longest day

I have not forgotten.

Two years ago, we were sitting on the patio under a sky lit by stars so bright and clear it could have been deemed tacky, pure kitsch, to be there and slowly get drunk on red wine and memories. We sat and chewed the fat as if we'd reached the end of a story that had finally turned out well - the banquet in a small village somewhere in the prefecture of Gaul; just who was the bard?

I did not feel distressed at all. It was a peaceful day, a warm day, sunlight until late into the night. A long day - the longest day for most of us. If anything, peace and quiet (forgotten, unattainable) seemed close enough at the time. I remember feeling guilty for thinking that at long last something real had happened. A sense of certainty: Here we know where we stand. Here we can but accept. Here no well-meaning voices urging us to overcome (by sheer determination, will power and faith) the obstacles (mere stumbling blocks, you ungrateful git) that life has so generously strewn on our paths. Finally, there was no chance left for me to fail. The relief. Drowned out everything. I might have. Felt.

Tranquility.

Excitement. (A little.)

The rest comes later.

This is going slow. From the other room comes the whisper of a conversation on the phone (Skype me, hype me) and I wonder whether there are really so many secrets too dark to speak out loud. Less inhibition, less judgment - it all seems like a good plan until you wade into the murky waters of truth (often more hurtful, more obscure than any lie could ever be; the novels about conspiracy and deceit where the love-lorn heroine longs for truthfulness and fights treachery and trickery surrounding her are fictional - fiction being the opposite of fact). Why is there no plural of truth? Will honesty and virtue save us? I think not. Save us from what?

This is not a fucking love story (Yes, it is!), this is family business. Is it?

I remember sitting on the train, watching the fields of the flat and boring heart of the country zip past while I mulled over the sentences in my brain: It was the longest day of the year, it was the shortest day for you. It was the longest day of the year, but the shortest one for you. It was the longest day of the year and the shortest one of your life. (Not perfect, but better.)

The words wanted out; Give me a pen, bring me some paper! then my phone went and all that came out was: Really, I think this is a most inopportune moment for you to be calling. I am sorry.

Sorry indeed. In the evening, I thought that maybe I should have been calling more often; I was thinking of someone and no one in particular - the act of getting and staying in touch as an end in itself. What for, though, what for? Talk is cheap, it will cost us dear: Can I be bothered, the way I am now? Or rather, could I be bothered, the way I was then? I think not. The utter absurdity of those months strikes me as funny now. (It all seems like a first try at Dada. In hindsight. Which always leads one to feel more intellectually or artistically than one really is. Truth being said: Too numb to seriously suffer, too dumb to complain.)

To cut a potentially long story short: I've remembered. There you go.