Life..?

  The almost empty bottle of alcohol slipped from her fingers and crashed below her, on top of the massive rocks that formed the beach in that part of the port. It wasn’t an area to go an have fun of anything, rather a place for people who loved seafood to go and have a delicious dish of crab, lobster, fish or any other creature from the sea. The small pier on which Cynthia was seating, her legs dangling like she used to do when she was younger, was located in a part closed to the public, far from the restaurants and the bustling ambiance of the now exclusive and upscale area of commerce that was located a few steps away.

 Where she was, she could hear the ocean crashing softly against the rocks and then pull back and then crash the rocks again. She found that beautiful sound to be very soothing, especially at that precise moment of her life when she was feeling cornered by thoughts and things that were happening all around her. She knew the place from one time she had been invited to a party there and now she looked at the pieces of glasses on the rocks, as if they had the answer to all of her problems. And apparently, the answer was to open up the other bottle she kept on her coat and start drinking again, no regrets at all.

 Cynthia had never really been a lover of alcohol but it felt soothing for that moment to do something like that. She wasn’t into drugs or anything like that, having a crippling fear of dying from an overdose, so she would more often than not go to her nearest store and buy a couple of middle-sized bottles of alcohol, which she could feet nicely into her large winter coat. And it was that, the weather during that time of year, that made it all the more perfect. She knew it was the perfect way for her to handle what was going on and she wouldn’t let anyone else decide for her what to do or how to do it.

 As she took a good sip of the clear liquid in the bottle, she paid special attention to a fishing vessel entering the port. She was certain no one could see her there, on the spot she had chosen to be in, but realized it would be very annoying to have someone come and stop her from going on and on with that part of her life. Because that’s what it had become: alcohol had become the perfect gateway “drug” to make her feel a little less, something she really needed each time she was reminded of her past but also her present and the prospects her future held. Everything in life triggered her and made her unable to respond normally to anything.

 The fishing boat passed and Cynthia waved at it, already a bit drunk from the alcohol but also because of the cold. She closed her coat a little bit more, realizing she had chosen an especially cold evening to go out and sit over the ocean. But the truth was that she had never “chosen” such a place or such an activity. It was only the thing she could do without feeling she was doing the wrong thing or acting in an undesirable manner. She wasn’t a mess there, by herself.

  It was also easy to hear the screams and laughter coming from the people in the restaurants, but Cynthia tried hard not to pay attention. One reason was that she didn’t really liked any of the people that visited such places. They were mostly snobbish, the type of folk that don’t even realize people don’t normally have the kind of money to dine in such places every single night. That was exactly what she realized the day she was invited to a party there and soon realized how much of a mistake it had been to attend that event, at that time and in that place. It was all wrong and there was no real way to mend it.

She made everyone feel uncomfortable and the only thing she won out of that experience was the fact that she was very clear on how other people perceived her and what she didn’t really like about all of them. She was one of those people that don’t really mind what you say about them or how you say it, or at least they seem to not care at all. That’s way her appearance in that party was such a disaster, even if other things were feeling as if they had been improving in her life for quite some time. But those awful moments of social awkwardness made everything feel worse and seem worse, and she didn’t really need that.

 When she finished the bottle, she dropped it intentionally over the rocks, applauding loudly when the glass shattered and pieces flew all over the place, to the ocean, over the algae and on the rock. No one appeared after she had clapped. Maybe no one cared or maybe she had a way with the city and its strange places, but her next move was to go back to the mainland and try to exit the area without anyone looking at her. She was successful, after avoiding to look back on her way to the exit. Once there, she walked, cold and shaking but feeling a bit better. The cold wind on her cheeks was apparently doing wonders too.

 She sat at the bus stop and realized she was a bit tipsy. She looked around, and realized her only other companion was a very elderly woman who didn’t even have a reason to be walking around so late in such a remote place. Cynthia looked at her and tried to guess if she was actually younger than she seemed or if she seemed to be into the kind of things that hip people liked doing over there. She didn’t have much choice anyway, as the bus appeared soon and they both entered. Cynthia sat behind the driver and the old lady walked very slowly to a seat by the middle of the bus. Maybe she was buying something she wasn’t supposed to.

When Cynthia got home, she felt really dizzy and also very tired. She dropped on her bed in two seconds after she had arrived and realized, in a moment, that she was drunk and that she hated most of the people with whom she interacted ever. Everyone including doctors, shrinks, supposed friends and family and all other people that always try for you to have the life that they want for you, instead of the want for yourself. She really hated them, with feeling.  

