tsvetoslav shalev

You can think of scope like the view of the night sky from your window. Everyone who lives on the planet Earth is in the global scope of the stars. The stars are accessible globally. Meanwhile, if you live in a city, you may see the city skyline or the river. The skyline and river are only accessible locally in your city, but you can still see the stars that are available globally.

~ Codecademy, Introduction to Scope in JavaScript

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The specific relevant content for this request, if necessary, delimited with characters: Although writing is a solitary endeavour, without other people, my creations would amount to something that’s less than nothing. Without the maelstrom of emotions relationships provide, life’s point remains somewhat moot, doesn’t it? I mean, the prose is, these days, rendered but a dialogue of the deaf. Or so I’m led to believe, with the aggressive push for scriptwriting in games media. As a regular alien, part-time human, I struggle with turning life into art. Solitude sure provides me with plenty of silence. But without shores on which to resume my intimate conversation with humanity, I’m left stranded in a boundless ocean of doubtful interpretation. And so, I’ll let my wavering memory speak for me one more time.

The text in the photo roughly translates to:

I was 16, and the person who wrote it – a girl of 15. After a year of online dating, she wanted to meet on several occasions, but I was too shy, forever at odds with my looks. Finally she gave me an ultimatum: “You come to my hometown to spend some time together, or we are through”! 15kgs and 400kms+ later I was scanning the crowds at the bus station for a familiar face. During our dating, I never showed her a photo of me. I was a disembodied voice on the phone, a ghost writing to her via IRC. Still, there she was in all of her voluptuous resplendence, beaming in my direction. Dehydrated, hungry, overly excited, and completely drained from the 7-hour bus ride, I allowed myself to be embraced, kissed repeatedly. My arms, slender with long fingers, almost feminine, wrapped around her Rubenesque shapes. They probably looked like the appendages of a strange insect, perched on a maple leaf in freefall. I can still recall the gentle scrapes of blond upper-lip hairs on my face.

At some point, I must’ve dozed off on the couch at her parents’ place. She said she watched me while I slept. To this day, I cannot make up my mind if such behaviour is creepy or sweet. Ours was my first kiss. Hers were the first pair of breasts I fondled, then buried my face in and inhaled deeply like a swimmer before diving. The bra stayed on. I’d insisted. She giggled and teased my unawareness of being full mast and poking at her shapely thighs. Her sister almost caught us in play; their dad got home earlier than usual, too. Red-faced, dishevelled, two juvenile rabbits’ hearts racing in tandem, we failed miserably at painting a picture of genuine innocence. For four days, our lips would part only when sleeping, using the bathroom or eating. She’d gambled with her feelings on a faceless stranger from a distant place, and I turned out alright.

The day I had to board the bus back home, her eyes would not stay dry. An image that would later replay in my life. On several different occasions, in fact. I wore a sheepish grin, gently wiping away the crystalline droplets that streamed down her reddened cheeks. I was doing a poor job at reassuring her that we’d meet again, very soon. Much to her ill dismay, some months later, I was utterly bewitched by another. The first and the last time I’ve ever “cheated”. She’d entrusted me with her naive heart, and I dropped it down a steep flight of stairs…

Bittersweet. That is how I remember it all. That is how I’ve compartmentalized, how I’ve labelled these intimate moments from my past. Her pain, however, ran deep like the roots of a rogue weed, suffocating anything else that tried to take hold in the otherwise fertile soil of her brilliant mind. Or so I was led to believe, during our brief exchanges later in life. I wish I could mend the chips and the cracks with a golden filling. I wish I could live up to nobler expectations, to higher ideals. But when I was called to action, I was found lacking.