( 0.1 )
Humor is tragedy. Just like a guy slipping on a banana peel.
Sometimes, I miss my laugh, the kind that isn’t polite. Isn’t that sad, when someone forgets how one sounds when happy. The truth is, I was always nervous whenever I spoke. It was because during certain times, I’d say something, and the last sentence, or words, that left my mouth would linger dangerously in the air, and I could hear it over and over, like a record playing.
Voices sound so strange over the microphone, over taped conversations during interviews, when watching yourself deliver a drunken speech caught on video. Voices always sound so rough-edged, so unreal.
( 0.2 )
And while I’m on the topic, if I could be another person for a day, I’d like to observe myself.
Here is why. Have you ever wondered how you look when your emotions are maundering? Do your eyes cloud over, does your mouth curl downwards slightly? Do your eyebrows rise in time with your thoughts? I’m talking about expression, the harmony a person’s face manages to conduct. A face is one’s Holy Ground, always — because everything about a person’s face makes you aware that you are in the middle of a quagmire.
You see your own face around an estimated 2% during the whole 24 hours (It varies if you’re vainer than most, though). So for the remaining 98%, I’m amazed by the fact that it is others who see us, physically. Some other person has already memorized the arc of your eyelashes, or has seen the way you wrinkle your nose. It’s almost unfair, but at the same time it’s like a game of hide-and-seek. Hiding from oneself, and seeking who you are through others.
Are you as complicated as you are in the inside, even though you wish to be simple?
( 0.3 )
Maybe, I wanted to ask about concealment. And revealment, revelation. How much the skin conceals, how much the eyes reveal. And so on.
I’d like to be post-punk about it and say “I don’t care what others think”, but honestly… can you say you really don’t care? If you didn’t, why did you just spend two minutes primping up in front of the mirror? Or why were you in such a bad mood on account of a bad hair day? What I’m saying focuses much on physical aspects, but maybe there is no barrier between the physical and personal. Maybe science had taught us so much about skin and veins and atoms and muscles that they forgot to tell us that the face is a mirror, and we’re all bouncing off each other’s reflections without being blinded. That’s science too, isn’t it?
The lovely, bittersweet part of this useless rambling : how much of ourselves do we allow to reveal, and how little do we conceal?
When someone looks into my eyes, am I able to tell them that I would have drowned, long ago, if not for their presence?
When I smile, am I able to assure people that I have a million worlds swirling in my head, and that they exist, beautifully, in each one?
When I cry, do my tears draw a path across my cheek to spell out the words “I’m sorry”?
Over conversations during power failure, or simply under mooonlight, does the candle cast eyelash shadows in such a way that the person before me realises the immensity of concealment in my words, and the bravery I choose to reveal in the shadows?
( 0.4 )
Illusory paths. And it’s true. It’s true that conceptually, humor is tragedy. Words make too much sense. Concealment is just as strong as revelation. Everyone is breathing tornadoes.
If you’re able to see yourself in others, I wouldn’t be surprised if you realised that the world is, indeed, a tragically marvellous place.
That’s the comedy of it all. Eyelashes and tears tell the most wonderful stories, so listen to that. The tiniest details have a revelation of sorts. Memorize the depth in someone’s eyes, trace your fingers across someone’s nose, breathe deeply into someone’s hair. All we ever do, anyway, is step on one piece of Holy Ground to another.
