THE FIND

How these papers came into my possession is of no importance. Suffice to say that no chicanery or deceit were involved in their acquisition.

What is significant is the astounding glimpse they have given me into another's life.  Reading these words I felt like a robber, stealing someone else's sensations, uncannily experiencing that which is not mine. A diary, after all, is a place where one lets all his defenses down to reveal his inner self.

So many times in this metropolis, I have failed to see life for what it is worth. Get up; run to work; run back home. This routine was as dehumanizing as any torture, and I was a part of it for a long time. My existence was reduced to that of an automaton.

But these loose pages shone through the grey monotony of my life like a lonely golden ray breaks through the forbidding clouds.

There they were, lying on the pavement outside an apartment block, as I was returning home from work. Waterlogged: they were waiting for the wind to carry them into their new abode. White fragile pieces on a black inert background - the scene bore a certain resemblance to a giant chessboard.

The discontinuity of the following account is a result of the incompleteness of the source itself. Nonetheless, despite the gaps, a uniquely powerful atmosphere, almost like a zeitgeist, envelops one as these words are read.

Let me share my find with all of you. 



20 January 19--:

Something very peculiar happened to me as I was taking my regular walk by the beach earlier today. This event was so unexpected and shocking that not even the Gods of Destiny would have seen it coming.

In order for me to convey exactly the thoughts that started to run through my mind, let me first give a description of the scene that was unfolding before me.

I was sitting on an old, wooden bench near a gaudily yellow kiosk to gain my breath and to rest my legs. The weather was ominous. In the west, the sun was taking in its final gasps. Its body's redness mixed incongruously with the blue-blackness of the ocean.

I often noticed how other walkers, overtaken by the beauty of a sunset, would slow down, come to a complete stop and watch the sun's fire being extinguished by the cool waters. Yet I have always been left unmoved by the spectacle.

So often the dreams of one's youth collapse into a chasm carved out by unrealized aims and unfulfilled ambitions. A few grow up and discover their talents. Others, their mediocrities.  It occurred to me that my entire life up until the present moment has been a struggle against ordinariness and triteness.

And I was frightened. Frightened, for I felt the grey mediocrity invading my very being. There it was penetrating me from all angles, filling in all the cracks exposed by my meager defenses.

The soft leaves of the nearby young trees, the waxing crescent - they all still looked the same. But I knew and felt, with merciless certainty that I had never experienced in my life before, that I have been irreversibly changed by this realization.

While all the other people of my age were looking forward to socializing, finishing school and bright futures, I myself now had to face a titanic struggle with an enemy I could not flee from, an enemy from which there was no hiding place.

More than that, I had to face my parents and tell them what had happened to me, for never before had I felt such intense, relentless unhappiness. 

Father would be there, watching the evening news as usual. He doubtless would not even look in my direction but would just give out a low grunt of indeterminable meaning when told the news. Mother would almost certainly get all red. She'd go hysterical. Yes, that's what she'd do.


11 February 19--:

Now that the worst has happened I can take a big sigh of relief, for I have nothing to be afraid of anymore. Only those who have had their most terrifying nightmares realized would have tasted this heady sensation of freedom that I am now feeling.


26 February 19--:

I have found a way through which I can reclaim my identity. I will find the significance of the cloud patterns in the sky. I will gaze at the sky all day long and draw the shape of every cloud in the sky in the big sketchbook that I purchased at the supermarket. I will then come home and analyze the drawings. From this analysis, I'll come up with fundamental laws which will allow me to predict the shape of clouds in the days to come.

I'm like a rubber ball, the harder you hit me, the higher I rise!


15 March 19--:

Devastating disaster! Yesterday, all day long, the clouds were following exactly the patterns that I predicted for them. And then, just as I was about to pack up and go home, feeling satisfied and proud, this little puffy white cloud had to appear in the lower right hand corner of the sky, as one faces the sea. My laws never foretold the arrival of a cloud of that size and shape at that time and place. Now, because of that dumb puny cloud, I have to start all over again with my formulations of The Cardinal Laws of Motions of Clouds in the Sky.


