Categories > Original > Historical > Crescendo
There are three different times in life where you feel honestly and completely unsure. The first is birth. The second occurs right before you're wed. The third and final is right before your death. All three of these times you feel the same things - confusion and worry. However, during all of them, there is a small feeling that festers at the back of your mind and that is regret. Regret is one of the worst evils in this world and one of the worst and most common causes of pain. The second in both these categories is jealousy. Envy, jealousy, and madness - all one in the same and all will be the end of the world we know and love. No one is immune to it and no one ever will be. It is the momentary loss of humanity. Every sense of self control and goodness dissolves and you're left with a selfish wanting; it is the feeling of domination. Whether you love that which you envy of or you simply wish to claim it for the sake of claiming it - it becomes the most important thing in the world and anyone who touches it is to be punished in the worst of ways.
There was a time long ago that I felt this feeling. I have felt it many times just as everyone else but it was the one occurrence that drove me into insanity and left me with nothing but my hatred and my painful solitude. Above all things, however, I learned this: no matter how hard you try and how much determination you acquire whilst trying - you cannot walk away or ignore, or even eventually forget love. Love is eternal. No matter how much time passes or how much you claim to hate that person or thing which you loved, there is one thing that stops you from overcoming them and that is your memory. As long as that memory still exists and you loved them once, you can remember that person when you loved them and feel that love again. Love isn't eternal because you stay with one person for eternity, or because two people can't lose their love - it is because as long as a person lives they will remember the person that they maybe hate now but loved then, and remember them how they were seen through love's eyes. This is the damnation for most.
It was the year of 1870 - yes long, long ago - and I remember every detail. It all began in Paris. However predictable it sounds, it was Paris, yes. France is where all great stories begin isn't it? Well this isn't a great story, nor is it grand or ever spectacular. It is true. That is the greatest thing of all . . . This isn't a love story either. No, but love is the background. Love is, shall I say, Poseidon and this story is the sea. Poseidon controls - and yet the sea weaves her own way around him in the end.
I first attended the Paris Opera on a cold winter's night to see the wonderful production of Faust. Surprisingly enough the play is the only thing I do not remember the details of. I do, however, remember him.
He had eyes like fire - I would describe him to a fuller extent but it was all I saw of him; those eyes, those shameless flaming orbs that burnt into my soul. I could see nothing of the man in possession of them, but those eyes were all I needed to see in order to discern what sort of man he was. Passion burned in those eyes - passion, pain, desire, hatred, longing, and most of all knowledge. They were eyes that had seen century's worth of occurrences and yet they held a sparkle that could only be that of a young man in the ripe of his adventurous life. The two small spots of fire shown at me from the darkest corner of one of the upper boxes; they shown at me - right at me even as I attempted to ignore them. They burnt into my flesh until I could feel it - the scorching pain of a red hot iron as it branded me, but as what I didn't yet know. A victim? A lover? A point of ridicule? I daren't have contemplated.
It was only when the opera had ended and the curtain closed as the audience burst into applause that I dared look into those eyes. They had met mine the briefest of meetings, and in a blink the eyes were gone. I had to blink multiple times until finally I stood up from my seat and followed the bustling, talkative crowd to the exit, receiving the usual abnormal look or two at my being a lady unaccompanied. At first, as I began walking I pictured those eyes in my mind and then, by the exit, standing behind a homely older gentlemen, I could have sworn to God that I saw them passing me to the right. As I turned around swiftly I saw no eyes - but I caught the figure of a man dressed in black, cloak swirling behind him, walking briskly away from the opera.
