I suspect that were I to reveal to everyone what I have achieved in the last two or three days, they would assume that I have gone mad. Perhaps I have crossed that threshold, but I have tasted madness before, in that brief winter month when my sole desire was to throw myself into the embrace of destiny. I can truly say that only then and there, I imbibed that soothing yet terrifying freedom that lunacy bestows. Then again, I suspect that my perpetual mental instability is tacitly accepted by all that know me, it is only when I vacillate to the extremes that eyebrows are raised; but I quickly return to that centre point where I feel nothing or effect to not feel anything.
It does not bring shame to say it, nor does it surprise me that I have gone full circle and now, after having traversed this arc whose ends meet ad infinitum, I find myself where I began.
“Your voice has changed,” he says. “I enunciate now.” I retort, not fully comprehending. I know my intellect has evolved, though I still maintain that docile and indulging quality (but is this not the paradox of the Stoic who denies himself every pleasure that he is only too quickly to bestow on those he loves without hesitation?) that cringes at the mere though of saying “No!” And physically, I am still that stolid citadel of ivory that refuses to succumb to the fury of transient winds. I may have grown and inch or two, my features may have lost their cherub-like quality, which always unleashed upon me a torrent of derision from the lover I would take on later on; he was particularly vicious when he was inebriated, but then again I had grown accustomed to such abuse from my father. Perhaps it is the separation of four years that creates the effect of change.
To digress a bit, I must confess that I am glad that everything unfolded in such a way, though I ended up jaded and depressed, because the rupture between my first love and I, led me to encounter a year on, this inebriated lover who once would say to me, “I will break your neck,” nonsense that was induced by his intoxication and jealousy. I stared into his eyes and he said, “I’m no good for you. I’m going to hurt you.” I wanted to be hurt, I cared for him so much. And with the facility and energy of a poet, I transformed him into Dionysus. To this day, when I speak of him, it is always as if I speak of a belle époque, a Golden Age when I would binge on unadulterated felicity. Such is the myth I created. And whenever he and I speak, I feel a rush of happiness that is real and overwhelming. His idea fills me with rapture. He is my poem incarnate; he is my Word come flesh. Simply knowing of his existence was enough to feed my soul – I was such a being, naïf and satiated by simply possessing such insignificant knowledge. To travel in time, ”… I am fascinated by him, I love him and though we shall never be more than friends, with this I am more than satisfied because my world is that of illusions, they’re noble, fragile, beautiful and do not hurt physically … they are simple.” I once uttered such stupidity! Such foolish romanticism. I was but 19 years of age. I was such an idealist that I would not allow my love degenerate by giving into the desires of the flesh. I tasted the sacrosanct sensuality of his lips; it was divine. It was magical … it was transient.
Now, returning to the subject at hand. It does not seem to me that my voice has changed, then again I hardly ever speak, so I am unaccustomed to my voice. At St. John’s I did speak but I never heard myself for my face was on fire and my heart’s pulpitations seemed to be so exaggerated that surely it would escape my chest. Yet it never did. I was too ‘in the moment’ to hear the actual sound of my voice.
As I spoke with this Delphic oracle that reintroduced me to the person that I was four years ago, I was amazed. I felt excitement, as if someone were telling me this incredible story about this fictitious being that supposedly was me. I still am that being, though I have become more jaded, not that I do not have a reason for it.