tsvetoslav shalev

In life, going through the motions without a plan or another to share it with is just a form of waiting around for the end. It’s surprising that such a profound notion can be glimpsed in a video game, namely, Diablo IV. In the later parts of the main story, we meet an old, seasoned traveler and merchant named Meshif. He mistakes one of the main characters, Lorath, for the long-deceased Deckard Cain and proceeds to refer to him as “Old Friend.” Throughout the questline, where he and his camel Isabelle help us locate a hidden temple, Meshif reminisces about random adventures he and Deckard had in the distant past. During one of his monologues, Meshif reveals that since he last saw his old friend, he has traveled the world and experienced marvelous things. Yet without Deckard, all this adventuring left him with a lingering feeling of going nowhere (waiting on something/someone) all along. The exact quote escapes me, but damn, did that kick harder than it had any right to.

I know this feeling all too well. Even the sight of a fiery sunrise isn’t the same when we have nobody to share it with. Hey, you—yes, you there. Stay awhile and listen… Or rather, stay with me and let’s watch the horizon change as our pale blue dot spins on its axis, creating the beautiful illusion of the Sun rising above countless sleepy households. Let’s savour this tender moment, you doing your thing (no smoking, please), and me, munching on a protein bar, trying not to choke on its wet, sawdust-like consistency. I know it’s cold outside; the ceaseless rainfall and winds have only just decided to take a short break. Still, can you feel the warmth of the radiation filtering through our atmosphere? Even though sparse, this subjectively soft and comforting light is destroying our skin on a molecular level. We mind not. After all, what’s unfolding before our very eyes is the stuff poetry is made of!

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

The Sun Rising by John Donne

And so, instead of waking her up from her tender slumber, I resign myself to taking shots with my phone instead. The end results are inadequate, but I never fail to share them with my Facebook ‘friends’. This is my loveless placebo, my consolation prize for partaking in life as an observer. And that’s okay; that’s contentment, pure as the spaces between words on a sheet of paper or a screen. During our last massage session, I shared with the young professional that despite all the rain we’ve been experiencing this past year, I’ve developed a keen interest in clouds. When she asked me how so, I replied that recently, I’ve taught myself to stop at different spots on my way back home from gym, and gaze at the sky and the layers of clouds swirlign around. She, a native of this land, had never given them so much as a second thought, and my observations seemed to surprise her. I tried to play my attentiveness off as trivial, by saying a busy medical professional like herself, has little time to think of themselves, let alone spare some to sit around and watch the sky during a workday. The truth, of course, is that I also have nobody waiting for me back at my place.