He inventoried all the ways in which the world disappointed him, and they were many and could not be forgotten. Legion scars were the outcome of his musings on his life on earth and his taking note of them, but he made sure, when he completed his list of injuries, to stow away the notes and try to live a life in any case, even if it be a life lived always amidst disaster.
When he came to, after being drunk on complaining about life, he stood up from where he was sitting, his mouth performed something close to a smile although not a smile, his heart beat with something like confidence and self-esteem although it was neither of these, and he began the walk, first to the door, then, after making it to the door, already ajar, he walked out to greet the world, which admittedly smelled of decay the day he faced it but still impressed him with ambiguous delights.
On the road between his home and a friend’s home, a road not at all long–in fact it was a short road, a road, even with midday traffic and cars blaring and beeping out to one another, where it was possible not only to see the man you called a friend coming from his house, but even to hear him if he should call out to you–he came to that friend who, like he was now, out for a stroll without any express purpose: his friend’s gait was like his own in meandering the paved walk in silence and not greeting anyone or anything on the way.
But when, heading south, he reached his friend his friend, the other lonely one enduring his loneliness with utter lack of expression–he must have made his case against life in solitude, like the man had before–this other man walking but walking north did not stay closed mouth, but let the lips part, let the tongue dart out, and said something amazing to the man, something he would never forget and never would have written if the thought of his encounter with his friend had visited him earlier, when he put pen to paper and blade to skin in rejection of so many things.
How proper that we should live in a place, the friend spoke in quiet words even though the atmosphere around him was full of interfering sounds, where the sun, or at least something like it, never sets. How fortunate we are that we cannot hide from all of this, this dreadful questionable splendor! He opened his mouth wide with the thought, and wide too were his arms, as wide as his body was tall.
It wasn’t a time for conversation, nor did any conversation occur, because the friend then left without another word, leaving the man to whom he had told his puzzle all alone on the road, except for a strong man in filthy clothes but upright posture pushing a shopping cart down the walkway, not even leaning due to the habit of leaning into the bar when pushing a shopping cart–one would never want to call this tall man pushing a cart a beggar, one would have to meet the brawny one first.
The one who had earlier made such a damning fuss about all things and who had cursed life to the utmost didn’t have a thought about what his friend had said to him so quietly as to whisper, there was no inner dialogue on account of the exchange. But he was transformed, and faced the world quite differently than he had a moment ago. He did silently whisper thanks to his friend, if this counts as approaching conversation.
Now life, although if he wanted he could take himself back home, open the drawer where the papers were hidden or pull up his shirt sleeves under which were hidden the scars, and remind himself of life’s travesties–he could very well recount the entire inventory of them, as if by heart, since it took such pains to write to begin with–although if he wanted–no, even if he didn’t want to–he could bring to burrow in his head and heart all these malicious and festering worms in the body of life, life was like a gift tossed out to him for his undeserved possession and filled with a joy stranger than any he had ever felt before.
With or without any remembrance of itself or any inventory of itself, it was all the same for him now: joy and wonder, wondrous joy and joyous wonder. He wondered now where he was heading anyways, why he had left the house at all. Although he realized now more than ever before that the house was a silly thing and like a trifle against the storm, when it comes, when it must come–whether you are inside or outside at the time makes no difference at all–he decided to turn around and enter his home and sit where he had been at the start, and try, for once, tapping the tune on his skirted knee, to write a song. The song came to him alright, and it was like nothing he had ever heard before, with notes stranger than the day was full of undoings, but tender notes all the same.
Love the Dust 