The Woman in front of the café

I go to the "Sleepless Goat" in Kingston at least once a week, to work on assignments, correct exams, etc. Every day, in front of the café, without fail, is this woman. Blond, wrinkled, holding a cane, asking for “change to spare”. Every time she is ignored, or given an evasive smile, she has this grimace on her face. Like that of an animal shot and in pain, trying failingly to project dignity, but knowing she will die soon, in the most humiliating pose - she must have been beautiful when she was younger.

Today I came to the café early. She was not in her usual spot. Then after about one hour, she arrived with a man. The man looked as old as her, had a beard, and was wearing sunglasses and a cap, despite the lack of sunshine. Everyone in the café paused, without seeming to, and surreptitiously shot her looks. Yes, even I did. We were all curious. The man set up her chair, while she waited, supported by her cane. He took a thermos and a pillow out of a bag, set the thermos at the foot of the chair, put the pillow on the chair, and hung the bag to the back of the chair. He gave her a kiss on the lips and then left. She sat on the chair and started getting ready for the day. A light rain was falling.

Le plus haïssable, c'est l'inconscience. Mentir aux autres est déjà détestable, mais se mentir est le pire crime qu'on puisse commettre à soi-même.

Becoming Prometheus

Prometheus, the fire thief. Prometheus means "forethought" in Greek. I think the link to make here is that our ability to foresee the effect of a cause is what led us to create fire, and eventually to an infinite line (more like a zigzag) of trial and error that brought us to where we stand now, civilised animals, knees and hands planted firmly and proudly on civilised soil, with our head buried in the same soil that tastes oh-so-good. This image reminds one of rape and orgy scenes à la Tarantino... But let's not digress.

Notice how Prometheus is a titan, lesser than a god, greater than a mortal : a mediator between the two maybe? Prometheus.. is he the one who inspires humans to greater heights? Is he a way to the divine?

On the other hand, Prometheus also steals fire and is punished like a fallen angel. In this case, he would be more of a pathway toward hell, if we take into account the Christian symbolism of the fallen angel (for the purpose of this very important article that is currently being written, we'll forget that Christianity came after Greek mythology. The world - the part that counts anyway - is divided between those who believe in Jesus-our-Lord-and-Saviour, and those who don't but unconsciously internalise the big guy and all the crackpot damnation-salvation theory he incarnates. So let's not sweat it).

Let's also not forget that Titans were gods that preceded the Olympian gods. This makes Prometheus something more ancient that the divine, which I would interpret as the basic instinct that precedes higher aspirations. (My interpretation is what matters the most here since I am of course the prime authority, this space being my blog. So what if no one reads it? The tree still makes a sound when it falls even if no one is around to see it. I think the very obvious and sad thing about the philosophical riddle, that no one seems to take notice of, is that the tree is dying and does not give a flying fuck if it's being heard or not... but again let's not digress.)

Prometheus is therefore Man. The animal that precedes intelligence and imagination. But also Man who dares dream, looking upward toward the sky where dwells the one with the white beard, or below in the furnace where dwells the fun one, yes, the one with the arrow tail.

A few years ago I came across Mémoires d'Hadrien. It instantly became my favourite book, the one I identify with the most, the one I feel was written for me. That a human mind could create such a thing is breathtaking. That a woman could transcend sex, time, space and above all, herself, and inhabit the mind of a male emperor who lived in a radically different time and space, that the same human mind could recreate a 2nd century emperor, with words her own, but a language absolutely fit for and worthy of a Roman Emperor, that such an extraordinary mind could forget itself to recreate another extraordinary mind, is breathtaking. What is there not to venerate and respect?

I am not easily humbled, neither by the Pope, nor by the Grand Canyon, not even by my father anymore. But Mémoires d'Hadrien humbled me.

Strangely, something else that managed to humble me was an article I came across when I was in a phase during which I would avidly research about the most gory and sick criminals. Now that I think about it, I suppose it was my way of trying to penetrate their psychology so they wouldn't make me feel so small. Or maybe I'm just trying to rationalise my morbidity. I guess you'll never know. The article in question was about a 2-year old toddler who was tortured and killed by two 10-year olds in Liverpool a few years ago.

