Notes from Another Underground

It’s all very peculiar. During my thee year time of study at a minor Swedish college I had the great privilege of getting to know a very special young man. On my behalf it was a pleasure having him as a conversation partner. How he felt I do not know. He was my namesake and merely 25 years of age he appeared to be an assuredly bright person but a bit on the introvert side. The head of the department predicted his scholar future with words like bright prospects despite the fact that he didn’t stand out from in a crowd. On the contrary he did his very best to fit in. Unfortunately his retired way of life seriously restrained him his venture.

During our freshmen year he often fell into a awkward kind of silence. As he didn’t speak those around him felt very uncomfortable. However as time passed by I saw less of this behaviour. Now afterwards I have often wondered if this tendency vanished in the same pace as our random meetings and conversations grew much fewer. It felt like he traded one silence for another.

When we met he always seemed happy to see me and didn’t mind sparing his time discussing whatever familiar or unfamiliar territory our conversations went into. It was always in or just outside the college library we sat down. In some funny way we always seemed to slip into subjects of great matters; views upon history, philosophy, values or endless attempts to define abstract entities such as love or morality.

I’m more of a pessimist in my view upon the humans as a thinking being and he agreed with me in the painful nature of her position. Still he was an idealist who hard as nails believed in the good in human. Although love time and again appeared as a frequent topic of our discussions he never told me anything of his own experiences. In fact the conversations always seemed to soar on abstract clouds. Perhaps that is why I so clearly remember the one time we really became personal and went mysterious absent as he said: “my life is poem – only the poet can live his performance”. Much later I understood that this would be the last time I ever saw him again.

One week later I received a large and torn envelope in my mail. Instantly I realized who sent it. I wasn’t surprised to find over 60 pencilled sheets full of scrawled notes. On the top a piece of paper addressed to me short and cryptic said:

“If I for some reason should be lost or in any other way unable to communicate to the world, then let this be my moral testament. But as I consider my heart to be good, I don’t wish to distribute malice’s and sarcasms. In stead let this manuscript be a guidance available for those who seek understandings and for those who seek the good in man. Let this be a lesson, a penance and forgiveness. Once I tried to explain… I failed. This is my failure.”

Every page contained, although completely unorganized, thoughts presented in a form which mostly could be classed as notes from a diary. But no dates were set. Moreover there would be no place for it, because where the line had ended the text continued wherever the writer had considered it would be suitable to squeeze it in, either it was on the diagonal, in the periphery or any other place the sheet still was free from pencil scrawl.

The sheets where loose but I suspect he had arranged them in some sort of sequence. Perhaps chronological. I seemed to distinguish a certain development in the thoughts, an approaching complex of ideas. Aphorisms, poems, literary episodes and reflections with philosophical efforts succeeded each other in a mess. Personally I would have deleted certain juvenile manifestations and episodes, but I suppose every progress has its beginning in the infantile. The purpose I know nothing of, my feeling is however that he wanted to mediate more than to write in a therapeutically manner.

A few moths after the script was sent to me I tried to reach him. My endless efforts were all in vain. I could never find even the slightest trace of him. Many days I sat in the college library hoping he would appear. He didn’t. I asked his lecturers but neither one of them had heard anything. I called the directory enquiries only to make a fool out of myself. His last name was as unfamiliar to me as everything else about his background. It was almost as if he had never existed. Still today I wonder what has become of him. My last memory of him is when we said goodbye at the library and he slowly faded away into a snowy December fog. As he wandered up a hill, I yelled at  him asking where he was going. He answered over his shoulder low-voiced and without turning around, almost as if talking to himself: “home”.

What hereafter follow are his words, not mine.

/WEBMASTER

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