“I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me, whatever mode of expression that personality selects is absolutely delightful to me.” ~
The water in the crystal vase long ago dried up, but the roses largely held their form, still recognizable as roses, and from a distance still giving off the approximate form of their lush beginning. The rich rosy resonance has dissipated, any scent that remains is tied to decay and desiccation – a not-quite-fragrant embodiment of the word ‘faded’, the way you expect an antique to smell – dusty and ancient and dry.
“I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else.” ~
Memories fade in a similar way, regardless of how many times we go over them in our heads, trying as we might to hold onto every detail of events and people that matter to us. In the end, all we have are hollow approximations of what came before, and they grow more hollow and empty with each passing hour.
“I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.” ~
Youth fades too, and the plump full faces and skin cells of our younger years become gaunt and tired and saggy. Hair grows brittle and gray, as if being drained of life, and our senses grow dull and weak. It’s been a process that I haven’t been as bothered by as some had predicted, myself most of all. Perhaps that’s why it doesn’t seem as scary as I thought it would be. I was preparing for worse, and maybe that’s still to come. No one is spared the indignity of age if we are lucky enough to achieve it.
“But we never get back our youth… The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.” ~
And so we attempt to still time, to create something that lasts, a way to enshrine our memories, a method of preserving what has happened with the keen eye of what is current. This blog has come to embody the stilling of time in a certain sense, the way it freezes a moment, a memory, a photograph. These are the many pictures of Dorian Gray but in reverse – they stay the same while the rest of us grow old and whither away. It’s the way life should be, no matter how much we may rail against it.
“There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtures are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.” ~
In a high scratchy collar decidedly not made of silk lace, in ropes of pearls around neck and wrist, I bind myself to another past, to another world, to another life. Tethered by trinkets and all that is trite, I have tied myself to an image entirely of my own making, and even if I have devised it to be shape-shifting and morphing and boundlessly expansive, it remains limited by my own failure of imagination. It is a trap, laid carefully by desire and fantasy, made pretty and frivolous and silly so as to mask its terrifying necessity, and the only way out is to become someone else.
If you’ve been yourself for as long as I’ve been myself, you’d be tired too.
“It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that. Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us.” ~
The first whispers of wisdom, when we finally start to listen to them, are naturally upsetting. There is no way to face the reality of this life without feeling sadness, a sense of fatality, and futility. The second whispers of wisdom, if we haven’t given up listening, are the ones we hear when we realize that we are not the end of the world, that the wonder and the horror and the glorious muck we have made of things will not end with us. That comes with its own menace and regret, but wisdom’s work is not quite done. It will follow us around until we are finally ready to listen again – and if we are still alive, and still listening, the whispers reveal the wisdom of those at peace, who have reached a certain stage of grace and happiness and contentment. The beginning of enlightenment, perhaps, if you believe in that sort of thing.
Sadly, I’m nowhere near that last bit of wisdom, however I am starting to listen again. The music is faint, but I know it’s there. Maybe it’s a song for another time, and another blog post. Maybe it’s a song you don’t want to hear. Maybe it’s a song I’m not quite ready to hear. And so I leave it here, for however long this fading corner of the internet remains in place. When we are ready for it, and I hope we will both be ready one day, may we find our way back.
