Going IV

(...)

He stood there, hiding his face against the door frame. He couldn't go. He didn't feel as if he were strong enough to stay, nor weak enough to leave.

As if he wasn't strong enough to leave, nor weak enough to stay.

He turned around to look at her once more. And as he felt his head spinning, he picked up the bouquet he'd dropped on the floor. Slowly, he walked up to her, watching while she kneeled and punched the floor with all her might, as if it had wronged her terribly. She stood up suddenly, and he took the last steps really carefully, lest he should scare her away. He touched her lightly on the shoulder, and she turned around, slowly, puzzled to be tenderly touched. Their eyes met.

She did not show any emotion, and he tried to do the same, not to betray any signs of desperation. He offered her the flowers, in silence.

"C'mon Jean... Take the flowers. Just... take them. Please..." The words echoed within, without ever finding their way out. She looked at him, big eyed - and started backing away from him, shaking her head in an insanely slow, persistent manner, her eyes insistently glued to his. She knew him; and yet, she knew him not. As she withdrew, he shook his head as well, in complete synchrony with her, in complete denial. Suddenly, he threw the flowers on the floor, while he pulled her close to him with the other hand. And with both of them, he wrapped her in his arms.

She grasped at his back, as if trying to return the embrace, but having only a vague idea of how to do it. 

He buried his face in her hair, miserable. And the smell of it... He'd never forgotten it - now he knew he never would.

So that, right there, that was despair.

She moved in his arms, trying to break free from the embrace he'd longed for. He didn't want to let go - and suddenly, she seemed to have lost all her strength, she felt like a rag doll in his arms. But she fought so clumsily he had no option but to let her go. She buried her face in her hands, hiding behind her hair; always without a sound.

He looked at her, then looked away, utterly lost. But when he looked back at her, it was just in time to catch her fall: the minute she took her face out of her hands, she had such lack of will of her own that she'd let gravity pull her down. He tried to drag her back to her bed, but instead, she threw herself on the floor, reaching for the flowers; she grabbed them, thrashing them against the floor so desperately they crumbled.

And the look, the pain on her face... it was just too much for him to bear.

He strode across the room, and in a moment he was looking out the only window there was. He leaned on the window sill, feeling weak, his breathing heavy and his eyes burning. He...

She was... running? Before he'd fully understood what she was doing, she threw herself on him, holding him from behind with all the pathetic strength in her weakened arms. He startled, and tried to loosen himself from her hold, taking large desperate steps, dragging her along - but she wouldn't let go. As he moved, her grip slid from his waist to his left foot. And the more he moved around, roughly, but never hurting her, the more she'd hold on to him, crying, silently.

He fell. She finally released him, and he stayed right there on the floor. He wouldn't...

She ran towards him once again, and he got up on one knee to catch her, but instead, she climbed his right shoulder. With the greatest of ease, he stood up with her on his shoulder, he'd carry her to her bed - but immediately she was somewhat slowly diving towards the ground once again. He slowed her fall even more, and she landed softly on the cold tiles. She lay there motionless for a split second, wrapped around her wrinkled gown, before she started pulling him, trying to get him on the floor by her side. He resisted as delicately as he could, trying instead to pull her back up - she let go of his hand, got up, and made a dash to the window.

She was going to jump.

He caught her midair, she didn't fight. He brought her back to the ground, and safe to his arms again. She seemed to feel that embrace more than she'd done before, she seemed to enjoy it.

Nurse. Visiting time was over.

She freed herself from his arms, and fought the Nothing again, frantically. He couldn't look at it anymore, but could do nothing else but look. He wouldn't cry...

He stole away.

...Unless he had his eyes open.

He's an adorable old man now, with a sweet smile and melancholy eyes. He came back home 40 years ago from the war. His parents have been dead for 10 years, and he misses them. He's got no wife nor children, no one to leave behind.

Except the quiet old woman at the institution, with no smile, big eyes and aquiline nose. The quiet old woman he visits every Sunday between 3 and 4pm.

Updating

Why are people always so obsessed with the new? Don't get me wrong, I love the new - but I just wish it was optional, instead of inevitable. I hate inevitability.

Microsoft came up with Windows 7 cus Windows Vista sucks big time, period. Ok, I get that. But... why did they come up with Windows Vista, when Windows XP works so damn fine?

Why can't we just get on with the old?

Celebrating (?)

Really? Already? Damn, it's time to go home. If only I knew where that was.

"There is a feeling/ That you should just go home/ And spend a lifetime/ Finding out just where that is"

(Cathedrals, by Jump Little Children)

Quoting favorites I (or: On Missing)

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody"
(The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger)

Top 3 ending, for sure. And obviously, top 3 book.

