By Yasmina Osama
You became wrapped into the world of solid-rock principles since the beginning of time. The decade-old protocols. The unpaved roads, covered in dust and rubble. Never wanting to kiss Mama Vintage goodbye. The monotony that doesn’t have to be always so tied back-to-back with jaundice, but rather with sleekness, with holding it together, with the straight lines, not the crooked ones that so get under your skin.
You’re seeing the world whirring too fast for your eyes to keep up with. You’re flinching and cringing at the mingled colours, the magnified sounds, the sharp words. You’re forcefully getting plucked out of your shell like a helpless vermin. Screaming but no one is hearing, twisting and flailing but nobody is watching.
Poor you. Wide-eyed. Such a virgin. Nothing is making sense, especially with someone so slow-witted like you are. Kid, this is the time of the hybrids, the new colours nobody actually thought they existed in the first place, the road forks where everyone is choosing the new paved way, and you just keep using the other unpaved one every single day at all kinds of scenarios, at all types of weathers, at all measures. You’re getting loggerheads with the whole society because you’re so stupidly unresponsive to all the external stimuli, all the new variables that have been added to the equation, all the persuasion of the world.
Not entirely keeping up with the swift electric guitar solo playing in the background, no? You’re not being a hippie, but you’re still getting left behind so bad I’m starting to feel sorry for you. Trying too hard to leave the serene symphony untouched the same way it was, the same way it is, the same way it will always be, uninfluenced, fossil-like preserved in amber, missing out on all the faceless prospects out there. Too cavalier? Too conservative? Too coward? Too stubborn? Against the flow? Ah, such a hard time identifying you, kid.
Admit it, you’re starting to have the itch, just like everyone who got it long before you when it was their time to change everything. The itch right under your skin that keeps scuttling like a restless insect. So tempting, trying too hard to pull you from behind your vintage sheath, your uncertainty, your routine. Will you budge? Will you keep going against the flow?
The roof is falling. The floor is cracking. Everything around is pulsating with the radical plot twist on its way. Yet you’re still thinking of nothing but feeding the cat because it’s 7.00am. The cat never feeds at 7.01am. It doesn’t matter if the kitchen is on fire, or if your polka dot underwear is flying out of the window on its way all around the neighbourhood, or if you’ve just lost a finger. It’s 7.00am. The damn cat has to damn eat, NOW!
And here again comes the easy solution that keeps nagging inevitably at the hem of your consciousness, so restless in this kind of situations. It’s too simple, too reachable; too straightforward you’re actually getting very suspicious at the confirmed possibility of the existence of such a resort that couldn’t have been any easier. Yet you obviously became addicted to complexities, to self-torture, to sweat, blood, and tears. To feeding the cat at 7.00am even when your life is crumbling down.
Will you budge in and light-heartedly accept abandoning your old beliefs? Or is it worth the effort to stick to the same old track? Such a labyrinthine situation, a great material for a Hollywood drama number. Very much like two kids pulling feverishly at all four limbs of yours, and you can’t really know which limb will break off first. Such a head-to-head challenge between the old and new, and nothing seems perfect enough for you. Paranoid you.
All you’re seeking is the beauty of eternity, of boots that fit you perfectly from the day you were born to the moment you take your last breath. The spontaneity holding hands with monotony to reach equilibrium. Maddeningly ambitious, and obviously incompatible with the current times when everything is so binary, or perhaps even incompatible with common sense!
Should you dodge the plot twists, or welcome them like an old friend? If the latter, then you’re choosing to become everything you promised never to become, with the irony of fate staring you in the face with a pink neon sign on its head. And the metaphor will not be a metaphor anymore, but a flesh-and-blood reality.
All you’re wishing for is that you, this creature that’s completely insignificant to the universe, never die unbloomed, and can get to the Beatles’ strawberry field, wherever that is.
“Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out
It doesn’t matter much to me
Let me take you down, ‘cos I’m going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever “ – Lyrics from Strawberry Fields Forever, by The Beatles.
