Ruminations on the Ontology of Morslity
Page 23
Chapter 23
To adulthood
My childhood friendship with Siriporn, as I am able to recall it imprecisely when one now instantaneously supersedes another and distant memories, like fossils, are deposited in ever deeper sediment of the mind, the neurological circuitry of decay under thickets of newer circuitry, that is all the more difficult to access, ended precipitously and inexplicably as any summary execution. There we were in a classroom in the high school building for the first time and suddenly, evinced on that day and the impression reinforced and solidified from all subsequent days, I had become an anathema, an abhorrent stranger whom he refused to speak with in his new company of friends who together scoffed at my occasional intrusiveness in accosting him (Aristotle of course stating that youth is noted for its varied pleasures and the variegated friends who are agents of those pleasures115, and thus implying—or this my interpretation of it—that in adolescence one’s understanding of his opinions, values, and talents, is shaped largely by the intensity of pleasures; but had I known this volatility, it would not have done me much good as the personal affront, especially sudden changes of deportment without explanation or farewell, hurts at the time it happens immeasurably) .
As the months went by, so the consternation intensified as realization set in that this separation was not from the usual causes of feeling slighted, and from piqued pride, taking umbrage for a brief period of time. This was as perennial as life was long, and there had been no provocation beyond stepping into a new building meant to symbolize a distinct and separate level of maturity; and reeling as I was, it seemed unfathomable, really, that the emotional core that I had always thought to be the quintessence of life itself should alter so unpredictably another time, and now here it was from two sources: a mother who no longer took pleasure from my being, and the cessation of this friendship. Together, the two incidents elicited and inflicted by these two personages, as they gave me understanding of life, consigned me further to the realm of shadows.
For every individual subjected to it, high school, unlike a university, or that cathedral of learning in graduate and postgraduate edification, is a veritable torture chamber that is not only not conducive to learning but almost entirely dearth of purpose except for any that might be gained inadvertently for oneself in stumbling into a discipline that he finds affinity with. From my own experience there were bullies in classrooms burning the buttocks of seated lesser entities with cigarette lighters, and to protect themselves, classmates laughing in feigned approbation at the antics that they themselves feared, teachers, as the acne scarred mathematics pedagogue whom many brazenly called “Crater face,” subjected to the worse derision, and condoms stretched out in water fountains --the pleasure of liberation and destruction as natural as lightning and fire. Still, for one subject to the drudgery of plow and water buffalo it was a paradise in its own right. As that homeless man sleeping near the grating on the cement walkway along Sang Saeb canal, or khlong, who is made more material by putting a stray puppy on a makeshift leash as it allows for commentary on the dog by passerbys, so I found restoration in writing a column for the school newspaper.
“Blah, blah, blah.”
“Blah, blah, blah?”
“And don’t forget that your father, one time when there was a delay in the scholarship money, cut down a tree and hauled the lumber to the school, importuning them that with this compensation or “gift,” as he called it, to allow you to continue to study.”
“I was mortified for a few hours after he left, unable to move or look up, or concentrate on my lessons; and then suddenly the mortification transformed itself in my mind, and I saw love. I was flummoxed. It was breathtaking. I was astounded to think that under all of that invective in that old man there was some degree of warmth. The human puzzle. I saw love.”
“And me.”
“And you. Of course, how would I forget that? You were there squeezed in the pages of a book in the school library. You were of course much bigger than what you are now, if we can call it being as you are now dead. You were so beautiful then.”
“It was love at first sight, wasn’t it?”
“It was, and then attested as a strong friendship by the greatest of all senses, the rational mind. “
“In having cognate experiences and sympathies, as long as they last.”
“Is that what friendship can be reduced to?”
“Only this, I am afraid.”
“That explains why it can be lost so easily--why I lost it with Siriporn.”
“And gained it with me. We were trying to study our way out of poverty. And, as we helped each other study, my presence made you feel that relationships were stable, which they of course are not.”
“But I needed to believe that they were.”
“Yes, of course, as I did, which explains why we got married years later.”
“Youth is gone so quickly.”
“Which to you means what?”
“I don’t know. You were so beautiful and then so quickly your skin seemed to dry, and then with more time shrivel up. You became fat.”
“And your love for me vanished: the love, as in that love at first sight, the desire aggravated by the senses; then the friendship, that which was based on common sympathies and experiences; and all that remained of the union was merely a desire not to end the union as it would be tantamount to losing sanity.”
“So we clung to each other.”
“Yes, indeed, clinging, or something of that nature. Do you like my looks now, Lek? I am not shriveled any longer, and I am thin.”
“And dead.”
“Yes, dead, except for memories of me that still rattle inside your haunt. Nonexistence becomes us all; so, am I more attractive in my nonexistence? Am I now equal to the bimbos whom you consorted with on the side? All those lies I had to pretend to believe.”
“No, it is as if a small patch of skin a few centimeters in length had been stretched and then made green and taut around a skeletal contour that is you but in a shrunken state.”
“Verdant. I am not green. I am verdant. ”
“Whatever. As you like it, Lookie. What I really hate most about this life, beyond its accidental nature from beginning to end, or how people become the tools and preparation for their trade of commerce, thinking of it obsessively until it altogether becomes the person whom they are, or even how we so easily lose people in this tenuous plain of existence—who would think that I would outlive you?, is to see it all as nothing but the same types of stages. When I was young I thought my life would be so sui generis, not toothpaste extruded from the same plastic. One morning you wake up as a boy with fuzz on your face, and the next day you are shaving, applying aftershave and cologne, and thinking yourself a man; and then you get an education and a profession and for a while think you are the man until reality sets in that you are a nobody in a world of nobodies. I am so nondescript, so plain, that sometimes it makes me sick.”
“How can it be otherwise? The same sublunary realities govern all our existences. Of course we are the same. For women it is the bra, and the quest for material from which to build their nests; and for men, in time desperation at seeing themselves for what they are, like reruns of the same male movie, causes them to have their adulterous relations.”
“My life is so dull and mainstream. And now I am middle aged, a widower, and just waiting for my time to come.”
“Death is nigh; but you need not worry about being too mainstream. Your failures are very salient. Most men your age are seeking to aggrandize fortunes. You, seek to diminish them so as to have leisure to think, not that any of your thoughts have exactly set the world on fire. That is as sui generis as a human is capable of.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“Not really,” said the Luklawan
gecko as she became mute and glowered at the human monster. So glowereth she, Lady Philosophy.116