How fascinatingly complex a human being is, being on one hand an animal that eats, sleeps, reproduces and defecates like all others, while possessing, on the other, a mind that can transcend or distort those instincts - in a heavenly direction. Or a hellish one.

The funny thing is that I read the gory article as avidly as I did Mémoires d'Hadrien.

Unborn

Breaking the barrier of flesh as You reach into my nourishing breath with your searing fire, your spark, invasive and abrasive.

Fire and Air, You and I.

I need more. I am arid soil that asks to be rained on to turn rich and sweet, to sprout life and enigma.

Water and Earth, You and I.

Potential of intelligence. Potential to shape newness if only You would be Prometheus. If only You would steal fire from the gods, We could create out of clay.

Receptacle, I. Fill me up again and again, while I squeeze and milk elixir out of You.

Pain precedes creation. Your eyebrows slightly furrowed and your mouth half open : your face is a mirror to mine. In pain. Eyes closed, every inch of our skin touching, yet still searching for each other like blind children.

Creation brings forth pain. Your gasps echo my cries.

You in I. You have dared make a home out of me.

And then You pull out.

Leaving me empty. Potential fire turns into cold seeds, spilled and wasted. Leaving me doubly empty. And what could have been is not.

As You crash on me, tired of your failed creation, your mouth searches for my breast. To mimic the child You did not give me.

Where You and I don't meet

A simple breakfast of plain bread. Spread butter and crushed banana on white crumb. Wholesome. Tastes like a fresh morning of blue and dew. Mama in an apron. Cleanliness, she would say, is the only luxury poor people can afford. And indeed she would clean and scrub and then clean some more. Huge backyard, small house, partly in cement, partly in corrugated iron, partly the sheer will to keep together a house.

Yes, the perpetual struggle to earn. Elation at the start of the month. The perpetual struggle to save. In vain. Desperation toward the end of the month. The unfailing pattern of a never-changing graph.

A doll, or a miniature plastic tea set. Such a grand event it would be.

Three channels. The big movie on Thursdays at 8pm. Another grand event. One of the highlights of the week.

And sometimes, just on a whim of his, we would not be allowed this highlight of the week. No TV. You have to go to bed early. Sleep and rise with the sun. One of the ways to a healthy lifestyle.
Yes, and alcohol and beating your wife enhances said healthy lifestyle.

Shouting and beating and breaking. More shouting.
Weeping in rhythm to her every scream, her pitch, regular, up and down. My heartbeat, irregular, like my sobs. As helpless as her on this side of my prison. My room, a prison in the bigger prison. Helpless on this side of the wall to the barbarity, the brutality, the I-will-because-I-can.

My way out of the prison, a legacy, written. Visiting Robinson Crusoé on his island because mine is going down through the sheer will of this man.

My way out of the house, a legacy, yet to be written. Writing, infantile, intimate, precious. Callus on my middle finger. Like a discreet "fuck you" to him, that he will never hear.

How do I share myself with you lover? You don't share my past. You never can.

Where you and I meet

She is the Loner who walks in and out of life. Alone most of the time. Sometimes, she meets someone along the way. They might stop for the rest of the night, share food, swap stories, and sleep together. But since their paths differ, she knows the more she stays back, the more she'll forget about the road she has to take. Ultimately she leaves her companion and continues her route alone. Sometimes she meets someone else along the way. Someone who doesn't stop her, someone whom she doesn't stop, because they share the same itinerary, at least for a while. So together they walk, for a few days, for a few years, until their ways part. Sometimes she's tempted to follow the other, but she knows she can't be true to her own path if she does. So she puts on a cheery mask, and moves on.

She didn't meet him on the way. He was not on her path. He was a good few metres away. She thought he was stranded and he thought she was stranded. And yet when they met, the road was not a road anymore. There was no road to follow anymore. Not for her. Not for him. Their whole surrounding turned into a lone universe, and they turned into planets. She turned into I, and he turned into You.

