The slow process of knowing and losing

When meeting somebody new, it's like looking at a map of a foreign city. It takes practice to memorize all its streets and find your way in it. Every corner looks new, every restaurant around the corner, every crossing, every turn. Then you live in the city for too long and you know your way almost unconsciously; it's too familiar that you forget that you once lost your way in it. The city grows on you, it becomes part of you. The smells, the noises, everything that makes a city breathe will be imbedded within you.

Then when you leave the city, you're always afraid that by time the memory of it will get stale. That the city that you've once known so well is no longer recognizable. Would anyone believe that the Cairo of 50 years ago is the same city?

Maybe some shops have closed down and others have opened. Maybe billboards infested the streets. Maybe the streets got dirtier, the people louder, the drivers bolder.

And that is always the fear when you're about to part with someone you have come to know so well.

You wonder that maybe in many years you will meet again. You will see traces of your past somewhere inside the person, but you will no longer recognize the person.

The routes you have strove to learn so well have become clogged in your memory. And that second you realize that the person is forever lost. Sometimes it's sad, yet at other times you know you have also been unrecognizable to them and think "that's just life!"

Prior to losing you always hope that what you have transcends the mere boundaries of the physical world. That there's a much deeper connection; that of the soul, the one that could never be shattered to pieces by time.

Time would be merely an ellipsis, nothing more.

Memories are never blown away immediately. The tick of the clock eradicates them slowly, like water washing over stones. By the time their shape changes, you no longer pine for them.

"That's life!" you would say and walk away.

I feel so much, yet I feel nothing at all
It may sound contradicting, but in my mind it makes perfect sense to me
I know I must be feeling so much
yet I'm perfectly numb
yet I see all these emotions circling around me
but now they are trapped inside the glasshouse and I'm just watching from the outside
Maybe I'm scared because I know that feeling too much would lead me back to the glasshouse and I'm not really sure I want to (do I?)
I reached the conclusion that I never quite write (at least with passion), without being in a sort of isolation....
and I wonder.
I'm always happy lately, cheerful. Something bad happens I frown for a few seconds and then shake it off and continue my joking around.
I don't know if I'm doing this as a defense mechanism or because nothing can touch me anymore...
Maybe I've grown a thick skin that doesn't allow anything negative to penetrate my being
yet I'm craving it
craving negativity
call me insane I don't care
I enjoy my life lately I can't deny it, I'm having fun, dyed my hair red, I don't know it seems so much has been happening. And it's fun. But only that.
and this is the problem I think.
I can't be just having fun... I try to write, nothing much comes out.
There are thoughts in my head- millions of them- but I can't quite write.

I few days ago, someone told me something that I always thought I wouldn't quite take well
I didn't feel anything
only a day later I felt something and it was so very intense
It lasted for a while, but then when the moment was gone I lost it
I crawled back into my stisfied unbearable numbness

An hour ago a delivery guy from drinkies rang the bell. I told him it's probably for the neighbours yet all I wanted to do was grab the bag shut the door drink drink drink and forget about my existance, even for a second

sometimes I confuse metaphors with reality and the reality with metaphors. And I saw him slipping away, I vivdly saw our invisible connecting strings unraveling, at least the strings of the physical life.

and then I remebered what he said again... I was swarmed with images, more likely scenarious of what will be....

We will always have a spiritual and mental connection... but is that enough, I ask.
Is it?
Is it?
Is it?

People

I like people quite well
at a little distance.
I like to see them passing and passing
and going their own way,
especially if I see their aloneness alive in them.
Yet I don't want them to come near.
If they will only leave me alone
I can still have the illusion that there is room enough in the world.

by D.H. Lawrence