Flow

It was a beautiful evening. From the moments I stood at the window in my room, listening to Dead Can Dance, thankful for the here and now... to the moment now, when I am sitting at my laptop and once again listening to Dead Can Dance, which seems to have become what I listen to the most these days. The music strikes a chord in me, one that I wish to hear more and more.

When you expect whistles, it's flutes
When you expect flutes, it's whistles

With sadness I saw him leave the room, the man I'd admired for so long for his writings. Admired perhaps even more so for being related to someone more than just admirable for much more personal qualities. I didn't know what I had been expecting really. Instant recognition, instant welcoming? If the one I'd once been friends with had moved on with his life, why did I think a complete stranger would understand how much meeting him really meant for me?

After all, it had just been a few words. About how I admired his writing, how it was a pleasure and honour to finally see him in real life. Things he probably heard quite regularly from people. Things it made sense to say. Some stupid question about inspiration. Then, just awkward silence. And indeed, there was nowhere to go on from that point. Nothing connected us, except perhaps that someone I had known a long time ago. Someone who long ago moved on.

So I stood there as he spoke to his companion, trying to look as though I was doing something. As the two walked out the door I stood there, gazing at his pale grey coat for the last time. Gone. I'd gathered my courage and approached him, spoken to him. I'd done what I could - at the wrong time in the wrong place, but the best there was open for me. I'd sought the person and found the writer. For the writer, I was just another girl who'd read his books.

I sat down, trying to collect the scattered remains of my hopes. In the end I didn't know the person. It was someone else who had inspired me, who I burned for with such passion that everyone who knew him seemed to have become holy. It was someone else whose memory made my eyes water when I saw this man, someone else and the inspiration I hoped they might have in common.

The event I'd come to see was almost over. There was little point in staying. I'd had a day full of magic and the culmination I had so desired. It was a dead end, but at least I'd arrived there, if only to prove to myself once again that some people were way out of range for me. Like father, like son perhaps. I'd been reaching out to people who could never be my equals. To people whose lives were just too distant from my own.

It was dark when I stepped outside. Still I kept hoping for a miracle of some kind, but little enough was likely to happen. I had wanted to meet someone who understood the transcendental... someone who could see beyond the mundane... someone with whom I could go on a journey of (self-)discovery. I'd thought I could find that in the man I'd spoken to. Perhaps I'd got too carried away with old connections, perhaps I should've paid more attention to something else. It was too late to think about it there, though, having reached the end with little more than once again broken illusions. It was not what I had come for, but it was what I would naturally get.

Right?

Someone spoke to me. It was a guy I'd had a brief conversation with at the event. He and a friend of his were thinking of moving on someplace else for conversation. Would I be interested in joining them?

Well... I thought. Might as well at least give it a try. Small chance I'd find anything transcendent there, but it would be a better end than a lonely walk home.

So on we went. With talk that in time went far beyond the mundane.

...


Only back at home did I look up who it was that I'd been talking to. And to think. He was a writer who'd approached me as a person.

How amazing. How ironic. How absolutely beautiful.