items of the history of others

I managed to see two movies recently which had some effect in restoring the general faith in human beings. I imagine this was necessary...given that I have plenty of evidence to the contrary amassing from years of experience.

People tend to be self-centered and neglectful of their essential natures. Including of course, myself. But in my case, it's rather easier to get away with being nothing. I tend to make no presumptions that I'm supposed to be anything more than that shadowy nothing behind the curtains and allow others to make such categorical errors in my place on my behalf as they are often wont to do. I cannot assume that even my pitiful standing as a human being is a given, so I must toil along on the most basic levels. So that in most respects, it is an easier path to walk where my mind can wander aimlessly over the valleys of human thought, pondering the mystical, or imagining the vicissitudes as what a life would actually feel like.

That doesn't seem like the general appetite. I am bombarded, almost physically, by people whose efforts are to impress upon me some natural appeals of their persona. They fail miserably of course. I think it is the fact they try so hard that offends me most. Or perhaps that they are so obviously trying, but have not the wit to exercise themselves in a manner which would actually appeal to anyone but themselves. It's the effortless ones that I actually watch. Where life is easier, almost like mine. But with something in it.

A glass without any water in it. What purpose does it serve? Is it still a glass? This isn't quite the chicken or the egg. Or the tree falling in the forest. The same sort of question always circling. Like a ghastly crow or raven swooping and pecking away at my sand castle. Maybe it wasn't supposed to be this way. Where decay and disuse are opposed by the scattered and chaotic flashes of a few burning embers. Perhaps all dreams are best that way. Smothered by the darkness of night. Where no bright sun cannot bear to go and only a gray illusion spreads over the pale spring of our morning faces when we wake from them. I suppose if most people had the same sorts of dreams they might think the same thing. But obviously this is not so.

I often wonder why people who are so obviously faking their presence on this earth are apparently untroubled by their nightmares. But apparently they have no glass in which to pour them out into and drown in, as I have. It's easy to blend in where there isn't anything to speak out of. It's like having your jaw broken open and being silenced, unable to scream for the agony of it all. Watching empty shells paraded around before the fireplace as shadow puppets of the people who actually were there once. When all you appear as is a shadow, it's easy to blend in there. It's not so easy to remain there when you remember you were not always so. When you were once called "friend" and not "acquaintance" by the only one you really noticed had noticed the difference in the two. That's the real nightmare, that flickering candle of hope dancing in the night's cool and soothing winds before it casts its last shadows on the wall.

So in a way. Being an old man with a lifetime of wasted memories isn't so bad. I haven't enough small children to glare at where they traverse the lawn. I haven't any prized possessions, being a spartan in my manners, to squabble over. And I haven't saved anything for anyone. I suppose these would be meaningful events. Something worth filling a glass for a toast.