Reverse Ontology

“Icame to you with a soiled philosophy of loneliness and you begged mefor an interview”

– LeonardCohen

Ifind that I cannot keep our conversations out of my head, which iswhy I prefer to put them outside for everyone else to judge andridicule. I find I am bad at judging everything. So I have decided toarchive this warped, one-sided romance for my audience of cyberstrangers. Perhaps it will sound more compelling this way. Perhaps Ijust want some sort of testimony to look back upon when this allcollapses to see why I did it. Perhaps I enjoy the honesty of baringsomething that matters too much to me and not at all to anyone elseand is therefore best stuck up on a glittering billboard to beridiculed outside of my temporal lobe. It feels a lot likeself-regressing, as if I were playing the Blue Danube backwards,hoping to somehow reverse the power of its intoxication.

Myencounters with N bring to mind something another cyber-acquaintancehas illustrated time and again in his blog: Elpis. I have followedthis particular person's online paradoxes for quite a few years now,almost always driven by the morbid curiosity I harbour for nihilismthat is manifesting itself much more clearly now. Although he alwaysworked to keep Elpis at bay, I find that I am desperately seeking herout as she runs screaming in the opposite direction. In the past Ialways read his accounts with a bitter, self-righteous defiance buttoday I have to yield to his superior insight regarding thisparticular theme. She really is a trite, cruel and fickle being.

Imade it a point not to dress up for the occasion because I knew alltoo well that he would pick up on it and comment. The only effort Idedicated to the event was to substitute my glasses for contactlenses. I entered the Ashmolean from the side entrance adjacent tothe Taylorian Library, this would allow me a chance to spot himwithout being observed. It would also give me ample time to come tomy senses if there was room left for that. He sat at the front stepsof the museum, cup of coffee in hand and looking…well, not entirelybored. He seemed to be scoping the crowd and I found thisencouraging, which I immediately realised was foolish (the pointwhere that infernal Elpis observation made its appearance inpassing). I was late. I had made it a point to be late, half in theattempt to see if he would care to wait and half hoping I wouldchicken out entirely. Apparently neither was about to happen. So Iapproached him.

Hedidn’t particularly react to seeing me there but he did flash apolite smile of greeting in my direction. The kind that means nothingbut is the indulgent courtesy that one reserves for strangers onstreet corners that accidentally catch your eye.

“You’renot wearing your glasses, was that for my benefit?”

.Sigh.

“Whydon’t you go ahead and assume it is,” I repliedsarcastically. It was my turn.

“Hmmm.So, you came. I wasn’t sure you would,” he said politely.

Iraised my eyebrows wearily and he did have the grace to manage aflustered laugh.

“Well,okay I was quite sure you would but I wasn’t entirely positive,”he indulged me.

“WellI suppose I feel all better now,” I said caustically.

“Right,so you’re thinking that being sarcastic throughout this encounterwill help you deal with …this. I suppose it is effective from yourpoint of view,” he mused, almost to himself.

Okay,so if I was going to play this …‘game’, was the only word for it(much as I loathe that term in this particular context) I suppose the only thingI had on my side was the element of surprise. I would forfeit. Icertainly wasn’t winning anything anyway if I went through withthis. Luckily, even I am not delusional enough to expect things whenit comes to emotional dependence of any variety. On that score wewere both evenly matched.

“Actually,I would rather not ‘be’ anything, if that’s possible and I amnot sure it is. However I was hoping I could try being as brutallyhonest as you,” I replied calmly, or so I hoped.

“Youwant to be a jerk too?” he asked, somewhat surprised andsimultaneously amused.

Icould honestly smile at that. “Sure, you make it look soeasy.”
There was that smirk again.

“Well,I make it look easy because for me it is,” he was giving me anout again.

“Irealise that and I promise to not let that escape my mind any timesoon,” I said quietly.

Hesounded slightly exasperated now. “So you are going to, what,Maria…pretend from now on that you don’t care about anythingeither?”

“No. I am simply going to try and behonest. Who says your nihilism hasn’t met its match in my perverseidealism,” I figured my false bravado would not be openlycontested.

Heseemed to think the same thing or so I supposed. “This shouldprove to be an interesting experiment then,” he almostsmil…no, it was still a smirk.

Weheaded out to find a place for lunch and he asked me if I had anypreferences. I decided that if I was going to be honest about this‘honesty’ thing then I should say Jamie’s. Jamie’s is arather pricey Italian restaurant owned by the BBC prize chef by thesame name. He asked me why that particular place and I told himbecause I couldn’t afford it on my own and if I was going to beberated I preferred the opposition to at least foot a considerablebill. He appeared to be impressed with my response. I was impressedwith it too. Perhaps that sounds narcissistic. I sure hope so, Idesperately needed a good dose of self-love to off-set my selfloathing and help me hold my own through this.