17 April 19--:

Yesterday I spent most of the time in bed. I did not feel like getting up and just laid there and analyzed the past, trying to understand the linkage of events that lead me to my present condition, trying to determine the exact moment when it all started to go wrong for me.

I guess my tragedy is that I was too young when I realized the presence of divine impetus in my soul. With my slender years, my attention's focus could not get away from the radiance emanating from my mind.

I gazed, overawed and powerless, at the wondrous landscape of my inner world and reality lost all its reality for me. I used to wonder how people could be worried and concerned by the drab, meaningless external events when the world of the mind was so much more fascinating and enthralling.

I would lose myself for hours on end in my contemplations, staring at my reflection, trying to understand the inexplicable and mysterious power that would emanate from the eyes in the mirror. What were they trying to tell me, those eyes?

I never did get adjusted to childhood or to teenage years. I never could work out how to be young.

28 April 19--:

Today I went to the city center just so that I could at least see normal people engaging in normal activity and experience some human contact, no matter how fleeting or inconsequential. Instead I learned that no type of loneliness is more excruciating than the one you feel in the middle of a crowd.

Alone in the ocean of humanity, waves of people endlessly washing over you, who are these beings that rush past you? Strange, unfamiliar faces that you never saw before and you will never see again, they have no time for you and you have no time for them, your existence as meaningless and insignificant to them as theirs is to you.

If the Rime of the Ancient Mariner was "Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink" then surely the Rime of the Modern Journeyer must be "People, people everywhere and not a soul to talk to."

20 May 19--:

Today my life shimmered before me in all of its multitudinous facets, in all of its innumerable permutations but I just stood there dumbfounded, overwhelmed by the infinite choice offered to me. I knew not what to do, could not reach out and hold onto even one possibility.

12 June 19--:

All day long I kept thinking of a persistent nightmare I had as a child, of being forced to witness the bizarre, inhuman spectacle of numbers increasing one at a time.

Ceaselessly they would grow larger and larger to ever-hideous proportions; coming closer and closer to the yawning abysm where that monstrosity, The Devil of Infinity reigned, atop his throne of fire. Never actually reaching him but always in sight of his leering grin, flickering his tongue at you, tormenting you with the vilest curses, safe in his knowledge that a mere mortal like you could never grasp his body.

After the friendly, familiar faces of One, Two and Three, strange new entities would appear, with long, surly faces. No person ever had to see their ugly mugs before but here I was, a small child, condemned to look straight in the eyes of numbers like 15084307597502802380423797493720748038720734020 and feel the hatred exuding from them.

How it made me frightened those numbers, in this world I was accursed to forever keep up with their merciless, inexorable progression, like an infinite column of army ants, without end, without pity.

Was there no escape from this ordeal? One million and one, one million and two, one million and three, sixty seven million four thousand and five, sixty seven million four thousand and six, somebody please stop this, but alas this world had no saving grace of death that awaits us all in our physical lives.

And the Devil of Infinity would grin his leering grin, observing this procession and my suffering from atop his throne of fire, knowing full well how unreachable he was in all his glory.

 

31 August 19--:

The pale buds of doubt have now blossomed into the bright flowers of despair.

Reviews

[Sara]

'Now because of that dumb puny cloud I have to start all over again with my formulations of The Cardinal Laws of Motions of Clouds in the Sky. '
this was my favorite part.

for some reason this story made me think of an independent foreign film , because the diary entries were so eccentric and real.

I dont know how else to describe this, but i really, really like it and your style of writing seems so sophisticated but simple, it follows natural thought patterns and therefore is easy to read, but it is smartly written as well.

-sara :-)

[Rain]

I liked this piece, with the obvious obsession with a mathmatical sway to it. In Tibet, his final Bardo will be, not a horrific being, but a pile of random numbers pouring random equations from a massive computer. lol. This piece deserved the honor of 1st place. Congratulations. Rain..

