| post scriptum |

Thought Du Jour:

"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." ~ Henry Lime, The Third Man, 1949.

***

'The strong are made to be tested,' said C in a particularly intense email. I was quietly amused; I've always been―C's straight-laced philosophy and his quirky take on life never quite come across as being holy revealations, but they're often little nuggets of truism, easily digestable if taken in small quantities.
'I don't think the world is separated as such―everyone's being tested. You can only tell who are the strong ones afterwards.' I replied, knowing that in return I'd get a lengthy email quoting everyone from Freud to Marx.
But this time, he only said one single cryptic thing: 'If we don't convince ourselves that we are the strong ones―why else should we go through the trials that we do?'

I stared at the screen, the cursor blinking uniformly, a tepid, clinical eye.
'You're the strong one,' Sam had said. 'You're emotionally strong―you can take this.'
Was I? Am I? Or have I only been a deluded, half-wisp shadow of human weakness, proclaiming my strength in order to hide my weaknesses?

***

Another week, grinding into a halt, dragging its feet, scattering the dust of Time with seeming purpose, but also with infinite indifference. What did A say in his fit of artistic optimism? Time is restless with opportunity. And its colours are all so intense.

'Are you always this optimistic?' I asked him.
I picture his grin, wide and child-like, the knives of broken memories behind his merry mirth. 'Even fools must have their rewards,' he assured me.
Then I wish to be a fool, blissful and stupid for a while. Knowledge and truth are fragments in a hologram. Smoke and mirrors. Two dimensional reflections and refractions.
Can I disappear?