A Strange Unrest

((Written, June 18, 2012, in the third person) (The old man is sitting by the hearth thinking, it is evening, a strange unrest comes to him and this is what he’s got to say about it: 10:21 p.m.))

He lived through a long train of adventures, marvelous ones as those in a book itself. Somehow when he read there appeared an image of him. For example, seeing a man standing by a lighthouse on Nantucket Island, or seeing the name Java, and the word “Borobadur” in his dreams, reading about the Great Wall of China or under the moonlit sky of Egypt, and the Sphinx all lit up. Seeing all the restaurants and cafes Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and James Joyce went to in Paris.  As he grew older life a little richer, perhaps a little sadder, yet proudly he did all those things, went to all those places.

       As a young boy he fought battles in the empty lot, across from his house, and on Indians Hill, which was part of the empty lot. As a young adult, he went off to war, to the shaggy and rice-grown fields of Vietnam—this time it was real. Here he lived among soldiers with stale odors, dust in their nostrils, and the poisoned sweat of the day.

       He thought it should be a pleasant life enough, he had no real complaints, it actually turned out a lot better than what he had expected—now reaching his mid-sixties, some foreknowledge which had sicken his heart and made his legs sag, made him restless, that same intuition made him glance with mistrust for his fellowman.

       Heavily over his strained body he self-indulged any vision of a wholesome future for humankind—feeling they had crossed the point of no-return. In a vague way he understood that the world was in trouble, and this was the reason why he had, he had not been able to subdue his restlessness (unlike William Faulkner, whom felt to the contrary for mankind).

       For sometime he had felt the slight change to his body, things like minor shocks, oversensitive, his boyish conception of the world was gone, darkness had entered its soul, and sought no outlet.

       Such thoughts of the world obscured his mind—as if he could hear the mares hoofs far-off approaching, those of: The Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, clattering along, swaying and rattling behind the clouds.

       This was the strange unrest that had crept into his blood, what he brooded upon; his immune system seemed too weakened over man’s pretence, self-interest, and lack of Godliness, and the consequences forthcoming. 

       The peace of his quiet home poured a tender influence into his restless heart. Outside the noise of Civilization at play, annoyance and silly voices, it all made him feel more keenly that he was different from the majority of others…

#927 (6-18-2012)