Infinite Seconds

I like roaming the streets alone and reading alone. I like riding the tube alone and walking home alone. It gives me time to think and set my mind free. It gives me time to fly away in the void of my imagination and create another world of my own where I like eating alone and listening to music alone. But when I see a mother with her child, a girl with her lover, or a friend laughing with their best friend, I realize that even though I like being alone, I don’t fancy being lonely. The sky is beautiful, but the people are sad. I am sad. I just need someone who won’t run away. Someone who won't let me down. Every time I make a new acquaintance I think "That may be it! That may be the girl or boy that I'd finally establish a fine relationship with!" but it never is. I leap at every chance with outstretched arms but I fall back into the void where I like going out alone and shopping alone but I never feel lonely.

I may like being on my own but I'd like to share with somebody the great discoveries I have stumbled alone during the quality time with myself. I like noticing stuff and being awestruck by the world that is surrounding me. I can find a tad of happiness in the sunshine, or in the drops of rainwater that are pattering on my window frame because those are touches of extraterrestrial. They link me to something greater than this world and more meaningful than my transient being. I am here and I am gone but the rains would continue to fall and the sun would set and rise and the nights will morph into days and life would beget death as always. Compared to what the universe has sustained for years my life appears to be a set of seconds. It takes seconds to demolish what you've been building for years and it takes seconds to lose somebody or to make them smile.

May be my couple of seconds would be as powerful. May be my seconds would buy minutes, which would offer hours, which would amount to days or hopefully years and my integrity would preserved in the memory of a whole bunch of unknown people. But what is the whole point in being remembered if no one recalls who you were? Your name, your date of birth, your former residence, your work and your grave, plus a couple of interesting trivia about you. That's what wikipedia makes of any famous man, a pattern of life - growing up, graduating, getting married (optional), making a breakthrough and resting in peace. Behind that commonplace pattern, however, stand feelings and thoughts, pain and joy; stands a man with all his honour and faults. A man that discerns from every other but is stacked in a dusty pile of history documentaries and put under a common denominator with hundreds of other bright minds that are now just names in textbooks - skimmed through and forgotten.

I feared oblivion. I have feared oblivion for a long time (you know the reasons) but may be I've been wrong. Yes, the memory of me would fade away sooner or later and a day would come when nobody would know that I have been walking this planet, hiding from the rain or bathing in the sun. What I do is inconsequential because people would never bother recapturing my personality or the driving force behind my actions. They would end up remembering only what I have created, and my name would go on being passed from a generation onto a generation but it would be as vain and as hollow as a balloon floating in the air. I wanted to live in the futures through the deeds of my past but that wouldn't be a life, it would be a whisper of vague recognition. A glimpse of eternity but not immortality. A couple of seconds may turn out more tremendous than a obscure infinity.

Whatever happens, whatever my seconds have to offer the world, they would be pointless if there's nobody except me to relish them for nobody can promise me that others will try to see beyond the pattern and know me. I can't trust anyone but myself as I know I will not let myself disappoint me, but I am here among those hundreds of people willing to stay in touch and attach, I may as well give them a chance to figure me out and glory in my few seconds.

I like roaming the streets alone and reading alone. I like riding the tube alone and walking home alone. It gives me time to think and set my mind free. I like eating alone and listening to music alone. But when I see a mother with her child, a girl with her lover, or a friend laughing with their best friend, I realize that even though I like being alone, I don't regret letting people in. I chose to contemplate the beautiful sky today rather than wait for a brighter one tomorrow.