 She then decided to strip for bed and stood in front of the mirror, looking at her almost naked body. Cynthia was not a supermodel but she wasn’t the ugliest woman in the world, she was fine. But she didn’t have much else aside a degree she never used and a lot of debt towards her parents. She was one of those so-called “leeches” that live in their parents’ home for years and never really go. Her fortieth birthday seemed close, even if it wasn’t going to happen for some more years. It was pressing on her, her mind and the body she was looking at.

 It was obvious that she didn’t really feel great about all of that but even so she got herself into a pajama and then into bed. She heard her parents entering the house right when she was about to fall asleep. It was nice she had chosen that precise night to be able to come back without her parents being there and asking something about her life or, much worse, not saying anything but giving her looks and glances, certain attitudes too, that made her realize what she already knew. But how the overcome the fact that she was a non- achiever?

 How was she supposed to overcome the fact that she was just one person, unable to change the world around her? That’s why she needed to drink, why she really needed to have a proper reaction to everything happening around her. She could just be there and take it or end it all in two seconds. Neither of those two options was an actual option, she didn’t have access to any of them. So, she had to endure and keep at it until something happened. But it had a toll on her and maybe that one would be the last straw for her and her consciousness. She knew very well she was not the kind of person to hold for years and years.

 Cynthia often found herself looking up at her ceiling, wondering about all of those people she had met at least once. She wondered about their lives, their success and their stories of greatness and achievements. And she felt so tremendously alone after that. She remembered the times she had borrowed money from her father to pay for a quality education and it had all amounted to nothing. They didn’t really say it but she knew, deep that, that it was the case.

 So every night was a struggle and every new day felt as one more iron ball had been put in a jar representing her life. It got heavier and heavier, never easy to properly carry around.

Storms

    Water felt good. Even the cold that had descended from the clouds was nice on the skin and bones. Everything seemed alien in a way, covered by the storm and a fog that was thick and somber. Sitting on a bench in the park didn’t feel like something normal, but so wasn’t the absence of people or of any kinds of sounds. It seemed as if the world had lost all of its inhabitants in a single moment and it was glorious. He sat there, not minding anything but the was happening right then and there. It was amazing.

 There were no birds, no dogs or cars turning the corner. There were no people talking on cellphones or others talking loudly with their coworkers. There were no babies or children or teenagers whose hormones made even more sounds than the storm. No one else was around. Only rainfall made noise and, occasionally, a thunder or two would break the peace, as if it was announcing its presence and power. All of that was beautiful and very special and something people would rarely stop to really perceive.

 Granted, storms like that one were not that common, even in the rainy season. But people should’ve taken advantage of them more often because, it almost seems that you can listen to deeper sounds when you have the chaos and calm of a storm. It’s almost as if you could listen to yourself, to what your deep feelings are really telling you. It’s such a peaceful state and place to be that it becomes almost as a temple. Of course, prayer is not mandatory but you could do that if you wanted to, if it was up to you.

 The man was drenched, from top to bottom. He wore a hat that was now almost black because of the water, a t-shirt, jeans and sneakers. Everything was flooded with water. Yet, he seemed to be thinking, he seemed to be really taking advantage of the moment. Maybe he didn’t get to meditate a lot at home or maybe it was just a way to breathe a little before the end of the storm came, which would eventually come. He seemed to feel every drop of rain on his body, every single water stream coming down his limbs.

 Two consecutive thunders and their lightings lit up the sky and made it look so different; that it was a shame more people weren’t outside enjoying nature. Sadly, people only learn to love when they get something in return and that includes nature. If she behaves in a way that its natural but that takes away something from mankind, then humans do not want anything to have with it and they even declare war against it. Humans never really learn to enjoy things as they are. Instead, they want to world to be what their image of it is in their brains, and that image is almost always highly inaccurate.

 The storm continued for several hours. Eventually, silence was broken by cars and people running to them and buses and trains and planes, in order to get home safe and hopefully fast. Then, at night, silence came again. The darkness made it all even more silent, more serious in a way. Now that most people were at home, relaxing in the world that they had build for themselves, they really didn’t care at all about what was happening outside their homes, not even caring if there were people like them outside, the less fortunate.

 In general terms, they really were unfortunate souls. They had difficult access to every single thing that a human being needed to survive and they didn’t have a home, which would cause several problems for any normal human being. However, they were much more in touch with nature than other people. They loved to have animals on their side and they learned from their surroundings about how to survive many things. Nature taught them everything they needed to know, if they listened and paid any attention.