[electricsatori]

Interesting read. Nice pacing and well written.

However. . .
It lacks the frenzy of other journal stories like Go Ask Alice and such. It feels too uniform, too paced, to be a journal. As a story it was unique, but a little overwritten in spots. It made me think that a schizophrenic math teacher was writing it.

There were no event markers that matched why this person was going up and down again. For example; "Now that the worst has happened I can take a big sigh of relief. . ." The worst I assume would be the Main Character's (MC) realization of his/her mediocrity? Though the conflicts that escalate in this story are internal, they are not dynamic. They do not sustain interest because I do not sympathize with the MC.
To me, they sound histrionic and imbalanced. I know many people can relate to becoming overwrought over nothing, but few find interest in reading about someone who overreacts about the realizations we all must face in life.

Overall, this story was well written and the pacing was nice. I would have like to see something interesting happen to the MC. Something outside their frame of reference. Perhaps love, perhaps a chance meeting that changes things, perhaps any type of external crisis that resolved their internal idiosyncrasies.

[Adela Muresan]

Astonishing.
You have a rare gift for writing. Believe me friend, I have read more than a dozen pieces of writing about dispair , but none so good.
It's well penned bla bla bla bla bla

Publish.

A.M.

[Laura E. Aranda]

Not really a review...just wanted to wish you good luck in the contest! l:) Cheers,lea

[Celtic Cat]

Perhaps accounting was the wrong line of work for the diary's author?? Sorry... I couldn't resist. It's curious... this write and these ideas. It actually reminds me of an old friend who would see numbers and people IN COLOR. I don't mean black people and white people color.... I mean "you're red" "he's gold" "she's green" "the number 7 is rose" etc. An interesting mind, that one. As is yours. I'm not sure if you truly found this diary or it's all part of the grand piece of fiction.... but either way it's a provacative piece... full of holes for us to ponder... and many clues for us to wander around. Good stuff!!

[JC]

Just goes to prove its not what you say, but how you say it. My take away is someone who's fear of being ordinary becomes a self fulfilment reality.

A truly enjoyable read, thank you for the invite.

JC

[Emily Elizabeth]

You write so beautifully, and classically. I love the tone to this story, sorrowful, almost mourning. I really connected with the characters and what was being said. This is a very professional piece of work, and I can tell you've worked on it, and your effort shows- it's such an amazing story, definitely one of the better works on here, this is a really moving piece that gets inside your mind and makes you think.
Thank you ever so much for sharing! This is brilliant work!

[Jason]

Hmm. Definately more profound and even more literary than anything here on the Cafe'. Terrific write. Reminds me of some required reading, as in Hesse or Dostoevsky. Deep. Dark.
Great write my friend.

Jason

[Solst Rapture]

In this there are similar expressions to those I have made. It is quite encouraging to see.
I want to avoid giving any technical critique, but I'll mention something I think you would want to know. The opening sentences seem unnecessary because you go on to tell us exactly where you found the papers.

Also, I wonder if waterlogged paper could ever be waiting for the wind to carry it? Perhaps the sun to dry it would create a slightly better sensation?

I relate to every word you have written, unsurprisingly, probably.

[Angel Bird]

Very interesting and amazing piece. It gets the readers attention from the start and holds it til the end and makes one wonder and ponder about how things will further develop.

Isn't what you describe so marvelously here in the diary called 'Puberty'. Times and moments all those who have gone through it know. Moments when body and perceptiveness change and begin to grow in importance - Who am I? What's this life all about? - Why am I here? - Where does the Universe begin, and where does it end? - Do I really exist? Or am I just an illusion? - I'm no good at nothing. Not worth to be the son/daughter of my parents.....

An easy and well flowing enthralling read, but nonetheless packed with wisdom, knowledge and experience that gives a lot of food for thought.

There's an especially significant phrase in your piece that is priceless to me, and we should all take it as a lifetime advise:

I'm like a rubber ball, the harder you hit me the higher I rise!

Magnificent!