wanderlust

A Voyage To Solitude, The Inner Dialogue

"Man with Crow" - Painting by David Ligare

FIRST ACT : A FLIRT, A FLYING LESSON OR A LIFE PHILOSOPHY

Second Act: A voyage to solitude, The inner dialogue

 

Next morning, he walks in, fully dressed as a bird. She is fully dressed as a human. The talk starts abruptly.

― How are you feeling today?

― I have this bearable, but unpleasant feeling. It’s called loneliness. It is triggering all my fears, including the fear of loneliness itself.

― Why are you afraid of loneliness? You have been alone for a long time, you know how it feels like, you survived it.

― Yes, true, I even enjoyed it. But we are social creatures, we need someone to talk to. Even when we are completely alone, we still talk, by remembering others, by imagining them. It’s like a background sound that accompanies us all throughout our life. When it stops, the unknown starts.

― You know loneliness. Don’t be afraid of something you already know. It’s like when you have a wisdom tooth extracted for the second time, you know how it feels like, yes, it hurts, but you are not scared anymore. This is how we conquer fear, step by step.

― But there is always the unknown left to fear.

― How many things do you know about yourself? How much of you is known and how much unknown? We carry the unknown inside us and that is what you fear. You fear yourself, but you are the fear creator. You fuel your fears.

― Sometimes I feel I am running in circles.

― Yes, circles, yes! From fear to regret and back to fear. We regret the past and fear the future or even worse, we expect the future to compensate for the past. Imagine life is a circle, you are running on its circumference, the regrets follow you and the fears go ahead you. But you truly live only when you are in the center of the circle. That is the present. The rest is a bubble that surrounds you.

― And only the outside of the bubbles touch each other. We are just rubbing each others fears and regrets. Sometimes it’s hard to reach that burning core of other people.

― This is why you need to break off  your own bubble. It is the only thing you can really control. But the others can always teach you something. You know, from every relationship I learnt something. There was this girl that thought me I need to communicate more about who I really am, but I had spent a long time alone together with her before I understood that,

― That is the greatest loneliness: to be alone with someone else.

― And then, there was this girl who taught me kindness when I was busy defending my hurt ego and drenching in self pity. And there was this girl who taught me that nobody can escape anger, no matter how kind. She also taught me something very valuable, she refused to respond to my anger, she waited for the tempest to pass and said: I know you have a temper.

― And you melted.

― Yes. It was totally unexpected.

― If I think well, the best times I had were when I didn’t expect anything. But then, something happened and the fear machine started again.

― It’s human.

― Mr Wisebird, what do you think I will learn from you?

― I will try to teach you how human you are.

― Mr Wisebird, how do you keep your wings this shinny?

― I fly often.

― And you can call me Will. We’re friends now.

Flying exit.

Animation by (yet) unknown artist

 

― Mr Wisebird, come back. I have a confession to make.

― You do? Okay, tell me. (Circles the scene and then takes a sit, next to her. He opens up a bit his bird costume.) Flying makes me feel hot. (Wink)

― I feel a bit hot also. Maybe it’s my desire to fly. Maybe this has been my problem all the time. My desire gets ahead of reality and I like it so much, that I close my eyes in front of the obvious.

― Your intuition works well. You just disconsider it. I think we would be much happier if we used more these two powerful tools that we have: intuition and imagination. When you find yourself running in circles for no apparent reason, you can always turn to your dreams for guidance.

― I had this dream once: a white canvas with two stripes of pink and cerulean blue. It was something so comforting about that dream.

― And what happened next?

― I put my dream into practice. And here I am today, talking to a bird! (She laughs. )

― A wise bird.

― (She laughs again). How do I know you are a wise bird or just a fool?

― (Offended) You don’t trust me.

― (Sad look) I wish I would. I can be so mistrustful at times and so naive at other times. I trusted other people before and what did they do? They stepped on it (angry look) and I stayed there bemused, wondering whose fault is it, mine or theirs.

― Yours for believing or their for betraying your expectations?

― Mine for hoping and theirs for not being sufficiently self-aware?

― We are not responsible for the behavior of other people. And hope is nothing to feel guilty about. But there’s a difference between the hope you make others carry on their shoulders and the abstract hope that is the fuel of life.

― Is despair something to feel guilty about?

― Despair is a punishment we apply on ourselves for our high hopes we place on others. But if you go back to that abstract source of hope I was talking about, you will see there is an unlimited amount of hope you can keep creating.

― Oh, Mr Wisebird, you make me feel better. (Smile)

― Now everything I have to do is to make you laugh. (Smile)

― (She laughs) (Turning meditative) All men say that.

― And now birds as well. (Stretches his wings and rearranges them a bit.) If they say that, they mean it.

― And then, what? They vanish and find someone else to make laugh and I end up here, questioning life.

― Permanence is the greatest illusion of them all. You are clinging to a static image, trying to reduce time to silence. But as we are speaking, time keeps flowing. It is your choice if you want to be surfing on top of the wave or standing where the waves brake.

If other people do mistakes, it’s in front of their inner judge they will have to respond to, sooner or later.

― Mr Wisebird, the confession I was talking about at the beginning…

― Yes, tell me. The confession in front of a human being is one of the most important stages in healing.

― I…I tried to change other people. I told them how they should be when they didn’t ask for it.

― I understand. Learning how to love is an art, but like all the other arts, it can be learnt. Patiently.

You cannot change the way people are, even if you see clearly what their problem is. Everybody will get their revelations at the right time for them. You should not force your teachings to anyone. You should just blow them in the wind and who needs them, who has the ears, the heart, the patience, the interest, will pick them up.

― Mr Wisebird, I have another confession to make. I…I recieved an invitation to a polyamorous comunity. (Shy look)

― (Laughs). You did? Hahaaaa. We’ll discuss this next time. Everybody likes to hear about sex, we’ll make the audience happy.

(Music. The curtain drops.)

Read the FIRST ACT : A FLIRT, A FLYING LESSON OR A LIFE PHILOSOPHY.

—

Laura Livia Grigore is a poet, painter and psychology enthusiast, with a background in space engineering. She likes to experiment with various mediums and types of writing. Her artwork is orientated on emotions, reflecting her opinion that most of the answers we need can be found inside ourselves, although the hardest thing to do is to be sincere with oneself. You can purchase her book here. 

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