Neither here nor there
Saturday, October 10, 2015
Perfect expectations lead to imperfect lives. Perfection though, is also a relative thing so an imperfect life truly is a perfect one, if we are willing to accept it. So, is our imperfect life an imperfect one we are willing to accept?
Imperfect expectations however lead to more perfect lives because we can achieve what we set out to attain. There is elegance in simplicity and I think that is taken for granted too much. The simplest things are often the best things, lest we choose to forget.
And regrets are burdens of expectations we failed to achieve. Of what we wanted before but never got, or what we know now that we wanted before in retrospect. Clarity in hindsight is never a delightful thing - simple, but never always one received with smiles and happiness. But changing the past will never be an option (and even so, what will happen will have happened already - so either we choose not to in the future, and preferably because things have turned out for the best, or because we cannot and maybe things do not change). We simply have to look forward to the future, and try not to screw up as much.
I shudder to think that I will leave certain chapters of my life unfulfilled, like pages in a book left uncoloured, that now lie behind thin sheets of plastic that can never be removed. The opportunities were right there, within reach, but perhaps I chose to do something else, or did nothing at all. Like colouring outside the lines of my favourite picture - not right, but not wrong either?
Like art I suppose, which is neither here nor there, and is something entirely different for different people. I read Larkin's "When first we faced, and touching showed" and pictured a couple meeting for the first time - two experienced and well-worn lovers, aided by years of found and lost love, to create a magical first encounter. But to go deeper would reveal the toll taken by those very same experiences - "lavished, lost" the words of someone realising the fizzled sparks of excitement, the weary tired nature of the soul, one word shorter than before, representing one's own dwindling enthusiasm. To end on "gentle-sharp" gave me the impression of the myriad of emotions experienced in any relationship, and possibly the contrasting hope of something special. (But analysing literature has never been my strong suit...so make of it what you may haha)
"
When First We Faced, And Touching Showed
When first we faced, and touching showed
How well we knew the early moves,
Behind the moonlight and the frost,
The excitement and the gratitude,
There stood how much our meeting owed
To other meetings, other loves.
The decades of a different life
That opened past your inch-close eyes
Belonged to others, lavished, lost;
Nor could I hold you hard enough
To call my years of hunger-strife
Back for your mouth to colonise.
Admitted: and the pain is real.
But when did love not try to change
The world back to itself—no cost,
No past, no people else at all—
Only what meeting made us feel,
So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange?
How well we knew the early moves,
Behind the moonlight and the frost,
The excitement and the gratitude,
There stood how much our meeting owed
To other meetings, other loves.
The decades of a different life
That opened past your inch-close eyes
Belonged to others, lavished, lost;
Nor could I hold you hard enough
To call my years of hunger-strife
Back for your mouth to colonise.
Admitted: and the pain is real.
But when did love not try to change
The world back to itself—no cost,
No past, no people else at all—
Only what meeting made us feel,
So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange?
"
I guess this is an attempt to describe my current state of mind, a bit messy, a bit messed up.
