Feasibility

A friend of mine of whom I have made no mention here in some years recently opened a martial arts school.

To rewind, I may have talked of this in passing as a dream of mine that I never saw as a feasible plan for a way to live out my days. My friend and I had talked about making our own school since we had barely started high school. We would be partners and combine our different styles to make something wholly new and more effective, and having fulfilled our dream, would be happy with work that we could take pride in.

Eight years later, he's now the owner of the fastest growing martial arts school in the nation, and I'm out of shape working at some corner in the mall.

It's hard not to let that make me feel retarded. Not that I envy him (I'm good enough at being content with not having to handle food) so much as the fact that I know I could've done the same thing. We were both world-class champions. Even though we'd always hold back, I never fell behind him when we sparred. I was perfect in form, flawless in weaponry, and in combat unrivaled by most. As was he.

What goes on in the life of one person that he is able to never lose sight of his single most precious ambition, and what happens to the other soul that he settles for choice number three or five or ten without a fight?

I should mention before I sound too negative how incredibly proud I am of this brother. It has always been utterly impossible to speak with him without leaving inspired, and it's largely because of him that I ventured into peaceful philosophy after my years of Nietzschean babble.

There's just something in me when he asks out of politeness what I've been doing in the meantime that feels like I have completely betrayed him in straying so easily from a path that he has never been able to leave.

I feel like I owe it to him to get back in the saddle, but really, I owe it to myself.

Tranquility

So much time spent in avoidance of a stale silence, that even I would not have predicted back then that one day I would be trying to illicit one of those overly long quiets to be a conversation-killer. After the wedding, I kept telling her. After the wedding, I thought, that's when I can fade to black like she's half-wanted me to for so long.

The other half is our unspeakable portion that no society would allow. I find that this is the side I reside in and the side to which I cater. Hers and mine, it is our pitch-black jubilant nightmare in which all horrors we withhold are utterly real.

Mine is a place of darkness where she is no longer allowed to dwell. Though she is welcome enough, she has forbidden herself. Thus as we teeter on the edge of a real conversation, I speak only of nothings and turn her to face the other way. Our chatter dies and she shows no remorse. For this I hate us both, for though I shall always be perfectly and unflinchingly in love with her darkness, her light holds me in no captivation.

I try to expand my consciousness beyond the walls of a small room and cannot; there are nothing and no one out there to free my thoughts.

I feel my heart beating strongly in my chest. I hear it tapping out each step as it marches toward its death. I feel the second half of my soul -- a portion given freely -- slowly flowing back into me. It is a portion that I had hoped never to see returned.

I am unloved again at long last.