the gift of happiness
Disclaimer: story-telling.
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The gift of happiness – Saturday night, staring through the tinted windows of his car at the dim, orangey world outside. All is at peace, all is quiet, all is mollified. There are groups of youths hanging around the void deck, playing basketball, sneakers screeching on hard painted concrete, smoking, people supping at the hawker centres, or running endless errands.
He’d been told it was all for this. All the wars ever fought – over soil, over ideas. All the people ever murdered - sons of men, Son of Man. It was all for this – flaming lurid human flesh for this twilight orange. This fulvous pallor in which youths hang around together, unmolested by either sinister intent or sentient thought, and smoke, and laugh, and pretend that they aren’t unhappy about their unhappiness. And then, as the hours seep away and the lights on the basketball courts dim to a miniscule grey, retreat into the dark places of their heart, the empty pages of their diaries, to cry and marvel at the relentless shadows forever crowding in.
Does He ever regret what He did in that eternal instant for us? Did He think it would finally make us happy? Did we think we could have given them happiness, wrapped up in layers of barren prosperity and idle peace? It’s like Christmas morning – unwrapping the gaily-wrapped parcels only to find something you never wanted, or worse, something you thought you did. Eventually we learn to squelch the dry-throated horror that we first felt when we uncovered the unspeakable null at the heart of things. Eventually we learn that there is no point in bashing ourselves against the core of unyielding iron, this, our hard-hearted planet.
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The gift of happiness – Saturday night, staring through the tinted windows of his car at the dim, orangey world outside. All is at peace, all is quiet, all is mollified. There are groups of youths hanging around the void deck, playing basketball, sneakers screeching on hard painted concrete, smoking, people supping at the hawker centres, or running endless errands.
He’d been told it was all for this. All the wars ever fought – over soil, over ideas. All the people ever murdered - sons of men, Son of Man. It was all for this – flaming lurid human flesh for this twilight orange. This fulvous pallor in which youths hang around together, unmolested by either sinister intent or sentient thought, and smoke, and laugh, and pretend that they aren’t unhappy about their unhappiness. And then, as the hours seep away and the lights on the basketball courts dim to a miniscule grey, retreat into the dark places of their heart, the empty pages of their diaries, to cry and marvel at the relentless shadows forever crowding in.
Does He ever regret what He did in that eternal instant for us? Did He think it would finally make us happy? Did we think we could have given them happiness, wrapped up in layers of barren prosperity and idle peace? It’s like Christmas morning – unwrapping the gaily-wrapped parcels only to find something you never wanted, or worse, something you thought you did. Eventually we learn to squelch the dry-throated horror that we first felt when we uncovered the unspeakable null at the heart of things. Eventually we learn that there is no point in bashing ourselves against the core of unyielding iron, this, our hard-hearted planet.
posted by leah | 6:13 PM
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