In Pursuit Of Pabulum (1)
Vincent paced a well worn path before the tiny garret window. It had been close to three years since Nadia, the one and only love of his life, had forsaken him for greener pastures and abandoned him to his present lovelorn disposition. His feet dragged as heavily as unrelenting thoughts of better days, and his mind was concentrated such that all consciousness was oblivious to the fixed stare he cast upon the cloak of night, interspersed with bright city lights that were reflected in his eyes and the skies above. The city was buzzing in its usual Saturday night fervour and reaching a crescendo as the ninth hour approached. The frivolous laughter of a young couple walking past Vincent�s cramped abode viciously lashed his heart as a bitter reminder of better days past. Once more it appeared that the sweet solace of solitude would serve to soothe his aching soul. His muse echoed the sentiments of his parents incessant inquisition, �Why is it that a handsome young gentleman of such worldly disposition is without partner - particularly when there appear to be so many to choose from?� The women that he seemed to meet had no appeal other than sexual, and this was certainly not embrocation enough to assuage a broken heart. �It is far better to keep your own company exclusively than endure bad company,� he reassured himself. Perhaps his standards were too high, but then again why shouldn�t they be, because in his eyes he was one man that could afford to be fussy. It was a fact that everybody who makes an effort eventually ends up with somebody. His days were growing old as the thirtieth year approached and the fallacy of convincing himself that he was happy being on his own grew more feeble with every year, and in more recent times every lonely night that passed. It was inevitable that his standards be compromised but the only question left unresolved was by how much? Vincent stared into oblivion and wondered if his future wife simultaneously cast a glance upon the majesty of that same star spangled sky? Where was she and when would she relieve him from his nagging loneliness? �There�s only one thing for it,� he announced aloud with firm resolution, �I�ll have to adopt a proactive approach and seek out my mate because the possibility of her finding me here in self-imposed social isolation is a slim prospect indeed!� But how could this be achieved? He had become a virtual recluse with a severe case of lucubration of late, and had lost contact with his few friends that had grown tired of his refusal to leave home for any purpose other than work. Vincent sighed as his glace languidly drifted to the door that served as a palpable reminder of his mental incarceration and shuddered at the prospect of going out alone. Even if he raised the courage to make a jail-break, where would he go anyway, and what chance would he have without somebody to abet him? Suddenly an idea overwhelmed him with a severity inherent in those that think more than speak and sent his heart racing at a speed comparable to that of his mind. �Why not try my luck on the Internet?� he announced half-heartedly before a gradual, yet definite, bitter sneer effused his physiognomy as he considered his apparent foolishness by placing hope in such a conspicuous graft for pedalling hope to the lonely. But any doubts were soon vanquished as thoughts turned toward the many women of similar inclination that were just waiting to talk to a man of his calibre. Well maybe not many but only one was required - the right one. As Vincent pondered the possibilities associated with a plethora of attractive, intelligent women lining up to have an anonymous tete-a-tete with him, a more permanent scowl clouded the shine from his countenance when considering the stigma that would be associated with meeting his dream girl on a chat line. Imagine explaining to people that you met your partner on the original twentieth century lonely hearts club! �These type of meeting arrangements are for losers and people that can�t get a date and desperadoes out for mere sex and ... well I guess maybe everyday people like me,� admitted Vincent audibly in disgust as he placed himself familiarly in front of the computer in the corner of the room. �At least the Internet offers the luxury of aborting a boring conversation with simple the flick of a switch and no hard feelings or repercussions need be considered,� he reassured himself with an air of corroboration. The search for chat sites was short and bountiful aptly reflecting the apparent need that the main �educational� tool of the 21st century was geared to service. Clicking on the �ICQ.com� website which grabbed his attention for its clever appellation alone, he proceeded to sign up and instigate a search for a mate of similar intention with regard to finding true love. This was explicitly stated in his User Profile indicating that it was love and devotion he required, and signified his intractable resolve to find it with an appropriate alias of �Pushy.� Vincent proceeded to type his first message with much consideration and launch it into the abyss of would be conversants in the Romance chat room, beyond the four walls of his security sanctuary. He decided to state exactly what he was looking for in a woman, in no uncertain terms, and in doing so attract a lesser quantity and greater quality of responses. > I like to push hard in every aspect of life. If you are a female capable of keeping pace please take advantage of my invitation to traverse the intellectual gauntlet laid out before you. A smile of satisfaction restored sparkle to his sapphire blue eyes as he eagerly awaited the fruits of his labour. His heart began to sink as the minutes drawled, until suddenly a quiver was lodged on the blank screen before him with apparent unexpectedness such that it nearly dislodged him from his seat. Vincent gasped in astonishment at the suddenness of the message forwarded from an anonymous sniper hiding behind the alias of �Annakie,� and then proceed to consider the words intended for him. >> oh i like a challenge, my life so far