He sat stiffly beneath the setting sun, the thrashing waves biting at the rock wall upon which he sat. The salt spray was like a neat shower, cooling the top of his head from the burning buzz of the wine. Though he ought not to be so concerned, and though he promised with such assurance, his teacher's words took hold of his senses, making him confused; he was too weak to fight against their decay on his passion. He began to think of all the horrible things, all of the things that could go wrong. His feet strangled by these thoughts could not make another move. He felt awfully ashamed to encounter this doubt again and again, even after speaking so proudly.
He thought, "My mind is filled with visions, thoughts, and musings which I can pen down into design, yet the feeling that none of these would grow into anything more is so frightful. The idea of failure, the idea of anguish and suffering, is too great to escape."
He slapped his hand on his leg, trying to break away from this haze.
He grew vulnerable to his recoiling mind. The weight of his worry was squeezing down on his back, pressing him till he could hardly breathe.
He said, "How can I be this pathetic? I have spoken so confidently, and yet I stand stilly like this, too afraid to go forward! I feel compelled to do something beyond the ordinary, but I feel that so often, to do anything, one must have already done something. There is little care or appreciation for the unknown and unrecognized. So, how can I start when no one would dare bet on me?"
He was kept stiff by such reasoning, and then the procrastination to do any worthwhile action came quickly. He could not move an inch, for he panicked. The idea repeated, unyielding to his stubborn words. All his aspirations would fail; it kept coming again and again into his heart.
He was recoiling in a panic, and then took a swig of wine to hinder this lame and unruly mind. He fell into daydreams to preoccupy his mind. Though such things served nothing but to quiet the temper of his mind, for only a moment.
Within a brief moment, it all came back to him. He would think of any small detail, then again, he would regress into turmoil.
He thought, "There is surely no cure for a loser. A loser is a loser, a person who can never win, for he is never able to escape the bondage of his mind."
He laughed, and though he wished for salvation, he knew no one could free him from this curse but himself. Yet, he complained, "I am weak! I wish I were strong, but I am not. I want to be better, but I can't escape it. I can't escape.
"No, there is no absolute for the human condition. It is only what I decide it to be. I will escape this confusion, I will not be stifled before even beginning. I will not surrender to the devil within," he said loudly. Although he knew his words were naive, and haphazard without any decent recognition of the demand such an assumption would need to survive under.
He said, "No, so many try and in the end fail. It is not a matter of the heart alone; the heart cannot defeat this fickle reality. There needs to be something solid and firm to give credence to your heart. There is nothing, though. I have not succeeded in one endeavor, and I have failed to do so many things. Why should I believe I can succeed here, especially in such a grand effort? Yet why does my heart beat so loudly if everything is so surely useless? Is that not a sign to try regardless? Does not my heart sing for an attempt, though it is frightened?"
He was sure that the sound of his heart was like a thunder drum. Stinging his ears, keeping him steady. Though he could not be sure how long that would keep, for while he was assured of himself, the weight of the world was far too demanding for one man to take hold of. A heart was too cheap to stand against the tide with.
Watching the sunlight neatly flicker off the faraway sea like a glittering crown.
He felt his mind drift away, and he said coldly as he watched the beautiful view, "Beautiful things enchant me. Such things, though, make a man hollow, for they are attached to a dream, and far from the heart of reality. In life, how fickle is beauty torn asunder by closeness? Beauty turns ugly for we call it beautiful, for nothing in life ever amounts to the beauty we imagine. Only in dreams can something be beautiful. Everything real is thus ugly, all because something beautiful exists, even if only in a dream. For all things that exist are fallible, all things are imperfect, and all dreams are short."
For what did he say this, if not to bemoan and complain? He felt a foul mood assault him, and he thus wished to assault all of existence too.
He recognized this and laughed bitterly, "Such was the cruelty of a loser. To infect all things with his obnoxious stench. I am not happy, and so I speak nonsense to infect everything around me in a bad mood."
He closed his eyes and thought, "I want a woman near me. I want her soft skin weighing onto me, her eyes staring right at me, her scent weighing on my clothes. I want a woman so badly."
Though he wished for a woman, to him, usually, such things held no great attraction. Yet, he was not himself now, but rather the awful remainder of his whole self, so he longed for the taste of a woman, rather than the company or soul of one.
