Between a calloused looked spinning a storm on a tall glass with a chipped pattern bottom, the ones you buy as wedding gifts for lack of imagination, a thought escaped me.
I asked a friend hoping his intoxication would have filed off his reservations and numbed his calculations for sounding intelligent. (He thinks too much)
What do you want out of life?
A simple question that I wanted an answer myself. Was it a constant thing a pristine goal that one is born to pursue, per-determined even.
Was it lots, a fatalism or chances that when we go into that evening drenched in dick-purple blood of dusk to an eternity/reincarnation/ or just lights out, we would have fit into purposes like gloves designed for us?
Or was it a morphing thing changing in its manifestation like a salty nipple to a child to a stick finger nipple to a man. changing with growing or diminishing need and attitudes.
Maybe it was with the people, left to tell if you got what they want in life. An outside thing determined by other peoples perceptions, ability or inability to see themselves in your shoes, empathize or worse still judge.
Did anyone ever get what they wanted out of life?
"Confidence"
It came out wistful, unlikely as I first thought. I'd expected better bigger. at least from him. A domineering pantheon I could add to a character in my book, a strong lurid but thoughtful character. But all he wanted was so achievable so within his reach that he had set his 'high-jump' beneath his heels.
I was wrong.
What he wanted tells a lot, its a statement of intent. A unique desire to compensate. It is history, his, or lack of. It is how he wants to fashion his life but is incapable of. His life is a dreary film he has watched, inspiring but just for the brevity of it. His life, our life demands that confidence a monumental courage to accept the vanities we hold but do not acknowledge.
I still had four fingers around my glass of brown brandy. Fiery for its ability to make us do the wrong things and pass blame to 'Oh the spirit of wine, let me call thee devil.' My one free finger pointed at another friend.
What about you.
"Happiness"
I swung the brandy up my throat my head bent backwards repulsed, hoping, maybe the drink would jut out through the sole of my brain like spewing retch.
Simpleton, I concluded, Jolly monkey African too content with the moment to notice the clock of time winding off those tiny wheels and cogs in de ja vu. I thought of him too crass to base such a mournful span of time to a simple single emotion that was at best unachievable if not feigned. An emotion that was fleeting in its folly and tempered by its antithesis at all times. Reggae-like calling for Peace when we know how awfully conflicting the world is even in its theoretic formation as an explosive star.
But I realized it was in itself not just a childish dream for grownups but an essence that escapes those who think they are climbing the lofty clouds of self awareness. The missing piece after Zarathrustra conquers knowledge. A dark moment even after we have discovered the light bulb in all colours. We remain base animals that need more often than not to be just that. Not tombstones but rotting corpses beneath swallowed by our insignificance. We remain prisoners of the soft human desires of perfections gladly imbuing the admiration and vanity of shared stupefaction. We need to be happy the irony is we will not and thus makes it a purpose a goal worth pursuing.
My friends turned and asked me with their eyes. I had sourced writing material from them, at least I should offer something in return.
"What? Living beyond my bones"
Reincarnation, I thought, wisdom something lofty to tell humans eons from now that there once lived a fool so full of himself. Something important enough to get people to awe at the gaudy brilliance I exuded while I lived, the most intelligent man in the room, the self importance, itself the greatest vanity.
But maybe I longed for an intrinsic biological logic. Desire to see my genes re-written in another being. Engineering something entirely non existent and dependent on my action. A child not only to bear my name but my race, my essence. Siring a human being.
What if am impotent?
What do you want out of life?
