The afternoon radiance of the sun, whispering its departure. Wind carrying warmth, resembling the heat emitted by another body. Blades of grass on the brink of wilting away, eager to embrace the cold yet comfortable night. A couple sit inches apart, an imperceptible distance from afar, yet distance nonetheless. As a third perspective on the scenery I have come across, they are mere subjects to my own psyche. Unwilling and unknowing characters to my own fiction. How long have they been together? A year? A couple of months? Just individuals placed in a random happenstance?
Marry or not to marry, Kierkegaard argues we all regret it in the end. At the present, we’d all hope to be ignorant of the gravity of our actions. The weight it burdens not on our future, but the virtual reality it will hold — the past. The present carries a phenomenon that all of us will bear. The present is the ever continuous cycle of becoming. Not one action is ever real until it has met the past.
The man, one half of the union I have observed, a being I can relate to — by virtue of sharing the same gender. I place my own thoughts onto him. In this fiction, I bestow upon him my fears, my desires — he became a vessel for me to examine myself. A ridiculous method to become my own spectator. I sought to understand my fear of intimacy. The gap between the couple, seemingly insignificant, left me in a state of questioning. Should the man hold the hand of his beloved as tightly as he could, or should he restrain himself in fear of the power the past might have on him? Should a man surrender words of intimacy that may flutter the heart of his lover, or should he bite his tongue, so the words may never be used against him? Even though I was the one to stage them in this scenario, the gap between these two bodies was odd.
A delightful afternoon after all, sitting underneath the shade brought by the trees, a consistently cool breeze. An undoubtedly picturesque scene.
At the peak of my skeptic cynicism, the man came close to his lover, placing his arm on her shoulder. Gently applying his weight, just enough to make sure he is felt, careful to avoid bringing her discomfort. As man embraces the individual he chooses to be intimate with — he realizes the choice was already given. Man has surrendered. Surrendered to the burden of being human. As they lay, they lay parallel to the world — accepting its weight. Why must man restrain himself? As Deleuze points out, we are at a fixed point of becoming, always arriving, never arrived. Why should man be fearful of what isn’t real? Only the past and the ever persistent process of becoming carries mass. One must not look across the horizon for what is to come, but must look at what he has now, and the past that has already occurred. Man shouldn’t restrain himself in preparation for somewhere. Man already is somewhere.
He lays across his lover, observing falling leaves. Falling from generous heights, gliding with the wind in such unpredictable patterns, it would be meaningless to anticipate where they would land. They lay at peace with the world. What is to come will meet them one day, but all that matters now is they are right here, at this moment, enjoying this wonderful afternoon.