Featuring:
- “The Death Evolution” by Ryan I. Vergara
- “In The Details” by Cindy Dirks
- “Homeland” by Jaclyn Rose Bernstein
- “War Poet” by Mercedes Chacon
- “Strange People in Worse Places” By Julia Antuerpem
The Death Evolution
A Short Story by Ryan I. Vergara
…………Evolution is a well-established notion. From its etymology in Darwin’s studies of Galapagos finches down to the extrapolation of “missing links” through fossil comparison, we can clearly observe evolution both across time and between spaces. The term isn’t as stringently atheistic as the reputation it has garnered, though it’s much more encompassing than mere adaptability. A lion can adapt to the plains of East Texas but lacks the ability to traverse the deserts in the West. Salmon regularly adapt to saline water then back to freshwater yet cannot dissolve gaseous oxygen into their bloodstream. Evolution implies permanent change in a species over time, like a lion developing higher water and caloric retention to endure harsh, barren wilderness. In humanity’s conquest of the Earth, we’ve undergone evolution of our own. The height of the average male has risen three inches in the past century alone. Physiologically, high schoolers regularly do what was once thought impossible and run sub-four-minute miles. Life expectancy continues to rise as higher standards of living and medicine banish disease, virus, and defect. All in search of a better, longer life.
It’s almost bizarre that it all culminates in death. Rather, nearly all species have failed to evolve to overcome death. We believe humans to have a maximum lifespan limit of 150 years, though the longest measured lifespan of our species in modern times clocked in at 122 years and 164 days. When asked what animal lives the longest life, most of us think of tortoises, which is true for land animals. But in the oceans lie a trove of beasts older than most existing nations. Bowhead whales recovered in the Artic had stone harpoon tips older than 200 years embedded in their blubber. Eye tissue from a Greenland shark dated to be at least 272 years old, and it’s believed this creature could live for another 300. Deepwater black coral off the coast of Hawaii measured as 4,265 years old. Two organisms stand out from the rest: Turritopsis dohrnii and Hydra. What makes these two jellyfish unique is their approach to the wear and tear of living. If damaged, starving, or in other distress, the medusa of Turritopsis dohrnii can revert into its polyp state, like a butterfly returning to the chrysalis after having a wing ripped off. Eventually, it can regenerate into its medusa and swim on. Hydra is composed entirely of stem cells; therefore, it is not subject to aging or disease. It can even reassemble itself if torn to pieces. These organisms are potentially immortal in the absence of predators.
……………But in the end, all succumb to death. Accidents, violence, disease, aging, all pushing the living into the arms of the reaper. In one form or another, humanity has sought their subjugation. Maladies that once inflicted carnage on our species now lie extinct, save for a few outbreaks and frozen specimens. Polio, the scourge of the 20th Century, and tuberculosis its predecessor throughout the 19th, now both eradicated. The flu and common colds are no longer death sentences. Cancer and heart disease, while still fatal, near their extermination more and more with each passing day. Leprosy, diabetes, arthritis, and other physical ailments, as well as schizophrenia, depression, and psychosis–thanks to medicine, man becomes unshackled from them all. The only war in which medicine deigns to take the offensive is against time. Geriatrics is historically the most understaffed specialty, with most practitioners opting to treat patients rather than engage in research to prolong life. Those that do study aging reiterate what we already know from other areas of research: stem cell transfusions are like rebirth, and organ transplants are an effective means of treatment. With the ability to grow human organs in vitro, theoretically we could keep a human alive following necrotic organ failure due to aging. All it would take is planning, close observation, and a heavy wallet. Nevertheless, deterioration of the bones, muscles, and nervous system present challenges that current therapies can’t overcome. Recent experiments with blood transfusions from younger patients, however, have shown muscular regeneration in the ensuing months. Next on the docket is testing if red bone marrow transplants into elderly or degenerative patients is a sustainable means of rejuvenating the musculoskeletal structure. Which leaves the nervous system as the last theoretical hurtle. Even though all thought, emotion, movement, perception, and memory are chemistry, our greatest takeaway from neuroscience is always that man is more than a squishy blob bathing in serotonin. If only it were as simple as growing neurons. In practice, life is artificially sustainable without the nervous system, but being alive and living are not the same. Perhaps one day we’ll understand the entire physiology behind consciousness. Until then, we remain decidedly mortal.
