Melancholy! If ever there was a word that so aptly described what it meant, then “melancholy” was it. Melancholy…. Even the sound of the word evoked the jumble of emotions tumbling inside, reminiscent of clothes tossed round the dryer at the coin laundry. He was up; he was down. He was tossed to and fro in an ocean of nebulous aches, yearnings, confusions, tumults, joys, sorrows, regrets, and triumphs. A nearly overwhelming flood at every level of his being assaulted him. Heart strings tugged like plucked strings on a harp.
It was an exhausting Tilt-A-Whirl ride at the country fair. An emotional roller coaster of stomach churning plunges, heart stopping twists and breath-taking turns. It was fantasy and infatuation, perception and reality, fact and fiction, truth and dare, love and lust, passion and apathy, everything and nothing - all rolled in together. Lines blurred and lines crossed.
A cacophony of sensations, maybe chemically induced by one gland or another or merely fabrications of his overactive imagination, held him in a tight grip and would not let go. He could not shake free. He was alone on a runaway train that would have to run its course and either slow to a stop on a lonely stretch of dilapidated track miles from nowhere, or derail in a fiery crash; which it would be he could not know.
He slowly meandered along the water’s edge, alone on the desolate beach, the wet sand mushing between his toes with each step only to be washed away by the ebb and flow of the salt water over the white sand in a constant lover’s dance. The gray, foreboding clouds overhead clung low to the ground, as apropos to his solemn feelings as you could get, threatening rain, but having thus far failed to deliver.
He snatched up a driftwood stick and earnestly sketched an image in the damp sand. He scrawled a few words under the artwork just as an incoming wave washed it all into the briny depths. He tossed the stick out into the water as far as he could muster, then watched it bob and drift aimless between the swells.
Even the ever-present gulls had abandoned him for fairer climes, leaving the only sounds the dry rustling of the sea oats and brown grass or the gentle lapping of the waves, planting wet kisses on the sand. He left the water’s edge and trudged across the dry sand to a wind-ruffled blanket that he had spread out next to a wicker picnic basket, but that was now sand-covered and disheveled. He grabbed it up by two corners and shook the sand off absentmindedly, before spreading it back out again.
He disinterestedly rummaged through the picnic basket, which held a brunch for two, but found he no longer had an appetite. He chuckled half-heartedly to himself at a secret thought and shrugged as if in reply. His gazed crossed the sand and then the deep blue water beyond, letting his thoughts rock with the waves like the now unseen driftwood.
He decidedly drew out a pad of paper and a pen from atop a couple towels and stared intently at the paper. It was as if a dam broke somewhere inside his mind and the words bursts into his thoughts like the water spewing forth. He pressed the pen to the paper and began to write.
“Melancholy!” he scribbled, “If ever there was a word that so aptly described what it meant, then “melancholy” was it…”
It was an exhausting Tilt-A-Whirl ride at the country fair. An emotional roller coaster of stomach churning plunges, heart stopping twists and breath-taking turns. It was fantasy and infatuation, perception and reality, fact and fiction, truth and dare, love and lust, passion and apathy, everything and nothing - all rolled in together. Lines blurred and lines crossed.
A cacophony of sensations, maybe chemically induced by one gland or another or merely fabrications of his overactive imagination, held him in a tight grip and would not let go. He could not shake free. He was alone on a runaway train that would have to run its course and either slow to a stop on a lonely stretch of dilapidated track miles from nowhere, or derail in a fiery crash; which it would be he could not know.
He slowly meandered along the water’s edge, alone on the desolate beach, the wet sand mushing between his toes with each step only to be washed away by the ebb and flow of the salt water over the white sand in a constant lover’s dance. The gray, foreboding clouds overhead clung low to the ground, as apropos to his solemn feelings as you could get, threatening rain, but having thus far failed to deliver.
He snatched up a driftwood stick and earnestly sketched an image in the damp sand. He scrawled a few words under the artwork just as an incoming wave washed it all into the briny depths. He tossed the stick out into the water as far as he could muster, then watched it bob and drift aimless between the swells.
Even the ever-present gulls had abandoned him for fairer climes, leaving the only sounds the dry rustling of the sea oats and brown grass or the gentle lapping of the waves, planting wet kisses on the sand. He left the water’s edge and trudged across the dry sand to a wind-ruffled blanket that he had spread out next to a wicker picnic basket, but that was now sand-covered and disheveled. He grabbed it up by two corners and shook the sand off absentmindedly, before spreading it back out again.
He disinterestedly rummaged through the picnic basket, which held a brunch for two, but found he no longer had an appetite. He chuckled half-heartedly to himself at a secret thought and shrugged as if in reply. His gazed crossed the sand and then the deep blue water beyond, letting his thoughts rock with the waves like the now unseen driftwood.
He decidedly drew out a pad of paper and a pen from atop a couple towels and stared intently at the paper. It was as if a dam broke somewhere inside his mind and the words bursts into his thoughts like the water spewing forth. He pressed the pen to the paper and began to write.
“Melancholy!” he scribbled, “If ever there was a word that so aptly described what it meant, then “melancholy” was it…”
