Oslo

I can’t watch movies anymore but one movie that stays with me is Oslo, August 31st. It captures that aimlessness and window closing of middle age.

One of my favorite scenes is where the main character gets caught in the sunrise amongst the younger hooligans. They’ll scream and holler, high off molly, ordained by the cannibalistic pardoning of all youth, before the clock silos you into a permanent disfigured sludge. He’s lagging behind, staring absently at the ground. Unable to articulate the iron wall they’re about to fracture themselves into.

Inevitably it comes: instead of seeking fun, one can only seek power and feel nothing. Become bloodthirsty because otherwise the bag under your eyes get all anemic.

Maybe it’s something unique to this era. These sorts of feelings were often reserved to those visiting the ruins of a village long raided. Picking up the ashen gravel toward the house no longer. Tears well while transposing a memory on a scene, of a child running, some airplane imitation, some sweetly banal Summer afternoon.

Why do I feel like I am picking up gravel everywhere I walk? One can certainly imagine the alternative of a more “established” lifestyle and you somehow sport a family, extended even nearby, and even then looking at your wife you can only feel your flesh so inert and the resolution gets all gritty. It’s just rereading a Dubliners monotony, though part the delusion is assuming such “established” beginnings ward away your, what else to call it, spiritual waltz to an inner light snuffed.

And I don’t mean to be so disgruntled about it. I guess sometimes it feels like a stalemate. You can work your life away and still be the last in your family standing. You can try to swing something different and watch the distance growing. You can try to live for others, only to find all the others missing. And I know Man needs to live for something greater than himself otherwise he’ll go insane; it’s just such a strange paradox to live in, that success is always living for yourself, though I guess resolved by looking beyond our pale blue, maybe.

I’ll attend another party, drink the mixed cola. We can talk about crypto or the best cartoons, video games and class select inclinations, druidic callings, begrudging attendance to some hockey summer camps.

But staring out the balcony, the music quiets down. I can’t hear anything anymore, other than the rumble cracking ground. Between the pitted grey sands shaking below: some billowing force waiting to evict your soul.