Doubting impressions

Albert Camus

In life, everyone has to draw some impressionistic paintings, maybe not as impressive as the ones done by Renoir or Monet but they do and hopefully and unknowingly pretend that they mean what they do. Days go by like the cherry blossoms, shimmer and glimmer to fade away suddenly. The shade of light and darkness mingles in the souls, in the most unconscious chambers, to make sure: dreams should and sometimes would turn into nightmares or nightmares would turn into something pleasant, if not dreams.
Clocks going round the opposite direction could be an illusion but Ahmad couldn't figure out what could explain the other anomalies, like people walking backwards, as in rewinding camera-works, conversations starting from the ends, incidents echoing those of another time, and so on. Dipping into philosophies didn't look very appealing and practical reasoning could lead him to some newer horizons of questionings.
The whiteness of wit and the gigantic jabbers of narrow-mindedness leave room for little lukewarm lunacy, which couldn't possibly be scraped out of a feverish mind. He imagined, rightly, he thought, wit could be as white as Arcos de la Fonterra and narrow-mindedness could be as hollow as a plumber's semi-sentimental pipe organ. At present, sleeplessness wasn't his slightest concern; it was rather a blessing, which might boom right across the face of a hypnotized lethargy.
Looking down from a fifty seven storied building, the first thing he could remember was a Haystack in the canvas of Monet, which kept on growing until the completion of the creator's satisfaction, before a fall. The happy faces of the Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette merge into myriads of inexplicable inertia that could be traced in running subconscious errands for the unknown millions. The simplicity in the Swing or the enchanting music in the Girls at the Piano left little room for doubting the tranquility in impressions.

