The barely bearable banalities of being.
I lost my words today. Quite literally.
An entire notebook full of them, left behind amidst cups of coffee and busy tourists.
Exposed to the mercilessness of a burning sun.
I obsessed for a little while,
about the potential humiliation arising from people reading my scattered thoughts
Until I realized they must appear incoherent to the point of complete unintelligibility.
Or perhaps, whoever succeeds in deciphering them will be my true soul-mate.
So, in a Hansel&Gretel fashion, I simply threw some breadcrumbs out,
not hoping to find my way home, but to be found.
However silly and banal the thought, it produced in me a brief relief,
and soothed the worst Angst caused by my temporary aphasia.
In retrospect, I am ashamed of this cheap and ordinary consolation.
Next I started thinking about all those lost words.
The thoughts not yet finished and how now they never will be.
And I contemplated how vain it is, this writing my thoughts down,
as though they were more valuable than others, as if they matter more, in some pseudo-divine way.
This incessant obsession with retainment.
Everything must be kept; must be strapped to this bundle of life that is me.
Why?
"The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant."
Was Kundera right?
Does it all come down to this abstract, unidentifiable fear
that one day that last piece of me will sprout wings and simply fly away
taking me with it?
Just like the narrator in U-P Hallbergs Grand Tour, with his head full of quotes,
I, too, greedily reach out for fragments, figments, phrases, fantasises-
And I pile them on top of each other, building a barricade to protect me from life.
Ironically, the answers are all there, they lie side by side, buried at the heart of that wall,
trapped in between the carefully placed and artistically crafted bricks of words.
If only someone asked the right question, maybe this wall would crumble?
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