Escape

I’ve been gone for a few days.

On Tuesday I realised how increddibly childish, beastial and (dare I say) predatory I was in recording Angela as she walked home. In the afternoon I stood in front of a bathroom mirror swearing to the face I saw inside it, gripping the roots of hair still left standing as I made an agonised face and groaned.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Grow up.

I had to exercise some restraint. Tough. I knew I wouldn’t be able to, and so, did the next best thing: altered my circumstance to prevent me from obsessively stalking Angela. Yes, I do acknowledge the nature of my obsession. I’m not proud of it. But I’ve always been one to pursue my emotional instincts beyond rationality and often in denial of it. I am often at odds with myself. At times, it’s like I am two different people, driven by two different forces. To that effect, I do have conversations with myself - serious conversations between a voice who is rational, and one who is emotional. I think Mr. Rational is a prick.

It wasn’t until I was on the train that I remembered how much I missed the South Coast. It was a plesant change to be rid of the skyscrapers, the fumes, the noise, the conflict. The air, I must admit, was noticably cleaner – a fact my lungs will corroborate. There was a strange magnetism in the air.

And this strange magnetism, drew me back to that Point.

Atop the cliff, the lookout point, there it was: a sight sheer magnificence. It still is. Though the city beneath it grows, the forest and the mountains still encroach around it. The flurry of buildings is but a thin canopy. And then there is the sky. And the ocean.

Irene and I spent our last days together here. Here, together.

She was a poet – no power could ever change that.

Fear certainly couldn’t. One afternoon, she described to me a vision of death:

By a river, where the water reflects the light of the rising sun just beyond the horizon, stands a weeping willow. In that morning breeze, flutters the limp silhouette of a woman who weeps with it, hanging from its branches at the end of a frayed rope. She sways in the wind, in harmony with the curtain of leaves.

I do it no justice. I wish I could remember her exact words. But I remember that they were beautiful beyond measure.

Her eyes, glistened wild with passion as she created the image. That passion, and her, taken by it, were of even greater beauty.

There was no willow there. That didn’t stop her. I knew nothing could.

She was at the end of that frayed cord the next morning, in the embrace of the tree; her white gown fluttered in the wind with the landscape below as the backdrop.

The other holiday-goers screamed and wailed. They were terrified.

I stood there and admired the image, and what it meant.

I guess I had always known, in some dark corner of my mind, that she would do it. I knew. I chose to know, not deny, and never act. I regret nothing.

She had always spoken about ‘never letting it win.’ She believed in being in control of her own life, the twists and turns it took and the end upon which it would arrive. She detested the idea of decay, of withering away and being remembered in her last breath as a manifestation of suffering – far from who she really was.

They all called it the image of tragedy.

I called it the absolute beauty, the woman I loved – immortalised in her victory – as she wished.

Remembered as the poet she was – and nothing else. Desire itself.

Never since then, have I felt the same admiration of death. The images of death that have plagued me have not been of any such beauty. They have been of distress, of malice, of hatred. In that sense, I feel somewhat estranged from her vision. But I never believed in the reality of her words, but the fantasy of them. And therein lay their strength.

Once more, I stood before that tree. Once more identify with the beauty of her death? Tragically, I could not. My eyes have witnessed too much to reclaim that concept of beauty, as much as I would will them to.

But what dawned on me once more was that idea of turning futility into power.

Despite all, I can’t let what I think is an insurmountable force of fate control my footsteps, least of all through fear.

Desire is the key. Irene gave it voice.

She had the right idea.

The next step is clear to me.

Restraint took me away. Desire brings me back.

To deny our own instinct, is to deny the very thing that makes us human.

- Mouse