Red Wine, That Is…
Here I am again, sipping wine from the bottle, surrounded by the layers of take-out garbage that’s been piling around for a week now, this must be exam week.
It’s a Friday night, and I’ve guilt myself into staying home, but ended up sipping wine, smoking, dylanning and pondering endlessly about improbable questions of my own.
***
Her name has come up many times, too many for my own comfort, in the course of the last few weeks, in the most strange of coincidences. I still don’t know if this is a simple conspiracy of life, or is one of my own mind to deny me any ability to focus on my Database Theory textbook. One thing is certain though, the thought is here to stay.
When I set out to write anything about her my thoughts start to confuse reality and fiction. They start to confuse what really happened with what imaginary conversations and events I’ve made up in days like this one. I confuse what I wrote once about her, with what she really was.
A question she kept on dragging behind her was whether I did love her, or just wanted to love, and whether she did love me, or just wanted to be loved. I remember how grotesque the question and its whole premise was, I still do. Maybe my problem was, and apparently still is, that I’ve found love, in its most abstract shape, to be an entity completely independent of us people.
Don’t read too much into this, I am not dwelling over an end of a relationship. Not that one anyway, that one was bound to crash in the most painful of ways. Egypt and Japan are not even in the same continent and, I have no doubt, our worlds were much further apart.
Nonetheless, when you find out that you share a thought that is so transparent, like a dream, a thought so personal and so particular despite its many, many colors, when you share such a thought with someone, she becomes an integral part of it. She blends with the background, a color of her own, and comes back with every morning as that thought eats into your mind.
You burn bridges and then beat your head against the wall.
Oh what an noisy gruesome world we live in these days. What a terrible way to burn bridges by ignoring emails and removing people from your Facebook friends. Oh dear!
There was a time when I wrote letters everyday, much like Issian of Amin Maalouf’s Ports of Call. Letters that explained yesterday’s letter, and one’s that explained today’s. But unlike Issian, I did not mail them. They’re here. All these letters of madness that I wrote are here, as a comic and insightful testament to those days. They bring me sorrow because I was the one who wrote them, but mostly because I never put a stamp on them and mailed them.
***
She had the smile of Astarte, and eyes much like the sun. She had the passion of a million seas and the vengeances of a million humanities. Oh, what beautiful a color she’s made.
July 25th, 2009 at 2:25 am
I always wonder why we sometimes get involved in ventures that we know are bound to end negatively. I do it all the time, I try to sedate myself, divert my thoughts, and delay the inevitable. On the other hand ,how boring would life be if all we did was fully meticulously planned and bulletproof?
July 25th, 2009 at 3:05 am
Omar,
it’s because there’s always a faint hope that these ventures might after all end up positively. And you never know, they actually might. That’s why we throw ourselves into them hoping yo find out. And sometimes, it’s not the end that matters but the journey. And sometimes, the journey makes up for all sorts of bad endings.
Yazan, I am loving your musings.
July 25th, 2009 at 6:57 am
All that matters is that you loved and that she colored your world. Eventually, that’s the beauty of it.
It’s funny to read about you writing letters that you never mailed. I do that all the time with e-mails. I wrote some to him. I guess I never sent them exactly because I knew it was all “bound to crash”. Moreover, some are just written in my mind and I could recite them word by word. However, I have never been able to actually write them.
I just took a minute to skim through my drafts and guess what, I even have two addressed to you that are still yeasting in there.
Anyway, loving your post :-)
July 25th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Omar,
I think Posh articulates it better than I’ll ever be able to. That faint hope that, maybe, just maybe, it could work.
The thrill of the adventure and the intensity of the feelings, good and bad, are two things that I would never regret.
And like you said, life would be terribly boring without them anyway.
July 25th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Posh,
You’ve summarized everything I wanted to say in a wonderful way. There are many things that I regret in my life, but most of them relate to times in which I overcalculated my responses and took the safe way.
It’s lovely to see you here again. :)
July 25th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Katia,
I have so many rough drafts written to many people that never left my drawer or my email. I think, in many ways, we write these as testaments of the time, and we keep them as reminders, much like a disarray of pages from a random diary. When I sit down and read them again, they feel like I was writing them to myself rather than others.
My dear Katia, you are a grand teaser. I love that.
How am I supposed to stop thinking of what you’ve written and never sent to me now. ;)
July 25th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
I might be totally off my mark but I really think that had you loved her enough you would’ve mailed those letters (that goes to you too Katia)
The basic difference between love and a relationship is that one is driven entirely by hope while the other relies on calculations of wins and losses, even subconsciously.
Sure it’s nice to have it all our way and be together from day one to the end of times but it doesn’t work out like that. The mass majority of people live together in relationships. There are those few, very lucky few, who have it all. For the rest, being in love is not that easy. Yet, the names of cities, countries and even continents become insignificant once true love is what’s keeping them together, despite the vastness of time and space.
Hope!?
July 26th, 2009 at 12:26 am
Abufares,
It’s a most difficult question to ponder about now. Why didn’t I send the letters, and whether I did love her enough.
There was a certain feel of the inevitable at the end, and it was all easy to succumb to it, I admit. Hope might be an overwhelming power at times, but it’s not endless. There’s just so much hope you can have in you before it’s crushed by what life throws at you.
It’s never really over though, as painful as it is to admit. Hope might be what’s bringing back these memories now. I suspect hope was also responsible for the little book she wrote this year.
It’s all too raw and confusing to articulate into words, so my comment, much like the post, doesn’t make all that sense.
July 26th, 2009 at 3:41 am
You did a great job disecting your raw emotions and replying to my comment. I knew there’s a light still going. Feeble as it may be, it could burn for a long, a very long time.
And time my friend, despite how harsh it might seem to be, is lovers’ best friend.
July 27th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Yazan, I haven’t any wise advice to give – as who does that better than Abufares? I haven’t any judgement to make on your actions – because love and emotions aren’t based on logic and don’t follow any set rules. The only thing I feel I can comment on is how truly lovely, albeit sweetly melancholy, your musings are. Her beauty is certainly flowing gently beneath your words.
August 6th, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Wallahi ya Yazan, you’re speaking on my behalf as well in this post. I’m as confused as you are, so I can’t help much here but say you’re not alone
August 9th, 2009 at 6:35 am
I love your writing style, but it’s very hard to read because of the font color along with the background. Would you please consider changing that to make it easier to read? Great work.
Cheers