dream deep

And his beauty was the fleeting sort, young and wide-eyed and a mature sort of childishness. He would look at people and things like they weren’t really there, or maybe he’d look at people and things like he wasn’t really there to see them, only he was. He’d tip his head, you see, like he understood, and was trying to see something else beyond all that. That was the case with the girl, that girl he saw. She had the sort of face no one would call classically beautiful, but there was an undeniable draw, something about the full, heavy cheekbones, or the wide-set eyes. She was the waiting sort too, only he never had the chance to find out.

 The generally accepted conclusion is that he was happy, in his own queer way. There are the sort of people who are real for a bit, just a bit, you understand, so other people passing by can appreciate them. Then out of the mist something else will come along, and they become unreal again, fading into the furniture and the upholstery, making their own sort of conclusion, not really dreaming, but understanding, and accepting. And that would be that, nothing less, nothing more. No overstepping, no crossing boundaries. It could get a little sad at times, but that was just the way it was.

He was not profound, this man. For him time was time, and music was music, but he knew them both on another plane. Perhaps when a person is like this, half in and half out, unapologizing, curious and crying, these things are more clear, and they hold no power over such a man, and they may sit over table as brothers do, and none affects the other.

I will not be acrimonious about this: he was a dreamer, but what dreams he lived in he chose to keep to himself. Only in his music he was slightly more generous, he liked the coming-together of people, however brief. He ended as he came, alone and withdrawing, but timeless and drawn, like a painting. And these people, all we can do is admire them, listen to their music, watch their dancing, glance at their paintings, maybe put in a kind word or two. Nothing like coming completely in, nothing like that.

In the end we love them still, and that will have been that.