And so very true.

It also led me to my Emptying post. "I wonder where all those people have gone"
We stop wondering a while, don't we? We have to let people fade away from our lives. We stop wondering, and we stop missing them. It's necessary.
How sad.

Going III

(...)

They opened the door, he entered. His heart gave a leap: there she was.
He would've been able to spot her silhouette anywhere, anytime. His hands had known that figure just once, but so completely it'd been enough. And if he hadn't been able to see it, he'd felt its presence from miles.
There was her hair falling over her shoulders, in startlingly fair curls, and her aquiline nose. She was standing by the window, looking at the opposite wall. Completely still in her blue hospital gown, she'd not seen him yet.
He gave the first steps towards her, with a ready smile on his lips - and stopped. She was stretching out her arms into the nothing with great painful effort, trying to make that suffocating nothingness not close in on her. She shook her legs in a frenzy, as if trying to release them from invisible shackles.
Still not moving he watched her, as she curled up on herself, clutching her heart, and all of a sudden, stretched out her arms again, this time towards Heaven. She clutched her heart once again, jerking her head up and down and then stopped, as if she were tired. She remained perfectly still, staring at her right hand, one inch from her face, knees slightly bent and an empty look on her face.

That was his fault. If he hadn't crashed, if they hadn't sent the "lost in action" letter to his family... now he'd never be able to make amends for that. No one would.
He turned to go away.
(...)

Going II

(...)

He'd droped by the florist first. After all, women always appreciated flowers, regardless of their condition. And she'd always loved sunflowers. He didn't even know how to get there - he'd never known, never needed to. Knowing your way down there was for the less fortunate, category he had never belonged to - until now.
The starched buttoned white shirt, the black tie, the bouquet and the address given earned him a commiseration look from the cab driver - look from which he shrinked away, painfully conscious of the sentiment he was liable to awaken in others. But it did not matter in the end, so long as he got to see her. So long as she got to see him alive, back. He was positive her pain would instantly fade away once she saw him.
Narcisistic? No. He just knew it. Because it would be the same with him. If he were in the same situation, he was certain the very sight of her would make it all go away.
He handed the money, not really knowing what he was doing, completely hipnotized by the size of the building. He mentioned her name at the reception, and the girl at the counter looked at him with a glimpse of recognition, as if she'd always known whom he was. As if able to read his mind, the girl answered the non-formulated question: Jean had mentioned him time after time. Everyone there knew him by his name.
Unsure of how that made him feel, he followed her through a series of long white overly clean corridors. The girl left, after showing him to a room furnished with some comfortable-looking chairs, a couple of cream-coloured couches and people just as well-dressed as he was.
With somewhat of a hesitant look at his surroundings, he sat down on the chair closest to the door, while the words "letter", "lost in action" and "mental" whirled around his head incessantly.
(...)

Begging (be it for mercy or for a chip!)

Now who will say life doesn't indeed imitate art?

"So You Think You Can Dance", 2008:



Video captured by a callous and/or insomniac neighbor, 2009:



You bang on that door, sister!

Going

Being alive was nothing. At least, being alive someplace else was nothing. This place, here, this was where being took shape and conveyed a meaning to him. He was finally back.
He ignored the shrill in his spine, as the remembrance of his plane crashing crossed his mind once again. The despair of not having his cries for help listened to, that blue wilderness drawing dangerously close, being utterly alone, looking at her picture and knowing he would never see her again. Never again hold her in his arms, wrap her, shelter her.
Being stranded from everything and everyone he knew, lost in a foreign land unbeknownst to the enemy, always in hiding, always alert, forever in fear.
But then, all of a sudden, they'd won. Just like that.
He'd gotten his decoration, oh yes! But his true award was finally being able to come home. He was finally going back to life. To her.
He'd lost the count of the days, once lost. It wasn't until his being rescued that he found out: seven months. Top it off with the other six months in the Air Force... But then he'd had the comfort of her letters, whereas in the East...
He shrugged it off: why focus on that now? He was going. His parents had been duly notified, and his "lost in action" rectified. He then wrote a letter, telling them the day and the time of his train. And with that, a private letter to her, bearing the same good tidings. She knew he was going back to her, just as he'd promised.

***

Oh, that the human hand could becomingly describe the joyous tears of the reunion! With what abandon and candour were them shed! The pain of losing your son can only be surpassed by the incomparable blessing of having him back from the sea deities! Their happiness seemed endless, and it tears one apart to tell that it was not so.

He had to go to her, and bring her there. Only then would his blessings be fully accounted for.

But the other two smiles faded. And with a shattered heart they told him she wasn't there anymore. He stared.

- Why? Where is she?
(...)