Oscar Wilde = The Picture of Dorian Gray

"People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."

September 18, 2007

London 13deg Celsius

The walk from the Central Bank to Moorgate was usually short but on this chilly day it seemed longer and almost pointless. The sun was out, which was more than he could ask for, and it bleached the buildings with its waning might. Autumn.

He checked his phone. No messages. He turned it off, it was almost out of batteries anyway. At university he sat himself down at a computer. After checking most of his mail and network accounts he decided to get up and find another computer, maybe in quieter surroundings. Corporation tax, that's what he had to work on.

Skimming through seemingly countless pages at varying speed, his eyes would occasionally blur, his pen would stop tapping. His brain wasn't slowing down, it was speeding up. Images flashed. Composites, mosaics. Images that came in different colour masks. Taking a deep breath, things began to slow again and the words on the page came into focus.

He changed his computer another 3 times at least. The air conditioning was too strong by the 1st. The Internet too slow on the 3rd.

At some point he realized it was time for class. Company law. Perhaps too simple to attend but how else would he kill time on this endless day. At his desk he stared right through his tutor and classmates. Nobody noticed of course - it was not like him to wear any sort of emotion on his sleeve. But as the day progressed his eyes would blur more and more frequently. Under the stress his memory divulged things it had kept private for 6 years. Their rediscovery did not aid his demeanor.

Later in bed that night, he turned on his phone. No messages. In a way, he was sort of glad the pact of silence was still honored. He couldn't help but wonder if things would have been any better today if things were discussed more openly, if (heaven forbid) feelings were shared. No, he thought, I'd rather not.

As he set his phone next to him in the dark room the light from its screen shone on the ceiling. As it went dark, his eyes saw the images clearer than ever. Sitting at his bed that afternoon, checking email. The sound of irregular breathing the next room. The way the sun pierced the afternoon air and the window screen, making its way into a room full of sadness and the anticipation of death. Tears, recital of scriptures. Yellow, yellow skin. Breathing as if an invisible hand had a firm grasp on her heart, pulling it out of her chest with all its might. The door-bell ringing incessantly as the news spread. White, red, green, blue masks covered the images.

Then the next day. Two, maybe three ladies softly touching him, nudging him towards the closed door to go say his goodbyes. Tears welling up in his eyes he enters the cold, clean smelling room. The room was flooded. He felt the water seep into his shoes as he walked towards the smiling corpse. The tears blurred his eyes, so that as he kissed her forehead, all he could see was a jumbled array of colours and light.

His insides were raw, his whispering in her ear quiet.

...labyrinthine wisdom

"In His absence, His place is truly re-affirmed in one's heart."

(the comeback post)

...at the dinner table...

JS: They were not concentration camps. Jeez, you're making us sound like Nazis...

RM: They most certainly were. Every Japanese American was interned during that period. It's not far fetched to say that Hitler was inspired by the US government.

JS: That's ridiculous, there was no torture...

Me: Not on the Nazi scale obviously but it was undoubtedly a crime against humanity...

RM: I wrote my dissertation on it. Did you know that non-US citizens are not protected under the US constitution? So (unlike, for example, Britain) there is no universal human rights code being followed and for the sake of national security the government is able to do a lot more than it should.

JS: As they should be able to.

Me: JS, don't forget that your family were Italian farmers who emigrated to American not too long ago. Do you think you would be happy if your race was suddenly suspect because of a few idiots? Just as the Arabs now are because of those 9/11 morons? I mean come on...

JS: You be quiet after 9/11 I wanted to pick up a gun and SHOOT EVERY FUCKING ARAB IN SIGHT.

Me: And this is where I excuse myself from the table

JS: And you should...

Me: The racism ingrained in you is disgusting and I'm frankly sick of it. To belittle the suffering of the Japanese Americans then to insult my own heritage - you have some nerve...

-----2 hours later------

SI, AT, TT and I arrive at DTPM. I'm still angry but in my party mood I feel defiant. The four of us had already consumed a significant amount of alcohol and it was now only 12.30 am. The vodka started flowing, the music getting harder and the crowd getting more and more merry. Six hours later I finally decided to get into the cab and go home.

I knew I was supposed to go to JS's place and spend the night (or the morning rather) with him. Since we both lived on the Chelsea Embankment I had time to make up my mind. As the cab wizzed through the quiet streets of London on an August bank holiday, I did not feel the usual yearning I had after nights like this to be next to him. I felt more independant.

"Which part of Chelsea Embankment sir?"

I looked out the window. To the distance I could see Jim's building sitting beautifuly on the river by the Chelsea Bridge. At this time of day and in my state of being it looked immaculate, flawless. It was very much like the way he imagined and pressured our relationship to be. Clean, lofty, right. My mind whirled back to the events of the evening. The inebriation, the random horniness, both fun and excessive.

"We'll just continue to Edith Grove please, past the Battersea Bridge." JS imagined us one way, but the truth was altogether different. Snapping out of this relationship is hard and over time I've lost a bit of self-respect for myself in my inability to take assertive action. I realized though that in a way, by distancing myself from him, I was doing what other people wanted me to do rather than what I wanted to do. Surely a part of me sees this relationship as wrong - but not enough of me. And until I am entirely convinced on an emotional level that this is wrong, very little is likely to take place.

