Mournday
Dearest,
How different the world looks now. How dingy and silly. Things that I once thought necessary and required now just seem trivial and pretentious. I watch the lonely people hurry about on their errands that really aren’t important. Not aware that all about them an uncaring world continues on without them. Every body is an orphan, every one is alone, filling their empty hours with nonsense and busy work. I thought they’re searching for meaning, but they’re not, they’re attempting to manufacture meaning. Trying to justify their empty activities with plausible reasons. With scarcely a thought for the future, and no thought at all for the past, a past filled with mistakes and heartaches, the future they tell themselves, will be better. “I’ll be smarter, more careful, I won’t let that happen again.” They will, it will happen again, as patterns repeat. Templates set down by their own patterned behaviors, their own dreadful habits, they run in circles trying to out distance the pain.
I wonder, will I be like that? This moment I spend but a brief interlude between tragedies. A quiet time of reflection on the frivolity of life, my short-lived respite before plunging headlong into the chaos once again. I grow older, as good and kind people around me do not, but no wiser. I have learned no secrets and conquered no great obstacles. I waste my precious hours on regret and sorrow. What is it that I actually want? Is there a thing I want to accomplish? I have many questions but so few answers; I barely even understand the questions now. The more I learn, the less I know.
I am invisible. I walk among them unseen and unheard. I watch children swiping grapes as mother selects oranges for her bag. I watch employees stocking shelves diligently oblivious to the customers around them. A short, plump woman bangs her cart into my side, she mumbles “Sorry, I didn’t see you”, my point exactly. Those I love die and yet I am the ghost? I am only half here, perhaps. Yet I am here, am I not? Lately, I am not so sure, perhaps the part of me that remains is not worth noticing. That insignificant part of me that is not really me at all. Does everyone feel this way?
The evening shadows are crawling across the room now. I live in those shadows, sometimes I feel that I am but a shadow. A shadow of my former self. My shadow is now my only company, at least it doesn’t complain or dawdle when I need to run an errand. If I were to lose my shadow, like Peter Pan, I suppose I would be devastated. Tomorrow is back to work. That should put an end to my pointless pondering.
Till, Your Ken
How different the world looks now. How dingy and silly. Things that I once thought necessary and required now just seem trivial and pretentious. I watch the lonely people hurry about on their errands that really aren’t important. Not aware that all about them an uncaring world continues on without them. Every body is an orphan, every one is alone, filling their empty hours with nonsense and busy work. I thought they’re searching for meaning, but they’re not, they’re attempting to manufacture meaning. Trying to justify their empty activities with plausible reasons. With scarcely a thought for the future, and no thought at all for the past, a past filled with mistakes and heartaches, the future they tell themselves, will be better. “I’ll be smarter, more careful, I won’t let that happen again.” They will, it will happen again, as patterns repeat. Templates set down by their own patterned behaviors, their own dreadful habits, they run in circles trying to out distance the pain.
I wonder, will I be like that? This moment I spend but a brief interlude between tragedies. A quiet time of reflection on the frivolity of life, my short-lived respite before plunging headlong into the chaos once again. I grow older, as good and kind people around me do not, but no wiser. I have learned no secrets and conquered no great obstacles. I waste my precious hours on regret and sorrow. What is it that I actually want? Is there a thing I want to accomplish? I have many questions but so few answers; I barely even understand the questions now. The more I learn, the less I know.
I am invisible. I walk among them unseen and unheard. I watch children swiping grapes as mother selects oranges for her bag. I watch employees stocking shelves diligently oblivious to the customers around them. A short, plump woman bangs her cart into my side, she mumbles “Sorry, I didn’t see you”, my point exactly. Those I love die and yet I am the ghost? I am only half here, perhaps. Yet I am here, am I not? Lately, I am not so sure, perhaps the part of me that remains is not worth noticing. That insignificant part of me that is not really me at all. Does everyone feel this way?
The evening shadows are crawling across the room now. I live in those shadows, sometimes I feel that I am but a shadow. A shadow of my former self. My shadow is now my only company, at least it doesn’t complain or dawdle when I need to run an errand. If I were to lose my shadow, like Peter Pan, I suppose I would be devastated. Tomorrow is back to work. That should put an end to my pointless pondering.
Till, Your Ken
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