It’s reminiscent of the secular comfort we hear at a funeral. “Death is just a natural part of life.” Arguably, death makes life possible. Controlled burns and clearings of forests allow for newer growth trees to reach toward the sky with the externality of improved soil quality, greater abundance of resources, and an improved habitat for the critters that call it home. It’s estimated that 117 billion humans have been born throughout history. If each one of them inhabited a quarter of an acre, they would fill the entire land mass of all seven continents. There isn’t enough space and resources to sustain them all. Deer populations starve to death for similar reasons in areas where they lack predators. Our species has a similar population limit based on habitable environments and sustainability of consumption. But no matter what you call it, be it death, passing away, moving on, or going to heaven, it matters that your life ends if only for the sake of ensuing generations.
Dying is a frightening concept. Since you can only do it once, there are so many unknowns facing you. What’s it like? Is it cessation of consciousness or an ascent to glory? Do we become one with the universe or separate entities? Will we even know? Will it hurt? At some point, we must all make peace without an answer to this, one of life’s significant questions. Perhaps it’s excruciating and dragged out, or perhaps it’s quick and painless. But we find comfort either in our works or in our faith. As witnesses to death, we who are left behind must do the same. A child I once babysat said hi to me at her mother’s funeral. Her mom’s death happened suddenly a few days before, the details still murky regarding what came to pass. I had a lot of questions; did she also? Head held high, smile on her face, mere feet away from the casket, she greeted me with a wave. I wonder what they told her after it happened, and if it was the same as what everyone else knew: very little. She had cried, that much was certain, but no trace of tears now. Just an odd little smile. Her younger brother was sobbing not far behind her, a nine-year-old boy clutching a grey rabbit with curly fur, the same one I brought to his bedside a couple weeks before. Wait, her smile wasn’t misplaced. Her mother wouldn’t have wanted any tears at her funeral. Most likely she would’ve elected something far less traditional had she anticipated this day a little more. Out of everyone present, her daughter had made peace with her death the best. That’s not to say she understood death perfectly, but it was a good start, a healthy adaptation that allowed her to face it courageously. Tokarczuk put it this way, “If dying was only bad, then people would stop doing it right away.” That we could all be so bold, death would hold no sting, frustrating the grave’s victory.
Funny turn of phrase, “loss of life.” After evolving to reach the top of the food chain, humanity has only known victory over all of Earth’s inhabitants, but perpetually loses to our ultimate adversary. Since we haven’t conquered it, and it seems unlikely we will, we instead imbue death with its own meaning. Perhaps that’s our evolution. The ability to face death with faith and fear, to die and be missed, build and leave something behind, even if only a corpse; the pauper’s grave is a trough for the lowly. We cease living, and yet in some sense, persist. Eons pass, bones turn to dust, but our voices echo even if it’s a barely imperceptible whisper in the mouths of our descendants. The essence of death is evolving into eternal life. So, in dying we achieve the highest of our evolutionary calls: give up the ghost, yield up the sum of our works to humanity, and return our bodies to the Earth from which we harvested. After all is said and done, if we were ever only alive, we could never have lived.
In The Details
A Short Story by Cindy Dirks
She wasn’t sure about Steve.
He sailed. She feared drowning.
He fished. She ate plant-based shrimp.
……………He dove from cliffs. She sketched cliffs.
He swam. Again, she feared drowning.
But when they stepped into that souvenir store in Annapolis and saw those elaborate wooden ships constructed in glass bottles—she swooned.
“The sails are so vibrant, right?” He nodded.
“Oh! The Iron cannons look real on this one!” He shrugged.
“This motif is dark. Like The Raft of the Medusa? In that main gallery at the Louvre, you know?” He tapped his chin, thoughtfully.
