Chapter Two ::: On Love Lost
“Between what is said and not meant and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.” - Khalil Gibran
The Serbian writer Dejan Stojanovic once remarked about himself: “my feelings are too loud for words and too shy for the world.” That's how I felt when my time at primary school came to an end. Too damn introverted to cry out and just too damn shy to let a girl know she was beautiful.
I am not shy now, in fact I don’t really give a damn what anyone thinks of me. I am me. But it would take a terrible lesson to change this me; a terrible way for a twelve-year-old child to learn to stop being so damn shy.
And it goes like this: think of the most beautiful girl in the world.
Can you see her?
No? Close your eyes and picture her. Go Slowly. Stop reading this until you can see her.
See her?
She is beautiful yeah? She makes you feel things you have never felt before. You have never been in love before so this ‘thing’ that’s happening in your body (and soul) is so overbearing in its intensity that you can hardly breathe.
Her quick glances past you makes your heart beat fast (I say past you because you are sure she has never noticed you). When she laughs the sound of her easy happiness makes your heart ache with an intense loving pain. The waves of her long black hair are like a tranquil ocean; soothing and innocently inviting.
When she walks past, you breathe in deep, hoping to catch her smell, to have something of her inside you. If she has ever noticed you when passing she would have only caught sight of an increasingly nervous boy trying as much as he can to melt into the ground, the wall, anything.
If fate had ever chanced a brief question or comment from her (maybe she wants to know the time) your voice would have trembled quietly as your hands shook with embarrassed fear.
But chance never did intervene for me until that day when I walked out of school and in the not so far distance I saw her. It was just her; nobody else in sight. We were alone, we could talk, or maybe we could just stand close together. That would have been enough.
Oh wave of ecstasy, what good fortune has brought you so close to me? What good karma has granted me the reward of beholding your form?
I made my move, walking faster and faster so as to get as close to her as possible.
What would I say to her?
“Hello”, and then what?
What would follow the greeting? What words would come out of me that could possibly keep her interested? This uncertainty made me afraid.
I was always afraid.
And then I was stuck, frozen and unable to take another step. I was so close I could almost touch her but the words I so desperately wanted to come out of me were stuck. I could not speak; she could not hear me. She we would never know I existed.
Oh garland of sweet words why have you abandoned me? What cruelty has kept my mouth shut?
She stands at the traffic lights and waits for the little green man to indicate it is safe to cross. It’s a three lane road on the side where we are standing. Two lanes must turn right and one lane (the closest to us) goes straight. The arrow for the two lanes turning right turned red and a few cars have already come to a stop. But there is still one green light; the light that indicates to cars traveling on the lane closest to us that it is safe to proceed straight and at normal speed.
I see the white and blue van traveling at what seemed like a high speed, but I am not sure if it is speeding or if it’s just my head that is processing events at an unusual rate.
She steps out onto the road. Why has she stepped out when the little man is still red? The little man is still red and he has not turned green, why has she stepped out? I am screaming questions and yet I am silent, I cannot move but I know something is wrong.
The sound of the van hitting her perfect little body is so disgusting that even now I cannot find the words to describe the horror. I don’t want to describe it because to do so would be to give voice to a kind of evil; a perverted mocking malice that deviously destroys perfection. A monster that creeps in from another world and in an instant grabs a child and takes her fragile spirit as its prize. I despise it! It destroys love!
Everything stopped. The world froze and everything fell to silence. When the world came back to life it was with piercing screams coming from all directions. People running from everywhere and rushing to her broken body as it lay there in the middle of the road. Her black hair floating in her blood and her face expressing a look that seemed to cry confusion.
“Why now? I had only started to live.”
I stood there a long time. Frozen solid as crowds milled around her little body.
Stop looking at her!
I heard the sirens; the police and the ambulance and whoever and whatever else came, I’m not sure, I didn’t care. I was a statue, frozen solid and unable to move while within me my soul screamed.
This was the day my innocence died. This was the day that would determine so much of what I would become, so much of what I am still. Although I didn't know it at the time, it was also the day I started my search for magick; the day I started looking for her.
