His world too is one where time and space appear as oddly
chronicled malaise, broken up by only momentary pleasures. For a sophisticated, sentient being, would he
be forgiven for not pursuing either love or joy and now just wishing for peace
of mind?
In a real way, although there’s no small level of paucity
in what we know of the universe beyond us, neither any small sorrow in whatever
would be left behind after any individual’s passing, elements of a materially
comfortable youth and prospects for a passable maturity would not stop Solomon
from rocking gently in his own well sofa’d suburban haven.
A certain new-age preoccupation gripped what was left of
his soul and inchoately scrambled his life’s quota of tears into something
else. Now, the only way his former
sorrow would be expressed was, little by little, piece by piece, by no more
than this- the occasional but audible inhalation of breath and exhalation of
hope.
To sigh with many years left to serve on a mortgage was very
different to the enthusiasm he’d known when he first signed up. That other moment could be noticed as far gone
now in his change of voice, so as it used to rise, fall and lilt as any voice
should. Not that Solomon thinks anyone
owes him a place in the sun, or that the requisite dedication or grand servitude
should be objected to per se.
He also agreed with his mother and father that renting would
be dead money. His own panoply of modest
achievement did sound quite good on the weekly phone-call with said
parents. “How are you?” Check. “How’s the job going?” Check. “How are your friends?” Check.
But it was a vast chasm between the outer world of survivable
circumstance and the inner world of intolerable silence that now seemed
unbridgeable.
For meaning to soon arise through crisis could have
brought a solution. And, when, as it
seemed to him, prior human centuries competed for which were the most replete
with total warfare, what did he actually have to complain about? Flicking between televised news and sardonic
comedy reminded him of the ways in which he could be seen as taking for granted
the late night solace, in between sirens, that his own small place in history was
affording him.
Although being awake past midnight on a Friday wasn’t seen
as such a bad effort at 32, the grand enactment of pseudo-energy the week had
entailed seemed to leave his body worn but mind unchallenged. Ok, so to separate them out like this may be
somewhat artificial, and it’s not like he could go on in the third sector
forever and never feel satisfied at what he’d done.
But to say there was a piece missing from the jigsaw of
components that would make for a content life would be too simple. It was more that the tapestry from which his
existence was woven was in part too loose and in places too tight. Issues, his friend Tom sometimes said,
“Solomon, you’ve got real issues..”
If he’d cared as much for himself as the next person
perhaps perseverance through adversity wouldn’t be so awkward. When asked how he was by peers, the standard
refrain of “not too bad” was passable in terms of common parlance, but the
positive exaggeration was only really due to the kind sentiments perceived from
those who bothered to ask. What was it
they really wanted to know?
With pharmaceutical medication on board, or magic beans
as he wryly referred to them, a certain dullness to the extremities of
existence pervaded each part of each day.
Sure, his thoughts and feelings seemed to be his own once more, but if
the exquisite and enduring suffering he’d known in the darker years weren’t
elements of a natural response to complex man-made circumstance then the
struggles that were now of years gone by, even if less intense, were neither
over nor still there, neither dissipated nor integrated into how things were
now.
From such a vortex in alternative existence ran few
parallels to what he’d known back then.
When Tony waxed lyrical about the potential of parallel universes based
on a keen layman’s grasp of quantum physics, this seemed interesting to
Solomon, who experienced a life from maturity as if born anew. Same body, same known boundaries of sorts,
but when each tomorrow was suddenly torn asunder from what had happened
yesterday, or yester-year, the enthusiasm of even a simply rooted joie de vivre went missing.
Pleasures were still there in his life. Company was not really avoided nor did shared
joy escape him. The coalesced normality
that he could be part of regularly took hold, and on nights at various bars the
escapism brought from too-strong-for-session ale and free flowing chatter
heightened awareness as normality dictates.
Feeling worse often lifted Solomon from a previous better, or
status-quo, such that the temporarily new neural beginning and florid
enthusiasm pointed to limitless possibility and oncoming unbridled achievement.
If it was the case that being happy enough three fifths of
the time was all that mattered, and realising that the other two fifths could
be but an exception, then he might have been alright. But of joy in all that was simple and his
own, of an understanding of how his choices altered each time he chose anew;
this was what irked him in the most targetedly painful way.
Neither was the point to do with contentedness in a
personal misery that he controlled and dispensed when needed. A brain perhaps, that has evolved over
millennia in human co-existence now only perked up when doused in alcohol,
re-creational narcotics; when monitoring a heart on edge with the turn of a
computerised playing card linked to his bank balance or, dare he say, when
faced with the still exacerbated sins, as they once were, of flesh.
Looking down on those who were more addicted to any one
of these vices than to any other wasn’t his style. A mixed outwardly-apparent effort at
normality was manageable, on most late starting days, and with breaking points
being too far off with any of his petty squabbles with straight –lacedness, the escapism sometimes felt
right, and sometimes didn’t appeal.
As the images of television now
flickered before him some of the accompanying sound registered and some
didn’t. For bed to come on a night when
the mind is racing with what could have been seemed like a retreat to
retirement before a task of unknown magnitude was complete.
