LOVE, DEATH and STRAWBERRIES

HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet,

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

Once upon a time there was a boy who could peer through people’s hearts, who could see with their eyes, hear with their ears, touch with their fingers. He was cursed with what to most would be a fulfilment of their wildest dreams – he knew everything. His mind could penetrate the deepest, innermost recesses of other people’s consciousness, right to the very core, the very essence of their most illicit, licentious, savage desires. The truth was what he always sought; it was all he valued, all he cared about, all that really mattered.

What to them was unseemly, warped, devious, was his everyday reality. What to them was sacred, he despised.

Shadow-like, he creeped among people, mostly unnoticed and unnoticeable, and rarely did his fragile remnant of a human body interact with anything but pain. A pain that seared through him whenever the very thought of his desolation invaded his intermittent tranquility, which was every single moment of his waking life. The distance that separated him from the rest of the world seemed to grow ever larger, the unbridgeable chasm, that gulf which was deepening whenever he beheld a creature that bore the same burder as his… widening by dint of the realization that even they would never comprehend the enormities that he brooded on. For they wanted to change, to adjust, to conform, they were ready and eager to forfeit their oddness, their individuality, their own truths in exchange for the society’s approval and the warmth of its faceless hords, in exchange for their protection and predictability that being an inherent part of them offered. Few of them constituted any mystery, still fewer made him gasp with admiration, and nearly none were capable of rendering him speechless.

“Away eastward the sun was rising red out of mists that lay thick on the world. Touched with gold and red the autumn trees seemed to be sailing rootless in a shadowy see.”

Lord of the Rings

People came and went, heedless of how they affected his life, doing what they were best at - moving on. One of them, however, stopped and looked at him straight into his very soul and he did not flinch, as it was the first time that someone could actually see him - not his physical vesture, not the appearances that he so easily maintained, not the illusion, but HIM, his very self, the essence of his speechless solitude. And then he reciprocated that look and was drowned instantly in the depths of her eyes, sinking deeper and deeper with every word that gently seeped out of her rosy lips, with her every gesture that he so passionately watched, absorbed, craved.

In he came, right into the very den of that monstrous madness that goes by the name of love. And he was lost as soon he set his foot within its bounds, as soon as he allowed her to peer inside his mind. And let her show him hers, which was a realm full of wonders beyond description, a realm of light and dark, a realm that one simultaneously feared and was drawn to; an eerie sight, yet so magnificently beautiful, that thorny touch, blood and love intermixed, as they always are. As they should be.

“And then we will understand – we held gold dust; in our hands.”

Tori Amos

Her ineffeble beauty shook the very foundations of his universe, making him reel with sorrow every time he beheld that fey creature, that translucent, unblemished fairy with soul unspoilt by the mundane, unmarred by the base and the ordinary.

She sauntered through this vale of tears and greyness unhindered and unencoumbered by anything that was tainted with daily life, leaving behind in her wake a trail of otherworldliness that was like a veil embroided with pure, infinite bliss. And he followed. Wherever she placed her dainty feet, rainbowy blossoms sprang to life even from the most barren, arid earth, bearing testimony to her divine nature which set her apart from all other beings, elevated her to the heights unreachable even by those whose words and actions shaped the entire humanity. Thus She glided amid his desires, heedless of the hearts quiverring at Her sight all round. For She moved not just one feebly twinkling star, but entire galaxies capered upon Her rosy breath.”

“And then you showed me,

the flight of seagulls.

And then you told me,

the part is over.”

Current 93

Yet there was a price to her breathtaking grandeur – it made her cruel and callous because it allowed her to do whatever she wished without any consequence, without ever facing a single rebuke or criticism. Dazzled by her beauty, men fell prostrate before her and she tread on them like on soft grass, heedless of the terrible void that filled their hearts when they realized that they were merely a means to her ends, bridges that might be burnt down once they’ve fulfilled their purpose, nothing more. Did she mind her own mercilessness? No one knows since none had ever had the privilege to traverse the endless maze of her unfathomable thoughts.

“I know that people can be fickle,

I know that nothing ever lasts.

I know that all snowflakes dissolve

and that all good things have to end.”

Polly Scattergood

The knowledge that one day she would gone haunted him every day, invaded his every thought, filled with premonition, fear and despair the closer they got to the inevitable parting. For she was a goddess and he was a mere mortal, unworthy of her true affection, a toy that, once it served the goal of entertaining her, could be discarded, cast in the all-consuming flames of rejection. He fought with all his might, he sacrificed everything he had ever had, but it all amounted to a puny gesture of defiance in face of an insurmountable obstacle, looming ahead ominously, threatening with its very vastness, a presage of his imminent doom. Once he gave her a piece of his soul and laid it before her feet. And she didn't even bother to pick it up.

"There is nothing, there is no one. No one but me waiting endlessly."

And then she was gone. Just like that. Leaving him behind - torn asunder, lifeless, numb with shock, incapable of weeping, for all his tears he had already cried out.

"I gave you all, I gave you all

I gave you all,

And you rip it from my hands

and you swear its all gone

and rip out all I had just to say that you've won.

Now you've won.

But I gave you all."