He was truly in a dire strait, not only because of the wine but also his foul mood.
For if he could choose with a clear mind worthy company, it would always be her, the woman far off in the depths of his soul - Minerva.
He was strict with his obsessions; there needed to be far more than beauty. He felt he knew far too many of those beautiful women who could stop a heart, who could steal all your courage and make your palms wet. Yet, none of them held such power over him. At least not the way Minerva did. No, not them, for they all had their flaws that outweighed their immense beauty.
He sipped on his wine and joked, "That foulness of character most people seem to have, deep beneath the surface. It is like a foul stench, stuck to my nose and mind, making everything ugly. No matter how hard I try, I cannot look on with favor, seeing their hearts. Not even the most enchanting beauty could charm my heart from indifference if they had an ugly heart!"
No, he believed in the focus of temper. He said, "For love, true love was not about what lay outside, but far within the deepest dark, and whether you could honestly bear it. Everyone has a flaw, a little ugliness; none of us are perfect. We are all like that, but tolerating it, staying regardless, that is love. It's just about finding someone good enough to risk it all on, someone you are willing to endure it all for."
Though it was indeed quite the opposite, he was quite often in his mind reviled, often judged too harshly, far too quickly by others, and that left him furious. Yet, what he hated more was his intolerance to acting, to doing anything. He felt that things were destined to be, and though he did not wish to let that be, in the end, nothing ever seemed to change. So he could only bemoan, running in circles of anguish, till he fell into such despair that he could not even move.
He came to think about what he would rather enjoy, perhaps being dead or alive.
He suddenly said, "I see sometimes people who are fawned over by others. They have good looks, a good mind, and a good soul, and this earns them love and all the things that are sweet in life. I lack everything, though, and surely I lack the affection of most people. They just snub their nose at me. So I much more enjoy staying at my forge, or my home. I never go out, and I enjoy it."
He complained, shaking his head, "Those who are too popular are, of course, those who enjoy their days in revelry surrounded by loose ideologies, and adulterous escapades, and were as a result wretched. Yet I fear at times that I say such things are wretched simply because I have never had the opportunity to enjoy such things, and for my peace, I dismiss it. I wonder if I were truly invited, would I reject it? Do I have an ounce of truth to me, or am I just a loser who compensates for his tragedies with petty lies?"
That frightened him far more than his fear of failure, that he was a man of little character. That, no, he was not a good man, as he had so relied on and lent his life to, but rather this pathetic, wicked man who simply had not the right to indulge and so complained and sneered.
He head ached, and he slapped his hand down on the ground with anger. He had, after all his talk, sobered up quite a bit.
He leaned down. He laid his head down, and his eyes slowly flickered close. As moonlight peeked forth thinly, he felt rather hopeless. He wondered what the answer should be, and though he rightfully knew there was no answer to the questions he asked, he still asked. What could someone in pain find in an answer? Nothing, it still hurt regardless of how much you rationalized it. No answer truly offered salvation to suffering; instead, the pursuit of an answer was an escape from the pain. To push blame onto anything else, perhaps imaginary, was the only way to survive. Though it's not anything really good, it's a comfort to blame someone, because how could the heart bear it all.
The feelings of angst continued, and he closed his eyes, too tired to contest.
A hand came onto him, like fire burning against his skin. The electric impulse coiled across his body and merged with the spell of sleep that he was in. He was both in a state of hyper-vigilance and also still half asleep. His eyes opened lazily, and the first thing staring into his eyes was the ten thousand stars above, their radiance as they danced. The lights were blinding, and they asked too many of his secrets, it seemed. They spun faster and faster as if to reach down and latch onto him. He worried about that and quickly turned his head away. Then he looked in this frightful mood at her.
How could he describe her? He knew far too little of her. She seemed abstract and untamable. Her figure and features were so difficult to retain, for the darkness and dreams covered her, and only the thin moonlight covered her brown eyes.
At first, they were nothing much, but as he continued looking deeply into them, he became mesmerized and enchanted. Her eyes were like beams of sunlight filling you entirely. Her body posed with the grave penance of a large and weighty attire, that mirrored her stainless disciplined mind. She was blinding like the stars, and the more you stared, the less you could comprehend.
As she drew closer, he could see a little more. Yet each recorded feature only served to confuse him more. For she seemed to be his love, Minerva. Yet, he quickly dismissed this realization as he had never grown so close to Minerva ever before. He felt it impossible.
