Sorrows of a Young Man

What I was telling lately about sketching goes for writing as well. It's all about seeing what matters, and daring to point to it. (And when it comes to that, less is more.) Today I was exposed to this scenery... it would be really artsy if I'd put it down like a great writer... but art doesn't matter, does it? I don't know why we should always force everything into the conventions of art.

If you think all this is building up to something truly great, I'm sorry to disappoint... it's just this teenager I saw that made me feel alive again. As usually, I will put it down badly, and as usual, you might find it exxagerated. Again, it's about this place on the hill with the viewpoint and the outside bar downstairs.

There were some people there sipping their booze, and I was handing out a bad excuse to steer clear from them.

This youngster appeared and he was hanging out at the place with a bottle of coke in his hands, and smoking. I joined him and we started to chat (I find it easy to chat with those kind of people). He told me he was doing garden work for this widow, and the more he told me, the more I realized he felt something for her. And it didn't seem purely platonic, you know. She was already old he said, abused by her ex, not willing to marry again... and as he kept talking I realized just how much this teenager (young man, already) was excited by her. How much he was hoping for her to choose him, to make up for all the bad she had lived through.

I would have to quote his every word, describe all his gestures, of what he told about the old man of her, to make you feel the way he felt, so that you could understand the fire in his eyes. His mixture of rough speech and harmonic voice, his love and loyalty. Yeah, it would take a true poet, but my talents won't quite cut it. It especially amazed me how afraid he seemed to be I would get it all wrong; that I would think bad of her, of his relationship to her. Amazing how he was talking about her, how she seemed to capture him even without being young and hot. I never dreamed, let alone saw such purity before. Now maybe you'll say I'm crazy but this image of him and his innocence really hunts me, this tenderness makes me feel wanting... it set me on fire.

I sort of want to meet that woman, then again, I probably shouldn't. Better to see her beauty through the eyes of her lover — she probably wouldn't be the same for me, and why should I ruin this image of beauty?