The link not as strong as say to the child-you. Or to the adolescent.
Which is the act: now or then? Neither?
Did a mask fall? Or has a mask been put on?
Why do I always ask myself questions I can't answer? Or to which a different answer will always be given depending on when it's asked.
It's pointless to carry on with you even at this early stage, but by that do I mean me or you, the reader?
I don't know. I'm going to carry on typing. See what happens. And you can stay too, or go. Who cares whom I'm talking to: to a past me, to present me, to anybody out there, even an alien form, to people who might wake up one day and feel the same way: find it hard to recognise who they were, and where they might have gone?
There's no clues. That person must have just upped and left. And you can't conduct a search for them, put up posters in shop windows and on lampposts, for you share their physicality, if not their personality or persuasions. Doing that would waste everyone's time, and besides, they're not coming back. They're never coming back. And they can't, they won't be found.
Yet it's not loss I feel, just bafflement. Why?
Did their leave-taking happen so gradually it went unnoticed? By me, by anybody... for years, until not a remnant (other than the same eyes, the same nose, the same mouth, the same hair, the same general height and weight give or take a few inches) remained. Perhaps I've been lucky in that regard...perhaps in other cases appearances dramatically alter too...?
So if it's not sadness and it's not a mystery I can solve, then what is it? This. This wondering. Is it more why didn't that person want to stay? Was there a reason she couldn’t? Or was their a door at which she could have come back through but I closed it? Chose to without even realising, and now she's so illusionary it's just not possible for her to ever re-enter. She's too much of a figment, like a fictional character I empathise with but feel separate from. That could be me, it was once me though it seems hard to believe because now it's not.
I never imagined I'd be holding this conversation with a screen; in my head, sure. I hold plenty of discussions up there, not that I ever make much headway. Ha Ha. Too many questions infiltrate and disrupt the A. of the session. Too curious to want to know the answers, if there are any. Too incurious to listen.
It's just one of those things isn't it? An age. A phase. You outgrow yourself. Become someone else. Mature. And look back and think: who was that?? Possibly think: she was more fun than me. Or played a very good game, convincing herself and everyone else.
Hmm, or is she doing that now? But then you end up talking about the current you in the third person, which means, although inward looking, you're outside yourself almost twice over. A 1.5 observer. More than half of who you are living in a dream. Do I do that?
Some would accuse me of being unrealistic in my dealings with this modern world. And I am. I'm not ashamed to admit that or be straight about it: I don't like it.
Do I like myself in it? Sometimes. I like me if I can keep abreast but mostly stay cloistered; I like myself less if forced to apologise for not adapting to its terms. Essentially, I feel got at if made to apologise for being me. For liking me as that uncompromising person. Who, for all her doubts concerning other matters, won't be swayed.
See, there's that third person again; it's too easy to dissociate myself from the subject. Perhaps, that's the crux of it – there are and have been many mes shared with this world, so that recalling any with any certainty or without that dreamlike quality proves problematic.
Picture credit: Femme assise, en robe bleue, 1950, Jean Metzinger
All posts published this year were penned during the last.