Steve lifted a medium-sized bottle off the shelf. It contained a schooner. She knew this because Steve smiled at the bottle and said, “Hey! Check out that schooner!” And immediately it seemed like the perfect activity to bond them as a legitimate couple: art and water. He could pick the ship. She could pick the bottle, the materials and eventually piece it all together. Steve suggested she add more maritime décor to his houseboat way back on Lake Union, Seattle. “Beautiful there,” He whispered. “Such a nice change of pace.” He leaned close.
She breathed him in and said yes.
So, faster than an encroaching Nor’easter, they bought plane tickets and commenced collaborating.
He complimented. She focused.
He dreamt about that perfect wave. She obsessed over that brass porthole.
He stepped out for coffee. She skipped breakfast.
Steve flew to Annapolis for that thing he needed for that other thing. She said, “Huh? Oh! That’s nice. You, too!”
Now, a year later, she put the finishing touches on her 5th ship-in-bottle project. And did so while living in his houseboat on Lake Union. She made her own workspace: a heavy, wooden table with a magnifying glass wider than her head and thicker than her forearm.
She loved the process, the nitty-gritty. Unlike Steve, she submersed herself in the details like they were tequila and she the worm. He was more of a big-picture man.
She filed, sanded and stained the slivers of Boxwood making up the stern and bow. She used pipe cleaners to adhere glue to the garboard strake and developed a soldering iron technique to make sure each pintle fit securely in their gudgeon without popping out. She found the simplest way to complete the task was to rig the masts of the ship and raise them up once securely inside the bottle. Spars, and sails worked best when built separately and then attached to the hull of the ship with strings and hinges, and…she built these hinges from scratch. Tiny hinges from bits of brass and copper found in discarded heaps at Lake Union Hardware, back when she used to leave Steve’s houseboat to go to Lake Union Hardware.
In the meantime, Steve sailed. He fished. He swam. He travelled wherever water could be found.
He met another woman who loved to paint and sculpt and create. Another aficionado who was just as taken by the ships in the bottles in that Annapolis souvenir store—the tininess of it, the details.
She turned off her soldering iron one day to find that Steve wasn’t there. He actually hadn’t been there for quite some time, but she hadn’t noticed until she popped the cork in Viking ship circa 900 AD and placed it on the shelf next to Courageous, Ted Turner’s America’s Cup Yacht circa 1977 AD.
“Steve?” She was alarmed by how muffled her voice sounded. She cleared her throat. “Steve? Honey? I finished if you want to grab a bite. Indian, maybe?” She stood and leaned towards the deck complete with planters and plastic begonias. Her knees wobbled and popped as she walked for the first time in however long. “I could go for tika masala. Tofu? Or Paneer?”
She could immediately tell he wasn’t there. One could stand at the stairs and look up, then out and side-to-side to know the place was empty. Steve’s was a tiny boat: Lake Union Houseboat, circa 1930, Renovation circa 1968.
“Uh…hon?” Her voice caught when she stepped on deck. That flawless, beautiful deck. Perfectly sanded planks of mahogany, ending at hourglass-shaped fence posts above the outboard motor. The water was rocky, but somehow the houseboat didn’t bob.
And when she reached out to flick away a speck obstructing her view, she realized that the speck was a leaf on the other side. It hovered just above Lake Union Houseboat, circa 1930, Renovation circa 1968. Hovered starboard of that perfectly sanded mahogany deck. Her hand hit glass. Her fingers rubbed the curve of what felt and looked like hard air. The leaf stuck there. Mocked her. It able to fly away if the right breeze came along, where she was left to wonder where air might be coming from, much less the right breeze. She thought about yelling but then realized that the women on either side of her were concentrating hard. And not just the fellow hobbyists flanking her, but hunched, focused women worked on projects in houseboats extending indefinitely from either side of her neighbors—all focused intently on the boat parts and bottles spread out in their respective workspaces. She swallowed, though whatever was caught in her throat now didn’t go away.
The woman immediately on her right crafted a Spanish galleon scaled larger than most models she’d researched, probably meant for a magnum or a Jeroboam. The corresponding lighthouse next to that vessel was a detail worth considering for future projects. She thought about waving, getting that artist’s attention, just for an unobtrusive second, and issuing a thumb’s up for such masterful work. Then she noticed how little sun was left.
