Pacific Nights

Poison of the hour: Sophie’s Choice

It’s been a long time since I’ve been stirred by that melancholy laziness that consumed me for so many years. I’ve been transformed into a rather disorganized dreamer, tracing lines in the tree bark of my imagination. Nineteen and consumed by the words “memory” and “ancient” and “memories of ancient ones” and “ancient memories”…

Sitting, reading, I’m consumed with that helpless feeling of bitersweet, pleasurful restlessness that, for me, has always accompanied that juxtaposition of reality with the fantasy world : That odd incongruity that is inherant in language, especially good language, expressed well.

The story washes on and I find myself bound to the protagonist: Intelligent, cocksure, frustrated. Perusing the contents of a medecine cabinet, staring at the ceiling, sitting in the throes of writer’s block, communing with the spirits of his literary idols, imagining fame and fortune and all that goes with it, living vicariously through the stories he reads and those he writes. Stirred to an almost erotic degree by a well tuned sentence, the cadence of a phrase eliciting emotions that he did not know existed. Dreaming again.

Always dreaming.

Plotting and planning and doing, never disappointed, but always just short of where we want to be.

The old lady across the way looks out her window for just a second, and then disappears back into her little world. Isolated, like so many others, by a wall of venetian blinds as impenetrable as many a more imposing barricade. I wonder, what is it like in there? Is she too, after so many decades, just short of where she wants to be? Does she keep on trying?
Will I?

Perhaps, but for now I will read again. Delving back into the pre-packaged and ready-made story. The one story of the three, that already has an ending. An ending that I can critique and think about and enjoy…

Before I write my own…