November 19, 2005 - Not With A Bang But A Whimper

T.S Eliot sure knew what he was talking about when he posed the above statement in his 1925 poem "The Hollow Men" (full text below). I supposed I used to be more... idealistic... in my comparative youth. My ego believed that when things ended, they ENDED. An explosive confrontation, a stinging rebuke, maybe even a hearty handshake coupled with wishes for a brighter tomorrow; but no longer.

Mel last day at work was Wednesday (1//16) and as of right now she is either on the plane that will take her to South Carolina, or is there already. There was no end to her and I's interaction, not even a real goodbye. A quick "good luck" from me and a few impersonal lines on a company sanctioned Hallmark card and she walked out of work for the last time. Hugs were given to and by others, email addresses exchanged, promises of continual contact all around... except with me. I suppose it drove home just how unimportant I was; how superfluous my presence was to her and... it hurt. Every now and again, I thought I would see a glimmer of genuine interest from her in what I would be saying or doing, and that may not have been incorrect assumption, but it must not have been the majority of the time.

I suppose it is human nature to want that which we cannot have. It is also human nature to have crushes on people we will never be intended to be with. Unrequited love is the stuff stories are written and dreams are built. What was it about her that sparked my interest? Was it the way she would look down and to the left when she was concentrating? Was it the way she would gnaw delicately on that worn Ticonderoga number two pencil?

I don't think so; not anymore. I think it is something far more precarious than that. I think on these people who we fall for before really knowing them, I think it's narcissism. I think we project onto them the qualities we ourselves lack. I think they become the personification of all of our doubts and lacking qualities, and if that is true than god help us. How many of us anchor our ships in other people's harbors as as we view them as being the last hope for a normal life we will ever encounter?

I do like Tess and Dee, but I don't know why and that scares me more than anything in this world. They are both great women who both have great qualities and if I weren't so absorbed with interpreting everything in life I would take that at face value, but I don't. In all reality, I have had a crush to some degree on Tess for about a year or two now, birthed while she was still in a deep committed relationship. Talk about unavailable! But I didn't care, and something inside of me is saying that if at work next week she tells me that she is back with her ex or with someone else, I will still catch myself looking at her and wondering what might impress her.

This scares me. It makes me doubt my own intentions, and leaves them suspect. For the first time in my life, I feel I cannot trust myself.


The Hollow Men

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper