All Over The Slowness

A man of twenty one is down about his seemingly (and ever more so) consuming, embittering, self-writhing waiting. And he lights another cigarette. A different brand from the second of two packs that he has with him because he's in the pattern of dissatisfaction of habits. One in his breast pocket, the other on the table. He sips his just more than half-drunk coffee, now luke-warm from exposure, as himself, to the bitter wind of a summer night that has not a trait to let believe it is so.

For all is swept and cold and anxious and imposes on him that exact mood as he thinks, despite having only minutes before arrived, that he is again wound round the tight bind of Love's baby little finger. And he wants to break it so and be free of the grip of consternation but he can't. Not yet, just not yet. Because he still sees in it some dreamy possibility, which he craves. A glimpse of a future, of an ideal, that he wants so badly to believe in and realise objectively as truth, and have faith in to rest upon his growing lonesome longings. So he but sits and waits.

It is not the first time he has waited for her. In fact he's waited on several occasions as he has with many a person, many a girl, many an instance in which he wishes to be in congregation with someone new and attentive and whom has such a mirrored aspiration. He's unsure at first why he convinces himself time and again that they - he or she - might change for him. Or not even for him, but for friendship's or honour's sake. This betrayal of his belief, which he blames them for invoking is a bottling hate, which will one day explode. But he finds forgiveness, for being knit so long, still has thread to give, but as one asks, 'how long is a piece of string?'

The juxtaposition is this: that he's reading Slowness. A book, somewhat but not exclusively, concerned with the notion of appreciating moments uninhibited by contemplation of the future. And he, who dreams of moments and upholds with pride the endeavor to focus and savor and remember those. Yet all the slowness of moments that are solo compound and pile upon each other stirring within him a desire for haste.

It has been until recently his subconscious quest to race through life, grow older, grow up because in those years where age seems the disparage of highest crime he aspired to being freer. Of constitution, opinion, people. But now, with his very aware and acute realisation that conversely with age comes plaguing and aching, waiting is the source of his accumulation of life in order to quicken his stream of existential being. For the dream he once had of the future and so much to greet has been excommunicated in favour of that to brisk through everything and have time to sit and rather than wait, contemplate the past and wish it lasted longer.

It is surely easier on the heart to review and wistfully recollect than it is to preview and see through to finally know there'll be nothing to forget. Except yourself. Time is that, which you can do nil to prevent loss of but have within your plans and corresponding actions every control over how it is spent. It is and always will be our greatest currency. So he leaves, grieving the cost of what she already owes him but knowing that he's learning a great responsibility. And just like that, the slowness is all over.