Pity.
Sure, the twilight sky was nice and, yeah, she had a few questions for Steve. But there was another box of gathered bits of fine wood and metals on the table inside. And Staten Island Ferry, circa 1819 wasn’t going to build itself.
The End
War Poet
A Poem by Desirae Mercedes Chacon
War Poet a poem
Gray plumes of ash & smoke assimilate
into clouds above
shrapnel & barraged dirt fall upon these
letters that i inscribe to you
& i pray that ink doesn’t mix with sanguis
& that these letters will find you in the
palms of your hands
every breath is like a memory from a
dream
a lifetime passing with each sigh &
respiration
every foot step surpassing the values of
time itself
a year is like a day
& a day a year
1914 commenced with hope, vitality and
the spirit of eagerness
these i all carry inside my collective of
ventricular chambers & atriums
of an organ that feels like a ghost itself
so much amassed moments alleviated into
entwinement with destruction, death &
desolation
memories in trenches of resilient laughter,
tears in No Man’s Land and a moment of
silence in the forests
today feels like the moment of gratitude
after illness and into a field of resonating
serenities.
when will i return to the place where the
air is silent
& sunlight dances through eyelets of lace
of a structure that is still and walls wont
crumble
where the mortar & bricks stand with
wood for their proposed design
and yet again feel the same age as my
contemporaries
this war is visceral & venous to my very
being
a solar system of intricacies
decorated into what Mr. Miescher
discovered in Tübingen nearly half a
century ago
deep grave prayers of desperation
speared into the skies while upon parlous
territories & undisputed lands by Allies yet
disputed by Central Power forces
a purgatory of earth
in the Eleventh Hour
and in desperate need of unrelinquished
elusive rest
once again i must go
as ammunition soars in the air like a flock
of sparrows
so by this i will put my pen down
fold these parchments
with a seal of a mortal plea for peace & a
perpetual steadfastness of eternity
Homeland
A Poem by Jaclyn Rose Bernstein
Cousin, you took my land
My blood, my shore
My pride swelled
….until I attacked
Since antiquity, you have claimed mine
…………..and I have claimed yours
But no one talks the day after the funerals
Chosen
Relegated
….Held hostage
Persecuted
…….Funded.
Now the world is watching as we kill each other’s kin, again and again
….. (Who said God had favorites? Who said you were not mine to care for?)
They want to judge us
… swiftly they mount up
But they too, have been colonized and colonizer
…………. Like sesame on bunnies
They too, have unearthed residential schools,
………….. And poured cement into water
They too have forgotten that once upon a time.. we were all indigenous peoples
Before death seemed the least painful
…… and we shared
Everything.
1
1
1
1
And children, found under blankets of rubble
So very, very many children.. when we should be celebrating sukkot in the desert but fear what
flies from the desert skies
Even when we live in the largest open aired prison
Even we live, live very very far away with conveniences that have made us forget,
That we too.. live on conquered lands.
1
1
1
1
1
1
We too, know border crossings
In puppy love and cousintry,
In organizations that try their damnedest to make a difference
However tonight
Tonight. There has been too much bloodshed to make one difference
Cement poured into water
Food cut off to half of a population’s children as the back of her sweat pants are stained with
blood, and her cousin was driven off on a motor
As her mother is wailing
And her
Everyone is crying tonight
My auntie hasn’t left her room for days
And war cabinets form,
As if they even had the capacity to form an answer
As if they weren’t at fault for creating this pain
As if they didn’t butcher all of the families that .. just want to live
Who said God had favorites? Who said you were not mine to care for?
Strange People in Worse Places
A Short Story by Julia Antuerpem
She had chosen the cafe with great care and hoped he would not hate it. The place is as calm as it gets, the air inside filled with the smell of cinnamon and oldness. There was nothing else she could find that was distant enough from an ostentation of modernity and still allowed for a good angle for the great encounter. She tries to make him laugh so he will feel more comfortable. He’s not comfortable, though. Actually, he feels like the last peasant in the world, nearly extinct, uprooted by a historian from his sweet sweet farm in Labruyère and thrown into the agitated Paris of the end of the year.
