Free blog for fun- Quintessence- Free writing

“What can I get ya?” The bar tender had a scruffy beard and a once white rag on his shoulder that almost blended in to his caramel-colored t-shirt that stretched to fit over his bulging beer belly. He smacked his gum while he waited for me to order something, anything.

“I don’t know, make it hard.” The bar tender looked at me and knew that he sat exactly where I did, he understood agony. What does taste matter? Just seconds later he slid a glass across the counter that stopped right in front me, the result of countless years stuck inside a tavern, repeating the same thing day after day, all the while promising yourself that tomorrow you’ll move on to bigger and better dreams. I sat and stared at the golden-brown liquid sitting within my reach, knowing that there’s no going back once I take a sip. I heard the bell over the door ring behind me, and a worn man sat a few seats down for me and asks the bartender to give him his favorite.

The barman took out a mixing glass and spoke roughly.

“This is my favorite… a rum daiquiri, a little rough going down though”

“Sweet liquid, it’s been a while.” He seemed to be saying it out loud to herself as a way of justifying the act more than anything else, but I answered anyway.

“Me neither, you know Ernest Hemingway loved the rum daiquiri mix” Both of us kept looking forward in our moments of immense sadness. He spoke again.

“Well, only the best for the best…right?”

I chuckled and slowly grabbed my glass and brought it up to my lips. I could see the elderly man look at me from the corner of my eye.

“What?”

He shook his head

“Oh nothing… do you drink a lot?” I pondered the question for the moment and put the glass down, I could see him smiling.

“No I have never had a drink in my life, but they say it can make you forget”

Minutes passed before the white haired man spoke again, the bartender cleaned glasses as his mind also thought of memories and scenes he wish he could have relived and changed.

“I’d have to drink a whole lot to forgot these past thirty something years”

At that moment a sense of interest overcame me like no other, this man had a lot to say.

“What do you mean, sir?”

He replied quickly “Don’t call me sir” he paused for a moment and brought his drink up to his eyes for inspection. He swirled the drink in his clear glass and smelled the liquor, he then released a depressing sigh.

“I loved this woman with a love that never existed before, I dreamt of her and woke up with her in my mind and I went to work being propelled by the fact that I would see her…” at this point the man’s eyes were shut and his hands were shivering, his frail skin seemed to feel a cold air that didn’t truly exist.

“Go on…” I said

A single tear splashed into his shot.

“And she loved me, we spent every day in a thick bliss, thick like a marmalade teeming with tough sugar…and I asked her to marry me, I asked her right outside this bar. She said yes, we grew up happy and singing like the tiny weightless birds in the trees of the park. One day she was teaching a pottery class in a nearby store and a mom and her child walked in… she told me that the mom looked at the child as if a florist looked at the last flower on earth. We made love that night and conceived Lyra, 18 months later came Jasper and suddenly I was all grown up…”

The bartender and other customers were also now intently listening; the old man appeared to be speaking not to me but to himself, to something inside him. I urged him to continue once more but he erupted into a fit of helpless sobbing, no one around him paid notice… we all just waited to hear his story.

“We owned a rather large loft right near the park, I would wake up next to hear and hear those soft birds sing every morning… even in the winter, they even sang in the winter. Jasper and Lyra were growing up at this point, doing well in school and art and football. One night I went out to dinner with colleagues and had too much to drink, my lady laughed it off and nursed me to health… but that experience was so numb that I came to it the next day. Soon she became worried and spoke to my friends but at that point there was nothing that could stop me, I had fallen even more in love with alcohol. One night I came home stumbling drunk and she scolded me. In my drunken rage I hit hear on the side of her temple and she fell…”

The man looked down at his drank and the wet spots of salty tears around it, he looked straight at me and peered into my soul.

“She fell and hit her head on the side of a table, my son walked in the room at this moment and attacked me in anger and disappointment… knowing his life had been changed forever and he had no choice over that matter. So I grabbed him by the neck to tell him to stop and I yelled “STOP JASPER STOP STOP STOP” but it was not him that needed to stop for my intoxicated action squeezed the happiness and life out of his growing limbs. I phoned the police immediately and collapsed on the couch shortly after… I woke up in a hospital with a sheriff at my bedside. The sheriff told me that I would go to court and so I did and I spent the next 35 years in jail, my daughter never visited me.”

I sat in complete awe and stared at those around me, this man had committed such a violent act and I am sitting right next to him. The bartender quickly grabbed the drink and spoke to him sternly.

“When did you get out?”

