Brian Kindall's Blog - Posts Tagged "existential-angst"
I Fancied Myself a World-Weary Picaresque Melancholic Poet Dude (Part Four – In Which I am Bumped From my Existential Rut)
I had resolved that I would never again – not in a million *%^#~´¡ years! – fall in love. That regrettable opportunity, I bewailed, had come and gone with the bitter winds. Instead, my destiny would be one of a brokenhearted solitude expressed in gloomy poems penned as I aimlessly roamed the indifferent world.
Alas! And woe!
Sure, I might stoop to take a lover now and then, might make a hapless friend or two along the way, but these affairs would only leave me evermore hollow and glum as I recalled the betrayed love of my bittersweet youth. (I can smile now, but at the time, I truly was pathetic human wreckage.) But as with so many foolproof outlines for life, things sometimes go awry. For me it happened on a chill afternoon in the early December of my twenty-first year unto heaven.
The day was gray. I sat on a cold bench reading next to the empty fountain in the square below my rented room. Dry leaves scuttled over the sidewalk on the breeze. An occasional snowflake glanced off the open pages of my book. My collar was turned up in existential seafarer fashion. I was shivering. Everything, that is to say, was as it should be, as I had come so forlornly and quixotically to expect it.
And then I heard a voice – “Hello.”
The word was so pleasantly put that I didn’t bother to respond. There was no way it could be directed at me.
“Good book?”
I looked up. And there she was, right before me, all sunny and sweet and incongruent.
I think I only stared.
She smiled. “I’m Sara.” She pointed with her thumb to the building over her shoulder. “I have the apartment up there, across the street from yours.”
I knew who she was, all right. Hadn’t I seen her a thousand times through her window? But she had always been so far away, behind glass, in a parallel realm of dreams.
“O’m Blhom,” I said. Or at least that’s how it sounded in my head. My mouth and heart and brain were not collaborating. But she seemed to understand. We shook hands – which I think struck us both as kind of funny and too formal considering we had been waving back and forth to one another for weeks – and then Sara sat beside me on the bench.
She told me about herself. I learned that she was studying graphic art, and that she was working to get her portfolio together before she went off to New York for some sort of an apprenticeship. Her voice was even more pleasing than I had imagined. Her eyes were blue, the only points of color, it seemed to me, in the whole wide and otherwise colorless world.
I tried not to get too personal, tried not to mention that I sometimes watched her from my room late at night with the lights turned out – that I knew she was left-handed, and tucked her hair behind her ears when she worked. I didn’t want to creep her out. Instead, I told her about writing poetry, alluding only vaguely to my wretched, angst-ridden persona.
The moment had that teetering feel to it – the kind where you’re not sure if you’re real, or just some character being born from the pages of a really great novel. The gods seemed to be grinning down on us. An odd sensation. Doubtless a symptom of my spending too much time removed from reality and immersed in books. Sara was an idyll. She was so pretty and smart and nice. How could she be part of this cold world in which I dwelled and suffered?
Holy Cow! I thought. Maybe I could fall in love again!
“Well,” she finally said, “I kind of have to go. But why don’t you come up some time for a glass of wine or something?”
“Schwurr,” I said. “Glaphe!”
We set a time for Friday evening, and then she went off down the street.
For a long time, I watched the corner around which she had disappeared. The snow was starting to fall for real. Lights were coming on in windows. Had any of that magical moment really occurred? I could have convinced myself that it hadn’t, if not for the echo of Sara’s lovely voice still sounding in my head, and the warm fragrance of her lemon-scented soap lingering beside me on the empty bench.
Alas! And woe!
Sure, I might stoop to take a lover now and then, might make a hapless friend or two along the way, but these affairs would only leave me evermore hollow and glum as I recalled the betrayed love of my bittersweet youth. (I can smile now, but at the time, I truly was pathetic human wreckage.) But as with so many foolproof outlines for life, things sometimes go awry. For me it happened on a chill afternoon in the early December of my twenty-first year unto heaven.
The day was gray. I sat on a cold bench reading next to the empty fountain in the square below my rented room. Dry leaves scuttled over the sidewalk on the breeze. An occasional snowflake glanced off the open pages of my book. My collar was turned up in existential seafarer fashion. I was shivering. Everything, that is to say, was as it should be, as I had come so forlornly and quixotically to expect it.
And then I heard a voice – “Hello.”
The word was so pleasantly put that I didn’t bother to respond. There was no way it could be directed at me.
“Good book?”
I looked up. And there she was, right before me, all sunny and sweet and incongruent.
I think I only stared.
She smiled. “I’m Sara.” She pointed with her thumb to the building over her shoulder. “I have the apartment up there, across the street from yours.”
I knew who she was, all right. Hadn’t I seen her a thousand times through her window? But she had always been so far away, behind glass, in a parallel realm of dreams.
“O’m Blhom,” I said. Or at least that’s how it sounded in my head. My mouth and heart and brain were not collaborating. But she seemed to understand. We shook hands – which I think struck us both as kind of funny and too formal considering we had been waving back and forth to one another for weeks – and then Sara sat beside me on the bench.
She told me about herself. I learned that she was studying graphic art, and that she was working to get her portfolio together before she went off to New York for some sort of an apprenticeship. Her voice was even more pleasing than I had imagined. Her eyes were blue, the only points of color, it seemed to me, in the whole wide and otherwise colorless world.
I tried not to get too personal, tried not to mention that I sometimes watched her from my room late at night with the lights turned out – that I knew she was left-handed, and tucked her hair behind her ears when she worked. I didn’t want to creep her out. Instead, I told her about writing poetry, alluding only vaguely to my wretched, angst-ridden persona.
The moment had that teetering feel to it – the kind where you’re not sure if you’re real, or just some character being born from the pages of a really great novel. The gods seemed to be grinning down on us. An odd sensation. Doubtless a symptom of my spending too much time removed from reality and immersed in books. Sara was an idyll. She was so pretty and smart and nice. How could she be part of this cold world in which I dwelled and suffered?
Holy Cow! I thought. Maybe I could fall in love again!
“Well,” she finally said, “I kind of have to go. But why don’t you come up some time for a glass of wine or something?”
“Schwurr,” I said. “Glaphe!”
We set a time for Friday evening, and then she went off down the street.
For a long time, I watched the corner around which she had disappeared. The snow was starting to fall for real. Lights were coming on in windows. Had any of that magical moment really occurred? I could have convinced myself that it hadn’t, if not for the echo of Sara’s lovely voice still sounding in my head, and the warm fragrance of her lemon-scented soap lingering beside me on the empty bench.
