The Ideal

Sometimes I wonder if anyone can really connect with the past. For years, every child is taught about humanity’s past, from her most gruesome wars to her sweetest achievements, but can you really understand it? I know that the Egyptians existed, or that the Romans controlled the known world for quite a long time, or even that World War II began 70 years ago, but I’m not sure if I accept it. As children, we digest these “facts”, these pasts, but I doubt if one person truly believes that they happened. It’s unfathomable. In Texas, the land I know was once traversed by men much as myself, with their everyday dreams and aspirations. Here in France, I’m attending school where barbaric Germanic tribes once lived. Except I don’t believe it. There is only me, the here and now, my thoughts, my wishes, my actions, and nothing else. These men never knew me, never knew that I would exist, and only I’m stuck with the unfortunate truth that I have to know them. Who cares if you once existed where I now walk?

When I’m dead, this world will no longer apply to me. But for now, it’s mine. What I think, feel, say is completely mine, and the way I interact with the world is the only correct way, at least for me. No one else’s world exists, and I won’t believe it if I hear it. Out of sight, out of mind. If I leave one room, it has vanished into nothingness until I call it forth again, ready to give it a place in my day. As it is with everyone, a virtual reality, a shimmering illusion. How can you not be inherently selfish if the only thing you know is yourself?

It’s funny though, these self doubts that plague your life. The nagging voice crying to you that you might be living your life wrong. Is it true? Am I approaching the problem from the wrong angle? Have I closed my eyes just enough so that I only see one path venturing into the darkness, so I believe it’s all that exists? It’s not wrong if it’s what I’m doing. If I know nothing else, then so be it, I’m where I am, where I should be, in the only place I could ever find.

Every misspoken word, every unhappy moment is not a misstep or a wrong turn. It’s the pathway. But even then, “pathway” is the alien, the anathema, the contradiction to what life is. There is no pathway, because that implies you are going somewhere. You’re already there, I’m already there, and we have been since we created this world for ourselves. It’s the ever-changing set of circumstances, a scene change with each word. A life at once fulfilled, complete, and yet nowhere near finished. Absolute zero, a lack of motion, infinity, total annihilation, all impossible.

Paris. I’m content, unfathomably happy, yet closed. The catch to spring the release is still missing, hiding in the city, and only more time will make it visible. How can one city truly be the ideal that is the wreathing mass of humanity? How can one city hold every dream, every hope, every need? If word got out that the city was an answer, it would cease to be. Beauty, full unbridled beauty, passion, regret, need, compete for air, for life.

I want to stay here.