tsvetoslav shalev

Solitude and introspection go hand in hand. Their ephemeral presence is a sign of a life lived consciously, with awareness and respect for the passage of time. Solitude and introspection enable the deepening of character and provide a fertile ground for wisdom and prescience towards the objective reality. They stimulate awareness of the subtler aspects of the human condition. And yet, traces of loneliness always threaten to poison the still waters of inner peace.

I make my way through London’s microcosm, almost daily now, lest all IT-related problems betide all at once in our absence. Surrounded by vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians of all shapes and sizes imaginable, what calm and composure I possess feel precariously balanced in my mind. We’ve all seen short clips of waiters slipping, tripping, spilling and even falling. In fact, some of us can’t get enough of them. Now now, there’s no arguing your way out of this, with me. So, try the following: stop by a busy street on a Monday or Wednesday morn and take the whole picture in. Actually make individuals out of the homogenous crowds. Watch their clothing, their posture, their gait, and the expression on their face. Many of these people are walking a mental tightrope above a chasm of anxiety and misinformation. Hic sunt dracones, too, in the form of.. you guessed it – loneliness. Oh, and should you decide to indulge in the aforementioned experiment, please make sure to stand in a place of safety. As in, to the side, ideally, where random strangers won’t give you “funny” looks or shout at you for getting in the way. In the way of what, though? We’ll never know.

Not one to revisit things upon completion, I do however obsess over works of art that pluck at the out of tune strings of my heart. One such fragment comes from ‘Sounds’, written in 1923 by Vladimir Nabokov:

I had a feeling of enraptured equilibrium as I sensed the musical relationship between the silvery spectres of rain and your inclined shoulders, which would give a shudder when you pressed your fingers into the rippling lustre. And when I withdrew deep into myself the whole world seemed like that -homogeneous, congruent, bound by the laws of harmony. I myself, you, the carnations, at that instant all became vertical chords on musical staves. I realized that everything in the world was an interplay of identical particles comprising different kinds of consonance: the trees, the water, you. . .

Vladimir Nabokov, Sounds

Indulge me in this overrated fantasy, oh, why don’t you? Our love, is an inter-subjective illusion, but one I need so badly.