Mumford and Sons

Not long did he have to wait for the baneful ramifications of that loss to come thronging into his sanity, corrupting it, degrading, rottening, not long till the he started to drown in the life-giving deluge of emotions.

Many a time did his desperate desire try to goad him into fleeing his futile existence, putting a knife in his tremulous hand, yet he remained entrapped, earthbound, dragged down by the immeasurable immensity of the weight of his weakness, his insignificance. Thus, he wasn’t even to be granted a swift death, let alone a moment of respite or a semblance of evanescent happiness. Nay, these were to be denied to him to the rest of his days. His dauntless spirit put up a valiant fight, but to no avail. His war was lost long before he engaged in the first of its myriad battles. Beleaguered with a welter of fiendishly baleful thoughts radiating malice and vindictiveness, his mind crumbled, shattered into still smaller pieces every single day that they were apart. And each time less capable of putting itself back together. Helpless, he watched his own life wane, subside, wilt until there was nothing but dreadful, pervasive gloom that surrounded him from all sides, that was pressing upon him, constraining, suffocating. Beneath a starless sky I lie, he thought to himself, with no hope but one - to die.

WHEN we two parted

In silence and tears,

Half broken-hearted

To sever for years,

Pale grew thy cheek and cold, 5

Colder thy kiss;

Truly that hour foretold

Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning

Sunk chill on my brow— 10

It felt like the warning

Of what I feel now.

Thy vows are all broken,

And light is thy fame:

I hear thy name spoken, 15

And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,

A knell to mine ear;

A shudder comes o'er me—

Why wert thou so dear?

They know not I knew thee,

Who knew thee too well:

Long, long shall I rue thee,

Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met—

In silence I grieve,

That thy heart could forget,

Thy spirit deceive.

If I should meet thee

After long years,

How should I greet thee?

With silence and tears.

Lord Byron

How he persevered through those two tortuous, excruciatingly painful years, he knew not. The sleepless nights, the longing, the envy, the self-destructive hatred… as wandered alone through the forest at night, even the trees bowed to the unutterable majesty and vastness of his anguish, lamenting the death of his long-tormented soul with silent tears of dew. And then he finally succumbed, abandoned himself to his one and only foe – emptiness: the great devourer of dreams.

All the hope that he had ever had was now forlorn, forgotten, all his dreams lay rottening among the remnants of his faith. He drew, he read, he wrote and pondered, he kissed and laughed, but his words were passionless, the words of others seemed shallow, his kisses dry and laughter hollow, saturated with sadness and tainted with his resignation. Time went by and on her roam, like a helpless child lost in the dark, but fearless, for he knew that he was already dead.

“Our integrity sells for so little that it is all we really have. It is the very last inch of us. An inch. It is fragile and we must never let them take it away from us.”

And even amid all that impenetrable gloom he never wavered, he never regretted having sacrificed everything he had because he knew there was nobler cause than love, nothing more worth striving for. He never compromised, he didn’t seek shelter in someone else’s arms, he accepted no substitutes, no half measures, made no concessions. That would an insult to everything he had been working for. So there he lay, a fragile spect of a man, devastated, but with his integrity intact. Faithful to his dreams to the very last second of his existence and paying a dreadful price; a price that none but him would be able to endure.

“All we ever see of stars are their old photographs.”

The Watchmen

This was to be the end. That was where it should have ended. That was where any good story would come to its conclusion; that would be the best time for closure. This wretched shred of a human being should have died there, buried deep under the profoundness of his boundless woe, brooding in the blood of his mutilated dreams.

He should have. But he didn’t.

“Tomorrow I can start again.”

The Cure

And when all was lost, all light extinguished, when the music stopped and drops of rain halted midair, when the predatory clouds consumed the last of the sunrays, when he sweetly slipped in the death’s embrace… when two years had passed…

He saw Her. She who outshone everything he had ever seen, overshadowed even the one who destroyed him, the one who left him to die alone. She who brought into his life such magnificent blackness that everything he had ever seen or loved paled in comparison, the blackness that glitters, the darkness that shines forth.

“I saw the last that which was fairest. Henceforth I shall call nothing fair, unless it be your gift.”

Lord of the Rings

She arose over the horizon of his ravaged, blighted realm like a luminous star, bathing its parched soil with sanity-eradicating light, infusing it with tranguility, dispelling all chaos and nightmares, which for so long had been feeding on his emotions, wreaking their ghastly havoc in every corner of his circular life.

And even though She was unattainable, even though he wasn’t worth more than a single strand of her hair, even though there were thousands desiring her… more handsome, taller, and more wealthy than him…

…he drew Her a smiling flower on a folded scrap of paper. She accepted. And his rebirth thus began.

Without realizing it, she re-awakened his shuttered soul from its long slumber, pulled him back from brink of self=destruction on which for so long he had been teetering. She inspired him, fascinated, filled with owe, captivated, the very sight of Her erased the darkest memories as if they had never invaded his mind.

It was the sweetness of your skin

It was the hope of all we might have been

That filled me with the hope to wish

Impossible things

To wish impossible things

But now the sun shines cold

And all the sky is grey

The stars are dimmed by clouds and tears

And all I wish

Is gone away

All I wish

Is gone away

The Cure