Wandering, 1:1

I have a certain amount of desperation.
There is a need, that I can't hide from. Always is there another person to replace the fixation. Always another. Who will be unfortunate enough to take the brunt of this fixation? It is unfortunate and no fun at all. Depressing, actually.

He put his pen down and put his head down. He was tired.

---

It was a glorious day, that day twenty years ago when he looked up at the sky and smiled. It was the morning of the first snow of the season, and he walked along the road, revelling in the brilliant day, watching the white clouds meander above him as he himself meandered through the pristine snow. There was just enough snow to dust his shoes to the laces, but he wasn't worried about wet socks. There was nothing to worry about.

Today is a wonderful day, he thought, there is nothing that can beat this.

He walked by a familiar set of trees, once thin oaks now transformed into elegant birches by the whiteout. Everything is transformed, today, he thought. Nothing is the same. The world is new born, the heavens sing with light for the child, and I can walk and glory in the majesty of the moment. The epiphany is now, the earth is the babe, and we are the magi, come to witness his beauty.

He carried himself away with his thoughts. He thought he could hear the voice of angels heralding something, everything. He looked around himself as he walked, immune to the reality of the cold, of the barren trees, of the maddening silence of an early winter morning in the suburbs. He couldn't see the power lines towering above the trees, silently humming, breathing life into the machines that the people needed to live comfortably. He couldn't smell the asphalt and concrete that crawl everywhere, driving deeper into the so-called wilderness to bring in civilization. All he could see were the sun and the sky and the snow. But those things were what he was.

He walked and walked, ignoring the cars that began driving dangerously along the road. He nearly slipped on an icy patch on a shoveled walk. He carefully picked his way around the pavement.

He made his way back home. Arriving on the walk in front of the house, he said aloud, "Sweet home, you too are changed." He walked up to the garage and keyed in his password into the electronic door opener. The door didn't respond with its usual click. He tried again. No response. He tried again. Nothing. The snow must've taken down a power line somewhere.

There's no power. And I'm locked out.

He walked around to the front porch and cleared off the snow on the top few steps. He sat down on the cold steps and pondered the gloriousness of the day.

Introduction by the Author

In an effort to force myself to create more, I have set for myself a public publishing schedule. Behold!

Expect continuations of the narrative each Friday.

As much an experiment in self-psychology as it is a display of my meager writing ability, the narrative will be excusably unpolished and rambling but it will be timely. I expect nothing more than to meet my weekly deadline, and, as such, I hope you, dear reader, will expect little more. (But, of course, I hope to expand your expecations as the narrative unfolds!)

As for the narrative itself: it is a trivial story of a trivial young man doing trivial things. It is nothing, really. Yet at the same time, it is everything and real. That is, a real story of a real young man doing real things. For what is everyday real life but everyday and trivial? No one cares about this young man, but neither does he care about anyone else. He is loved--but alone.

But by no means is he a portrait of depression. The very opposite, in fact. He is a symbol of hope as the ordinary. He is transcendent by being the ordinary. He is the modern hero, inunique, a man living inconsequentially and dear to few, but dear to at least himself. He lives despite living like so many before and around him.

So forgive me if my hero seems ordinary, and forgive me if my writing seems to surpass my hero in dullness. But this ordinariness is exactly that which I seek. I seek the ordinary, and all the extraordinary things that the ordinary entails.