Memoirs of the present.

Every old man must write their memoirs and often it turns out to be an elegy. I won’t do that. When I am old I won’t write an elegy. I will write a kick ass novel about how awesome being old is- and I will write about my angelic grand-children. But I am young now and there’s a reason why I am writing this. I am twenty five years old and I already feel old and dying. I told her this with that same disgust laced authoritative voice.

‘I won’t do this. I am too old for this stuff.’

She looked up and said. ‘Shut up.’

She is the beauty queen kind. Smart, good-looking and full of words that I don’t understand or find too trivial. She inhabits a world whose station I left years ago and I feel if she had known me then she wouldn’t have taken me by the hand and professed all the love she had for me.
‘Here’s looking at you kid.’ I could have said to her, but then she didn’t know about Casablanca, since I had already asked.

It was kind of funny to hear her say just that.

 
‘Shut up, old man.’


She was a little younger than me, you know. If years were measured in days- she would just be a week behind. That was how I thought I would tell her story to others. But there was nothing in this story to be told- a zebra while crossing a road got run over because there were no people on it. You see that’s how this story would seem like if it’s ever told. There’s no love. Can stories not be told without love?

Perhaps they can, so I will give it a try.

Yes, this is the truth -I am not in love with her. I am merely acting it, for the fun-things that happen whenever I am with her. Her energy is something I feel I had missed out in my earlier life that had been spent around nice-bookish people. I am playing out all of the love games of youth, for I feel I have grown out of some experiences that a writer or an artist should feel, so that- 

“now that he is all grown up and mature he can comprehend it better and produce it in his art.”

God, I am such a deceitful person, I think sometimes. Morality, if I recall a political philosophy lecture was something on the lines of feelings. I feel bad at times when I imagine myself deceiving someone. I wish not to.

I realized I had grown older for another reason - it was so easy to fall in love with a beautiful girl when you were young. You didn’t care about the walking checklists that you had set up in your head- she needs to watch these movies, read these books, not be too materialistic (still a no-no), I mean who the hell thinks about all these things when they are young? All you want is a nice person walking by your side, preferably well adorned and then sometimes you go peek into a feminist’s diary and high five yourself in the mirror. For shallow people like me it worked well, very goddamn well. But with time you grow careful about love. And as the years take a toll on your sleeves, you grow into a skeptical optimist. I must admit, with age it’s difficult to fall in love. So, I think I am old, for I can’t love this gorgeous girl the way I wanted to- in the poetry of daily words.

 For people like me aesthetics have been a driving factor-in life and elsewhere. I am nobody now, but still deep within my heart I consider myself a writer and an artist, maybe that’s why even if the whole world vetoes me out I think this honest self-expression will somehow find its way into a stranger’s heart.  This is one of the reason why aesthetics is so important to me. Beauty should be everywhere- even in the gutter if you find it. (As long it’s not medically deleterious, then artists like me recommend it.)

Do you really want to know how I do this? Fine, I will tell you. You might think my words are borrowed, but I have felt them and that’s why I can write it with absolute certainty- for I know, I know this -

you gotta be a little unlucky in love and you gotta suffer a little in life- not the deliberate ones where you take a razor and shave off your vein. You let life happen to you and try not to escape it, you try to think it through and help yourself, and that’s where it comes from- all this introspection and the philosophizing which again ends up being candidly futile. But it does make art!

So in the end of you might think what’s the use of all this? Well, didn’t you heal a little? Don’t you see things a little differently now? Was it better then or now? Our answers may vary, but for the sake of optimism let’s rely on the adage that our forefathers bestowed upon us- something on the lines of things happening for a good reason.  

There’s always a heart that wants to go back- that wants to relive those moments that were beautiful and could have been lived in a better way. See, that’s what memoirs are about-reflecting on the mighty maze of the past. And they essentially sound like a sad song. I am not writing a memoir of my youth-this is merely anything but a rant, reflecting on the hazel shades of life. All I want to say is that, there had been years of intellectual masturbation with women that now lay behind in time, and if I looked back carefully I did not see much fun in it- perhaps it was worthy of writing book (with all those promises of love and the idea of falling in love with love) which should be done in time: but where was the human experience- the sight, the smell, the touch. What could I find from books, movies and theater? And, I am pretty sure those years were ahead of me too when I will really be old and ugly- when we will still discuss love over our cellphones and make less of it, and never dare to take that leap of love for that single person that would matter- for we will all be seasoned and taught by time. Damn, don’t we learn pretty fast?

 
So, I have decided to live in the moment. There is a girl who loves me, and for once in my life I will allow a person to love ‘me’ and it won’t be the other way round. I am safe in somebody’s love. Let her love me. She has everything to lose, but then she is young and I tell myself, she will recover if her heart is broken. Oh, the idea of love, how it takes up our youth and swallows it and changes the prism of our vision. As an artist, I am bound to think of such stuff and if you’ll just excuse me, I will continue.

“Never make the same mistake again.”

And this is where I come in- the self-proclaimed artist.

I think that’s the punch line that works in many matters of life except love. You might be a skeptic or a cynic since your heart’s been broken, perhaps you have written all fancy poems about it. But I will tell you this, there’s no other way round here in loves’ florid villa- you got to make that mistake again, give your everything and try look like a fool every time because that’s what love demands of you. I know it’s a little difficult and people might question your morals because after all-
how could you love again?

‘This is cheating!’ some would scorn out loud.

Don’t explain them shit because they are afraid that you might find out what they never dared to. Always make that mistake. Because I will tell you the rewards are a life that reeks of spring flowers shining by the spectral moon. Love is making the same mistake over and over again.
And here I am pretty safe in the arms of whom I thought was a youngster, so very different in habit and taste that she resembles a Martian- and mind you I am not in love with her, but the tragedy of all my stories are this-
when I write about someone, no matter how less it is,
I am always in love with that
person.