Night's Contemplation
You know when you're asking really ludicrous questions of yourself, like What is a kiss, that you're already past saving. You've dived off the deep end. The philosopher in you has finally turns cannibal and gobbled up all the pretensions you've spent the last ten or so years putting up and maintaining, of nonchalance and disinterest. There's no use resisting. That is, the wall that I've built around myself was never as solid and impenetrable as it seemed. For the first time, I'm glad of that. I don't want to be fortress, which might be safe in a siege but which is every bit as much a prison as l'oubliette.
I'm no Miss Patty (obese, loud, and female), pouncing gleefully at every scrap of hearsay, every tittle of human behaviour. I won't make something of nothing, won't extrapolate what is beyond my sources. I won't downplay it either, because she's the sort of girl who's every action and word counts for something, even when she doesn't realise it. I wouldn't say that she's a serious person exactly, but she takes herself seriously; which, I suppose, is better than someone who insists on trivializing everything. Like me. Only now, I'm finding it hard to be objective or dismissive about anything, and harder yet not to think of her, or of the kiss. I'm too restless for sleep so I get out of bed, shrug on some clothes and quietly go downstairs.
It's almost twelve and I walk the streets alone. There'd be nothing unusual about that if I was at home, but the way people react to it here it may as well be larceny. Night settles like a blanket on this backward little crackpot of a town and after dark all you can hear are the muffled sounds coming from the neat rows of houses, each fronted by its little strip of lawn. The streets are almost spookily still and empty. From behind walls and doors (a ridiculous number of which, I know, are never locked) I hear voices, slipper-shod feet on worn but clean floorboards, the opening and shutting of cupboards. Every so often I catch a giggle, or what might be a snort of laughter. In Stars Hollow there are no surprises and no dangers to be wary of. They've labeled me the town's resident criminal, not realising how easily their quiet lives are shaken. Exasperating and pathetic, yes, but at the same time, their resolute naivety is touching. Their eccentricities are so predictable they're almost soothing. I don't see myself as eccentric and I'm definitely not naïve, so in my mind there is no us, just me and then the rest of the town. No matter how long I stay here, or how comfortable I grow, it isn't likely that I'll ever shake that feeling.
My feet have carried me to her street and now as I pass her house, I catch myself looking at where I remember her bedroom window to be. Inside there's a light on, and I like to think that she's reading a book that she's enjoying, and not just doing her homework, so late at night. I want to be in that room with her, swiping the book expertly from beneath her absorbed gaze and making some astute remark that would make her smile and then give me that uncertain look of hers that seems to say - Why, why did it have to be you? If I only know one thing it's that, despite her good judgement (and I'm not ashamed to admit that any relationship with me is probably not the smartest thing to enter voluntarily), she wants something more from me than friendship. So far so good. What's bothering me (and here it comes again) is the kiss. Not her side of it, because I know (or can at least make a fairly accurate guess) why she did it and why she made a quick exit afterwards. That's not a problem. The problem is with me.
It's possible, I think, that I am not nearly as jaded as I've always thought. Nothing has prepared me for this. All my experience does not help me now. Oh, there's no shortage of memories (some good, and others, I'd rather forget), but they can't tell me what she was thinking when she touched her lips to mine, nor why that moment should suddenly become the singular most significant moment in my life. I must be exaggerating, but it doesn't feel like it.
What is a kiss? What's more, what is one kiss amongst hundreds? Or could it be thousands? One doesn't go around counting these things, simply because the kiss was never really important, until now.
The reflective philosopher has come up empty and is forced to resort to other references.
I glean stuff from everything I read, storing away sentences or entire passages without any clear preference or reason, so I think of James, Donne, and Hemmingway. For every situation, there is a precedent. Somebody must have written something about this one.
You know when you're asking really ludicrous questions of yourself, like What is a kiss, that you're already past saving. You've dived off the deep end. The philosopher in you has finally turns cannibal and gobbled up all the pretensions you've spent the last ten or so years putting up and maintaining, of nonchalance and disinterest. There's no use resisting. That is, the wall that I've built around myself was never as solid and impenetrable as it seemed. For the first time, I'm glad of that. I don't want to be fortress, which might be safe in a siege but which is every bit as much a prison as l'oubliette.
I'm no Miss Patty (obese, loud, and female), pouncing gleefully at every scrap of hearsay, every tittle of human behaviour. I won't make something of nothing, won't extrapolate what is beyond my sources. I won't downplay it either, because she's the sort of girl who's every action and word counts for something, even when she doesn't realise it. I wouldn't say that she's a serious person exactly, but she takes herself seriously; which, I suppose, is better than someone who insists on trivializing everything. Like me. Only now, I'm finding it hard to be objective or dismissive about anything, and harder yet not to think of her, or of the kiss. I'm too restless for sleep so I get out of bed, shrug on some clothes and quietly go downstairs.
It's almost twelve and I walk the streets alone. There'd be nothing unusual about that if I was at home, but the way people react to it here it may as well be larceny. Night settles like a blanket on this backward little crackpot of a town and after dark all you can hear are the muffled sounds coming from the neat rows of houses, each fronted by its little strip of lawn. The streets are almost spookily still and empty. From behind walls and doors (a ridiculous number of which, I know, are never locked) I hear voices, slipper-shod feet on worn but clean floorboards, the opening and shutting of cupboards. Every so often I catch a giggle, or what might be a snort of laughter. In Stars Hollow there are no surprises and no dangers to be wary of. They've labeled me the town's resident criminal, not realising how easily their quiet lives are shaken. Exasperating and pathetic, yes, but at the same time, their resolute naivety is touching. Their eccentricities are so predictable they're almost soothing. I don't see myself as eccentric and I'm definitely not naïve, so in my mind there is no us, just me and then the rest of the town. No matter how long I stay here, or how comfortable I grow, it isn't likely that I'll ever shake that feeling.
My feet have carried me to her street and now as I pass her house, I catch myself looking at where I remember her bedroom window to be. Inside there's a light on, and I like to think that she's reading a book that she's enjoying, and not just doing her homework, so late at night. I want to be in that room with her, swiping the book expertly from beneath her absorbed gaze and making some astute remark that would make her smile and then give me that uncertain look of hers that seems to say - Why, why did it have to be you? If I only know one thing it's that, despite her good judgement (and I'm not ashamed to admit that any relationship with me is probably not the smartest thing to enter voluntarily), she wants something more from me than friendship. So far so good. What's bothering me (and here it comes again) is the kiss. Not her side of it, because I know (or can at least make a fairly accurate guess) why she did it and why she made a quick exit afterwards. That's not a problem. The problem is with me.
It's possible, I think, that I am not nearly as jaded as I've always thought. Nothing has prepared me for this. All my experience does not help me now. Oh, there's no shortage of memories (some good, and others, I'd rather forget), but they can't tell me what she was thinking when she touched her lips to mine, nor why that moment should suddenly become the singular most significant moment in my life. I must be exaggerating, but it doesn't feel like it.
What is a kiss? What's more, what is one kiss amongst hundreds? Or could it be thousands? One doesn't go around counting these things, simply because the kiss was never really important, until now.
The reflective philosopher has come up empty and is forced to resort to other references.
I glean stuff from everything I read, storing away sentences or entire passages without any clear preference or reason, so I think of James, Donne, and Hemmingway. For every situation, there is a precedent. Somebody must have written something about this one.