Actually, he’s just a simple, humble old man, who never felt like quitting his country life. The times he came to the big city were always unpleasant. When he was a child, he even went along with his dad to deliver the crops, but, when he found himself surrounded by people who seemed to have nothing else to do but to walk in every direction, his only thought was that something bad was about to happen. This feeling choked him for a long time, left him scared and irritated, until one day it traumatized him, so he never came back. Now, 55 years since the last time he was there, the feeling was very much the same — people were just walking faster, because of the time of the year, because of their duty to celebrate themselves.
Enclosed in himself as he can be, resistant to the viscosities of modern life, he’s happy to see her. Olivia may still be young, but she’s a woman now, with three daughters. When she was a child, she was his protegée.
At that time, her parents purchased various acres of land in Labruyère, among which was the farm belonging to this man, already lonely and fatherless. They liked him so much they put him in charge of their purchase. The girl began to stay there during summer vacations. The first time he saw her, she must have been four. She had a sweet, childish way, her voice was calm and soft, and one golden lock insisted on escaping her hairdo. He liked her immediately. Lying on the grass or in front of the barn, he began to teach her about nature and the animals, with so much love as if she was his own granddaughter. He liked to think that it would not matter how much the big city would try, during vacations he would always bring her back to the essence of life and nature, not allowing her to lose herself in the sensual pleasures of modern agitation. Besides, unless he was mistaken, every time she came back he was sure he had won the battle against the city. She, on the other hand, always adored him and saw him as a true druid master, always with a kind word. Anyone could see how proud she felt in being his protegée. Now, the mere fact that he had accepted to leave the country was the higher display of tenderness he could afford anyone. And she was well aware of that.
They sit at a reserved table on the side of the café, overlooking a large window. She’s carrying her youngest daughter in her arms, a baby nearly twelve months old, while taking the second, about ten years old, by her hand. He even thinks the place is nice, despite the gang of teenagers in the other table, cameras in their hands, saying nasty things about the place, endlessly and to no end. The gang laughs hard at the colour of the walls, saying it looks like a senior’s panties. That vintage shade of pink in the wallpaper was what he had most enjoyed in that whole place. He stares at them with open disapproval.
The waitress approaches the table carrying so many things in her tray it’s a wonder she was able to climb the stairs. Immediately he rises to help her. An offense from someone initiated in the ways of chivalry. In the face of such kindness, the waitress could not have been nicer, he could not have been more natural, and the gang of teenagers could not have cared less.
The reason (for the meeting, anyway) can be found with a brief glance through the windows. On the other side of the street there was a premiere. A film’s premiere. The star was the oldest child of his protegée.
He sits down and looks at the view through the windows. Sophistication reigns supreme. Black walls, crimson carpet, advertisers’ brands in gold. A true display of modesty. The stage seems part of a great smart plan to win anyone. However, that gentleman would not be won. The lights are on even though the sky is not dark. Flashes from photographers behind the lines come join them, a hostess with red leather pants appears, and everything seems like a view from the end of hell.
How much would all that have cost? God and loan sharks know the exact amount. He touches on the subject as delicately as he can, but he does not like to discuss finances. Eventually he confesses he used to keep his money in a box over the cupboard on the farm. The second daughter is flabbergasted and begins to question him. He’s very patient with kids — it was always adults who bothered him —, but this child in particular seems to provoke a new relationship. There’s no solidarity in him with the child’s age, and at every new question all he can think about is that he would rather be home, talking to that box. The girl looks at him as if he were nothing but an old, bald gentleman, surely from another world, already doing his countdown.
“You kept it in a box? Is that a joke?”
“It’s not proper for a lady to be so keen on money,” he says.
“No. That was the joke.”
As every alley and window nearby gets filled with fans, his agony increases. He plays desperately with the wristband of his watch as if his imaginary armour were not enough. The truth is, he was always someone ready to believe the worst of modernity. He went through many crises and wars, carrying in his face stories full of suffering, though unknown to all. Even so, even if he did not say a word, it was nearly impossible to talk to him and not feel so guilty you wanted to apologise for not having been there during the Great Depression.