Over lunch we maderelevant small talk, he asked me about my taste in music and I toldhim I was a Dylan and Cohen fan. Apparently he approved, he said itexplained "a lot". I assumed this was some kind ofreference to my fore-mentioned idealism and let it pass. He onlylistened to classical music, which was easy enough to anticipate:lots of Bach, Wagner, Handel, Puccini. He asked me about my favouritebook this year and I mentioned that I had discovered Borges thisyear. He had no criticism on that score.

“So,really, why did you come today?” he asked.

“Ithink I have developed a very healthy respect for curiosity as anemotion. I think it is severely underrated how compelling curiosityreally is. Especially in a situation like this…”

“Meaning?”

“Well,on every rational, self-preserving note I shouldn’t be here. I knowI will get hurt, you have told me I will get hurt and yet here I am.So the only explanation I have left is curiosity. I am Alice as ofnow,” I said as honestly as anyone should have to under suchspeculation.

“Aptlyput, considering this is the city that gave birth to Alice,”he mused.

“Ohplease! Are you going to pull college rank on me now? You don’t goto Christ Church either,” I said indignantly.

“No,but Balliol outranks St. Anne’s any day,” he scoffed.

Ishould have stuck my tongue out at him. It would have been honest. Itook a sip of my coke instead. It seemed more dignified. It occurredto me quite suddenly that this was not as bad as I had feared until,of course, it became precisely that bad.

“So,how exactly are we going to do this?” he asked, pinning mewith a levelled gaze.

“Dowhat?” I prayed we weren’t actually going to discuss themechanics of this…whatever the hell it was!

“Well,you told me you haven’t really dated much and after what I told youlast time, I was just wondering how we were going to proceed withthis. You must have considered it or you wouldn’t be here,”he said, with what appeared to be some sympathy for my predicamentbut apparently not enough sympathy to avoid the subject entirely. Ihad neglected to mention that ‘not dated much’ meant exactlythree dates in my twenty-six year life span and two kisses. How didpeople do this?

“Ummwell, if I’m being honest…” I stammered.

“Areyou being honest?” he asked flatly.

“Youknow, I really do resent that. If anything, ‘honest’ is reallythe only thing I am being. It doesn’t come as brutally to me as itmay to you but the fact that I haven’t been put off by yourattitude should at least let me off on this score,” I supposeI said this angrily, despite all my efforts to the contrary.

“You’resaying that my brutal honesty doesn’t bother you?!” healmost laughed.

“No,of course it does…” he raised an eye brow in satisfaction. Irecall thinking that this was a truly warped thing to derivesatisfaction from.

“But,it is the brutality and the apathy that bothers me, not the honestyadmitting to them. Obviously I really do appreciate the honestyotherwise nothing would keep me here.”

He did seemto appreciate that. “My particular brand of honesty reallyisn’t the best thing for healthy relationships …I am told.”

Ihad to grin at that, “believe me, even I am not delusionalenough to classify whatever this is as in any way ‘healthy’!”

Helaughed.

Ihad made him laugh. I suppose I lost this bizarre tug –of –warright then. Women really are masochists. Suddenly I was very aware ofhow all my feminist colleagues would excommunicate me from the ‘fold’if they got wind of this. I had just joined that pathetic legion of‘nurture clan’ that needed to save all the 'others' that didn’twant saving. I was officially a cliché. I really didn’t mind itmuch.

Sigh.

Hewas kind enough to let the sex subject filter through the fissures ofthe remaining conversation. It was a sort of unspoken current thatradiated around us cautiously for the rest of the afternoon. A tacitunderstanding, on both our parts, of how all this would pan out. Hewould go his way and I would go his way and that was that. He wouldnot wait forever, he wasn’t even waiting now. Yet, somehow fortoday it was enough to simply talk about it and for me to get fullyon board with the concept of what this would be.

Fistof all nothing would happen, then perhaps it would happen a few moretimes and then nothing would happen all over again.

Alaya Vigyan

I don’t quite remember when I read about it or where for that matter but I haven’t ever forgotten this phrase. I believe it is Sanskrit for a house where one goes on throwing into the basement things they want to do but do not. I suppose the trouble with me is that I live in that basement as I ‘pretend’ to exist outside the house.