Yet, though he knew she was not Minerva, something within him was seized in a panic, and his heart began to pound in his chest. She was something that demanded his full attention, and yet he could not focus an inch towards this woman for some reason; she remained hazy.
He then grew forgetful of himself and other things, for his love came to occupy his mind when he looked at her again. Though he recoiled again in fear. Now he could not stand to look at her, for she stood poignantly like a mass of horror to him. She was utterly beautiful, and enchanted his mind easily as if through magic. She was naturally something dangerous in his mind.
Yet in the end, drugged by the mindlessness of curiosity, he lost focus on his fear and came to continue to gaze at the woman in front of him. He seemed to see her features change once again to that of Minerva. He was like a moth to the flame, pulled by terrible force, losing control of himself!
He asked, softly, perhaps afraid of embarrassing himself, he would rather be unheard, "Do you know me?"
He replied without waiting, "I wish you did, but I know better. Thus, even if it's not you, but merely a fake, a mirage, I still wish to hear those words come true. Minerva, say you do know me, please, even if a lie, even if a pitiful thing, even if you are not her, please say you know me."
Staring emptily, he said, "I have something I wish to do, but not an ounce of courage. I worry what might happen to me, and Minerva, my one love, is perhaps the one thing that I can lean on to escape this terrible hell."
She neither abandoned the conversation nor replied.
He, upon seeing her not answer him, felt she truly was a ghost haunting him. Hence, he arose and attempted to escape.
After a short while of thinking, he stopped in place and sat down again. He knew better than this, but his mouth was controlled by the intrusion of a deluge of thoughts and desires, and so he said, "Pardon me, but I dream a lot. Now it seems my mind is lost, for what I dream seems to seep into reality. I even take you a ghost or a stranger as the woman I long for, I keep seeing Minerva within you."
He continued, "Though I don't disapprove of seeing her, even if a hallucination, I appreciate seeing her. Life ought to be a dream, yes? Instead, it is a nightmare, and perhaps hoping to remedy this, my mind hallucinated you as someone else. Excusing that distance between me and the one I silently adore, using a stranger, is my only relief. I am sorry for using you like this, but please allow me to continue speaking to you as if I am speaking to her."
She warned, further disturbed by his words, "Your mind is unsettled, but why? What could possibly have haunted you so? You are much better than this."
He begged her to be silent. For her pitying words were humiliating. Yet, why did they also seem sweet?
He wished he could have been silenced then, but he could not stop the terrible rush of words from his innards, as if pulled by the hook of some divine fisherman, "I am not better than this. This is my common state: madness and endless chatter. I hardly accomplish anything else. You seem to think you know me, though I cannot place you, it makes my apology grow deeper. There is nothing good about me."
She interrupted, finally finished with it all, "I do not wish to hear your pessimism, you are mistaken. There is no chance that what you say is true, because I know you. Perhaps in your mind, all your delusions have taken control over the truth, making you feel otherwise. However, listen when I say this, you are better than this. Reality is all that matters. Do not let your nightmares overtake you."
He laughed suddenly as a silence came over his mind, bemused by the sound of her words, "Is it so? Yet, I see hardly any difference between reality and the nightmares I have. What is the difference between a nightmare and this pitiful life? Indeed, it feels absolutely horrible when nothing seems to work out, as if you are stuck in tar as the world continues moving on. The feeling of everything failing is much worse than the greatest horror, the greatest nightmare, for you know this is the truth. A nightmare may be awful, yet I can awaken from it. While failure and reality never cease, no matter how much I beg, they never end. Thus, I would say even a nightmare is favored over reality."
He stopped to take a breath, he realized he had run out of breath, and tears had come to his eyes. He wiped his tears and said, "In fact, everything is horrible, because there is no escape. There is no change, no matter our efforts. We seem to even accept it as natural. Yet, it's ugly and horrible to live for despair is the closest thing to happiness the poor and pathetic can embrace."
He took a breath and then reached out to hold her cheek.
