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Polymorphosis > A short story
Maxims and Aphorisms
by Andreas Filios
II. A short story
1.
He started walking. He knew the time had been right for a long while now. It was an ideal moment. Pack some things together and start.
It was important not to think about it too much. It was even more important not to look back. He had to promise himself that. �Look back when you�re there; or at least almost�, he thought.
It would be his first real journey. Quite likely the last, too.
Surely, he won�t be the only one to judge it, in the end. But in the end it would be him and just him left, anyway.
Would he get out of it what he hoped for? Would these hopes bias the outcome? In the process of walking, would his consciousness or subconsciousness not always have his expectations ready for comparison? So be it, he couldn�t change that fact. No, but he could use just this certainty to play out his other worries.
What if something happened to him on the way?
So what would he be risking? Losing his comfort and risking being scared. Not even being scared, but rather facing fear. Facing it and understanding it until it is no more fear.
He can only gain out of this.
2.
This trip was meant to be different.
He had ravelled places. He had been in places. And everywhere he had asked himself how they would be when one was in them in solitude.
In all the silence he would think that the surroundings would stare at him, would scream at him. Exposed to no one and yet exposed. Was that his fear?
Is that the fear of mankind? Not being able to hide oneself behind customs and traditions? But who would be there to judge? Wouldn�t that be the ultimate, sterilised fear?
One that clearly isn�t possible. This fear of not being able to apply the instinctive and taught mechanisms of hiding behind a custom, because for behaving that way, other people are needed.
Maybe this idea of the sterilised fear drove him to this trip. To find out what he would do in such a situation.
Again, he was worried that his advanced knowledge of the situation might affect his reaction. Or maybe he was worried that his reaction is an already constructed and determined concept, only designed to satisfy those who�d ask about his experience.
3.
He wanted to see the sunrise. Just the sunrise.
From a mountain top. Just him and the impression. Like him and another person.
Is there anything more beautiful than the sunrise?
The birth of the day. Isn�t this how the whole world must have come to life? The increasing intensity of the light. He knew that the light was different in different countries. From a mountain, it must be the purest light. With the sun rising from below, there would be no shadow of him. There would be no feedback, no one to tellhim how he is, who he is. Just him and the sunlight.
A friend told him to beware of the snakes. This friend was afraid of such things. He told his friend that on such a trip he would beware of other things than snakes. Other people have different perceptions of fear. Of life. In the end it is you and you alone, anyway.
He wanted to appreciate solitude when he had the choice not to be alone. This appreciation, like a stoic, an epicurean, or hedonist with different preferences. Maybe here really lies the answer. The key to happiness. To appreciate the moment, while expecting tomorrow and reflecting on yesterday. Neither being nostalgic, regretful about the past nor careless and ignorant about the future. Yet taking the given moment at face value. Adding nothing and taking nothing from it.
4.
He had a bad night�s sleep and nightmares kept recurring.
The next day he thought that maybe it was time o make a decision. He remembered how he dropped his mobile phone and it fell right below the red bus, which had stopped at the station. It was only seconds till it would move on. With or without the phone lying there and potentially being crushed. He just snatched it before it drove off. He didn�t even decide it. He just did it.
Did this situation require a decision or could he just act? What was his responsibility?
Never looking back. He kept reminding himself. Not until at least the peak was reached.
5.
He noticed that the German language, that every language, had alienated itself from the meaning it should carry. Language and meaning � at times � had been like body and mind. There is only so much you can represent in the appearance (body) if a person, just like you can only express a limited amount with language. And if that language has even evolved and changed into something that was unknown before, then meaning becomes understandable only to natives or even insiders..
Language is like the body: only able to express a limited amount of the state of mind.
He really hated the answer �I don�t know�. From himself and even more from other people. He also hated questions that he could only answer with �I don�t know�.
He preferred giving no answer.
He hated when people started talking about the weather. That was a sign of detachment, when really there was nothing more to say and one wanted to fill a conversation. Why would he care about the weather at the place of the other person? Would it make him feel differently? Would the other person feel differently according to the weather conditions? And if so, why would he care? What use would it have? It is just pretending to care, which is worse than not caring at all, when the other person realises this uselessness. He shouldn�t really ask anymore: �how are you?�. That was equally useless. He answered �good� almost all of the times without really thinking about it. It made as little sense as �how are you�. Then, where would it stop? How much of what is said is really meant? Isn�t most pretentious rather than genuinely inquisitive? That was the negative externality of the evolution of language. Of German. Of Greek. Of all? Language and mind is like body and mind. At some stage equally detached. And people hide behind these fake buildings (like fa�ades in movies) of language, which are known as customs.
Amongst some people he noted: language and culture is like body and mind. Germany language is very detached from meaning. If someone has nothing to say, which he really means and wants to express, he should be silent.