The second daughter becomes dangerously agitated as she sees the crowd increase. Anyone can see how proud she is of te way her genes made her similar to her famous sister: they do indeed look alike, says the mother. However, even so, even with the same haircut, nobody had ever noticed their similarity, much to her frustration. This lack of recognition, once again repeated, made the girl complain all the time during the event.
The crowd hurls in every possible way on the Avenue Champs-Elysées, alerting to the beginning. He looks out the window and starts to think. The combination of so many people and colours has tired his vision. It does not even seem that this landscape was ever filled with the sad French women from Les Misérables, who at least hurled properly. He feels more and more alien to all that, like a fly that hits the glass without understanding how it is separated from the outer world.
Little by little the actors arrive. Each one of them looks more like a Disney production than the next. The director arrives shortly after. She’s inflammable with energy, she’s praised and acclaimed, but apparently she can’t admit she’s not the mistress of her creatures when she sees the cast draws more attention than her. Finally, Emily appears, the main star, the oldest daughter of his protegée, accompanied by her boyfriend, a young man who walks the carpet as if all that were for him, without noticing the event’s gynocracy. It is clear he should reassess the market relations in question. On the other hand, the director’s husband — or perhaps boyfriend — seemed to have been warned in advance about daring to speak.
The actress is really very pretty, but for him her mother on that chair, lovingly helping her baby drink milk, is true beauty. The way she closes her eyes, proud of her oldest one, the way she took off the hair from her second daughter’s forehead (even though the girl, embarrassed, pushed away her mother’s hand as if it were on fire), and the way she cherished her baby — that was worth taking pictures of. Just that scene made him sure that the baby would become the sweetest angel. Still, he recalled that the frustrated girl beside her as well as the young actress were also her daughters, and let that thought go.
The second daughter, still in the wailing altar, looks enviously at the whole scene, as if the thought her oldest sister is nothing but a worse version of the girl she would herself become in the future, like Napoleon III is not Napoleon I. She criticised her sister’s choice of clothes, talked about how nice the director was to her, accuses her mother of not saying loud enough that the film’s star is her sister, that she is their mother. He could not tell whether he was more disturbed by having a crowd separated from him by nothing more than a window or that little frustrated girl on the chair by his side.
The first moments of the actress on the carpet make him extremely nervous. The chain in his pocket watch turns and turns in a frenzy. “Look here, Emily!” “To the right, Emily!” “Emily, smile!” “Look ahead one more time, Emily!”, the photographers cry in miliseconds surrounded by a multitude of flashes. There’s still that wretched woman in the back who cries over and over “Emily, over your shoulder!” after the actress looked over her shoulder – she could not accept she had lost that moment. It was pure agony. However, the girl walks as if the waterfall of flashes was the natural state of things. All the time it becomes more evident she belonged to a species other than his, a world where he did not belong.
Does her mother feel desperate that her daughter is this famous? Doesn’t she want to protect her imperilled virtue? Isn’t the daughter herself worried about the way she’s going to be portrayed? Or with possible psycopaths with their rooms full of her pictures? Or even with being left behind by her sister, who clearly wants to be a new version of the original? No. Neither mother nor daughter seems worried. The actress must have been wearing excellent imaginary armour, he thinks. Far better than his – even in his imagination, it felt like a rag. Emily, however, still walks charmingly in the midst of chaos. Her performance was so perfect it nearly destroyed the distinction between human and machine.
A machine. Yes. Of course. Two sides of the interface, man and its operator. When it seemed the mechanism of flashes was winning, there was nothing left for the actress to do except sacrificing herself for the people’s pleasure. When it seemed the actress’s mechanism was winning, and her original was as out of reach as the Lascaux grotto, all the photographers could take from her were effectively no more than two seconds of stillness. Such was the machine’s Leitmotiv.
The audience, in the middle of all this, applauds in true ecstasy, fascinated by the spectacle of the machine’s workings. The applause is the most monotheistic thing that gentleman has ever seen.
