10 Dec 2014
Fading lines
I can't tell this day from the other; I can't tell the next week from this one, either. Months have passed in tens and I can't tell which one will remain etched into the farthest lanes of time, for each one has just been the same. I can't tell this year from the past few I had lived through. There was a time - and what a time was that! - when I could spot that one face among hundreds, even in the gloomiest of hours, and now I can't tell her face from another's. Have I lost the eye or is it the faces indeed? They sport the same deliberate smiles, that sly glint in their eyes and that haggard bearing that fain hides the beauty of ageing skin. Just as the nonchalant fingers, benumbed by habit, hold the fag but never feel its texture, I feel I have sleepwalked in time without ever confronting life. There's neither the joy of living nor the ache of dying; just a frozen indifference.
Maria found it unusual that Jacob should ponder so deeply in her company. She ran her finger through his hair. He felt Maria's slender nail slide along his neck. Then he heard her: "I sleep with three or four men every night; I can't tell one fuck from another. You either get used to it or you look beyond. When you start getting used to, you have chosen to die."
Briefly, Jacob looked at her face. "And what is it to look beyond? What is it to look beyond when this is all there is?"
"I don't know! But on some morning when you open the window and look into the distance, you will feel you can still run, that you can still abandon everything and just run. You will not mind the stakes, you will not care if you must run barefoot, you will know how much you want to run and touch those spotless skies, crash in the sand and just breathe. And maybe then, when you die, you will at least die with grace!"
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