It was at that moment I changed completely. My persona shook away the strict teachings of my womanhood and I was overwhelmed with a curiosity much like a pirate's longing for adventure. I needed to know to whom those eyes belonged, why whoever it was had his attentions fixed on me, and how the mere thought had such an effect on me. I had always been like that however - adventurous wistful, curious, imaginative - but certain circumstances had forced me to push myself away. I hid myself in cruelty and sarcasm and spite. I loved spiting those who thought themselves above me, thinking that I was defenseless and I was cruel to all those pitiful mindless little twits that dared call themselves more than girls that I had to pretend to be like. My freewill swam back at me in full force at that moment is probably more so of a definition, and a fire much like that in those fateful eyes swam in my blood. How was I to know that it was that feeling that would determine my fate forever?
There was a time long ago that I felt this feeling. I have felt it many times just as everyone else but it was the one occurrence that drove me into insanity and left me with nothing but my hatred and my painful solitude. Above all things, however, I learned this: no matter how hard you try and how much determination you acquire whilst trying - you cannot walk away or ignore, or even eventually forget love. Love is eternal. No matter how much time passes or how much you claim to hate that person or thing which you loved, there is one thing that stops you from overcoming them and that is your memory. As long as that memory still exists and you loved them once, you can remember that person when you loved them and feel that love again. Love isn't eternal because you stay with one person for eternity, or because two people can't lose their love - it is because as long as a person lives they will remember the person that they maybe hate now but loved then, and remember them how they were seen through love's eyes. This is the damnation for most.
It was the year of 1870 - yes long, long ago - and I remember every detail. It all began in Paris. However predictable it sounds, it was Paris, yes. France is where all great stories begin isn't it? Well this isn't a great story, nor is it grand or ever spectacular. It is true. That is the greatest thing of all . . . This isn't a love story either. No, but love is the background. Love is, shall I say, Poseidon and this story is the sea. Poseidon controls - and yet the sea weaves her own way around him in the end.
I first attended the Paris Opera on a cold winter's night to see the wonderful production of Faust. Surprisingly enough the play is the only thing I do not remember the details of. I do, however, remember him.
He had eyes like fire - I would describe him to a fuller extent but it was all I saw of him; those eyes, those shameless flaming orbs that burnt into my soul. I could see nothing of the man in possession of them, but those eyes were all I needed to see in order to discern what sort of man he was. Passion burned in those eyes - passion, pain, desire, hatred, longing, and most of all knowledge. They were eyes that had seen century's worth of occurrences and yet they held a sparkle that could only be that of a young man in the ripe of his adventurous life. The two small spots of fire shown at me from the darkest corner of one of the upper boxes; they shown at me - right at me even as I attempted to ignore them. They burnt into my flesh until I could feel it - the scorching pain of a red hot iron as it branded me, but as what I didn't yet know. A victim? A lover? A point of ridicule? I daren't have contemplated.
It was only when the opera had ended and the curtain closed as the audience burst into applause that I dared look into those eyes. They had met mine the briefest of meetings, and in a blink the eyes were gone. I had to blink multiple times until finally I stood up from my seat and followed the bustling, talkative crowd to the exit, receiving the usual abnormal look or two at my being a lady unaccompanied. At first, as I began walking I pictured those eyes in my mind and then, by the exit, standing behind a homely older gentlemen, I could have sworn to God that I saw them passing me to the right. As I turned around swiftly I saw no eyes - but I caught the figure of a man dressed in black, cloak swirling behind him, walking briskly away from the opera.
It was at that moment I changed completely. My persona shook away the strict teachings of my womanhood and I was overwhelmed with a curiosity much like a pirate's longing for adventure. I needed to know to whom those eyes belonged, why whoever it was had his attentions fixed on me, and how the mere thought had such an effect on me. I had always been like that however - adventurous wistful, curious, imaginative - but certain circumstances had forced me to push myself away. I hid myself in cruelty and sarcasm and spite. I loved spiting those who thought themselves above me, thinking that I was defenseless and I was cruel to all those pitiful mindless little twits that dared call themselves more than girls that I had to pretend to be like. My freewill swam back at me in full force at that moment is probably more so of a definition, and a fire much like that in those fateful eyes swam in my blood. How was I to know that it was that feeling that would determine my fate forever?
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