“I wasn’t actually in love, but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald
Inspired by old Hollywood movies about time travel and alternative dimensions (see Back To The Future), I wonder sometimes what it would be like to meet my old self. A soft-featured chubby kid, legs whose knees almost touch from his sheer bulk, with unkempt wavy hair and long spindly arms that seem to belong to someone else entirely. A fusion of honest sweat and sugars in decay cling to him like a worn cape. Bright hazel eyes under a roof of feminine eyelashes betray stubborn naivete and innocence. His features are not unpleasant, but if there’s a man behind this irregular façade, he’s making his presence well and truly hidden. What would I say or do? Would it even matter in the grand scheme of things? If I told him of the pain and the struggles he is to experience should he stay on this path of self-contradiction, would he even listen? Would I try and understand his arguments in return?
I never did have an idea of the sort of person I’d like to be when growing up. The individuals I looked up to, be they real or characters of fiction, always sat on sky-high pedestals of gold-veined marble. Their accomplishments – impossible to emulate, with personas larger than life. Some, an embodiment of gravitas, while others, extraordinarily charismatic. As I hurtle towards my 35th birthday, this spectral vagueness, like a January mist that’s overstayed its welcome, begins to lift up. There’s an older man standing on the other side of an impossible bridge. Slender, his hair the cold light of a full moon and with a dignified demeanour judging by his posture. The longer I stare in the general direction of where he is standing, other granular details begin to rise to the surface. His face, canaliculated like a tilled garden, a sympathetic smile transfiguring it. Before I am able to piece more of him together, a small crowd appears out of nowhere, each individual placed like a pawn in a game of chess. The bridge is now a train platform and I can no longer see the stranger, but I have a feeling we’re both waiting to board the next train.
Little if anything’s left of the boy; the man I see in my mind’s eye is but a fantasy. Old age isn’t guaranteed, nor is the victory against our baser instincts. Some days it’s hard just trying to put one foot in front of the other. A gentle light enters my cold room now. It carries with it a promise of easy walks in the park, on carpets of fresh green and soft earth. As I take Loneliness’s cold blue fingers and place my lips on them, my airways are about to spasm. Her vacant eyes tear at my psyche piece by piece, like a letter from an old crush. She demands more, but I have little left to give. Did you know that even the imagined presence of others may cause us to smile?
tsvetoslav shalev 
Leave a comment