sketch pad

meine umwelt

avec moi, sans moi,

par moi


Ahh… and the tales I shall unfold

May blast comprehension if the truth be told

An ode to the masters, martyrs and whims

A satyr on life and sullied daydreams

(1996)

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Benjie’s Love Affair


Benjie reclined, dazzled by his own brilliance. If he could but find adequate company for his fathomless, though mainly unhoned, abilities, he knew his elite circle would mutually benefit beyond the realms of comprehension, and spin off into space uninhabitable to the grey multitude. The aesthetic, pole-encompassing, idealistic realism of the esoteric bunch of them would stun reality into a base compliance with a manipulative skill acquired only through an understanding and familiarity so complete that…


His thoughts often did that: they built a fantastic creation that quite over-awed him, then the conclusion would elude him like a tease one can’t be bothered to chase up. He was always convinced he could catch the tail if he liked, and never allowed doubt to undermine his complacency on actually doing so. It was this indubitable confidence that awarded him the title of brilliance, and social gatherings were never complete without his charm.


Of course, Benjie did have his moments, as do we all, and they were remarkably lucid despite his defensive layers of superficiality and blindness. No, Benjie could not be accused of any degree of insensibility, where he wasn’t simply ignorant. It is said that geniuses merely have their moments of greatness closer together than the rest of us and therefore manage to fit in more of them before they die. Benjie liked to contemplate these subjects, and devoted more time and energy to the process of self-gratification that he could afford. He borrowed from a loan-shark, and thought he’d pay another day. If persecuted on the matter though, he’d testify to naïveté and a lack of thought in the necessary areas of awareness. One of his most generally envied skills was his enormous power over self-deception, though it would never be acknowledged in such dress, if recognised.


Benjie was in love. Well, he continually had his little dalliances here, there and everywhere - there were so many to choose from - but he was specifically enraptured with a goddess quite out of his reach. Not that he was not often in her company, nor that he could not touch her if he so chose, but the idea of involvement with him would have struck her as so ludicrous that he would be quite pained at the response. He therefore heroically abstained from introducing such conflict into their relationship, and contented himself with adoration, genuine petulance, mimicked reserve and denied fear. Denial is a terrible thing, and their friendship suffered for it.


She in her turn felt little at all for Benjie. He amused her at times, but so did he antagonise her. He knew this, and chaffed at it, but it served only to make him more self-aware and inadvertently superficial. For this he loathed himself and reality in turn, which made the difference between them greater. The more she ingrained herself into his being, the more he pondered, and constructed, and was thwarted, and the more depressed he became.


Benjie started to lose his charm.


Until he began to react rather negatively, with emphatic resistance to to his feelings for her, which drove her even further away, and made him wilder still. He became an object of interest again, and quite the party animal. He held his lack of the genuine as a beacon to others, and they followed. He was drowning in the quagmire of his love, and finally managed to kill it completely. She was probably more hurt by the episode than he was.


(4th Jun ‘95)

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