A man in my position is expected to wear a mask for so long that he forgets who was beneath it. Please excuse my rigidity as I attempt to balance masculinity and honesty within one swift maneuver of the pen – and all this, without a single iota of help. They said that speaking of romance and matters of the heart would make a man weak… On the contrary, it only makes a man more passionate in times of war. When we could only be as strong as the woman that raised us, my tears wet this paper like the rain wets the ground. Like an embryo in the secrecy of a womb, I was held incommunicado for a predefined period of time. Here, I reveal a manuscript, perhaps naively, to delineate an immaculate blueprint of many men within the context of our personas. To shine the light of understanding on the aphotic regions of my heart, to know what makes my brothers suffer dolorous moments in silence during the matutinal hours of the day.
Scientifically, tears are produced when the lachrymal glands’ nicotinic and muscarinic receptors are activated. As a sentient human being in a perceptible world, the tears secreted by these glands are naturally released in times of pain and joy. Tears, which, in the absence of witnesses have absolutely no chance of being wiped away. A man’s tears, however, are manipulated and monopolized by an eternal social taboo. A man cries from within; our tears are not at the eye level, but at the bottom of our hearts concealed in an infinitesimally vacuous space. Alone, where no eyes are open, tears become the prison that introduces a man to himself. In times of pain, we tighten our musculatures under the umbrella of our egos. At the swing of the historical pendulum, we witness another generation surrounded by hearts of stone, in cities of stone, stoned in their quest to seek alternative avenues of meaning. In life, many are nothing more than a spectator – an anonymous face in the back of an opaque discotheque, in the midst of disturbed visages in the smoke. Here I see my brothers trying to maintain a façade in the limelight, but weeping silently with each his own story never foretold; narrated only in the subconscious because you simply never saw the pain in his eyes.
We all became an outward mirror of an inner condition; the helpless victims of random childhood events fated to plunge memoryless into an adulthood whose every aspect grew daily more obscure. The modern world has shamed us; our souls extensively marinated in the culture of speed – systematically desensitized, fractionized, and homogenized by the umbrage of mutual misunderstanding. Opting for solitude rather than allowing love to take its course, we suffer an emotional impairment that disables us from trusting one another. Thus, we enunciate our frustrations like the victims of a broken promise. It is as though our best efforts could never appease the wounds that lie within, clinching to emotional addictions that refuse to satisfy the heart’s vacuity. Hastening our own demise as we look for substitutes in a heavy patina of ephemeral relationships, we’re absent in our presence, we’re surrounded yet alone, slowly sinking into a dense miasma of longing. It’s here that we try to exist, engulfed by an unrequited sentiment of loss; an ironic feeling of not knowing what we’ve lost.
Mystified by competing priorities and unable to escape these worldly superficialities, many men run out of money chasing women, but never run out of women chasing money. Succumbing to vanity and eroding moral absolutes, we become opportunists seeking to be emotionally honest. In anticipatory salivation we are transformed into cut-throat desperadoes leeching for substitutes. But there are no replacements – most are left to stand alone in the darkness as love endlessly eludes them; a state of mind bearing resemblance to the times when you missed that special someone so much, you wanted to reach out and pull them out of your dreams.
The Mathematics of Love
Love – the word itself is often vocalized in vain. For a man, its power is often underestimated, antagonized and countermanded in his every effort. Too many refused to believe that when a man truly loves a woman, she will become the reason he smiles. Each day, he embraces her with an abundance of brio just as the sun caresses the sea. Effortlessly transforming fear into assurance, loneliness into companionship; the most unselfish act indeed. So here I am, writing my messages in code – no need for words, we passed each other silently only to look back when the moment was just right. Romantically hesitant, just like the wind; you felt it, but you could not see it. My heart could not beat without the rhythm of yours. I was enamored, bibulously soaking in your presence as the light from the crevice of your room reflected into mine. Alas, I had reminded myself to dash ahead and never look back, but in my weakness, my knees trembled at the reminiscence of souvenirs long-expired.
Mathematically speaking, I failed as to solving the mysterious equation of love. I wanted to subtract myself from this equation so that I could divide the pains from the joys and multiply the result, while adding another chapter to my book of trials. The geometry of love is complex, as though the angularity of our human nature lacks a vital measurement in the pursuit of our common hypotenuse. As I integrate myself over the interval of having written this text, I derive relationships between the symbols and variables appearing in my life – tediously pondering when I will reach my limit as I approach infinity…I remain terribly remiss in such affairs; the solution seems to be far from numerical, far removed from being the sum of finite quantities. Perhaps, this equation was never intended to be solved…
Despite my many failures, under an ominous sky I stand alone, non-branded and free-flowing. Even ends have beginnings; everything must be told in sequence and in context. Today, a sudden intake of fresh air invokes a caesura of pure awe plummeting towards the illuminated windows of my soul. Tomorrow, my memories alone produce a salubrious effect on my spirit. Each and every day, I’m existing to cherish a few amative moments under the candlelight, pristine conversations below the canopy free of self-induced agony. Safe and sound, because we knew from the very beginning that freedom is having nothing to prove in this life…
She came into my life as quickly as I could lose my life. When I thought love had escaped my side once again, there she was, with the verb in full action. And there I was, slowly melting in her arms as the warm kisses cushioned by her luscious lips carried me into a metaphysical heaven. In this heavenly realm is where I discovered the most beautiful human being to have touched my heart. Like a blessing from infinity built in the image of relative perfection, her very presence redefined the word beauty in terms of moral character. While actresses attempted to lure me away from the truth, our joint presence exposed honor in times of obscurity, compassion in times of hostility, and sovereignty in times of subjugation. We dreamt of faraway lands never forgetting where we came from, because where we come from has determined where we are going.