I should have asked her for a date. Any date at all. 4th of March, 6th of April, didn't really matter. As long as we could go and have a dinner, or see a movie or something. It's not like I'm craving a relationship, I've got too much to do already, but it stung inside of me knowing that I'd already lost a chance. A chance. Singular term. There could be more coming.
But I had her worked up in a period of heat, we were flirting like backyard cats in the upper middle-class, when the rain started to fall.
Why had I waited for so long? It was good as it was, sure, great excitement for the both of us. At least I hope she had that feeling too. Now I would never know unless I could break my own barrier of procrastination.
Just sit and wait till life ebbs out like a stranded whale waiting for its body's internal collapse.
And why was I doing this? Fiddling my fingers when my life was waving goodbye from the leaving train? Melancholy Sundays all about the one that got away.
Another example brought forth by free association.
Mountain trip, two thousand and five years after year nought, with my family. We'd already done the mountain. Five days of climbing and walking. After days like that you feel strong enough to take on anything. You feel like a man.
Until that moment when I was sitting outside the station having a cigarette and writing down some thoughts, when a princess latina walked by me with her friends. We exchanged several glances. Tourists, no doubt, but I was one too.
She was clearly drawn to me by something I wouldn't know, while I only wanted to kiss her, to see what would happen to those soft, brown eyes. Would she close them? In contentment or melancholy? Sixteen or twenty-six? I have no idea.
Being a mountain train station there were really only two ways to go: up or down.
She was going up and I was going down.
We met several times while waiting. One time she was standing so close that I could've touched her. She turned to me and looked me straight in the heart, as if asking me to do so. But I didn't.
Two years later I'm in a similar situation, except that this time the waiting has gone over months, and I am not bound by circumstances to go either up nor down. I have a choice and a say. I don't deny that I did back then as well, but the sea of opportunity lies vast before me today, and only an idiot could fail to see it.
Still I'm just standing there, on the shore, just looking. As if I'm waiting for something. Doesn't that make me the bigger fool?
It makes me a coward.
There is nothing I fear and detest more than failure. I drive myself to the depths if I fail in anything I've set out to do. Bipolar personality disorder? Nothing as fancy as that. It is my ego. All is well when my self stays out of it.
And well it was, for a pretty long time. I saw hundreds, thousands of girls, and I knew in my heart that the earth was filled to the brim with them. What more could a man want, than being born on such a planet? Selfless and bold I threw myself into her arena. I grew accustomed to her waiting me, our flirting, her smile and those eyes. She made me feel at home in her presence.
All of a sudden I wanted her, and not only that; I wanted her alone.
Suddenly all the millions, billions of women out there meant nothing. The fact I had cherished and kept close to heart a short while ago made me happy no longer. It became too apparent; there was only one of her. In all of history.
My feet collapsed at this engulfing equation. She was as embossed throughout my thinking, and reality seemed pale and indifferent. I almost threw up out of sheer fright. What was this again?
Shaking hands? Was I feeling failure or falling in love? Either way I didn't like it.
Like a mother who shields her baby from the dangerous and the frightful, my self awakened to steady the ship, and in the captain's seat was my ego.
It shook some dust from its jacket, and reprimanded me for having buried him for so long. Degraded to a deck boy in my own life, I took orders from any faculty that opened its mouth. They were all in the negative, and they undermined my sense of self-esteem. Authority was lost, chaos erupted, and a pair of binoculars replaced my open mind.
I could see very far ahead, linearly, but not the breadth of reality. With binocular vision you can see cliffs and storms, the only things to stand out from the horizon, but you cannot see the now.
The now – mother of all possible futures – yours to command as yours to obey.
The lookout only obeys, and he does not see anything but cliffs and storms, serpents and waves.
The captain relied too much on experience, and arrogantly refused to read Mother Nature right.
Love has never worked for me, but I've always worked for love.
Is that some kind of poetic destiny or a simple mind-trick to put my hopes into an early grave?
If I were to trust my experience alone, the horizon would seem very bleak.
Revolt! Revolution!
Act, and act from love, not from fear!
Fear be the hangman of dreams, the curse of the weak, and a paved road for the greedy and the mighty who desire nothing by power and rule, like the male ego. Like my own ego.
The tender spring upon thy tempting lip
Shows thee unripe, yet may'st thou well be tasted
Make use of time, let not advantage slip;
Beauty within itself should not be wasted:
Fair flowers that are not gather'd in their prime,
Rot and consume themselves in little time.
~ Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare
Sigge S. Amdal is a word wanker from Oslo, Norway.
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