Choice. People prefer choice from a limited range of options to an unlimited one. Tell a person he can live as he wants and he�ll adapt to an already existing lifestyle; probably a common or popular one. This is what he would understand by this task, anyway: to choose from a range of familiar lifestyles. What is, however, meant is that he may live a lifestyle which would be natural to him.
People prefer to copy rather than create. People subconsciously prefer to be deceived than to find out.
He would breathe in. And breathe out. Separately. For every time he felt bad mentally, breathing out would represent, give away or even amplify his melancholy. With every breath he took he would recover but he knew that this coin wasn�t one-sided.
He found a great source of regaining positive energy is living under risk or right after finding out that there was no real risk, nevertheless he then believed to have been exposed to it.
Willing to give up everything is only the precondition. He seized the perspective generated out of that condition. A perspective far from subjectivity, giving him the chance to see things in a very pure light. The challenge was, to maintain that perspective after the risk had ceased. But that was difficult. Like holding the rush from a fading drug.
In that perspective he saw the real colours of things. The real good. The real important.
He not only saw the real colours � a thousand greens of the grass - he also saw the shades. Shades that no one would look at, no one would notice, many wouldn�t even find.
6.
He wanted to duplicate himself. He just wanted someone next to him who would probably be able to talk with him about the things that he felt. He preferred solitude. But there were times where he wanted to share his body and mind.
Getting himself back into this state of independence from himself would be the key. This state of �extremity� in a way. Knowing the risk and living with it. Maybe by travelling or moving or starting a new life would bring him back into this state. Maybe he was already or still in living the rist and he didn�t consciously know about it.
He realised that is was fear, that other people had. Fear when speaking to them. He could sense it. The fear of opening oneself when he only wanted to be positive, when he wanted to open himself. Why were they afraid though? Of being laughed at?
He needed to travel. He needed to see different cultures. Surely they, too had this fear, but he hoped that not being familiar with their customs he would get at least some honesty from them or interpret their customs without any bias.
He was so tired of the nonsense routine he lived, he now hoped that sleep would take him to a different world.
7.
It was only a matter of days till he would go. Start his journey. By the day his expectations grew. He had a picture in mind of how he would like the journey to be and at the same time he expected so much to come unexpectedly. This trip signified probably symbolically his life. He had set high marks and wouldn�t rest until they were achieved.
The aims kept accumulating and time past. The trick was to find the right time of doing things. The things that you just can�t appoint to a certain date, not explain them rationally. It was finding the midway between irrationality (taste, maybe, an art even) and idealising the time, money and dependencies.
8.
He wrote:
There is gravity and there is grid.
And you can live your life as it evolves: gravity will move it; the grid will form it into its predetermined shape.
Take out only one second, one moment of your life which would otherwise go lost in oblivion. Take this one moment and determine yourself what you want it to become. Do nothing, and the grid will place it into �your� place in society.
9.
Day 1:
He did instead of thinking, he moved instead of planning.
Putting himself in that situation, where he needed to plan and improvise on the spot, was like a drug. Maybe he wanted to fear. A voluntary, self-imposed terror situation. Unknown territory, everything could change from one moment to the next. This gave him some sort of feeling alive. And probably, these situations would stick in his memory for longer. Simply because his awareness at those moments was much higher than usual.
He did it. Why though? He did it because he didn�t have to. Like the old man embarrasses himself because he lost shame with age. Like the old woman who would sell herself if she was still desirable because she would do it for money. Like they who�d undertake a risk only after they had lost something.
He was looking for perfection. Maybe that�s why he did it.
Not that he was perfect, although he strived for it.
Maybe he did it now, on the search for the perfect, because now he had most arguments against anything � or most power to criticize.
10.
Day 2:
He did it. Climbed the mountain � although not to its peak (that wouldn�t have been compensation enough), - but what an ordeal: a real martyrdom. Enough walked for the rest of the year. With no sleep in the previous night, he was mentally and physically shattered. Also, he had no lunch, just a good breakfast.
So, when he made the last steps and ordered bean soup with two pieces of bread and a tomato-cucumber salad with no oil or vinegar, it looked like the best meal he would ever eat. Moreover, he wanted to buy all of the available chocolate bars, cakes, bananas and apples and was convinced he would manage to eat it all.
Now it would be just him and the sunrise.
11.
Day 3:
He had a vivid dream about colours, maybe a sunrise even, just shortly before the sun actually came up.
The red line turned into a colour not red, not yellow, not pink, not orange. It illuminated the clouds from below, the whole sky in front of him turned bright, filled with colours. The change of the sky was so fast and yet he could hardly notice the difference from now and a minute ago.
The clouds looked like the sea, turned upside down. Then, they looked like a snow landscape. It was beauty. And even though he had great expectations, with the sunrise he knew he wouldn�t get disappointed.
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