‘So much, yet so little”. I think this is the eternal pattern humans are caught in. Plenitude and bounty, if only we would look ahead, above, beyond and yet our weary hearts and dimmed hopes, make us numb, content to hold on to the last tentacles of despair.
Why despair? “Look at it this way. Lesser pain in the longer run.” That’s how a wise well wisher once put it. Almost makes you look at your interest in human bonds seem a commercial investment doesn’t it. Someone comes along and makes logic seem unnecessary, pragmatism a foolish word and laughter eternal even if the hearty ones you had brought on tears later. So you pumped in every single atom of your happiness, the joy you’d never feel even if an older friend stepped in at that moment with a surprise painstakingly planned. You didn’t believe in hedging your risks though. Mutual funds do that for you.
For a dreamlike frenzy and the boost of anxiety attacks that feed us in our youth, anything is worth the gamble, bonds forged in quest of future happiness even more so. But gambling the commercial way doesn’t entail grey areas does it? You place your money on your intuition or strategy, whose consequences you are well aware of. But human bondage, they cost more energy and time than ventures whose outcome makes your pockets heavier.
And yet you'd take your chances; in a little corner of a resort by the big blue sea, you’d pull the trigger on the machine, seated on a stool next to your partner in crime betting away the last chips, waiting to see if those three bananas in the machine struck a row together, You knew your chances in real life were low, but this setting presented a virtual possibility and you were happy to take the risk and bet your remaining chips away.
Yet, sitting here, now by the dim light of the corner lamp watching naïve insects driven to despair by its enticing light, I look back and understand what the “long run” counsel holds for me.
It’s so easy to rush headlong, to never want to stop being the chase or being in pursuit of it. So easy to go back to the apartment in the suburb and wish you’d hold time in a duplicate key which transferred you to the utopian happiness when you opened it’s lock. But the light is dim, you know it well and yet you want to get closer.
The insect gets closer but when it’s seen all that it wanted to, it’s wings fall off , a speck of a corpse lying on dusty wooden tables to be brushed away.
I'm weary dim lights. Of course the fantasy of the neon is elusive even if I know I'd enjoy it sooner or later.
But I’ll take a bit longer to turn the lights brighter. Because there's a time trap, I think I'm caught in and it is like it is today. No pretensions, simple facts. 09-10-09. Step further but a step back because time makes you bold but steadily. Because staying here in the shadows is comforting…..perhaps for a while until the light needs to be turned brighter.