Second Waltz

Questions live on in the basic expressions of culture and somersaulting hypochondria in the look-alikes of Lacan or the clashing derivatives of Derrida amuse and bemuse the veins of artistry in the ever silicon-minded motions. Unheard melodies still would haunt the spirits and many could dare being in the quest just for the pleasure of waiting. Devoid of almost unlikely solitude of literature, these ghosts in their unknown nightmares might look very much like Beckett's most famous characters.
Superficiality was rooted so much inside the Dalmatian Diaspora. Never quite meaning it but people scatter more than they stay, work and fight. Delphian oracle exists in every sky, momentarily combining the universal idea of a clash between luck and supernatural, in sound and echo frequencies. After winning all battles we can't say, man is sublime as we could never find out what we're up to.
There had been a time when exception used to define some existence, but that idea is at present absent. Exception has been so much in inception in the perception of every conception. The slant look of Sartre at Camus or symposiums at coffee corners sipping down ideals through a blocked ravine persistently ignore the grimaces of idiosyncrasy towering above the slain dragon of modernity, which might laugh off the imitations with Simpson's paratragic comedy. To think or not to think, that might be the question.
Suddenly there was a fast car racing out down the Rodeo Drive. He was looking out from inside, to the dizzy decorations of the sparkling lights. Imagination could always turn out to be a gift if curses could be fended off and Ahmad possibly knew how to do it, all along. Losing out to candidates better equipped with answers sometimes gave him the shivers. But he always wondered: knowing answers to only a number of questions wouldn't end his quest.  A cutting edge infrastructure might not get him solutions to the meta-mathematical problems he was suffering from. He would be happy to land on a harbour but harbours nowadays merely bridge distances across, picking around corners.
A love story that begins with Shostakovich's Second Waltz would never be his. His story with the unknown girl, Yasmine, started rather strangely, when both were tired of their previous selfish selves. The hard days in the Latin Quarters still reigned with an uncommon range of butterfly effects, caging his spirit in a wasteland of checkerboard. Norah had been honest, perhaps too honest, and her graceful pursuit of a home for loving couldn't necessarily exist in his world of noir noise and Lilli lies.   
He wished he had forgotten the sensitive Norah, a pure lover of his dreamer self. She's dead to him now, though those memories welcomed him off and on into a world, which could have been all his. Possibility permitted, he'd like to live out all the romantic stories in his head. If insensitivity is at the core of forgetfulness, why would new Abrahams wish to die for simple reasons? Poets' black cats don't run after prey any more,. Rather, there seem to be lots of life forms ready to die down into oblivion, willingly. But did he want her to go?
Surreptitious negativity lands noisily upon a silent plain, which might never have identified the enormous amount of treasure it had buried alive once.  What is cherished in a world devoid of anything fresh? Now freshness dries up with a fleeting flip of the coin. Modern dictators never embark on Cape Sagres nor do they hide out under Schopenhauer's will or some dead god's psychoanalysis. Shakespeare's rest in silence gets arrested with an angry mob trying to convince a dead leader of their earnest condolences. Maybe, to do or not to do is the question.
When the spell of a hang-over hypnotizes nodding Homer or Hume or some egalitarian emotional Einstein, the time-bound tidy Toms try tracing some somnambulist syllogism, in some sugar-coated sauerkraut. Rational beings' reasons are pound-foolish sometimes and logarithms of ideal hemisphere may not possibly linger on a leaflet of common judgements. Could anyone ever associate the sociology of a penniless heart or richness of Cleopatra with the perpetual colours of our individual paradises? The ideas of realistic Rembrandts are sure to get short-circuited in the malevolent time-piece of Dali, or in the tardy egg-shells of some vigilant surrealists. Therefore, Feliz Navidad echoes empty encircling ethnocentric enigma where Felicianos dare to trade.
Suddenly a synthesized ringtone played softly with a rhythmic vibration. A call from Yasmine! She hardly calls him so late at night, but maybe today she had a good reason. Going through such a series of thoughts, almost feeling giddy, he found her voice to be the sweetest since the beginning of time.
“Well, I didn't expect you to be awake still. But had a sneaking feeling that you might be absorbed in the meaningless means of yours. The way you had been looking for something original, in the afternoon! You are so impossible sometimes!”
“Darling, you read me alright once again. I've had, what you might call, a monolithic odyssey through an island of streams. I am a blind man in the rain. Lost in time, yet trapped around Ieri, oggi, domani! Misspelled Cézanne! Scribbling a newer mindscape, myriads of dotted lines merge outside the limit of the horizon, with a pallid sense of 'leaving out a lot details'!”
“Wait! Wait! Wait! One at a time would be better!  You've been through lots of thoughts, as you said, different expressions of impressions. Misspelled Cézanne? Why? Where have you been of late? Aix-en Provence?”
“I'm a solemn passer-by! Rejected by the Riviera sun! Daunted and haunted by fire-breathing gargoyles, I look away towards the Grand Corniche! A stolen plate of La Cristallined'Agrumes au Coulis de Fruits rouges! When you're bornin Aix, nothing else is good enough! By the way, what might you be doing (looking at the clock) so late?”
“Oh, I had the same question, 'solemn passer-by'! What are you looking for in Aix? (Chuckling) Was trying a daydream before I realized we both are on the same side of the world. Have you ever listened to Nina Simone at this late hour? Sweet as the moonlight! Ah, darling, why don't we move to Aix someday? A little piece of paradise on earth! Someday! Anyway, there'll be time to reorganize everything. Let's get some sleep, shall we?”
“Sleeplessness is bliss! Passion is my sweet child leaning against the moon! Oh, let darkness linger a little more, for I'm a homeless brute, staring at a Botticelli angel, spreading her wings against the wind and against the light!”
“How am I supposed to react? You do take me to newly found lands, full of romantic nostalgia.”
“Nostalgia?” ………..

(Voices began to grow fainter, to only movements of the lips. Conversation went on, with fragments of stories, through smiles and tears, biting lips, twinkling eyes, etc., etc.)
Time went by, smooth or rough, he wouldn't question. As the trance broke, with an impulsive flash, ideas seemed to merge, faces seemed to fade, places seemed to fall into pieces and with a gusto of whirlwind memories disappeared, leaving him as still as the sleepy chill of Vivaldi's winter. It's 3.30 a.m. , in reality, and he's yet to go to sleep. As he was walking away from the reading table, the undying impressions were beginning to come alive once again. Tomorrow's going to be a very busy day.

Kazi Abu Bakar Siddique is Lecturer, BRAC Institute of Languages, BRAC University