Attis
#1 of Other
Are you sometimes watching the trees moving in the wind?
Are we walking? Where are we going?
ATTIS
"My grandmother once said: 'You cannot take anything with you. Not even your own shirt', while looking out of the window, fixated on nothing in particular while contemplating the death of her husband."
"That day she came back alone. Her bag full of things that didn't belong to her. Neither did they belong to anyone anymore. They were literally impersonal, yet eerily personal to her. She said she couldn't bring herself to put them anywhere and so they stayed in that bag on a chair in her kitchen."
"Her gaze wandered around aimlessly, seemingly searching something outside the window that didn't exist. It wasn't a curious gaze. There wasn't anything expectant in it. It just was what the eyes do whenever you haven't set them on anything. You're looking, but you're not watching. It's like you're blind with your eyes wide open and instead of darkness you see colors and random movements that don't tell you anything about the world"
"It was silent outside. Only the wildly moving branches and bushes revealed the heavy wind. The window glass separated us from the world out there. I felt like being somewhere else, but nowhere in particular."
"She said she could just watch these trees endlessly and that she had no idea why. She was never the kind of person who liked to just sit around looking out the window, observing the world as if it was a muted TV screen."
"I remembered my grand-grandmother who did exactly that. She had a small chair right next to the window and a pillow on the sill to put her elbows on. Or maybe it's just something from a movie I remember and she actually never had a pillow and a chair there. Or perhaps I once saw another old lady at her window looking at me while passing."
"But in that moment I could almost understand why my grandmother had this unexcited confusion. Why she suddenly felt like watching the world silently. And I wondered if all these other elderly ladies were the same."
"'The world is shit if you're alone', she said and took another long pause. 'We had a good life', she concluded, but I sensed no joy in her words. There was nothing warm and consoling about them. They seemed to be a mere conclusion, dry and without consideration, like something you'd see on an old computer screen after it had hummed for whatever time it took to finish the calculation. Her calculation had needed over 50 years. Or 60, I don't fully remember. I was never good with numbers."
"In that situation I believe I could feel some of the despair she internally struggled with while maintaining her calm, aimless gaze. But maybe it was an egoistic kind of understanding, because I never suffered a loss like hers. I was only ever good at pondering. My mind would take the concept and would run it down to whatever final conclusion it was able to come up with. Loss. Despair. Death. I have no power over it. It wants to show me."
"But I've felt sadness. Anonymous sorrow that wedged itself into me whenever I was given the chance to think. I'm not even sure where it came from exactly, but it showed me how fear and loss look like. Like a theater I never wanted to be at in the first place. I like to watch happy things, valuable things, fantastically things like every other person. But what I get to see is tragedy and horrors that cannot even be committed to a stage."
"What 'horrors' exactly?"
"Being alone. Aging. Being sick. Being a failure. But most of all being alone. Just like she was. And she did indeed have a good life. Whenever I saw her and my grandfather they radiated contentment and calm happiness. I believe they achieved everything they set out to. They had a good marriage. Got to know each other very early. Weren't too poor. Had a good family. A nice house right next to a small forest in an area that was close to a huge forest they liked to travel in."
"And my mind asks: 'What will be with someone like me?' She had a good life and still ended up there. Watching the trees from a silent room in an empty house. She used to be happy, I believe. Now there was only the wind moving the leaves."
"... It's egoistic of me again. I'm selfish to use this still image as a reflection of myself."
"Is this a bad thing?"
"I must be. I'm not in her position and cannot even comprehend her feelings. How bad it must be to have lived over 50 years with the person you called 'being one with yourself' and now being alone with only memories that all went gray. How utterly destructive must the feeling be of losing a 'soul mate'? Is it even possible to comprehend this? It sounds far worse than death to me. ... There's me again, isn't it?"
"Well, at the moment there's only you. There's no other person around who could even speak for themselves. This means it's alright if you tell me about your feelings. We can talk about all the others once they return."
"The concept of 'soul mates' kept me thinking for a long time. Still does. Is it even possible for a person to be so close to you that you both are like one? If I believe my grandmother then it must be. And I don't have any reason not to believe her when she says that she knew every thought of my grandfather -- every idea he had, every problem that plagued him -- by simply looking at him."
"But is this what a soul mate is? Or is it just the result of having shared one's life with another person for over 50 years? And even if these two things aren't the same, wouldn't they still have the same effect? Knowing and trusting a person like yourself or maybe even more."
"But it cannot be possible to find a person who shares your interests and wishes so deeply that you're like one being that, from the day of your first meeting on, cannot be separated anymore without breaking both of you. Maybe there's just enough common ground to create the feeling of belonging, but beyond the surface there will always be hidden fissures of two worlds that eventually aren't connected. There're just too many variables. Too many nuances and pitfalls. It sounds impossible."
"But on the other hand, there're over seven billion people on Earth. It would be statistically highly unlikely if there's no person on this planet who likes, wishes and feels 90% of the things you do. Somewhere in another country, at the end of the desert or at the top of some mountain there must be this one person who'd sink on their knees and both of you start crying about having found each other against all odds. Or maybe this person lives next door, currently having the exact same thoughts and worries you have. You pass each other without knowing, being unable to look through the unexcited gaze you wear to hide the cracks behind. Can it be that people overlook their soul mates because they're so similar that they just pass by like the smell of wavers in an ice cream shop?"
"Do you know the feeling of waking up and feeling like somebody you loved more than anything else in the world just died? And then you realize that there never was such a person? Shouldn't it be much easier to cope with this imaginary loss when noticing that it was never real in the first place?"
"But it's not. It feels abysmal. When you realize that you're alone -- have always been -- and instead of a person dying your inner wish of having had a loved one dies. It's not the same. Not made of flesh, but it's still death."
"It's strange. The people I think about don't even exist and I still mourn them as if they once did. Isn't it paradoxical that there's something bad happening to them? Wouldn't it make much more sense for me to imagine them happy? What prevents me from taking all these non-existent people and letting them be friends with each other and family? Don't they deserve it? Deserve to be in an imaginary, happy world I can just wish into being? Instead they're just as miserable as I am. And I'm sorry for them. I wish I was able to show them love and take away the pain they feel. But I cannot. I don't even know how to take away my own."
"If there was a god and he felt sad, depressed and lonely -- something that surely could easily befall an eternal creature -- would he be able to make his creation be happy? Or would his inability of making himself happy prevent him from creating a happy world?"
"I could basically be the god of the stories I write. I could write my characters to be happy and content with their lives. I could make them feel loved and understood by everything and everyone, but wouldn't it just be a façade behind which they wish nothing more than to cry?"
"I don't want to hurt all these non-existing people, but I cannot help. They hurt with me. And still we're not able to console each other. We're so far apart. Farther than another universe. One side lives in existence, the other in non-existence. They cannot do anything -- are dependent on me. And they have no clue. I wish they could write their own stories and I would read them. Would they write something happy about me?"
"So ... I feel like that's some kind of 'conclusion' to all the walking around? Did it satisfy you?"
"We took a good walk, I think. There're many things to expand upon. That's a good thing. It would be bad if we were talking about the exact same stuff all the time."
"I hope I'm not taking too much of your time with this."
"Don't worry. There's more than enough."
"How much before you need to go?"
"Thirty years. Maybe a bit more. Maybe less. We could be here for half a decade or maybe tomorrow we're gone. Nobody can know for sure."
"What would you prefer?"
"I don't have preferences. I'm here as long as it takes. The more time we end up getting the farther we can walk."
"You still haven't told me who you are, by the way."
"You tell me."
"I'm still alone, aren't I?"