Cola and Cigarettes (Hisao Fic)
Posted: Thu Mar 22, 2012 10:10 pm
And so with that I thought I’d take a final walk, the tide of public opinion had long ago started to abate – the neighbours, bless them, had turned out to be all talk – I could see their frightened faces peering at me through the gate.
We’re all dead and dying, forgotten and forbidden, yet we press on. There is nothing which can defeat our passion to try, our burning desire to change or at the very least ignore the fates which have been bestowed upon us.
I myself am no longer counting my final breaths, I have chosen to completely omit registering them in the little notebooks stashed somewhere deep in my brain along with the slowly ticking away countdown towards the last throbs with which my crippled heart will audaciously announce my resignation from this world to the unknown.
I have long ago accepted my fate – death; the one told that he might not live past middle age managed to push on and outlive everyone dear to him, which is kind of ironic: I have domesticated the shadow that’s been always creeping beside me, keeping me company at all times, ready to extend its dry hand and lay me to rest: the worst adversary of life has become my most amicable companion.
And it is true. It is not death who I have grown to despise – it is life. I hoped that the gifts it had so precariously conferred upon me would never be taken away, that I would be the one to enjoy them from the beginning to the end, that I would not have to resort to graceful gestures of compensating for the untold goodbyes as the coffin is buried beneath the soil.
I have seen people I held close laid to eternal rest.
My wife along with the five fairies I’d once met in Yamaku have passed away. I can still remember them clearly and vividly, all the colours they emanated still imprinted in my old tattered heart.
It might be why it kept at it – pumping blood -, disregarding my lamentable pleas for death.
I am one hundred and eighteen years old. It has been a century since my lifeline took a turn in the direction that brought me here.
Back where it has started.
I have come full circle.
It is here I was given a second chance at life.
It is here I die.
In memoriam Hisao Nakai
1989-2107
____________________________
The first paragraph is taken from the song "Darker with the Day" as performed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on the "No More Shall We Part" album.
We’re all dead and dying, forgotten and forbidden, yet we press on. There is nothing which can defeat our passion to try, our burning desire to change or at the very least ignore the fates which have been bestowed upon us.
I myself am no longer counting my final breaths, I have chosen to completely omit registering them in the little notebooks stashed somewhere deep in my brain along with the slowly ticking away countdown towards the last throbs with which my crippled heart will audaciously announce my resignation from this world to the unknown.
I have long ago accepted my fate – death; the one told that he might not live past middle age managed to push on and outlive everyone dear to him, which is kind of ironic: I have domesticated the shadow that’s been always creeping beside me, keeping me company at all times, ready to extend its dry hand and lay me to rest: the worst adversary of life has become my most amicable companion.
And it is true. It is not death who I have grown to despise – it is life. I hoped that the gifts it had so precariously conferred upon me would never be taken away, that I would be the one to enjoy them from the beginning to the end, that I would not have to resort to graceful gestures of compensating for the untold goodbyes as the coffin is buried beneath the soil.
I have seen people I held close laid to eternal rest.
My wife along with the five fairies I’d once met in Yamaku have passed away. I can still remember them clearly and vividly, all the colours they emanated still imprinted in my old tattered heart.
It might be why it kept at it – pumping blood -, disregarding my lamentable pleas for death.
I am one hundred and eighteen years old. It has been a century since my lifeline took a turn in the direction that brought me here.
Back where it has started.
I have come full circle.
It is here I was given a second chance at life.
It is here I die.
In memoriam Hisao Nakai
1989-2107
____________________________
The first paragraph is taken from the song "Darker with the Day" as performed by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on the "No More Shall We Part" album.
