There are moments in ones' life when we come intermittently face to face with our mortality, the moments are few and far between, but they exist. I wonder, now that I see my life perpetually trounced by outward phantoms , that I am prone to live vicariously through my words.
It is not a writers curse, as I would so like to believe - rather a cowards penance. Most men and women, who write, string together the words to dictate a life already lived or conceived. I, on the other hand, do so to avoid the latter. My words are the substitute for the journey, I write, because I come to see now that I cannot live and the words make this epitaph seem prettier somehow. Inanely glamorous and tinted in a softer hue than abject failure.
There are some select few, who are destined to go through life and not around it, sadly I begin to realize that I am not one of them. Even when life has left me little choice - backed me away imperceptibly in an unbearably cramped corner, I wish my way around it. Never, do I merely walk the path stretching out before me.
I paint it in my head, choreograph it in my senses, but NEVER do I feel it run through my fingertips.
Is mortality being faced with death? Or is it waiting for it with a smile? Or more likely, something wedged uncomfortably in between. I suppose what irks me the most about ‘musts’, ‘don’t’s’ and ‘end’s’ is the black out at the base of each word; there are no windows to these words. Only tar and cement to plaster every tiny opening. Perhaps the shortest path to Heaven 'is', in fact, straight through Hell.
It is not a writers curse, as I would so like to believe - rather a cowards penance. Most men and women, who write, string together the words to dictate a life already lived or conceived. I, on the other hand, do so to avoid the latter. My words are the substitute for the journey, I write, because I come to see now that I cannot live and the words make this epitaph seem prettier somehow. Inanely glamorous and tinted in a softer hue than abject failure.
There are some select few, who are destined to go through life and not around it, sadly I begin to realize that I am not one of them. Even when life has left me little choice - backed me away imperceptibly in an unbearably cramped corner, I wish my way around it. Never, do I merely walk the path stretching out before me.
I paint it in my head, choreograph it in my senses, but NEVER do I feel it run through my fingertips.
Is mortality being faced with death? Or is it waiting for it with a smile? Or more likely, something wedged uncomfortably in between. I suppose what irks me the most about ‘musts’, ‘don’t’s’ and ‘end’s’ is the black out at the base of each word; there are no windows to these words. Only tar and cement to plaster every tiny opening. Perhaps the shortest path to Heaven 'is', in fact, straight through Hell.
What do I want?
A mind exalted beyond mortality? For there is no such thing. Plato is dead and I hardly think it matters to him that we remember his name. Is it a run-on sentence that I wish for, perpetually flawed? Yes I suppose that may be it.
For I loathe the abject finality of ordinary words on tombstones' that are left behind to summarize the entirety of a soul. People use words like Beloved Mother, Daughter and Friend, just as carelessly and cause-lessly as they do 'Blue' or 'Dog' or 'Paintbrush'.
‘In loving memory of’….words that say less than nothing.
There are no run-on sentences for tombstones. None bother to voice “Beloved Mother, who made pancakes on Sundays and loved about- to-rain cobalt skies” or “In loving memory of my daughter who hummed the ‘happy days’ theme in the morning and a Sparkles anthem every night before she floated off into Neverlands, yet unbreached”. No, there are only monosyllables at the end. That and full stops.
It hurts me, more than I can say that people no longer start sentences with “Once upon a time” and end them with “And they lived Happily Ever After”. I fear, that they too, already realise that the few who believe them, are destined to be broken by both.
And were an epitaph to be my story
I’d have a short one ready for my own
I would have written of me on my stone
I have a lover’s quarrel with the world.
‘In loving memory of’….words that say less than nothing.
There are no run-on sentences for tombstones. None bother to voice “Beloved Mother, who made pancakes on Sundays and loved about- to-rain cobalt skies” or “In loving memory of my daughter who hummed the ‘happy days’ theme in the morning and a Sparkles anthem every night before she floated off into Neverlands, yet unbreached”. No, there are only monosyllables at the end. That and full stops.
It hurts me, more than I can say that people no longer start sentences with “Once upon a time” and end them with “And they lived Happily Ever After”. I fear, that they too, already realise that the few who believe them, are destined to be broken by both.
And were an epitaph to be my story
I’d have a short one ready for my own
I would have written of me on my stone
I have a lover’s quarrel with the world.
(Robert Frost)
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