I have never been good at anything, nor am I ‘gifted’. I do have ‘potential’, but who doesn’t? So I try to trascend this peculiar state of inaction, to actualize this ‘potential’, a word that stings my very being. I read – though I am not very good at it – in order to be loved. I am a consumer of books, these fantastic beings who are worlds unto-themselves, universes waiting to be deciphered and experienced.
But what is potential? a kind word, a generic appellative – a prudent and ritualistic spacefiller; a gasp. I am not a lover of truth, but then again, who is? Nevertheless, this word buries itself into my skin; here it hibernates. From its slumber it is awaken, rapidly aroused and armed by the beck of the falling Atlas. I am the collapsing Titan, who after liberating himself, finds his liberty too overpowering. And how I love to mortify myself when I am down!
I am not potential, I don’t want to be potential!
Life is a fucking race to the grave; I was born to die. And in the meantime, I read. Children, hardly weaned off their mothers’ breasts, are told that they are adults. And they’re off: go! They are marched on a linear path, performing one activity after another; none truly excelling. How can one? if there is never a moment of reflexion, of sweet contemplation. And herein lies my folly, I reflect too much! But they, these children-under-the-illusion-of-adulthood, they go their deaths believing the myth; it is their last act. Mere babes!
I too am a babe, un petit enfant trop affaibli, si amer. The world calls: “Become an adult.” I tremble. I don’t want to, I don’ty know how to, it’s not in me. “Life is an absurdity, I believed it and now I know it,” escapes in a susurration. “And these, are these the words of a child?” it stammers. I tremble anew; fear-driven and unable to act.
Oh, another confabulation, a charming paroxysm of lunacy.