It's finally autumn at the door... I took my uncle to visit the Queen this morning - well, we visited the outside of her 'humble' home, really.
We took a long walk across St James' Park, which is right next door to the palace. Though it had stopped raining, the air was cold and humid, and smelled of wet grass freshly cut. It was truly a beautiful scenery, and it helped sooth my anger.
Why exactly was I angry? Well, it's not even worth wasting precious words on the reason, and the anger is gone anyway...
We mingled with the crowds of tourists standing in front of the palace and took a few pictures of the monuments around, and then we popped by the library and I rented yet another CD at random... and today I'm discovering all the beauty of Mendelssohn's works. I particularly like the violin pieces, I have to say, but then again I always felt a certain affinity for that instrument... perhaps because a violin can sound like sorrowful cries just as much as it can uplift you to new heights. This one piece, by the way, is simply wonderful...
As we sat on the bus on our way to Buckingham palace, I felt depressed... I wasn't angry just yet, but feeling extremely sad. I was looking blankly out the window, at the vanishing wet streets, at the procession of umbrellas and more faceless people. I pondered on the fact that I felt so much like an outcast, and even if I tried to fit in anywhere, I wouldn't even know where to start. I wondered how come I didn't know how to 'live' within society as so many seem to be able to do so naturally.
I felt so depressed that I tried to imagine how liberating it would feel to simply fall asleep and never wake up. Then I tried to imagine what I would do if I were to lose the small family I have, and how would it feel like to wake up one morning with absolutely no one around for you. The first feeling I experienced while thinking that was that of anxiety, and then that feeling swiftly changed into a strange sense of curiosity. What if I was suddenly accountable to absolutely nobody in this world, not even one single living soul? Nobody expecting anything from you, and having nothing or nobody left to lose...
I remember reading a story from Kippling a long time ago. I cannot recall what it was called, but it was about a man who lived completely isolated in a house in the middle of nowhere... At first, he had no problem motivating himself to behave in the same way he had within society. However, the more time he spent alone, the more he could feel his human nature sleep away from him... If there was no one else around, then why bother make any effort? Why bother with anything at all? Why dress, why even wash or try and look good? There was no other person to validate his own existence. In the end, the only way for him to save his own sanity was to force himself to act as he would have among people, even as he spent all his time alone.
Then we took that stroll across the park and the autumn scenery simply took my breath away for a moment... Reminding me that if I only make the effort to ignore most people in this world to only focus on the latter's pure beauty then suddenly the mere fact of being alive today was worth it.
No comments:
Post a Comment