“The best is the deep quiet in which I live and grow against the world, and harvest what they cannot take from me by fire or sword” – Goethe
I have taken up an old habit once more and it is oddly refreshing to discover that I can re-visit past trivialities with such ease. I am playing solitaire again and remembering how much I used to enjoy not needing to surf the web, type up resume’s or worry about checking my mail box for emails that never arrive. It is a relief to re-discover the simple pleasure of still finding myself capable of whiling away the hours mind-numbingly playing solitaire. My aunt recently noticed my new past time and commented on it.
“It’s the word I can’t stand ‘Soliatire’,” she said with a shudder. And I shall always treasure this fundamental difference between us…on her behalf, for it gives me hope that one of us seeks glorious hope over the oddly bitter, blandness of truth. You see, it is only love of the word that makes me love the game.
“Yes, but that’s just because the name represents a morbid sort of truth,” I said.
“Absolutely not! That isn’t truth. No one is all alone,” she added vehemently.
I became silent at that, which is my usual response to any conviction that I hold but simultaneously realize I cannot convince (nor do I want to) another of. I am incapable of arguing about ‘the big things’ because I recognize that our views on all the big unanswerable’s stem from individual experience and yet I can carry a conversation about them with relative ease. Perhaps it is an irrational fear I harbor of accidentally proselytizing. I loathe the pulpit tradition of preaching answers to unanswerable questions. I do not think I could stomach that in myself.
Yet, I long for such conviction and I am envious that I cannot find it or even want it. After all, if we human beings are the sum of all that has happened to us; the people we have encountered and the way we are wired to perceive those dualities, then by definition ‘conviction’ cannot be taught or passed on or somehow triggered. Whether or not one appreciates the word ‘Solitaire’ for what it means, is in a similar vein to whether or not one can inherently view and measure the world in a proverbial glass of water that is either ‘half full’ or ‘half empty’. Sponsors of the latter metaphor will never really admit or embrace their position because it ‘sounds’ wrong, even if it is true as the case may be. I, for one, know with reasonable certainty that the only limited freedoms I have ever known, I have found in loneliness. It is a twisted impasse to navigate: Solitaire. Because the word rests, not on belief or perception but rather on …countenance. It is that lingering query that rests on the fringe of all things. One can rationalize it away but one cannot revolutionize it.
Does one believe that life is spent alone, surrounded by people who can never know the ‘you’ that lurks in the corner of your skin; your address; your bank account; your diploma’s and your photographs?
Or
Does one believe that we all tend to think we are special and that is precisely what connects us into an intricately woven tapestry of souls, spaces and the side-effects of solipsism? If everyone is special then by extension no one can be special.
Those that tend to believe the former (whether or not they admit to it) fall largely into that odd fixture of never knowing how to live in this world without being of this world. They tend to be quite comfortable living outside the world. It is ‘the world’ that is uncomfortable with their existence, with their innate ability to function outside of the social and sociable premise. Minorities of all varieties always offend majorities because they provide a constant reminder of how the latter has not yet completely ‘won’. How any majority will always just be that, a majority, persistently at the precipice of becoming a monolith but never quite managing it. They know, they recognize invariably that they are always alone and that ‘people’ must always be kept at bay lest the tide of their emotions, their needs, their wants and their …issues swallow the individual. That the frail spark of self, having sprung up in spite of all that surrounds it shall be squelched. And so they defend it ferociously in their fortress. They are that misshapen, congealed puzzle piece that is left behind once the picture is made and complete. They are unnecessary and yet that is their only claim for clemency… that they do not aspire to be more than what they ‘are’. Embracing the word ‘solitaire’ means knowing that you are enough for ‘you’ to survive and also knowing that this admission somehow bars you from the world outside and those that live and flourish in it. To flourish in the world requires the pretence of mimicry, of marginalization, of momentary, monetary couplings that mean nothing.
The other creed that learns to detest the word ‘solitaire’ tends to prosper, simply because they are able to seek solace in society. They can love and also be loved (in my experience, it is the latter that is trial some). They have learned to walk among the sea of faces and not trip in the tide, to dust themselves off and move in unison with the battalion. They march for progress, for the constant illusion of movement and money. They learn to survive and to do it well. They travel through time in the perpendicular, tangent North and they grow old in so many mirrors bearing the same reflection.
I presently traverse in terrifying limbo, knowing that much as I would love to delay all decisions, life is all about knowing your take on that infernal glass; on this confounded word; on those blasted rose-tinted glasses. Life cannot be carved or commissioned from within this in-between layer of time and perception that rests uncomfortably wedged beneath the real, above the unreal and beyond the surreal. This place reminds me of the 24th century story of Chuang Tzu, who dreamed of a butterfly and was unable to decide if he was the man who had dreamt of being a butterfly or a butterfly who now dreamt of being a man. Was it the dream that lived him or the other way around? And yet for both of them, the dreamer and the dreamed one, the conflict lies not in awakening but rather of choosing how to keep dreaming.
The need to choose this premise, and quickly, stems primarily from the fact that I have decided to go back to Pakistan in October and work again, while applying for my PhD. It also rests in the undeniable ‘solitaire’ truth of having turned twenty-six this year and realizing what this means back home. It means that re-joining my grandparents will mean being unceremoniously thrust back into the Lahore marriage-market as ‘soon-to-be-going-bust stock’. Sadly, it does not do (in Pakistan) to insinuate that one may just not be suited for constant companionship, much as there may be times when one craves it. To be honest, I am not even sure whether I am arguing for or against marriage most of the time. I am perfectly clear, however, on the fact that the institution terrifies me either way. If I am lucky enough to be happily wed, housed and family-ed then I must re-discover who I am (a tedious re-evaluation) or where I shall pocket Beentherella and her whimsical, beautiful nightmares. If I am not and grow old and alone then I will have to live with Beentherella forever and that is an equally petrifying proposition. I am told this particular catch-22 is really supposed to hit home at 30. Apparently, I have four more years to self-combust.
“You’re a girl. Girls get married,” my grandmother tells me flatly.
I know better than to argue with a seventy-seven year old woman who has raised five ‘girls’.
