Anachromism

My personal sentiments towards the generation in which I belong, and how I feel juxtaposed against it.

   He was one of those queerly fellows who indulged in anachronistic pursuits; he donned the outfits of a prior generation, a much more stable generation, while his peers succumbed to all of the modern notions of ever-fleeting fashion. He had a penchant for the avocations typical of an earlier era, interests and hobbies which were looked upon by those of his own as age as shameful. Sinful, really. They prayed for him at all of their houses of worship, all of their churches, but found that their myriad of supplications was ineffective; the boy simply resisted to change. No one respected this, no one respected him, and they shifted their focus from his anomaly, his infatuation with �" as they viewed it �" primitive pursuits, back to their own modern manifestations of joy and good humor. The boy was glad to be left alone, abandoned in his own world �" a serene world, quieter and slower than that one he’d resisted to be assimilated into.

   Books were his main source of entertainment. He’d awake early in the morning �" those hours in which the world seems renewed, reinvigorated, and almost boundless; if only the sun didn’t rise…if only the people didn’t awake, for those were his distractions. Yes, people and the sun, that golden nugget deposited in a curious bank of blue. When people began to arise from their beds, the boy would sigh and surrender his novel. It’d fall from his hand, onto the floor, with a resounding thud that always made sent a vertiginous wave washing over him. He’d sit there a moment more, sick to his stomach, then arise; fire blazed in eyes. Today, he’d resigned to inscribe on his heart, I’m going to make something of myself.

   But he could never escape from that own world of his. This world he lived in, a world as boundless as it was invisible, held a protective grip on him which was impossible to sever. His contemporaries saw this, understood this, and knew that he would never be apt to succeed in their world, the tangible world, the iconoclastic world. They witnessed with their own eyes the impotency of clinging to tradition, of clinging to vestiges of the past, and scoffed at his ways. He never understood why they scoffed, why they mocked, for he was content in his own world. And he never really wanted to prosper within another. His notion of success was one in which he could stay; in which he wasn’t evicted from his home, his paradise. Nobody could understand, though. Their surrender to sybaritic pleasures had gouged their eyes and blinded them to all opposing forces.

   The boy is not deterred, though. He yearns to make something of himself. Not within the confines of surrender but within the cornucopia of triumph, and it is the triumph which he dreams of in the world all-his-own. The boy calls out to the blind, and they reject him; they reject his anachronistic ways, the simplicity of his clothing and the serenity of his avocations. They prefer the world in its great fleet; the beams of light that radiate for a mere second before fading into nothingness and then are absorbed into oblivion, these are the stupors of their world. In the boy’s world, a light never dims; it is an evanescent glow, never seduced by the darkness.

   This light dominates his mind and permeates his actions. The actions which are repugnant in the eyes of the restless, but they themselves move too quickly to see the value in anything. They do not even see the value in themselves, the impetus behind their existences, and thus spend their days importing this value not from any spring of self-worth, but from dispensaries of confidence �" stores, hairstylists, dance clubs; all things shallow, all things superficial.

   Religion is just one of their many vices. They drink to get drunk; they smoke to get high; they pray in order to feel a short, fleeting ecstasy in which they are the consecrated, the holy ones set against unpredictable masses below them. A stark garment folded into a pile of rags. They walk to a bar in search of their relief; they are injected intravenously by the sweaty of hands of stranger; they attend church on Sunday, pride swelling in their hearts and a consciousness of their perceived alienated status in the world.

  Verily, they are not alienated.

   They are accepted by the world, for the world, and within the world. The boy realizes this, for his trained eye can sense things that others cannot, and he resists the religion entirely. It’s a murderous religion. Genocide reigns upon those who refuse to surrender, but to those who do? Well, let’s just say, that they are welcomed into the world again. A world indistinguishable because of its homogeneity.

      In a world of homogeneity, the boy stands out. He’s truly that stark garment folded against a pile of rags, and deep within the hearts of those adjacent to him is a begrudging. He is sober, he is liberated, and thus can see the world with eyes clearly. Those adjacent to him are intoxicated upon the liquor of that has been forced down their throats since they were born, and thus cannot think clearly. They inherit this alcoholism, pass it along to future generations, without any hope of it ever reaching a terminal.

   The boy thanks god, his god, for sparing him of this despotic disorder. He can be himself in his own world, liberated from the chaos which surrounds him. He wants to make something of himself, but the drunken world mocks him. For, what can he do? He isn’t like any of them �" he hasn’t the fashion of the time, the avocations typical of the era, and neither does he have religion, their religion. What an aimless young man he is, bound for failure in this world and hellfire in the next!

   The boy doesn’t lament due to his rejection, but rejoices in it. Those who are shunned in the world are truly the prosperous ones, surrounded on all sides by drunkards. He remains sober, his mind remains clear, and his chimera remains intact.

   Satisfied with his position and impermeable to vice, the boy declares bankruptcy in the world separate from his own; however, in the world belonging to him, he amasses a fortune. Munificence is another one of his redeeming qualities, and he longs to share this fortune with his contemporaries; they all but refuse this fortune, and instead opt to amass their own fortunes, subject to destruction.  And so, they boys sits complacently in his own world, watching through a portal the other: there is a frenzy. A great fire consumes some dispensary of confidence, some bank of reassurance, but no amount of water will assuage this crisis. And then, there is nothing left but scorched earth and a covey of aimless souls crying over the loss of such a great monument.

   Tomorrow, they’ll go back to drinking, to smoking, to praying �" but for now, they are destroyed. The boy realizes this, and sheds a silent tear. They are so drunk and stumble their way along life, their senses impaired and their eyes totally gouged by the evil forces they have succumbed to. 

   The boy soon retires to his bed. Clutching a shield in his hand, he reads the book which he’d previously dropped early in the morning. Early, when the lamenting ones were awaking again to their facetious existences. An immense guilt overrides him, for abandoning this book. He realizes that without such a shield, without such an avenue of expression, he himself would be drunk. The thought sickens him, and he continues to read, continues to imagine, continues to persist in his own world, and continues to ward off the drunkenness that has ravaged the world and forces him to settle in one of his own.