He said, "Yet, in-between there is love. The only thing worth fighting for, the only thing worth living for. Yet Love is like a nightmare, too. It is so far fetched, people often confuse it with attraction, lust, and settle their noisy hearts with the peace of the plain, a worthless compromise. They say it's enough to have someone, even if it isn't love. Yet, love is so much more than a hundred years; it stretches far into the distance past life and past death. Yet, how can we muddled-headed men see something so far above us, something so ethereal and pure? To cherish something so invisible, then there can only be pain. By seeking love, one can only find pain. Yet people chase it, I do too, for there is no happiness without love, there is no despair without love, there is just the plainness of life. Reality is dull without love, and so when love is so lost, then reality is so torturous. In the end, which is worse? A world without love, or a world with love? A world where you are constantly searching for love like some fool, or the world where you are told the cold truth and become colder in turn? Which should you choose, the horrible reality, or the deadly dream?"
She replied, "Whichever is nicer should be what you choose. In the end, when we open our eyes, reality is born, and when we close them, reality dies. We choose our truth, we choose our perspective. There is the world that is, and the world imagined by us, which one ought you to take? It is obviously the one imagined by us. I feel that life is often so confusing, we settle for what is, and let reality be the harsher of the two come to take control of our hearts. Why can life not be a dream, even though there are nightmares occasionally? Surely we can offer a dream far nicer than this cruel reality. Even if a lie, shouldn't the soul be comforted, else why live? Do we not deserve even that little bit? So I say seek the nicer of the two, hold no care for reality or the truth, find what is pleasing and allow that as your truth, your dream made reality."
He felt his heart shake at her words. He stared at her and said, "Men are far too foolish, aren't they? They simply give away their happiness, accepting the fragility of some certainty. They accept reality and deny dreams. You are undoubtedly right. What is leaves a man struggling. So we cannot try, for the end has already been settled. The loser lost, and the winner won. Yet in dreams, there exists something more; in a dream, at least you can try. So why live with reality? Dream, lie, cheat your way into finding a better way to live, a comfortable and beautiful way."
He said, "Why does corruption have to be an inevitability? Why does love have to end? Why do people have to be mean? Why do kings have to be cruel? Why do the people you love hurt you the most? These things are things people say are life and reality, things we must accept as necessary evils and things we cannot ever escape; they are fixed onto the fact, but in the end, I seek to deny such things! Why do I have to accept the way things are? I want to change things; there's no way I'll let this world be decided. So I'll make the world a dream. A lie big enough to change the world! At least I must try."
She found him rather amazing, for she felt certain she had found someone whose heart and beliefs aligned with hers, something she had never seen. No, she had met many people, many with stern and strong resolves, but though they were trustworthy and thoughtful, each was too consumed by the darkness of the world, too belligerent by its harshness, that they denied that the world was filled with an infinite potential. She had always, regardless of the horrors she saw, regardless of the ugliness of man, she always believed that the world could be more. She disliked whenever anyone relented anything, saying men were evil, or that this world was foul; she was disgusted with such a lack of passion.
She ought to have been more understanding; she lived far too long, through far too much, to have such a childishness. Yet in this world, to relent to the darkness is as good as to die. To live, to dream, is that not to journey into the unknown! Is it not a human's desire to peek into the untamed, and defeat a challenge, to merely accommodate suffering, and even worse, to become tamed by it, to become vicious, is that truly living? Enslaved, by such conventions, she could not accept it, but it was far too easy to give up; most people she knew had given up, and the rest were too naive to realize anything substantial. They simply talked about things others ought to do, never seeing the weight of such a challenge. To do the right thing, how heavy a burden. To love is to sacrifice, and as such, one is weak. In service to revenge, a worthy parent would do any cruel act, and just the same among lovers, and every other form of true love.
She herself had abandoned such a thing, knowing this was far too frightening. The idea of her agency lost to another, her mind torn and weak to the tempests of the heart, such a thing frightened her too much. Hence, she had long closed her heart.
He suddenly stood up, not even looking at her, and said, "I have much to do. Forgive my mindless utterance. I hope you will not take me as rude. I have wasted your time whining incessantly like a child and I even mistook you for someone else."
He did not look at her, too frightened to truly see her, for she truly held such strength over him.
Standing as he left, she extended her hand out and said sadly, "I am right here, and you don't see me. Vulcan, you call my name, but do not think I could hear you. You leave this distance between us. Though you call out to me sweetly as your love, though you call out my name - Minerva. You do not dare to see me. I wish you could just look at me, and see me with sincerity and honesty."