Monday, October 29, 2007

Soc"I"ety

No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man
Is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;
John Donne

I’m having dinner with some friends, absent minded and sleep deprived. A close friend of mine is sitting to my right. He takes a look at me and asks what’s wrong, but I ensure him that I’m just tired. This starts one of the most sincere conversations I ever had with him, in which he advises me to unlock my doors sometime and let others in. The fact that I’m usually with him when all my social inhibitors are supposedly subdued by alcohol seems to trouble him even more, for he admits that even then I’m still self enclosed and unwilling to communicate.

I’m sitting alone in that coffee place, drinking espresso and waiting for some friends to arrive. And as I watch society drifting by through the huge glass entrance, I begin to wonder how life would be without all the inessential decorations we’ve added over the centuries. Would the fake masks of civility drop once all the innovative technological “enhancements” are removed? A guy parks his Porsche near the entrance and steps out, accompanied by his gorgeous girlfriend. For the next few seconds the caveman’s mentality takes control, urging me to run a spear through the man’s chest and take hold of his possessions. In the world I imagined, just a while ago, this would’ve been totally acceptable and he would’ve surely understood.

My friends arrive, and we start talking. The same old conversations repeated over and over again. Empty phrases and meaningless words, emphasized by the painful silence, this has been the ongoing theme for my social life of late. And during these brief encounters with society, life stands still for a few seconds, the surroundings fade away in the surrealism of the scene, and God’s brush is inspired by Dali’s madness, disfiguring all faces beyond recognition until they all become one and the same. Eventually, all that is left are the invisible walls that stand between us, and the ones around me seem to be the thickest.

I park the car and step out of it. My friend and I have decided that I had too much Lemoncello to drive, so we’re walking to his house at 5 o’clock in the morning. As soon as he closes the door I remind him to lock it, and for some reason this seems to amaze him. He looks at me and asks “You’re not really drunk, are you?” and I answer “Too many fucking brain cells to start with.” This reminds me of another conversation I once had with one of my childhood friends, he believed that my biggest problem was that I think too much, perhaps that was really it.

So here I am in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by the ocean from everyside, the Continent remains out of sight and I'm still waiting for a hand to pull me to the maine.

Sunday, October 07, 2007

V-day

‎"You're just jealous" she said teasingly. ‎
‎"Of the balloon giraffe! For God's sake, be realistic." I sarcastically dismissed the charge. ‎

And walking home that night, alone, engulfed by a red sea of roses and balloons and my own ‎generation of oversexed post-teens, I could not help thinking about what she said. ‎

Jealous of what? Of their idiocy, of their blind imitation and lack of originality, of their ‎characterless behaviors, of the way they adopted alien traditions that were totally pointless in our ‎sexually frustrated society. ‎

Jealous of what? Of the way they materialized love, and turned it into a commodity. Of their ‎cheap gestures that stripped it from that element of the Extraordinary and made it just a ‎common thing in their endless list of mediocrities. ‎

Jealous of what? Of their synthesized feelings and mis-used words. Of their silly attitudes and ‎fabricated confusion. Of ‎their red roses and outfits, of their chocolate hearts, of their BALLOON GIRAFFES!!!!

For God's sake Lara, of course I was jealous. ‎