Of the Domus Mundi: II
An excerpt from Clive Barker's Sacrament.
Grim memories, all of them. And yet when he thought of Eleanor (and he often did), the sentimental songs had their way with him still, and he would feel that old yearning in his throat and belly. It wasn't that he wanted her back (he'd made new arrangements since then, and they worked well enough in their unromantic way), but that the years he'd had with her-good, bad, and indifferent-had passed into history, and when he conjured her face in his mind's eye he conjured a golden age when it had still seemed possible to achieve something important. He yearned then, despite himself. Not for the woman or for the life he'd lived with her, and certainly not for the son who'd survived, but for the Hugo who had still been self-possessed enough to believe in his own significance.
* * *
It's taken me a long time to understand what someone told me long ago. Happy with her current love and content at least with the promise her new life seemed to be offering she commented that she still missed a boy she'd dated some years before. An earnest and innocent longing for characteristics departed with lost love (slight hyperbole) and irreconcilable differences. It clearly wasn't a desire to go back. Neither to that time or to that person, but simply a wish to once again have some of those golden moments the way they remained in her memory. Simple things too. A smell, a favorite topic of conversation, or even the way they chose movies. Romantic in its mundane, inane way.
As my frustrations mount over not having sight of a purpose for myself, and my depression deepens, I find myself drifting back to dreams of not so much times or places but feelings. Feelings I recognize, very sadly, only in retrospect. Comforts and sensations that the lonely don't have access to. Certain doors can only be opened in tandem. Most times I can let the past be as it is and seldom does it take hold of that hollow in my breast. More often than not any grief I feel in solitude is a result of who I am in the present rather than a reflection of what I had in the past. Good, bad, or indifferent times remain in antiquity where they belong and surface only as wistful memories. Other times, more desperate times, those memories fill the hollow and begin to smolder expanding smoke outward choking the breath and life from my chest. Dreams become anchors and memories chain me to the depths to which I sink.
With such loss of connection comes a loss of faith. It is harder to believe in one's own significance in the Domus Mundi when the person once most important and pivotal to you can not muster enough to stand by your side. The world stands in spite of one person's suffering. Whether you choose to kneel in the mud and muck that has swarmed around your feet or leave foot prints in it as a reminder of your passing the foundations and floors and ceilings of the world will remain. The holes you leave behind will be filled. Your foot prints, no matter how emphatically and carefully placed, will fill with the next rains or be lost in the ambulations of those who come shortly after. Your mark on this world will fade.
One's significance to the world is insignificant. Significance is a matter of perspective. A matter of self. And a matter of faith.
Grim memories, all of them. And yet when he thought of Eleanor (and he often did), the sentimental songs had their way with him still, and he would feel that old yearning in his throat and belly. It wasn't that he wanted her back (he'd made new arrangements since then, and they worked well enough in their unromantic way), but that the years he'd had with her-good, bad, and indifferent-had passed into history, and when he conjured her face in his mind's eye he conjured a golden age when it had still seemed possible to achieve something important. He yearned then, despite himself. Not for the woman or for the life he'd lived with her, and certainly not for the son who'd survived, but for the Hugo who had still been self-possessed enough to believe in his own significance.
* * *
It's taken me a long time to understand what someone told me long ago. Happy with her current love and content at least with the promise her new life seemed to be offering she commented that she still missed a boy she'd dated some years before. An earnest and innocent longing for characteristics departed with lost love (slight hyperbole) and irreconcilable differences. It clearly wasn't a desire to go back. Neither to that time or to that person, but simply a wish to once again have some of those golden moments the way they remained in her memory. Simple things too. A smell, a favorite topic of conversation, or even the way they chose movies. Romantic in its mundane, inane way.
As my frustrations mount over not having sight of a purpose for myself, and my depression deepens, I find myself drifting back to dreams of not so much times or places but feelings. Feelings I recognize, very sadly, only in retrospect. Comforts and sensations that the lonely don't have access to. Certain doors can only be opened in tandem. Most times I can let the past be as it is and seldom does it take hold of that hollow in my breast. More often than not any grief I feel in solitude is a result of who I am in the present rather than a reflection of what I had in the past. Good, bad, or indifferent times remain in antiquity where they belong and surface only as wistful memories. Other times, more desperate times, those memories fill the hollow and begin to smolder expanding smoke outward choking the breath and life from my chest. Dreams become anchors and memories chain me to the depths to which I sink.
With such loss of connection comes a loss of faith. It is harder to believe in one's own significance in the Domus Mundi when the person once most important and pivotal to you can not muster enough to stand by your side. The world stands in spite of one person's suffering. Whether you choose to kneel in the mud and muck that has swarmed around your feet or leave foot prints in it as a reminder of your passing the foundations and floors and ceilings of the world will remain. The holes you leave behind will be filled. Your foot prints, no matter how emphatically and carefully placed, will fill with the next rains or be lost in the ambulations of those who come shortly after. Your mark on this world will fade.
One's significance to the world is insignificant. Significance is a matter of perspective. A matter of self. And a matter of faith.