The lilies were released in bud swiftly as the spring came, and soon the pathways were pillowed with their innocent white extractions. Thomas Williams, approaching what seemed like the last year of his gladly irresponsible youth, the final year of his college bachelor degree, stood for a moment on his way to his penultimate lecture. With a smirk rising across his lips which felt as sour to him as it might have looked sweet, he remarked silently to himself how the spilled seeds of the flowers laying vanquished on the ground seemed to act as a reminder of the earnest naivety of the person he was the year before: of an attempt at some kind of pure achievement, now leaving only a shell with its echo scattering away from it, both inert beings left cold in an uncomfortable place.
Thomas always saw the funny side to situations that most people would consider tragic. It was just the way that life had an indominantable knack in being able to beat you down, no matter how hard anyone tries or even how innocently people just try to get on with things, yet they always seem to become magnetised towards some other upcoming cathasthrophe.There’s a woman who raised five kids on her own, gets mugged by smack addicts one night, breaks her hip, dies of pneumonia in a nursing home. You manage to put your kids through college, you get throat cancer. You think you’ve found the love of your life; she’s not really that into, she moves on only to have her confidence crushed by some guy who was never really that into her. The great human comedy replays the same tawdry scenes, using the same basic motifs, only nowadays the furniture is a little cosier and the lights are a little brighter. Shockingly bright, you might say. All this Thomas pondered as he strode towards the lecture hall, the anonymous kind, it could have well been any lecture hall in any college in the world, bar the language differences, the results of what went on inside would have developed in mostly the same way, given the state of mind that Thomas found himself in. The fact that a philosophy lecture would be the silent curtain call of his college career could have raised a smirk to anyone’s lips without the threat of moralistic reproach.
She mustn’t have been wearing any perfume this morning. When that thought arose in his head as the lecturer babbled on about some notion that was supposedly incredibly serious and would feature heavily in the exam, Thomas might as well have laughed out loud. The panic she creates in me, she does not know. Another self-concious, although self-mocking would be a more aptly descriptive term, smirk emerged, as it if were smacked, across his lips. This sense of mild hysteria didn’t last long, however, as he recalled how their talk had gone earlier. They were just different people now, she was going to go her way and he was going to go his, to either sail away into the sunset or sink.Well, neither of them had actually said anything as harsh about it as that. It had gone quite well really, as well as it could have gone. After all, he had, though he coughed himself dry to admit it, loved her. Loved as far as the dictionary definition found under ‘young’ states. But all sweet things must come to an end, even the lilies had to fall off the branch and die before you could really appreciate them.
He thought about the effect she had on him as he watched sceptically as the ducks fought for the scraps of food that were tossed at them on the lake. It wasn’t just emotional, it definitely wasn’t as if she had done him over or anything, and there definitely wasn’t a change in his fashion sense, he had managed to keep wearing most of what he wanted to wear throughout their acquaintence.Oh yes, he would manage to survive without her. Maybe that it was more along the lines that she made him think more considerately, to think twice before he spoke, to actually give a shit for a change. That life wasn’t just some big rat race where the rules are made by idiots, although the immeadiate sight of ducks tearing themselves apart over sandwich leftovers was probably not the best example of these new revelations. Summer would be coming soon, a time for homecomings, goodbyes and life changing decisions. As Thomas Williams sat on the bench observing a now silent lake, he decided that he should let the past disappear with the lilies.
No comments:
Post a Comment