I woke up with a familiar sense of dread. I dreaded waking up to an empty bed. And of course my thoughts turned to her. But it hurts too much to even write her name - hence I won't. When I close my eyes, I see dark infinity backgrounding an incandescent trace of her lovely face. I then take deep languorous breaths - trying like hell to capture moribund desires and expel them in a cleansing sigh. It never works. I continue to think those impossible thoughts - those recollections anchored to my dreams of her.
I'm out of her life and that is my bottomless reservoir of torment. I love her. I love her and only her. One cannot control who they fall for, even though sometimes they try mightily to resist.
I'm done. I can't continue on. I've tried to "move on" - oh how I have! But does "moving on" - and all that trifling ubiquitous platitude encompasses - require such an exhaustive, almost Herculean, effort? Bounding from one empty encounter to the next, I have emptied myself of lust. I cannot fathom waking up to another ersatz lover wishing it was her instead. I want only love. But no more. I can't have it. She's gone.
Ah, I wish I could move on. I wish I wasn't haunted with these accursed thoughts. But I am. I am still anchored to the past. The past refuses to let me go. It shall surely lead me, despondent and morose, into the depths of madness...
On the verge of madness, I cannot return.
On the verge of madness, thoughts of my darling torments me.
On the verge of madness, what shall I do? Shall I chase after a specter? Shall I sit here and slide into the depths of insanity. What can I do? Can I do anything at all?
On the verge of madness, I dream of her. I dream of fulfillment. I dream of meaning.
On the verge of madness, I am nothing. I am empty. I am incomplete.
On the verge of madness, she will push me over. She, an elusive wondrous apparition, shall lead me hand-in-hand...into our abyss.
Broke Boy must perish. Broke Boy must die. J.
As a boy, I dreamed of going into space one day and collecting stars with the Little Prince. I dreamed of swimming along outer arms of the Milky Way. I dreamed of wading through infinities after infinities to find God and Buddha playing Bohemian Rhapsody on violas. I dreamed of vast eternal darkness and what mysteries it would yield to an inquisitive mind. I dreamed of weightlessness most of all - to be freed from earthly bounds. I dreamed of floating away.
Jorge reminded me of that would-be celestial traveler. There was an obstinate optimism hidden below his despondent brown eyes. That repressed ebullience would periodically percolate to the surface. But in general, something bothered him incessantly. Although he was a solid human being - generous, candid, and honorable - a melancholic mood followed him. I suspected he was grappling with a problem - not unlike my own - that refused to yield any solutions, difficult or otherwise.
In Victoria, one can find a rather eclectic shop in a hole-in-the-wall located at the heart of Fan Tan Alley. Fan Tan Alley doubles as a kitschy tourist site and an enduring reminder of racial segregation - the Alley, a narrow strip of an avenue in the heart of modern Chinatown, was at one point in the city's history the only place where Chinese could freely interact, which often was either gambling or the occasional puff in a clandestine opium den. But in modern Victoria, one can weave past the incense shop, the Antiques emporium. the insurance place, and find themselves inside a record store. Located in the very back corner of the record store is Irrelevant Questions Inc. It's run by a guy named Jeffrey Lee. You see, Jeffrey was trained as a software engineer at MIT and graduated with honors and the whole nine. He decided to start up a business alongside a few of his MIT chums; it was called, appropriately and pompously enough, Brilliant Solutions Ltd. Whether it was the luminosity of their MIT degrees or their attractive moniker, the business took off almost instantly, all the while, doing what is expected of those knee deep in the solutions racket.
All was well until one afternoon, Jeffrey, in the midst of a mesculin trip, stated in a business meeting, "Solutions aren't important. Fuck the solutions! What we need are questions. Lots of them! Ask them all the time and damn the solutions! Solutions only lead to shit and more shit. Just ask Dubya." Needless to say, his business partners - now leaders of industry, reputable businessmen, upstanding philanthropists and - hush hush - frequent patrons of Thailand's child brothels - were appalled by their colleagues suggestion. They quickly voted him off the board, bought out his shares, and went on their merry capitalist way. Jeffrey - never one to be discouraged - took his sizable buy-out, moved to Victoria, birthplace of his great great grandfather William, and was determined to get into the questions racket. He soon realized that people in the "real" and ostensibly practical world had no use for questions, i.e. they did not help the bottom line; therefore, they could not help one find a bigger house or a faster car or tighter whores. After a few months of sitting in an empty office at the corner of Wharf and Fort waiting for clients who never would come, Jeffrey decided to move to Fan Tan - which according to his father was where William found his fortune as a bootlegger.
Earlier, when I said hole-in-the-wall, it was not said jocularly or for the sake of metaphor. If one walks into the record store and goes in search of Jeffrey, you can find him in a hole in the wall, cut six by eight and six feet deep, sitting on a stool, arms rested on a foldable TV dinner table, with a pen and pad of paper prepared for anyone in search of questions. One day when I was looking for a Donna Summer vinyl - which was to go into a fire on an upcoming camping trip - I stumbled upon Jeffrey. I asked him a question, ironically enough, "What's your method for this gig?" He noted that since I gave him a freebie, he would respond in kind.
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Wherever he was, he continued to ask questions. But questions go unappreciated. The majority want to be left alone, undisturbed, jogging with an iPod around a beautiful lake, enjoying nature as a blur to be recorded by a mediocre photographic device, turned into slides, and shown to a pack of equally middling bores. While the dogwalkers and crosstrainers zipped by us, we sat on a bench overlooking Thetis Lake, waiting for an etiolated tree to die.
“A question, in most circumstances, disturbs. It challenges widely accepted and already established ideas and assumptions.” A solitary leaf fluttered slowly down towards us.
“But,” he continues, “we are trained to find answers, to purchase them if need be. This training and ostensible attainment of expertise is expected to produce solutions for everything.”
He continued to stare at the decaying spruce tree. We continued to wait for it to fall.
“We can’t solve anything. We can’t solve anything. We can’t save anything. It will all perish in the end.” He took out a yellowed piece of paper from his pant pocket. He opened his hand to show me it. It was a ticket to the 1900 World’s Fair.
“The twentieth century commenced with unlimited promise and boundless optimism. Enlightened industry and mechanized ideals aroused visions of a world that should be. Utopia, once thought inconceivable, was seemingly at arm’s length. Great Ideas, appropriated to achieve a final paradise - an end to struggle, to humiliation, to difference, and an end to history, provided final absolute solutions and demanded that fervently faithful disciples carry them to the finish. Questions that were posed without answer since the beginning of human civilization apparently were solved, once and for all, and ceaseless bloodshed was the price of this bargain.”
Branches began to crumble from the decaying spruce.
“They killed ambiguity for the sake of an Answer. They dissolved contradiction in human incinerators. They exalted then sacrificed Idea atop a pyre of bones and rotting sinew.” The tree was about to topple into the lake as he continued with his thought.
“It was an Answer, not a question, that justified genocide and collective suicide. In a world without questions, men topple tyranny to install tyranny, displacing one erroneous answer with another.” The spruce fell and sank into a watery grave, deteriorated roots still exposed. Unfazed by the majestic demise of the tree, he finished with a question.
“What’s a question worth if it cannot be sold?”
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When I hopped onto the last train before his shift ended, I saw him once again staring at the yellowed C-Train advertisement. This time around he was methodically stroking his gun, which had been removed from its holster.