I suppose one could say that independence and the realisation that one is finally in charge of oneself brings along with it a hard look at the ‘self’ in question. In the past I have gone to great lengths to avoid this very confrontation and it is not something I take lightly. My sanity - hangs as it does by a thread - depends on my believing my illusions absolutely. My optimism, my insistence on pretty alternate realities and my overt idealism rests on consistently resisting the truth that I am actually a cynic. That in truth I believe in nothing and I feel even less. I must pretend for myself more than anyone else, or else all my I’s fall down. I was seven when my first therapist told me that I was ‘very creative’. In therapy that is code for ‘escapist’. I also discovered years later when I read his reports that he perceived me to be extremely manipulative. He noted that I easily preempted his changing tones and the tenure of his every question and told him exactly what he wanted to hear. He said I had astonishing control over my emotions and never let my face betray any sign of weakness. He wrote that I smiled at all the wrong things. He found me endearing because I was altogether too perceptive but in a quiet, inquisitive, blushing sort of way. He also observed that I would collapse under the burden of my mental ministrations and my grandiose emotional cover-ups. He stated that my behaviour, if it continued, would lead to an emotional breakdown. He predicted a collapse of the facade, most likely a suicide attempt. He recommended me for mild shock therapy at eleven. I had the first of my three subsequent ‘collapses’ three years later.

I have never really been able to view any of it as an illness though. I don’t suppose anyone who is depressed ever views it as an illness… it is merely an ‘awareness’. I am one of the select few that realise that perhaps it would simply be more convenient for me if life were to end today because I would not have to go to the bank or feel alone or pick out what to wear. Many people feel that way…not many feel that way all the time. Even fewer people cover it up with rainbows and ice-cream. I am all too aware that I don’t react to things as most people expect me too. I do not get angry…ever or perhaps it is prudent to say I cannot express anger…ever. I find it a terrifying emotion, perhaps because I have witnessed all too clearly how easily anger morphs into violence, madness. I am told now by the two friend-like acquaintances that I have not managed shake off with my attitude that this is why I don’t have relationships or friends or …what they classify as ‘a life’. And here I always thought it was because I was merely terrified of not being liked!

I argue with them vehemently about how my constant ‘calm’ shows how evolved I am, that it has nothing to do with being numb. I struggle in vain to push my puns into profundity but there is a problem. They are not stupid and don’t accept any of my neologisms for life. They can quote back just as much Nietzsche and Rimbaud without needing to live it like I do to ‘feel’ unique or…something. I find myself to be little more than a verbal fidget in their presence, trying in vain to explain that the reason I prefer to stay in my room or read in the park over bar-hopping is because I simply find all company ultimately exhausting. Perhaps I have been educated beyond my intelligence. Reading people rather than talking to people, thinking rather than doing, lying rather than living…perhaps it is all finally beginning to lose its appeal. I can feel my Utopia fray around the edges as everything it was covering up struggles to swallow me all over again.

Perhaps it is because I fell in love with a nihilist and he made me realise that secretly I was one all along. I don’t want to confront this information, let alone acknowledge it so I now avoid stalking him. We had three conversations over the past two months and each one left me shaken to the core. I asked him what degree he was reading for at Oxford and he told me it was a Dphil in Theoretical Physics. He was polite enough to return the favour and I told him that I was doing my Mst in Women’s Studies and that my research focused on the human rights situation with regards to religion, Nizam-e-Adl and all that. He searched my face for something and then asked whether I believed in any of it.

“What?” I asked.

“Human Rights.” He responded.

I didn’t really know what to say so I said “Don’t you?!”

“I don’t believe in anything. It’s a moot point. I am curious why you do.”

“Well I suppose I like to think we all should have some guarantees just because we are human. Personal dignity being one of them,” perhaps I sounded sullen, I don’t know.

“Yes but ‘liking to think’ and ‘should’s’ aren’t the same thing as believing. Actually, I take that back: they are exactly the same thing. That’s why I don’t really believe in anything,” he said calmly.

I was quiet for a moment as I took in his point. “I can agree with that, but…”

“Can you?” he raised his eye brow at me, smirking a little.

“Yes, but I also think that if we didn’t have any standard of what ‘should’ happen, we would never have any motivation to change what does happen,” there that sounded good enough, didn’t it?

“So you believe that motivations and wants can change things?” he countered.

“Well, perhaps not all things but certainly some things,” I realised belatedly that I was way in over my head.

“But we have no control over those ‘some’ things do we?” he said,

“No, but I don’t think that should stop us from trying for…”

“...For?” he echoed.

“Something, anything” I countered stubbornly.

“I do” and then he got up abruptly, leaving me to sulk for the rest of the week as I was hounded by all my own some’s that had nearly driven me mad. I kept telling myself that I had overcome that blackness that I could escape it because I never let it fester. I didn’t believe in self pity. Then I heard his monotone echo in my ear reminding me that just because I didn’t believe in giving in to self pity, didn’t mean that self pity didn’t drive me in other ways.

