Another Toast

George: May the wind always be at your back and the sun upon your face.
Fred Jung: And may the wings of destiny carry you aloft to dance with the stars.
Fred Jung: Cheers, Georgie.
George: Cheers, pop.

– Blow (2001) –

And then you wake up, and your mind starts wondering once again…Wasted, Wasted, Wasted, like the rotten breaths you try so desperately to hide in the morning. You look at yourself in the mirror, and you see the devil staring back at you. That mocking gaze penetrates your skull and ignites the nightmares of your troubled sleep. You take a cold shower, trying hard to wash away her memory, to clean off her smell that your skin is soaked with, to hush down her voice that you can hear so clearly under water, to silence her laughter that still rings like church bells in your head, to erase the image of her face that comes to life every time you close your eyes. But you fail miserably, as you always do, as you always will. And when you step out of the shower, you pick up the phone, call her up and ask her how she’s doing.

Let us go then, let us drive away and try to hide from this cruel sun. What do Irish sailors know about reaching the stars anyway! They were never tortured by the flaming sun of the desert. Strong and relentless, its ugly rays pour down from every corner of the sky, like the burning truths we were trying so desperately to ignore. And even if we stopped, even if we slowed down, even if we decided to halt for a while and give our silly useless brains time to evaluate the matter, the sun would never give us a break. Within seconds everything would burst into flames, and nothing would remain but the tasteless ashes of our dreams and realities, feeding the senseless anger that leads us to self-destruction.

So let´s have another toast, right before I leave... To Amman, a city so ridiculously limited, in a way that challenges Imagination. A city whose walls close down on you every second, strangling your dreams, and forcing you to fight for every bubble of Freedom you have managed to create. A city where the eyes of strangers haunt your mind and keeps it restless, as you turn around to scan the faces in empty restaurants and less fashionable bars, paralyzed by unexplainable Fear from those recognizable shadows that only exist in your head. To Amman, to the amazingly beautiful moments we´ve managed to steal, and to the Moon shining down peacefully after long hours of the horrible sun, telling us that all our desires are attainable, even if we need to work just a little bit harder in order to reach the stars.

Let's have a Toast

Yeah, sure, why not! I’ll drink to this, to that, and to a couple of other things. To you, to her, to us, to mistakes we’ll do all over again. To all the steps back, to realities we failed to change and we’re no longer certain we want to change. To foolishness, to idiocy, to stupidity, to all the things we still have in common with mankind. To lightness, that undesired feeling that weighs us down. To Freedom, to happiness, to Love, to every illusion we’ll never cease pursuing. To forgetting, to a past we imagined we could simply erase but never really could. To loneliness, to boredom, to ghosts that haunt us every hour of the day… But above all, let’s drink to God, to Death and to Beauty, to hopes and beliefs lost and regained within a second…

And after all the alcohol settles in, I’ll leave you there, staring as I tremble back to my car, fighting the strong temptation to get it all out, to throw up my whole existence right there before you on the sidewalk, to cry out all the frustrations that bind me to this ugly reality, and to yield to that overwhelming desire to hold you in my arms and keep you there forever.

Oh, the horrible things we do to ourselves just to silence our inner demons. We drink, and drink, and drink… until our feet fail us, and our words become less and less meaningful. The whole world is tuned down, but the ugly thoughts keep getting louder and louder, eating at our own sanity. We realize that we can never really drown them, yet we keep on trying all the same. We experience with our feelings, we walk willingly into abysses that hold nothing but pain, imagining it would kill some of the ghosts we hold inside. Still they emerge victorious, stronger than ever, and it’s just our souls that are weakened by the experience. We exceed our limits, overloading our bodies and exhausting them with physical labour they can’t possibly handle. Yet, as we lay down in our beds to rest, we see shadows dancing in front of our eyes, mocking our stupidity and the futility of our efforts. We try to escape, we run away into pills, and happy hours, and concerts. Into sleepless nights, and days of hunger. We read, and write and watch movies, we discuss stupid ideas and faiths and fantasies that remain totally irrelevant. We Socialize, we surround ourselves with a cloud of people of all sorts, trying everything to stall the inevitable moments when we’re left alone to battle with our own fears and doubts, without any chance to win, without any will to surrender.

Then, I’ll get inside my car, turn on the engine and switch on my half broken radio. I’ll search for whatever song that’s playing, and turn up the volume to the max, until the entire world is submerged under Music. I’ll drive aimlessly, singing along at the top of my lungs, until they burst, and I no longer feel a thing except for the sensation of blood rushing up my throat. I’ll drive faster and faster, leaving everything behind, trying in vain to run away from you, only to hit my rock-hard reality and feel alive once again just for a second before Death approaches from a distance to liberate me from my misery...