Joey struggles to get himself out of the funk he’s been in ever since the Esperanza/purple guy incident.
The next week slogs by at school. Sadness and despair ebb and flow, intermingling with anger and nihilism. David White and the Orange Face brothers, swagger by me repeatedly, swearing and glowering. Na-Na hasn’t been in school for a while, and these jackals instinctively feel something is amiss. Circling me ravenously. Just waiting for the opportunity to pounce, and exact revenge. The longer Na-Na is away, the hungrier they become. Pining for the time when they don’t have to answer to his retribution.
It doesn’t get any better at night either. Still nobody to talk to, as I lay there in the silent darkness. No answers. Again. Seeking any kind of solace, I turn to the book, The Prophet. Again.
I flip through it, hoping against cynicism to glean a second chance at wisdom. Mostly, it’s this blabbering from this guy who comes down from a mountain and addresses these apparent retards from this village called Ophalese. And, they keep dogging him with a bunch of just inane questions. I’m about to kick it (the book) to the proverbial curb, when one passage catches my eye, ‘Speak to Us of Beauty’.
“All these things you have said of beauty. Yet in truth, you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied.
And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth.
But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted.
It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear.
But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.”
Something about this hits me as beautiful. The truth. Or at least part of it. I close my eyes, conflicted. Feeling vaguely bad. Or sad. I brush it off as nothing more but the usual flowery philosophy that you can’t translate to apply in the real world.
It does, however, lead me to reminiscing about that meeting with the Professor, when I bought my gold ensemble. How fascinated I was by their world, and the way they used that jazz jive, like calling guys “cats”. Yeah, maybe I just need to buy some new clothes! Maybe that’ll make me feel better!
