The Ache

I ache.

It's physical. A burning need behind my solar plexus, coiling tightly, sending heat radiating up my chest and down to my groin.

What do I ache for?

We live, we love, we fight wars, we grant lives and we take them away (how people fail to realize how enormous that concept is, I'll never understand). We orbit and oscillate around and into each other like an infinitely vast kaleidoscope, turned towards the blazing sun.

So complex, so wondrous...

So utterly, horribly mundane...

...More.

That's my ache, my need, I think. For more...

More life, more experiences. More everything.

Perhaps I'm too young, to inexperienced to be permitted this desire. I shouldn't have it - not when there's a whole world to be explored, a vast planet teeming with life to taste, see and touch. There's more to see here than can ever be seen, more to do than can ever be done (as Elton John so quaintly put it).

The paradox is unbearable. My life offers me more than I can ever handle, but it's still not enough...

I am the Wandering Jew – but without God, without redemption and, worst of all, without immortality. One day I'll grow old. My bones will become brittle like so much petrifying fossil. My voice will grow feeble and my eyes murky. And on my deathbed, I fear (I know), unless I've despaired so much over my failing body that death will come as a relief, that my final words will be ”Not enough...”

It will never be enough. Not this world, this reality.

Magic, perhaps...

I think that's what I ache for...

I ache for more than what this reality can offer. My imagination isn't so much a prison as it is imprisoned, bound and gagged by the limits of my consciousness. I want dragons and witches and things lurking in the corners. I want Batman soaring overhead and aliens landing in my backyard. I want new frontiers to press, impossibilities to make possible. I want the fantastic, the unimaginable - and I want it real. My dreams are only a temporary and inadequate fix. Then maybe, just maybe, I will become satisfied.

I know that there are wonders in this world. There are sights that take your breath away, challenges that, once faced, can sustain one's pride for the rest of one's life. Maybe I'm just deluding myself. After all, what do I know. I certainly haven't experienced much of these things yet. They could be more than satisfactory.

But there is still that ache in my gut, and I don't feel it nearly as much when I picture the mountaintops of Himalaya, forbidding in their purity, or the uncharted jungles of the Amazonas as when I hear a song telling of other worlds, or hear tales of exploits and adventures whose greatness I will never be able to touch except in my dreams. This mundane reality will only provide me with the mundane wonders it is capable of creating. I fear that I will always seek the next high, and always find it lacking to the ideal my imagination so cruelly presents behind my eyes.

And I realize this is in no way new. I have absolutely no doubt that comments on this text would be confessions of similar thoughts (I'm almost as sure that these comments will now not appear, just so that you, my friends, can be contrary and prove me wrong. But you will think it, and that's what matters).

Although I cannot lie. Sometimes I'm content. When I play make-believe with my friends or see how my love for them and my family is returned, I'm happy. I can profess my dreams and ambitions to them, grand delusions all, and feel a semblance of peace. I know that I look forward to everything that my life has to offer, good and bad.

Still, I believe that one lifetime is not nearly enough for me to sate the need for, well, everything that can be offered or taken for me to experience. There will always be that nagging feeling that I'll always tread on walked paths, see sights already seen, sate hungers already provided for. I don't want worlds tempered by ignorance, believe me. Traveling back to the dark ages hold no appeal to me. I just want...more.

I guess I'm greedy like that.

Temporary Improvements

I am sitting in my bed in the basement of a hostel that serves as the cheap and convenient dwelling during my current stay in Stockholm City, the "Venice of the North". The Slovenian man in the bunk above mine shifts ever so often, making the whole structure creak. He's not particularly heavy, it just does at the slightest movement. It worries me, because my cell phone is set to wake me at 7 o'clock sharp, and I don't want to disturb him needlessly, nor his girlfriend. She sleeps in the adjacent two-level bed above the Irish chemist who has claimed the last remaining bunk in this tiny room. He speaks with an Irish rumble that makes me automatically slip into my own Scottish brogue, and with his carrot-red hair, freckled face and love for soccer and rugby he is a lovable stereotype of his nation. He's never seen snow before, and has confessed he spent the entire day walking around enjoying it. I consider him my friend, and now I no longer mind the snow so much.

But the purpose of my post wasn't to tell everyone about all the new friends I've made, but rather an intriguing observation on a certain behaviour that I find particularly interesting: my own. Usually, as many of my friends and family can attest, I am rather lazy and sloppy - I might even constitute as a slob at times. But here and now (and, looking back, also in the past) I find myself working and organizing myself with an almost militaristic rigour. My pack is neatly shoved under my bed, its content compartmentalized. My jacket hangs on a hook instead of being slung over a chair as it usually is, and I ingeniously used a coathanger to hang my wet bath towel to dry. Even before I had finished my revision course of the day (which is my reason for being here, by the way. I'm doing fine, it is very rewarding) I had already scheduled to visit the budo & fitness store I saw heading to my classes this morning, as well as scoping out the immediate area to find fitting stores for food and other necessisties. My cell phone/alarm clock, my watch and my glasses are all geometrically lined up beside my pillow, and I have already planned out an Order of Doing Things when I wake up tomorrow morning, which starts with immediately going up by the bell (and I do it too. I know, I shock myself!). I have even folded my clothes! The only exception is me staying up way too late to write this post...

This uncharacteristic reversal of my usual unstructured behaviour seems to occur whenever I am alone for a longer period of time, generally in a strange place. Same thing happens in me and my mom's apartment when she's gone for more than two days: doing the dishes? No problem. A list of tasks to be done before she comes home? Nicely ticked off and proudly presented to her at her return. Apparently I rise to the (not-particularily-challenging) challenge of getting a hold of the structuring part of my life only when I absolutely have to.

It's kind of a downer, since it suggests that I'm lazy and unhelpful unless I really need to be - I know that I'll regress into my usual pattern of strewing my things around me as soon as I come home. But it also gives me hope because I know that I won't be helpless if I ever find myself on my own, wherever and however I may be.