UI
What a trip
My shadowless journey among the living
I keep hearing: Life is just a trip
What trip?
A few come to life, their trip all planned out, scheduled, financed…
They tried all kinds of transport facilities and toured the world without luggage
They get out in their voyage for long treks in nature, climb mountains, surf, hunt wild animal in safaris…
They never had to try Greyhound or these slow trains for destinations not so exciting, and pretty unknown.
A few come to life not having any stipend to dismount from the transport carriage to have a bite
As many riders do in the bus.
A few are discovered in the landing gears of airplanes: They are retrieved in a state of hibernation
Many have no idea where on earth they were born and why they were born.
Frequently trailing after the long pilgrimage convoys to the nearest UN compound for food, potable water
And treatment for curable diseases.
Occasionally they are pushed to join “revolutionary” armies as kid slaves
After being forced to kill their mother, father, and elder brothers and sisters.
It is getting tradition to board rickety ships as immigrants, after suffering long journeys in desert and refugee camps
And hoped to be picked up by more comfortable salvage ships.
The vast majority are stashed in containers
And human-packed containers cross oceans in total darkness
And in the stench of totally closed compartment.
Cars are the transport means that killed and handicapped most trip takers
And particularly in countries suffering from embargoes on spare parts
The daily toll is staggering.
I was packed in the luggage compartment of some transport means and forgotten.
I was found 6 years later.
I woke up after a coma of eternity to discover a semblance of life.
I chocked when I had my first breath of fresh air: It was poisonous to my weakling constitution.
For the first time I noticed shadows of people surrounding me.
And I wanted one of them shadows, all mine.
I was transferred so many times and experienced all kinds of confinement in boarding schools,
In private schools and later in public universities.
I was shuffled from one main language to another main language schools.
As adult, I kept sharing apartment and lived in tight basements, modern caves…
I wanted a shadow, but wanting and getting one is not an easy journey among the living.
My best refuge was dark rooms and basements.
I was a totally transparent body among the living up the age of 13.
Living bodies who never noticed me or paid any attention to me.
Why I’m under the impression that never talked to anybody till the age of 13?
Why I’m under the impression that nobody talked to me till then?
I had no shadow to impress and attract the living.
I joined in trips with the living:
It is not of any fault or limitations of the living for isolating me.
I just had no subjects or emotions that could create any kinds of passions in me
To transmit, communicate, explore.
What a trip among the living
As if no lights left any trace of a shadow
Behind or ahead of me.
And I didn’t find any good enough reason to observe the living and their behaviors.
It is not an easy job to establish a salient shadow.
Years later, I managed to secure a room of my own in the ground floor.
I installed the bookshelves, the computer, the homework of my university students…
I thought I was settled.
Relatives of mine deemed this room a luxury for someone just intent on reading and writing.
A room that was vouchsafed to be better vacant and put for rent.
Instead of being rent, my own room was reserved for storing unwanted belonging that were cramming
And disfiguring their interior designed space for receiving the rare visitors.
Why do I write?
So I can learn to observe.
I observe to resuscitate whatever feeling and emotions I buried
In the deepest recesses of my convoluted memory.
Still this shadowless individual,
Still learning to observe the shadows
Note: I began my piece 3 days ago, before I stumbled on Thomas Mann’s essay “Nobleness of the Spirit”. I flipped to the chapter of the German poet Chamisso and discovered the novel “The marvelous story of Peter Schlemihl (1813)”. I got the key symbol of Shadow and ran with it.
Read every day and you’ll never lack inspirations to improve and finish an essay.
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Adonis Diaries 