He laughs for the first time. He began to wonder how it would be if God came to this world. He could imagine the Messiah arriving – on the inside lane, of course – at the door of the Palace of the Reichstag. The sponsors would kill each other for a place in that Sun, competing for the more vibrant shade of gold. The scenery would be so pretty, so well planned, it would be an antipation of Paradise itself. There would be cops to keep the crowds outside, too. Paradise is full. Be satisfied with the waiting list and the screen that will show the Ressurection live for the viewers, interactive extras and heaps of faithful who – again, obviously – stayed outside. Even among the fans with some desire to look composed, there was still a long distance to go until that became a choir of hallellujahs.
Once again the battle for the God in the machine would come up. Only this time it would be more dangerous. The last time men rivalled with God, in the Tower of Babel, he cut them off from understanding language. Now, however, we have cryptographers, closed captions, and nearly everyone knows the Ceasar Cypher. It would be reasonable of God to take technology into consideration. On the other hand, upon closer inspection, it would be even more reasonable to accept death as virtual reality: freezing oneself and waiting. Can you imagine, what if a great mutation takes place in this world in the future? Everything makes it seem that this world is a huge, sarcastic laugh about all this man ever held dear, as if it had been created by a big celestial buffoon. Brilliant.
Tired of so many delusions and missing his farm, he simply stopped analysing the situation, which seemed to make him look even more upset. Yes, he was a stubborn, conservative old man, all too human, but above all, he had just distanced himself. Perhaps the problem was his, as he saw the Sun rise the other way.
When the actors finally enter the theatre for the premiere, the crowd slowly goes away. His protegée seems upset because he did not enjoy it. He neither ate all of his cake nor did he drink his coffee. However, he never ate much; what he enjoyed was hospitality as a thing in itself. He enjoyed seeing her. “Emily has just shot another film in Sardegna,” says the mother, proud to share her daughter’s success with her childhood mentor. He, on the other hand, could not understand the pride behind all that. For him, recognition was never a collective brouhaha with somebody at the centre. Still, he accepted it, as he saw she was happy with their daughter’s success.
His protegée asks whether he would like to stay until the end, when she would be able to introduce him to Emily. The girl butts in to petulantly emphasize how great an opportunity it is to meet a famous actress. She manages to keep her sister out of her words, as if she was just anticipating her own words in the future. He smiled and said he would love to meet her. This was true, really true. All her daughters were good and deserved as much success as they wanted. This was about two-thirds of the truth.
Yes, probably all that would look different from the inside lane. He was not sure he would only see a young woman in case he met her. A calm young woman. An actress who likes not to be in evidence, but to disappear behind her characters. And so he would no longer be afraid of her and all that. Still, he paused and pondered. The opinions of the world have no mercy on these matters. Perhaps the actress was rude, petty, a prima donna. Perhaps she would treat her mother barbarously. He would not like to see his protegée in a situation like that. Not knowing what to do, he left as if he exemplified the notion of persona non grata.
He went away sure of the tender connection he had with his protegée. He misses the time he would teach her about nature by the creek, admiring her golden locks. However, her hair stopped being venerable a long time ago. The reason why it all went wrong is a mystery. Perhaps he had finally lost a battle to the city. It was always that same story about the fly against the glass.
He was brave while he could, but it’s no use, what he really likes is his farm, where animals are the sincerest audience, and trees whisper as the living things they are. He had a very comfortable life and did not have too many desires. The idea of going back and diving in the nothingness of his anonymity pleased him more than ever. Extreme isolation never frightened him. Some people prefer to live and die away from “social life.”
End of this man’s story. Happily he goes back and lies down in his endless fields, looking at the stars, nearly falling asleep with the sweet smell of the countryside and the certainty that would not go away from him. His decision, now, was also a reaction. The world had gone on without him, but he did not take it personally. Perhaps every generation believes they will save the world, whereas the next one can only bring the end of it all.
So, he decided to admit he was a hero, and, in the midst of so much happiness for being back to his nature, a sad moment came up. That would be the place where that gentleman would perform his heroic duty of mourning the end of the world.