I took to working on my papers and my research kept me busy and is keeping me busy. I started writing again, fiction this time. Somewhere in the middle of escaping his words over the next few weeks I even managed to get my US visa. I would overcome this odd little bout of cynicism. I had overcome so much worse. I spent my days strolling through Oxford listening to audiobooks on my iPod and sketching random walls and trees. This city is truly magnificent in the summer and I relished it like only I could. It is hard to hold on to cynicism when one is surrounded by colour. Then I ran into him outside the Bodleian Library on a Tuesday afternoon. He was sitting on the grass reading…well, math. I didn’t really have the courage to approach him again so I thought I would just pass right by him and into the library but he noticed me staring at him. He greeted me in his usual monotone and asked me to join him.

“Were you going to pretend you hadn’t seen me?” he smirked. I could tell he was enjoying my obvious discomfort.

“I really didn’t see you,” I stuttered back at him.

“Which is why you stopped and changed directions, of course,” he asked.

For some reason he was oblivious to how impolite it was to slap someone in the face with the knowledge that you were all-too aware of their obsession with you. I don’t really know how badly I was blushing… it was a habit of face.

“You blush quite violently, you know?” he observed calmly, the expression on his face unwavering. So now I knew. I also knew that he was cruel. I chose not to acknowledge either observation as I sat down.

“So, you like me.” he stated in a bored voice, while staring at me intently waiting for a reaction. Seriously what was wrong with him? Was I not allowed to salvage any measure of pride? I could actually feel tears build up and prick the back of my eyes. I had never been this embarrassed and I had never felt this vulnerable. And heaven knows that 'vulnerable' was my default setting. I was also horribly paralyzed, so getting up and running was not an option.

“My mistake, believe me I think I just got over it,” I whispered, it was the only way to keep the tears out of my voice.

“No you didn’t, actually. If you liked me in the first place you already knew that I wouldn’t care either way, so if anything, my being a complete ass right now would only make you like me more.” He wasn’t triumphant, at least he didn’t sound triumphant. He was what he always was: brilliant, incisive, honest and bored.

“Yes I get it, I’m a masochist. I won’t bother you anymore.” I said in a rush, I really needed to get out of here before I broke down.

“You don’t bother me. I am flattered actually. You are a lot more observant than most women I meet and I wouldn’t mind in the least getting to know you better. As long as we were clear on what it all means,” he said calmly.

I have never hated myself more than for asking the next question that followed, “And what does it all mean?”

“Nothing,” he said. “If we were to see each other it would be about sex and that’s all it would ever be. I don’t really ‘believe’ in relationships” he was waiting for me to react now, I could tell. He wanted me to be offended or petulant or perhaps violent so he could safely put me in one of the neat little 'woman' boxes in his mind. I could tell that he had been on the receiving end of all of those reactions before.

So I took a deep breath, “No of course you don’t.”

He raised his eye brows slightly. I don’t know how I managed it but I was perfectly calm now.

“Although I do think you have presumed a bit much. I won’t deny following you or liking you either but the fact that I never tried to do anything about it should clue you in on the fact that I don’t ‘expect’ anything from you. And that’s what really bothers you isn’t it, ‘expectations’? Well trust me on this it bothers me more. I expect nothing, which is why I did not try. So you humiliating me like this doesn’t really serve any purpose. Although I am sure it is extremely entertaining.”

I was done, I was even slightly proud of myself when I noticed that he was surprised by my response. Of course he didn’t betray any overt reaction, just a subtle tensing of his jaw but that ghost of a smirk disappeared. I got up and left.

Then I cried.

It has been several weeks since that particular fiasco and I have been rummaging frantically through the drawers of my old dreams to keep myself occupied. I have been editing old short stories I had written that I never thought worth much; I have been writing poems for poetry competitions; I have been applying for jobs with the BBC, the United Nations and well anywhere that would have me. I have also been listening to Saeen Zahoor and Iqbal Bano, which tells me that I must be more miserable than I thought. I know all too well that I am barely keeping the blackness at bay. The mere fact that I haven’t left my room in six days is due to the fact that I sporadically burst into tears without provocation, rhyme or reason. My research continues as I sift my day through Pakistani news stories for my thesis and I was finally beginning to approach some semblance of a schedule until today.

He wrote me an email. It took me almost twenty minutes to decide not to delete it and then another ten minutes to read it. It was short, two lines and as with all our confrontations it was a challenge.

I realise you will probably decline, you should decline… but I was wondering if we could have lunch tomorrow. I shall be outside the Ashmolean at 1:30 pm.
-N
I know perfectly well that I should decline and I know perfectly well that I won’t decline. He is right, I am a masochist but then again I have been waiting to feel for a long, long, long time now. I shall feel this, whatever this is or will be.

Wish me luck Captain, I haven’t finished anything in forever.