Of love and shadows
22nd June 2001, 1442 hrs
Location: AS6 Computer cluster, NUS
Weather: post-downpour
On the table: two snapdragons and a huge white rose (flower auntie was particularly generous today)
It all started with a story. A love story, sweet, sad, human, told through the intermittently firing medium of ICQ messages. A story about too much caution, as aid, as hindrance. About inexpressible joys and unutterable pain. A strangely chaste story, so rare in these wanton days. A love story.
But it's not the only story I know, and it's not the only story I could tell. I could speak of love, again of love, but in a different way. I could tell a tale of rushing in, of caution cast to the wind, of sheer fastness and intensity, of fevered huddlings in muddled places. And I might just perhaps give you a similar ending. A love story.
Perhaps the only thing which makes a tale happy or sad is where you choose to place the ending.
***
And I spoke of two kinds of dark: the first, the warm secure darkness of your room, or of a place loved and familiar; a darkness which holds you in its warm embrace when there's no one else around. A safe, warm, loving darkness. A darkness which is sanctuary. The second, a darkness beyond that holds a million unknown terrors; a dark to be fled from, not to be countenanced. A menacing, watching, hostile darkness, always ready to engulf you in its maw. A cruel darkness.
Is it all just a matter of perspective?