Time Lost

 

 

A concept that has defeated philosophers down through the ages. Man and his place in the universe, are we the peak of existence or just the servants of some greater plan? Is there some supreme being, benevolent or otherwise, watching and judging; waiting for our success, or more likely our failures looking at mankind’s track record. Or are we just an artefact, a mistake, a conjunction of atoms producing a unique, for the moment, life form. 

 

Barokni lowered the pencil, placing it carefully on the page containing his thoughts, and stared into the piece of mirrored glass. He gazed at his reflected image, finding little he could recognise there. The eyes, which had once been as blue as forget me nots, were now a dull grey. The thick, glossy brown of his hair was thin, matted and grey, he had become the epitome of grey. His life, what was left of it, had lost all colour. He picked up the shard of mirror and was about to fling it into the furthest corner of the room but something stopped him, the thought that seeing an image of someone he no longer recognised was some sort of company.

He picked up the pencil, licked its blunt tip and continued with his task. 

When he woke up the light had gone, but the full moon allowed him to see into the far corners of his home, or his prison cell as he sometimes thought of it. His hand found the candle and matches, always close by, its illumination bringing a little warmth. For a few moments he looked around at his treasures, worthless to most but to him a lifetime. Suki’s cushion cover, it had taken her three years to complete with many missed stitches and now with moth holes.

‘You’ll never get that exhibited in the local craft exhibition,’ he remembered saying, and she’d thrown a ball of wool at him. He’d feigned great injury and she’d kissed it better, before returning, tongue between her teeth to continue with her masterpiece. She had finished it and it was given pride of place on the rocking chair. He picked it up and held it to his face, convinced that he could still smell her in amongst its multi coloured threads.

 

Memories, false friends I suppose, are the substance of life, or life as we know it. Each part making up a mosaic of the individual. But the individual can only be unique when set against others, pathways merging, diverging; sometimes on collision courses at other times meshing seamlessly.  I thought once, I was part of life’s tapestry, but that was before.

 

His glasses were cracked and scratched, he pushed them onto his nose where they sat in a lopsided fashion. ‘Hey Suki, what do you think of the intellectual, mad  professor look?’ Once these words had been internalised but of late, to fill the void, he had begun to vocalise his thoughts, holding the curled and faded photo of his wife.

‘I went up into the attic today, something to fill the time. Do you remember that old Chinese trunk, the one your granddad left us. All those intricate carvings on the outside but the real treasures inside. Do you know, you can still smell the camphor? Valentine’s cards, birthday cards, letters; I didn’t have the strength to read the letters. But best of all the photograph albums, so many memories, so much time preserved.

 

Some primitive groups were afraid of photographic images of themselves, they thought that their souls had been captured, never to be released that they had been diminished. A truth there somewhere, a single moment of our lives embedded with only fleeting memory to recapture it. Memories all that are left now. No future to contemplate.

He dropped his pencil and stared at the words he had created on the page. They swam before him and their meaning lost. ‘Why? What is the point, who is left to read this? But I promised you I would keep writing and I cannot let you down. It is the writing now that keeps me going, the hope that this is not the end, that one day someone will read my ramblings and will understand.

 

Man has long had the idea that he is immortal, that evolution has determined  he will always rule the earth. Some sceptics have declared that within man are the seeds of his own destruction that one day he will be the cause of the blighting of civilisation. That any god, be there such a creature, has given up on his creation and has left him to find his own salvation.

 

Barokni stood and stretched, cracking each of his fingers in turn to bring life back to them. He picked up the sheaf of papers that lay on the table, a lifetime lay here, and the end of a life. I AM ALONE. The first words he had written when the realisation that this was the truth of the situation had at last sunk in. He had documented the events leading to this, what he thought of as his crossroads, the point where a decision had to made. There was little left to write, all his thoughts, or almost all, were complete.

He crossed to the window, the yellow ball of the sun just rising beyond the hills painting everything in an ethereal glow. Trees’ skeletal fingers reaching up as though to clasp the fiery orb. ‘It’s your birthday Suki, we always got up early to watch the sunrise on this day. Isn’t it beautiful? See how without man’s interference nature takes over and covers the earth in wonder. This is decision day, do I continue alone and die alone, the last human, or do I end it all now and join you in the stars. A strange thing, when I awoke earlier I thought I heard a voice, not your voice, I hear that all the time, but a voice I did not know. Wishful thinking I suspect.’

 

He returned to the table, plumping up Suki’s cushion and put it behind his back. He picked up the pencil stub licked its end and prepared to write the final entry of his account. 

Through the house came a sound. The knocker on the front door, the one in the shape of a gloved hand bought many years ago on a foreign holiday, was being used to summon him.

‘Suki, I’m not alone. This is my future.’