 At those hours of the night, no one would do the same thing that the man did during the day. No one would sit on a park bench and just wonder about life, not even if the night was perfectly clear and warm. The weather came in second or even third after the dangers of the city. They could be deprived of any soul and dangerous because of those people that have evolved to feel they permanently need to take away from others. It’s a disease that many have inside their brains and it grows and cannot ever be eradicated.

 As they say: “once a thief, always a thief”. And it’s a true saying because no one really stops being something like that. Once you think you have the right to take someone else’s belongings, you will never stop perceiving the world like that. It’s not that some steal because they are poor, less fortunate or just hate society and everything in it. No, it’s because they have gotten used to it, they have started to like scaring people in parks at night, cornering them and threatening their life. They have become addicts to that feeling.

 It is power that they love and even during storms at night, they will come out and try to cure their obsession by doing the only thing they feel they know what to do. They can be caught by police and send to jail for a short time, but that rush will not come down. Once you’ve felt power, you just cannot let go, especially in a world where only a few fortunate souls really do have power, mostly in the form of money. If someone outside that circle gets to feel a little bit of that, they simply become remarkably obsesses and they continue fulfilling that rush until they can’t, for one reason or the other.

 Anyway, stormy nights belong to no one, just as stormy days. No one can claim them; no one really knows how to describe the feeling of it all, how special it really is to finally being able to talk to your real self and to connect with nature. It’s different for everyone; so one experience is not really similar to any other. They are just as us humans, similar in key aspects but vastly different in what really counts. And that’s a fact that nature imbued into us, making us realize how really complex life is.

 The same feeling can be experienced when snow begins to fall or when you experience the natural darkness of the wild. You can also fill it when you dive deep into the water or when you swim in the ocean. It’s just something that is more than all of us combined, something that we can only experience privately. If we do feel it, if we really achieve that point, we will simply find it very complicated to use appropriate words to describe what it’s all about. After all, it really is a personal experience, different for each one of us.

 We have been led to believe that, as humans, we are precious and very special. And a way, we are, because we exist out of pure luck. We just happened, like a miracle, and now we are here doubting every single thing that surrounds us or worst, no even stopping to look at our surroundings. We believe that our brains are a masterpiece but most of us rarely use them properly because we just don’t have to. The world has stopped trying and now we just have to do a small amount of things to be a successful human.

 Of course, that is only in rich countries. In the rest of the world it is even worse because we still think we are miracles but we do not see any advantages of that anywhere. We try and try and try and nothing works and that’s how people get frustrated and they do whatever comes first in their heads.  So, that special part of us is just useless, like having the world’s most expensive object but not being able to sell it because it has become something more than just a very expensive object, whatever it might be.

 What really makes us special is how we choose to live life and how we decide to learn about ourselves. Thinking and precisely using the tools we were giving at birth is precisely what makes us special, not just having those tools. Anyone can do anything but not all of us can do it the right way.

 So just go out into the storm, drench yourself in water and make yourself feel. All those other things are not us, all those objects and people. They do not matter when don’t even know where we are and who we are. In order to live properly, we should really learn to look inside and around ourselves.

Where's the passion?

The day was as clear as it could be. From the terrace of the tenth floor of the Equity Tower, one could see for miles and miles. Evan was standing there, in front of the glass, just millimeters away from a one hundred meter drop. But he wasn’t looking downward. He was looking across the park in front of the building and a little bit upwards. There was some sort of bird flying around, possibly after having spotted a delicious rat or something down between the trees. It was a majestic site.

 Evan didn’t move a muscle, as he looked on, mystified by the gracious movements of the bird. It was so agile and beautiful, only an event that could’ve been created by nature itself. Evan didn’t want to miss the moment for one second, as he knew it could end soon. And so it did: the bird suddenly dropped from the sky, flying downwards at top speed. It disappeared between the trees. Evan waited for several minutes, but the bird didn’t resurfaced. Maybe it had been successful. He wanted to believe that.

 Evan moved away from the glass and walked slowly towards his kitchen. Mind you, Evan had no clothes on: no socks, no underwear or shirt. Not even a towel or a baseball cap. He was naked as he always was at that time of day, which was past midday. The man was one of those people with so much money that they didn’t need to care about schedules or time in general. Besides, he loved to do his work and other commitments at night, when he felt most comfortable. During the day, he would rather sleep and eat.