Yes, two planets, You and I.
Different most of the times, similar sometimes.
But still two.
One identity clashing fervently against the other.

Different upbringings, different cultures, different circumstances, no shared historical past.

The different ways in which We
see red
smell cardamom
touch dried leaves
hear jazz
taste berries
and feel love.

The enormous weight of ingrained culture and preconceived ideas we have to shed.
For You and I to forget our respective paths. For You to walk halfway toward I. For I to walk halfway toward you.

For I to see the blue You see.
For You to smell the sea I smell.
For I to touch the dried paint You touch.
For You to hear the coming of the cyclone I hear
For I to taste the home-made jam You taste.
For Us both to meet halfway and to feel the same love.

Is it possible, lover, to meet exactly halfway? Maybe it is, maybe it is not.
But
if you take but one step toward me,
I promise to
walk for the both of us
to bridge the gap
and touch you
even though my feet be bloody and sore
every ache and every blood drop worth the effort.

The Story

My hero should be a he. That much I've decided. Maybe it is the ideal view of the Other that I have, me being a woman. Another thing is that a woman is always a woman before being anything else, but a man is always human before being anything else, especially when it comes to perceptions and thoughts. And I am looking for a human simply, someone who encompasses the human experience, the one experience that everyone in the world should relate to.

A simple lyricism to it. But how does it fucking end, this darling crazy story of mine? Or most importantly, how does it start?

TAKE 1:
How does one stay motivated since no action will have any consequence the next day? How does one live life without the reality of cause and effect? He thought that time was man-made, that the 24-hour clock was man-made. How could it be, if after every 24 hours, he was one day younger?

.....Too H.G.Wells.

TAKE 2:
He knew this was the last one. He knew that the next time he would open his eyes, he would see the face of God. When he opened his eyes, he saw the face of the nurse, and in her eyes, his own face and the million other faces he had worn.

"God, lad? Who are you kidding? We kill in the name of God, child."

Every time a child dies in Palestine, we are killing a little bit of God.
Every time a girl sells herself in Vegas, we are bargaining a little bit of God.
Every time we put away a parent in a home, we are humiliating a little bit of God.

"Of God, lad? I suppose it would be less effective to say "of humanity", wouldn't it? Ah humans, and the fantasies they need to come up with to well up their self-induced tears, feel good about still being able to empathize and just forget about the damn world after they've bargained their much-needed change to Children's Foundation for some feel-goods!"

.....Too cynical.

TAKE 3:
He was sleeping, and his pale bony frame protruded out of his thin scrubs. As soon as she entered the room, his eyes opened and smiled green. So far from the health of iPod commercial teens and trivial preoccupations. He was the real deal. Eternally young, with the infinite wisdom of the dying. He lifted his hand a slight inch above the bed. It fell back again, weak. The weakness shot through his body to his eyes. At that moment, she wanted to love him with her hands, her eyes, her warmth, her fifty years of childlessness, this white boy of 18, emerald windows and pasty green clay. She settled for just setting the frozen hospital dinner on the bedside table to hold his hand.

She knew that this was going to be the most important night of her life, there at that precise moment, in a hospital room, holding the hand of her leukemia patient.

"You are the most beautiful woman I've touched," he said in response to her daily disappointment at her own self.

She was profoundly moved. No man had ever thought that about her before. She was one of those black women who were not white enough.

In the simple statement, she heard the majesty of her skin, the sinful fruits that were her lips, the pungent forest that was her hair, her plentiful breasts, the receptacle that was her womb..
She had never felt so herself without any artifice before.

She let go of the boy's hand and said, "tell me your story." And the boy said, "I will tell you a story. That of my lover, born yesterday and a thousand years ago. That of the man of today. The one for whom there was no tomorrow."

And so begins our story of the man who, because of the impossibility to go forward, started going backward.

.....Too Hollywood-meets-F.Scott-Fitzgerald-meets-Walter-Benjamin.

Nothing is more depressing than realizing that the culture you thought was providing you with knowledge and imagination serves only as recycled material to your pseudo-creative ideas and dulled imagination.