has been conducted within the comfort zone of easy conquests. too many slayed dragons and i'm suffering paradigm paralysis. so push me... The line was cast, bait set and now a fish with teeth like a Barracuda and as slippery as an eel was on the bite. Vincent�s eyes were cool and concentrated as he set about snaring and netting the audacious prey and his heart pumped adrenalin to sharpen his senses for the proceeding fight ahead. > Are you a slayer of hearts or of minds? Preferably the latter because my intellect is my Excalibur that yields me protection whereas my heart is the weak link in my armour when I battle against any fair maiden. I live a full life and push myself pretty hard - well to the limit anyway. I'm always on the lookout for somebody who lives life by the same philosophy. Someone that drives and inspires me, giving fuel to my fire, rather than holding me back and consuming my air. I believed Don Quixote to be the last of your profession and he has long ago expired, as has his diffusive tale, so tell me by what means you survive in contemporary society. >> i used to be a slayer of hearts but now, in favour of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, i only slay dragons. and only fire-breathing dragons. the almost extinct brush-tailed dragons and other endangered dragons i let be. but i am very attracted to fire-breathing dragons because before i slay them i cleanse myself in their flames and so regenerate myself... i'm a legal editor by trade but this is merely a stone-carrying job. i have a law degree so i'm utilising it to make some cash but i carry these stones back and forth everyday so that at night i can indulge in my real passion - the novel that i'm writing. it's like when you work in the fields all day with the sickle, the bread and cheese for supper tastes oh so much better, or when you go through a tunnel on a train the emerging landscape looks blindingly good. when i carry stones to and thro all day, at night my creativity reaches a peak. so are you going to breathe any fire in my direction? i�m in pursuit of pabulum so please tell me some more about these vagaries like pushing yourself to the limits and how do you challenge yourself? > Like yourself I am working for money as opposed to love. I am a Philosopher with an Engineering degree and am all too capable of providing food for a famished mind. Philosophy doesn't pay the bills so I spend my days Engineering. In actual fact I am a researcher taking an indefinite break. Research is my passion however I'm unfortunately just a little bit too good at it. Like writing a novel, Research can all too easily become an obsession for the unwary as nobody can really gauge their limits until they go crashing through them. It is a lifestyle as opposed to a career and for the perfectionist can unwittingly consume ones soul to the core. After a year in the intellectual desert of the Private Sector my mental drive is being restored to me and I find myself working on a day to day (well more like year to year) basis. Indifference to job security is the luxury of the young and the brilliant but please forgive my arrogance. I am of the belief that one should never leave their job until they absolutely hate it as this is the only scenario whereby loss is an impossibility. Whereas my passion was eclipsed by over-indulgence take care not to suffer the same fate at the expense of a lack of mental stimulation. Perhaps a career change is in order? >> i am addicted to job interviews in the same way as i am addicted to burrowing into the minds of strange men. i apply for about twenty jobs a week in all different parts of the world, sometimes i turn the job down before the interview stage, other times i go to the interview and if i get the job, turn it down. one day i hope to accept another job. perhaps my livelihood will be the excuse to take me somewhere that i haven�t lived and preferably a large city in which to embrace the solitude it affords. > It sounds like you aspire to be quite the nomad, travelling in search of something better or maybe just something. A very romantic notion indeed. From my perspective solitude is not something one searches for - it is something one lives with. The bright are often never alone although frequently lonely and more often that not lazy. Some of them even forget to place capital letters where they are required in their sentences making them that little bit harder to read. >> oh but capital letters are so rigid, they cap sentences, they suffocate words which would otherwise breathe, they place plastic floral arrangements where there should be heath. (note: i'm giving you an insight into my character here but perhaps you could dispense with these guiding text notes? i've actually installed character-check on my chat setup, you may wish to do the same, that sorts out internet personalities, blocking messages from disagreeable characters who may potentially mar my personal landscape). > I beg to differ. Capitals EMPHASISE, ignite the imagination and allow one to screen the important from the less important in a similar fashion to your chat character checking filter. Besides, I am an Engineer (and dare I say it a pedant) so I live by rules, methodology and systems - that's what I�m paid the big money for. I will assume from your continued response that I have not been black-banned from your screen and relegated to the abyss of oblivion where my message is unconsidered. Dragon slayers have thick skin, well so I would imagine, and punctuation criticism from a novice literate (ie. Engineer) should be little more than a briar in your Combat boots. Tell me more about your writing exploits? >> i live by half-obeyed rules, unfinished methodologies and tattered structures. but what more would one expect from someone schooled in derrida and punished by foucault? if i don't write i'm nothing. it seems a tad simplistic to say so, but i write not because i need to, or even because i want to, but for a negative reason, in that, if i don't write i'm nothing. it's what drives me forward in all aspects of my life, i swim laps of the