I got home and rolled into bed after a quick shower. I lay there for a moment trying to think. There is no reason why I shouldn't be selfish. I want JS in my life, though he can be a rude, asexual bigot. I also want to live my youth, experience what I want to experience and meet who I want to meet. In the past guilt held me back more than anything but now I'm seeing this as a ridiculous excuse. JS started dating me when I was 19 an he should expect the commitment of a teenager not of a 46 year old.

I rolled over and turned off my cell phone.

Anthem by Filo and Peri (awesome summer track 1)

Mid-Summer Night's Ghost

Since my arrival in Cairo only 3 weeks ago, and with three weeks left of this trip, a familiar sense of exhaustion and nostalgia settles in. Exhaustion at the routine, the people that have managed to stay almost exactly the same since high school- frequenting the same bars and eating at the same restaurants. Nostalgia at the beautiful summers that I have had here, with carefree days where the realm of possibility and spontaneity extended even beyond the breadth of the persistently blue sky. Every year I try and recreate the atmosphere, to 'let loose' and get a taste of anything that I had missed to the 'n'th degree. And usually I succeed.

The same song goes through my head:
"I can see you,
your brown skin shining in the sun...
You've got your head thrown back and your
sunglasses on..."

I spend hours on the beach, sometimes dancing in the water. I lose all sense of time and its relevance. I turn on my iPod and drive into sunsets almost on a daily basis- be it a cityscape or otherwise that lines the horizon.

But I'm also overwhelmed by a feeling that my intellect refuses to acknowledge. I miss you. I still remember every detail of that summer we had together. I remember you, my first love, my summer love. I remember the torment that lasted a year before luck struck and you returned to me. I remember the passion and lust that engulfed us and made both 'time' and 'place' intangible, alien concepts. Most of all I remember your hands, how they felt and how they fit in mine.

It's natural to deny this, after all I had rejected it all after one stressful weekend. Youth can be a terrible, improvident agent. Still I remain unsure if a mistake had been made. There is no doubt that I yearn for that physical intimacy, but on an emotional inter-personal level was there a match? There may have been. There must have been, but my ineptitude in self-expression has placed resentment amidst the whole scenario. I easily become a victim of my own failures, but I shudder at the memory of how much pain I caused you.

Love conquers all

An eclectic group of individuals sit at a table at the Greek Club in Cairo. As the light alcohol loosens their tongues, they throw around frivolity and profundity with equal ease and in a manner typical of francophones – with a dry twist of sarcasm. Jean-Eric, face tanned but tired, with cigarette in one hand and a glass of beer in the other, darts his eyes across the table and is unafraid to express his surprising and surprisingly well thought-out opinions. Staring directly at me he asks – Why is it, do you think, that love is always painful?

In my slight disorientation at the depth of the question I managed a logical though basic answer – love is painful because, even if it were requited, the lover constantly desires to express it and constantly needs the beloved to reciprocate. The mere impossibility or impracticability of such a constant display entails a constant internal struggle.

‘No,’ Jean-Eric bluntly disagrees as he lights up another cigarette. ‘Love,’ he says, ‘is painful because of the gap between who you are and who you have learned to be. Our experiences in life have formed our opinions, our behaviour and motivation. We have learned to be a certain kind person because of our experiences, and we always strive towards ideals such as intelligence, worldliness, success. True love cuts right through all this, leaving the raw human inside of us exposed – it is a manifestation of who you really are and can even ignore (or contradict) the logic or rationale that the person you have learned to be dictates.

‘Love is painful not only because it is difficult to deal with this exposure, but because it becomes more difficult to reconcile your true fundamental nature with your learned behaviour. Your relationship with your beloved becomes almost a parallel existence, but as you begin to experience the world together your relationship must be integrated with ‘reality’ so to speak.’ This challenge, I thought, is both internal and external. First, you must ensure that your fundamental self has made a choice that your experienced self supports by way of conviction. Then, if such internal reconciliation takes place, the second step is to ensure that physical, social reality is also reconcilable. Long-distances, significant age differences, different cultural backgrounds or social convictions – these are all external factors that may affect the difficulty of the challenge.

As one stands at a fork in the road of a relationship that has spanned years, the tendency is to look back and try to see why this diverging path ahead was inevitable from the start- or was it ever? The rhetoric is: love conquers all. Jean-Eric’s lesson, I think, does not deny this. It does, however, suggest that if love were to develop into a fulfilling relationship, other factors (both internal and external) must be considered and that in seeking to bring a loving relationship into the swing of every-day life the emotional toll is inevitable.

Moby - Go (Trentemoller Mix)

The Master has done it again!

But this time he paid homage to an entire culture in the process.

Trentemoller put his moves on Moby's classic hit from the early 90's "Go" transforming it into an exciting avant garde electro house track. The track strikes you as outlandish, at least for the few seconds, but the familiar violins slowly swarm the sound image and your left panting with excitement, your mind projecting a slideshow outlining the history of the "Acid House" movement that the original "Go" embodied.

You can almost see the DJs at the Hacienda in Manchester, and in the ghettos of Chicago, pulling together for the first time sentences of music and loop-di-looping em; Paul Oakenfold pop his first pill and scratch an LP, turning Ibiza into a clubbing hotspot in 1987; the illegal raves all over England, especially around the M25, and the legislative panic that followed; and of course, the taming of house with the birth of the Ministry of Sound in London.

All this goes through your head just the violins build up and the chorus yell "Go!"

Suddenly the track is thrown into thick groove. The chunky sound from Chicago is mixed with the electro beat from Manchester and they're both taken to a new level with Trentemoller's ingenius syncopation and beat maping.

How many tracks make you go on and on like this?