Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Anatomy Of Absence

Absence wounds in such a way that is too thorny to commit into the nakedness of familiar words. Neither Science nor Logic can decode its cryptic verses; Apparatuses cannot measure its degree in thresholds, yet you feel its existence. You suffer its presence when everything starts to cave in and only the nearness of a yearned name could dispel your vast constellations of voids.

Call it a hunger, a malaise, an affliction, an ailment in which no one is immune. It is the cornerstone of smouldering yearning; of petty, blinding jealousy; of wanting too much that it hurts.

How can you describe the anguish that shadows its arrival? How can you justify your freefall into undignified depths of being too needful? How should you deal with muted gaps which intensify your great deprivation? Or how should you reconcile with the thought that you are not missed in the same way you toss and turn in the hollowed spaces of profound vacancy?

Missing a much-loved is an affront to your self-sufficiency. Your memory-triggers dilate and everything liquefies and carried away into unconscious soft whispers of the truant’s treasured scents. The mere fact that you cannot bear even a slender departure ignites emptiness too overwhelming to contemplate. Your heart constricts and your restlessness swells into oceans.

Wistfulness descends upon you and you conceal your wretched, intimate poverty with premeditated missent messages. There is no rationality to this business, this sending deliberately ‘unintended’ sms. You just have to, because every breathing nerve of your pining self tells you so. You revel in slow-burning ache while waiting for a response, suspended between anticipation and regret. Getting a reply, with due explanation of its erroneous reception, prompts a birth of smile. Delayed or non-response propagate the most unreasonable dawn of flaming suspicions and resentments.

Such is your misery. Such is your fond wish that missing someone badly can be abolished by anything mortal.

Such is your fervent desire, and your immense discontent. Because even if the beloved is away you do not cease on loving. Because the insinuation of reunion wipes all lingering twinges of sorrow. Because proximity is a reward itself.

Because just being in the same room, silent and breathing together, is reason enough.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

nice blog. you very well know the language dude! can you post anything about the best comedy writers like Nigel Williams, Garrison Keillor, Kurt Vonnegut, Jane Smiley, and others.. tnx tnx

loudcloud said...

thanks for leaving a comment, raul! i am not quite familiar with most names in your list except for kurt vonnegut whose passing i blogged about previously (check out The Silence Of The Titan). Though now that you mentioned these names I'm quite motivated to look them up and start catching up on their works. i met david sedaris when he was in manila and the interview was a riot. he's one insanely funny guy. i love the tongue-in-cheek, masterful offbeatness of mike royko and the brand of humor of roddy doyle and cathy pelletier. jay mcinerney, whose works are often tragic, has a knack of injecting very funny moments in his stuff as well. i am not sure anyone can write about comedy without mangling the subject. very tricky territory ;-)

Anonymous said...

Hi, forgot to congratulate you on your nomination for Blogger of the Week. You deserve it. :) And damn, I miss reading your posts, I'm too fucking busy to even slap a book by the cover. T_T

Antigonic

loudcloud said...

thanks antigonic! i lost though. hypnosis and threatening voters of physical harm didn't work either! haha. hope you are well despite being busy. swamped with work, myself :)