pool because i write, because i know that physical fuels the mental; i socialise because i write, study of character fuels my writing; i seek adventures because i write, it's all fodder. circular perhaps... but i think without my writing i would crumble. i would be unable to justify my existence. a while ago, in pursuit of 30 000 dollars literary prize money, i started to pad my novel with crowd-pleasers...i think these will need to be extracted in order to stay true to my original unpublishable idea. i find a man of your logical persuasion to be a healthy contrast to my personal world of faeries and gnomic laughter in the forest glades. and i admit i have the desire to hold the head that holds that foreign brain between my hands (in much the same manner as i would hold a globe of the world littered with terrain not yet traversed). > A student of phrenology I suspect you are not but I welcome the laying of healing hands upon my troubled brow to exorcise my demons once and for all, and in doing so, redress an unnecessary yet unrelenting imbalance in my soul - absence of female companionship as opposed to company. I naturally reprove any attempt to compromise the quality of literature for financial gain although concede that thousands wouldn�t. What is it that motivates you, your quest to be recognised or a burning desire to tell a story? Should you have tainted your pure tale with crass commercialism for mere wherewithal I should have said the former. Money should not be the master of art, art should be the master of money. I wholeheartedly approve of your final resolution to maintain your integrity and stick to your story if you�ll pardon the pun. To write for an audience is to compromise art as the purest thoughts, and writings, are those that come directly from the heart. If you are true to your heart stories are not written, they write themselves, for this way the purest ideas are transferred from hand to paper without becoming retarded by anxieties of the mind. >> pray great sir, i concur with your infallible assessment. writing is therapy, an opportunity to explore, although all too often such juncture is squandered with reliance on condiments and garnish in place of meat and potatoes. ideas are the foundation of writing which are all too often smothered by prolixity whereas language should be little more than a trifling formality. there is nothing more tiresome than prospecting through a quarry of loosely strewn semantics for the occasional gem of literary brilliance. the mark of a great writer is not the amount of quality work produced, but the amount of quality work relative to the full gamut of work produced. many authors transgress the fine line of informing, to boring, by putting pen to paper when they have absolutely nothing to write about in a similar manner that the garrulous persist in idle chatter when ultimately there is little to be said. perhaps this is why tv characters appear to increasingly have little of interest to say, which is not to say that they are ever short of conversation. could it be that all worthy of elocution has been pronounced already? > Everybody�s life experience is unique and therefore we all feel and think differently in accordance with the experiences we are subjected to. This most certainly means that each person in effect has their own story to tell as no set of eyes see, or at least perceive the same way. To dress your finely prepared culinary argument with bricks and mortar it is apparent that building blocks without cement ultimately result in nothing less than a colorful heap of loosely strung axioms and semantics when the arguments are stacked up beyond a moderate intellectual level. Writers often forget that the aim of writing is to inform and not perplex with cryptic rhetoric, which serves as an effective insulator against commitment, and therefore pain. Wouldn�t you agree that they fear being maimed and in doing so deprive themselves of life�s full experience, for living involves suffering and to live without risk is not to live at all? >> indeed, although i like proust's technique of living and subsequently recording thereafter. years of being a socialite without lifting a pen, accumulating ideas and feelings and then locking himself away for the latter part of his life in order to write. of course his illness would have helped to discipline him. he didn't have the health to continue to be the man-about-town, and his beat-up heart wouldn't have helped matters. > I agree with Proust's resolve to practise before preaching in theory although his concept of practise is apparently wanton. How can one possibly live a full life in half a lifetime? Irrespective of ones mental and physical condition, reclusion is not living, it is dying. Romanticised ideals about exploring the self and its boundaries as the recluse does, as a means to blossom and bear fruit, are simply a fallacy. The balanced diet is most certainly the best recipe for good health and withdrawal from society can only result in imbalance. I empathise with Proust as I have a strongly reclusive, often bordering on antisocial nature, stemming from the solitude of a rustic boyhood, but always force myself, if need be, to socialise because human beings are fundamentally gregarious by nature. One may well focus inward in the name of discovery, but should take care not to get lost in the labyrinth of ones soul from which return may be an impossibility. Without social interaction one will inevitably lose his (sorry, I'm not politically correct compliant) reference beacon and drift on the tide of the soul, inevitably becoming shipwrecked upon the shore of insanity. That is the basis of one of my shortcomings that I actively seek to remedy. All too frequently I set my reference mark by which I navigate without considering the mark of others. When I do chance to glance at my peers around, it becomes evident that their mark is down low on the ground (I never was a poet). >> what do you know of writing sir and what are your credentials in this matter to discern greatness from mediocrity?
Copyright © 2001 Bradley Postma |