything, all the minor details in life that are so easily looked over,
the imperfections that contradict the very nature of perfection itself, breathe
with meaning and purpose. Only a couple hours ago, I had been blissful; only
until I realized that I was a mark of nonexistence, a mere scratch on the
marble slate of essence did I actually breathed the air of actuality.
Who
am I? I am in an eternal state of morning, living life as it came to me, like a
leaf brought down by the graces of nature to silt down through the wet,
sublime, sovereign air, only to modestly sulk and travel alongside the sidewalk
into a gutter, left to coexist with all the other rotten filth of society.
Somewhat like a fallen angel, I thought. After all, even a falling leaf was
obligated to represent meaning and order.
I
lifted my face towards the sky and felt the reassuring sting of existence as
the rain slapped upon my face. The rain. God’s pebbles of scorn perhaps, all
guided down by the compelling pull of structure, all consenting to the
compliance of order. Raindrops were conformists themselves; only aligning
themselves to the composition of what nature allows them to be; falling,
resonating in puddles on the cold concrete for the ephemeral moment of being,
then rising up again only to be brought down by destiny. Order says so; a
raindrop only has one fate: to fall from the sky and shatter.
I turn my face away from epiphany
and look towards reality once more. My coat, drenched, sags under the weight of
sorrow and misery.
They
must be God’s tears then, I thought with a chuckle. The scornful, miserable,
tears of heaven glistened on my palm. With a quick flick of my wrist, they fan
out into empty space, captured in that evanescent moment of being with bearing
and elegance. I hold out my hand once more indulgingly and my palm fills again
with small beads of water.
“Hey!”
–I hear someone calling me, and I snap my neck around. As if being woken from a
dream, I turn to face a tenement building, its refuse in its cracks evident
still, even with the downpour struggling to crawl down and clean the façade,
stopping every once in a while at the grime that entrenched itself into the
creaks of every brick and mortar in between.
“Hey!
What in God’s name are you doing?” At that question, I stopped.
What
was I doing? I was simply catering to the moment, the dream that I have long
since yearned for. A long exasperated sigh escapes from my clenching teeth from
the bottom of my stomach.
I
took three steps back to the tenement building, seemingly losing faith with
every step I took. One. As my foot hits the ground, someone in the distance, a
ghastly figure, turns to face me. Whether he notices me or not, whether he
matters to me or not in my interest, whether or not I need to know him does not
occur to me, so I ignore him. Two, the ashen figure, floats, as if it
acknowledges my presence yet heeds me to ignore it. I took my third. It was
twisted, and from the looks of it, its tendons and rippling muscles gripped its
skin tight. The gilded aura I felt overtook my conscience. I felt the world in
these three steps, the world slumped itself on my shoulders and although I was
still strongly standing, the sheer weight buckled my knees, beckoning me to
collapse, so that it could laugh at me. I found it quite interesting that my
palms were already pressed hard against the ground. By my fourth step, I was
completely engulfed in certainty, coming face to face with the distinct glare
of reality. Those icy, piercing eyes, eyes that could make any man drop to his
knees, eyes that cut the veins of a new dawn, eyes that held gripped the heart
of even the most fearless man in its iris. And those teeth, the very gnashing
teeth I remember hearing about during bible study, teeth that could chew on the
souls of man, teeth that never hunger, yet feeds a mouth that is never
satisfied.
* * *
I glance down at my watch. It was an old thing, passed down through
my family for generation after generation. Raindrops fell and exploded in their
tiny existence on the glass. I couldn’t see the time too clearly. I wiped the
rain off to see the time, and noticed a scratch, a seemingly minor detail,
traveling from the nine to the five. I could deal with it, it wasn’t deep big
anyhow. I had reached my
home, and as much as I hated to call it so, it was my identity, my belonging. I
was only ten yards away from the entrance to start with anyhow. I pushed the
rotting door open, its hinges squealing, as if they too, were tired of life.
“You
idiot, are you trying to catch a cold?” That was my brother.
“Hm.”
He couldn’t even steal a glance. My mind was elsewhere.
My
brother, quickly lost interest and muttered something, “…fucking rain, goddamn
weather forecaster couldn’t read a chart if it…”
He
was always muttering complaints. Always bitter yet never willing to break loose
from the manacles of society. He was two years younger than me. As much as I
loathed his personality, his complaints, his three-in-the-morning-calls asking
me to pick him up at the on the corner of fifth and Alhambra, his complaints,
he eventually became a part of me, like a leech or tumor that lodged itself
into my heart. My existence wasn’t quite complete without him. I scoff at very
thought of it. My existence.
I
ponder about life.
As
I took of my shoes, I imagined an aerial view of my life, from birth to death,
the shallow graze on the intricate plane of life, falling in line with the many
other blemishes, at times intersecting with others.
With
some effort, I pulled off a boot from a foot, and peeled away a sock, leaving a
damp, pale, shriveled foot in sight. I threw the leather boot off to the side.
It tumbled and fell on its side, leaving a trail of water dripping out at the
entrance.
Then
I envisioned the lives the greats, Napoleon, Roosevelt, Caesar, Alexander the
Great, Ghandi; deep gashes, leaving almost a wound, a gaping chasm upon the
grand face of time.
The
other boot came off with a tug and I shivered, realizing how cold the rain was.
It was a pity the furnace broke last week.
I
thought about the differences between lay between I, the meager pond scum of
society, writhing aimlessly and barely scourging on dirt, and those who are
remembered, the people we read about in those useless history books, showing
pictures of their stone gazes peering into the future with that look of
excellence, iron images coexisting in the past, future and present.
The
difference lay in this: they lived, I existed.
* * *