The man replied so softly as to signify that no anger could grow inside him again, to show that we could trust him. “I got out today” once again silence carpeted the crowd and it was my turn to question him.

“So what are you doing in a bar?”

He gazed even deeper into who I was that day. He understood the quintessence of happiness in that moment.

“I am in a bar, outside of where I proposed to the woman of my obsession to look at the one thing that I have desired so much and that has caused me so much pain… so that I could look at this tiny glass and smell its delicious scent and be able to walk away and know that I am ready to realize what beauty truly is. As harmless as it may look if it hurts your heart, and steals your joy… then it is not worth your breathe”

I began to cry in that moment, for I no longer needed Anna.

Hamlet conversation

Recently my group in Hamlet had a discussion of the third act of Hamlet, the third act is one of my favorite and it contained a lot of topics that could have been discussed for hours, unfortunately the bell had to ring sometime. We spoke particularly about Hamlets famous lines of-

"To be, or not to be". The reason these lines are so important is because it adds too Shakespeare's ability to make his scenes, and characters for that matter... very three dimensional. Hamlet is a character who has a subconscious that only the audience seems to understand. Hamlet himself never says the words "I or me" in the speech itself, almost as if he does not consider consider killing himself. He does not express himself in agony or pain, which could possibly lead him to only pose the question as a matter of philosophical debate on the topic... almost. When he states that anybody would kill themselves if they weren't certain about afterlife then he is almost arguing for a certain belief instead of commenting on the fact that he might want to actually kill himself. It is hard for us to know exactly what Shakespeare intended for the "to be or not to be" line, did he directly refer to this idea of suicide? If so then Shakespeare was years ahead of his time, in fact it was forbidden to think such thoughts during the turn of the century. Did he mean to be as in to act or to take action? that could be a possibility because he certainly had revenge set in his mind and wanted to act upon his wishes and wills of his ghost father. Or he could mean to be as in to appear as himself and to not be as to not be himself, Hamlet does seem to know a lot about appearing a certain way and he consistently lies to others.... but we see a true release of Hamlets and who he is, this is his biggest speech that he gives alone.




The only big question remaining for this speech is whether Hamlet is crazy or not, my group had varied opinions on the matter, I thought he was just as crazy as we are all and that any of us in the situation would end up like he would.That Shakespeare was trying to make a comment on how each of us lived our lives to the perception that we are all sane, yet if we look at what we do then we truly are crazy creatures.

We know that we are going to die, yet we completely ignore that fact.
To put it into very very very simple terminology.

"When you admit that we are all crazy the mystery goes away and all else stands explain"- Twain

This quote by Twain really emphasizes to me Hamlets last lines "The rest is silence".

Poem

For my blog I decided to do a poem which I ended up writing.

I can see the shadowy night, and the dark silhouette of giant trees
And the dissolving snow, preparing for spring time
I can touch the cold chair with sensitive hands
And I can smell the earth as rain touches its surface
I can hear the whistle of an old swing, neighbors laughing, and the croaking of lonesome frogs
I can taste your sweet kiss, soft and harmless like the breeze against my skin
These are my senses, all five of them encountering pure beauty
But what do I feel?
I feel like the giant trees, alone and still and waiting for something magnificent
I feel like spring time, eager and ready and excited
I feel like the sensitive hands, curious and delicate, powerful yet small
I feel like the water… spiraling down in hopes and dreams to be caught by a beautiful net
I feel like the croaking frog, shouting and begging for its other half
And in this pensive moment I realize
I may be encompassed by graceful and alluring sights filled with awe and wonder
Surrounded by flowers with suns and muted grass
I may be next to happiness and joy and delight
Yet I do not feel content
Because I am the water plummeting towards an abyss, without a net
Because I am that tiny earth in the huge galaxy, without rain
Because I am the flower in the depths of winter, without a sun
Be my net,
Be my rain,
Be my sun,
Be my valentine.

I wrote this poem on valentines day because my valentine was very far away and I was overcome by the mood and general feel of the night, I was sitting outside and rain began to slightly fall against my face. The rain and smell of the earth reminded me of home so I decided to write and that is what I came up with. I think its important to express yourself, whether that be through poetry or some other method that is unrelated to literature. I like poetry because it is beautiful enough to be feminine yet strong and powerful enough to be masculine. I generally write to understand, not to express though, to understand how I feel in that moment... then I feel as if I go through an almost cathartic experience. Even if no one reads your work its still important to create something out of the emotions that you are going through.