When September Ends

One of my favourite cinematic scenes is when someone crashes through a wall. No matter if the wall looks like it was constructed of papier-mâché, it’s still a greatly dynamic instant. I’m pretty sure I can’t break through a regular wall, but drywall is very much within the realm of possibility! Idly dreaming during (sometimes unnecessarily) long work meetings, I can imagine myself busting through the wall into the adjacent conference room. And just in case that isn’t intimidating enough to the unassuming folks on the other side, I can also be green and make caveman-ish sounds. Easy peasy!

I know I have a long way to go still, but at some point during the journey I would like to experience the event that becomes my story. Many people have many stories to tell, some more than others, but only a few have the story, the tale they tell that stokes the ember of interest in every listener. Whether horrific, fantastic or ecstatic, the story never fails to enrapture its audience. And I don’t mean the fluff you might catch in a break room, cafeteria or around the water cooler. This is serious stuff; the kind of stuff that is passed down within families, from generation to generation, changing ever so slightly with every new retelling but never forgoing the wonder of the original. In fact, the story is narrated so often by its owner, that with every passing year it either evolves into something more fanciful than before, or loses some of its less major elements to the clutches of time.

Unfortunately, I have no follies of youth to speak of, no movie-style romantic trysts, nor had any adventure that can be recounted with great gusto and pride. I might say my existence is absolutely unremarkable at present, if only that wasn’t such a cliché for someone my age. Unlike the general trend, I like to look at my life from the outside in, thus requiring more than just a personal sense of satisfaction or achievement to be suitably happy. Which doesn’t mean that I yearn for acknowledgment or approval by the people that surround me; on the contrary, it doesn’t matter as much as my own critique when I look back in at the events that have gone by and continue to do so, shaping my path through time. Narcissistic though it may seem, I think honest retrospection and self assessment does me well, rather than enduring the condescending, biased or disinterested opinions of others.

I don’t want to be greedy in wanting everything at once without having paid the price by facing the rigours of lice life, but I also hate having to think of an unpredictable future in which dreams can be forgotten or snuffed out in an instant, without anyone ever knowing they existed. This has certainly been the nature of things from time immemorial, but I don’t think it’s unfair to want a highlight before it’s too late. I don’t know, maybe it’s all this dreary rain that’s got me edgy and maybe tomorrow I won’t even feel the same way. But at the moment, this is my retrospection and I don’t want to lose it.

“Your world is nothing more than all the tiny things you left behind.”

The Turtles – Elenore

Skeeter Davis – The End of the World