 In the kitchen, Evan fixed himself a bowl of his favorite cereal. He poured some almond milk on it and then started eating it right there, just by the coffee machine. His empty cup was in the sink, as well as plates and other stuff from past days. Evan wasn’t a good cleaner and he preferred when he came back from work and everything had been cleaned and organized for him. But the lady that did that was sick and he did not want a stranger to come into his house just like that. He’d rather do it all himself.

 So after finishing his bowl of cereal, Evan did something he hadn’t done in a long while: he did the dishes and then checked his refrigerator for rotten vegetables or fruits or products past their expiration date. Nothing was out of order and he was able to get it all done in a matter of minutes. He wasn’t one for doing those sorts of things but the truth was that his work had begun to feel repetitive and boring to him. A change of pace would suit him right, as well as doing things he wasn’t used to do. The moment made him have several ideas, right on the spot.

 One might think he could’ve wanted to put on some clothes on before going ahead, but he didn’t. He decided to check every single drawer and closet in his two-story apartment and get everything he didn’t want to keep out of the house. He looked for some big garbage bags in the kitchen and then started on the living room. There wasn’t much there besides his bar, fully stocked at all times with the most expensive wines and spirits from around the world. However, he did find some underwear that wasn’t his. He just smiled and moved on.

 There were lots of drawers in his studio. He threw away a bunch of office papers that he wasn’t going to use anymore and several other notes and small objects he just hated. There were things inherited from his grandparents and parents and he really despised some of them. There was this bowl of marble balls that was supposed to be an ornament but it had always made him crazy because it reminded him of how strict his father was. When he wanted to use the marbles to play, his father would practically yell at him.

 There was never real violence on his house. After all, he didn’t really have a relationship that strong with his parents, he didn’t even see them enough during a whole year. It was rather sad but he always smiled telling the story of how he learned his parents birthday dates when he was about to enter college. The funny part, according to him, was the fact the he learned those facts by accident and not because they wanted him to know. It was like learning the birthday date of a beloved movie star. A far away star.

 He filled a whole garbage bag in the studio before moving on to his downstairs bathroom. There was not a lot there, only some old flu medicine and ointments he used sometimes when he was sick. It was funny that he had all of that there, as he would never use any of that. His parents only intervened in his life when health was an issue, probably because they knew that if he died, there would be no heir of blood running the company. As if it mattered, but it seemed important enough to them.

 After so many years, he still did things to keep them happy. He would do parties in his apartment with various friends of his family and the company, even if most of those people barely knew his name. He treated old friends of his parents and grandparents as if they were elders of great wisdom, but deep inside he knew there was no way he could really trust any of them. They were all around because of the money. Same happened with his so-called friends, vultures flying around him waiting for something to fall on their lap, a job or some money or compensation.

 In his bedroom, he threw away various pieces of clothing. Being naked, he smiled and thought of the whole situation as ridiculous. But then, he realized it wasn’t an accident that he liked being naked around his home so much. Back when he was young, Evan had been thought that the human body was practically something to be ashamed of. It was only during his years in college when he learned that shouldn’t be the case, when he started to explore his body and those of others.

 He remembered wearing ties every single day, not only to school but also in the house and to all formal events to which his parents were invited to, and there were a lot of those. His former house was one of the gigantic mansions where you might imagine a caped crusader living in. But nothing of the sort happened there. He did imagined to be an orphan many times in his life, but he was reminded many times that he did have parents and that it was important that he was their son.

 Evan’s future had always been in the company. He had no control of his work life and, to be honest, he didn’t want control over that. In college, he soon discovered he wasn’t really interested in something in particular. He liked numbers and sometimes watching movies and also music. But would have never thought of been an accountant, becoming a filmmaker or learn to play any kind of instrument. He had no passion for any of that. The only thing that ignited passion in his heart was his private life.

 He lived to invite random people to his house. He met them at galas or bars or even cellphone apps. Sometimes he would say how much money he had and other times he would create some sort of story, like the one where he was a caretaker for some rich people and how they paid him the bare minimum to take care of their houses as they sailed through the Caribbean. And people bought all those lies because they wanted and also because Evan was a very good liar.

 He got four garbage bags filled to the top. He took them all himself to the deposit downstairs, wearing a hoodie and some gym pants. As he put on the bags on a large container, he saw a picture escape one of the bags and fall softly, like a leaf, on the floor.

 Evan picked it up and saw his own face looking at him. It was a very old picture, from his early youth. He was maybe five or seven years old. And he was smiling. He seemed so happy and eager, so full of life. Evan wondered what had happened to that little boy, to his spark.