To My Love, Listen,...

Imagine an empty room. Imagine a house. Or a world. Imagine an entire star-spangled universe with its make-believe show of beginnings and ends. A show that engulfs us, consumes us and drives us towards each other. Or away from. Even from ourselves.

Now imagine us. Forget the noise. It's just you and I. All that I say won't matter in time. All that I say will echo across the stars forever, forming new words somewhere else, for someone else. But right now, in this moment, all that I say is for you. You know that. So listen. I love you. I've been looking for you. I hope we find each other, because what else is left when the sun is cold and we are all long gone? All we have is this moment, to be true and to live and to not burn ourselves out in this great cosmic pantomime that consumes us and drives us away from ourselves. 

📸 John Fowler via unsplash.com

I found a Tumblr screenshot on Instagram the other day. I don't recall the exact language but it said something to this effect: that the universe was basically the interval between two Big Bangs, and we were the dust that settles after an explosion. An afterglow, if you please, if you want to be poetic. Imagine dust became sentient. That was us. I would give credit but I honestly cannot find that post so apologies for the bad paraphrasing. Anyway, it made me think of Olaf the Snowman from the movie, Frozen. Imagine you and I are just like that, brought to life and being at whim, for no purpose at all. We bring in so much strife into that, so much pain, so much longing, so much desire. And all I want to do is whatever snowmen do when it's summer.

Hello again. I meant to have a post up here a week ago,  on Bloom's Day. The hundredth Bloom's Day, in fact. Not because I want to speak of James Joyce, or of Ulysses, but because five years ago, on the 16th of June, I promised myself to restart my defunct blog, to give myself a second shot in believing that my words were worth writing down,  even if only for myself. A friend reminded me that it was Bloom's Day, and I thought, what are the odds? I am going to go walking around in my head and see if I can make a grand story of it. And isn't that what we do? Stumbling through our days, looking for our glorious purpose, hoping to find some semblance of significance in the midst of this great make-believe of beginnings and ends?
Some find it in the past, a mythical era of ancestral glories where heroes came home to vanquish their enemies. Beneath a night sky lit by long dead stars, it is a terribly comforting thought. There was greatness once,  and can be again.  In the inevitable wheel of loss and death, they are no longer specks in the cosmos, but inheritors of greatness. Perhaps they too can slay their dragons.
But the dragon is in the mirror,  perhaps dreaming of their own golden age. 

Did you watch the Stranger Things 4 episode where the police were addressing the people in the town hall and the basketball team strode in, led by their captain? And did you notice how much it looked like a pose– the way they fanned out in perfect, symmetrical formation? It reminded me of another scene from a movie where the heroes had walked in into another assembly of confused,  frightened people. 

Same formation, but it had seemed so natural and reassuring back then and yet looked so insincere now. Not to the people of Hawkins however,  who would rather clutch at the chance to go witch-hunting than deal with the fear that came with death and the idea of things beyond our knowledge and control. And sometimes hate is just that, a little chance to dress ourselves in shiny, heroic armour, making ourselves feel good in the face of the infinite unknown. And when the weight of insecurity becomes too much, imagine a glorious past when you had control. But nobody ever had control. Not in the grand scale of things. People are just good at lying to themselves. 

If you're lucky, you know how to live in the present. But some of us are drunk on hope. Delusional,  perhaps. Or naive. Or eternal optimists thinking things will be a better tomorrow. 
Me, I've always looked to the future. Mostly. Towards an ever-shifting mirnage promising wonderland. And maybe I never find it, but I found you, now, reading my words. And I found myself,  in ways that I didn't think possible. Have I found what I was looking for? No. But I have found something. That's enough to go on. For now.

Anyway, I planned to have a post for BloomsDay and failed because I couldn't find my words and I was afraid. Afraid that I had lost my words, that I had nothing to say. On all the days that I drew blanks  there were scratched out lines and deleted paragraphs. Yet, here I am,  eventually,  rambling my heart out and afraid that I am not making sense. 
But even so, darling,  stay with me. Listen. Even if it's for a moment,  love makes it worthwhile. 
And even though it's all a moment's illusion, I hope you are listening because I don't want to be alone in my silence. It's awfully silent without you. Say something. My ships have no harbour without you.

 📸 Maximilian Weisbecker via unsplash.com 

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