The Marathon Dusk (reprised)

Towards the close of the evening, a tired traveler desires nothing more than a peaceful exile. There is always hours waiting to feed on him, always the constancy of purpose that slowly grows all too large on him. Somewhere in the midst of all this, he buries the satisfaction that erupts from the day's essays, and calmly lays to rest all that is done and dusted. There are always greener pastures, lesser mortals and idler moments. A walk down the memory lane is not a bad idea for him, for a the traveler has nothing but impressions of what once was, that blow into his face, filling up the chapped lips and calming the furrowed forehead. Within these solitary confines, he builds his own mansion, a place so distanced from the trifles of this world and the idea that is purposefully built on the premise of seclusion. While all that travels alongside him sojourns in that figment of his imagination, some silhouettes continue eluding his capture. En-route, he battles day in and day out, each day, to preserve his creation from the unrelenting examination from the daylight; day in and day out he strives to catch up with them, sit down in a tete-a-tete with them, and how he just runs out if time. It is a burden, definitely, carrying the exact same concoction, but a burden he gladly bears the weight of. There is no refuge from memory in this world, they say; in nothing else is one richer, in nothing else poorer.

"...because you are sure you never can tell..." The song played listlessly in his ears. The visibility was growing fainter with the light. The glaze of the dust-smitten sun was no better than the subway bulb he was standing beneath. The sharply outlined form of a twosome slowly broke into a vision, resembling that of a wet stratosphere. There were no more shadows stamped on the asphalt beneath. His sandstone mansion had survived one more day of gruesome battle against the array of sun rays and the sun, finally, was forced to retire. The mauve was swallowed by the leaden sky, the wait still azure.

“You can take my overcoat if it comforts you.”

“No, thanks, I think I am doing fine.”

“So you have not been here recently?”

“Does it make a difference to you?”

“I expected an answer.”

“… (blank)…”

“I did not know silence was still in vogue.”

Sharp. Stinging. Memories. Everything seems to bite back in disgust. Preserving things as they were might not be all that good an idea. Not all memories are pleasant and not everything is averse to change. But the good thing about relations and emotions is that they leave you with memories, pleasant and scarring. For a traveler, the pleasant ones are summoned more often than the more irksome ones. A raconteur finds solace in reprising the more ambiguous reminiscences. The underlying mordancy of his memory was the unaltered play of events that unfolded when he met her. Every act is on a fresh slate, and every action that elicits some reaction is untouched by the past and remains free from the infection of hope for the future, was what he has reasoned out for the way life presented itself to him. And somehow, he sees everything decaying, robbed of its very premise by the cruelty of the precipitating memory.

No. There are better avenues to bury oneself than a displeasing thought. The demonic resurrection of that phantom gets even harder to ignore once you start ignoring it. But there is always the subterfuge of that quaint sense of longing one experiences at this juncture.