Dear David Frankel’s “Collateral Beauty”

 

“We’re here to connect. Love, time, death. Now these three things connect every single human being on earth. We long for love, we wish we had more time, and we fear death…”

∞

“Collateral Beauty“,

As a movie, you touched me long before I even watched you, and not because you follow the deep personal tragedy of a grieving man… no, no, no. You primarily made me sad, because I know that deep in my heart, you were a movie I was supposed to create…

As a writer and aspiring Director, I’ve spent years coming up with different parts of a grand puzzle, and with every new addition, the direction becomes clearer and clearer. With that, there are certain themes that have landed on me. Which brings us back to you as a film…

Will Smith – who so brilliantly portrays the grieving man in question – takes pen to paper and writes 3 letters: to Love, to Time, and to Death.

Love.
Time.
Death.

This alone was enough to blow me sideways, because the concept is familiar to me.

I’m an avid letter writer, and these 3 abstracts are already so well acquainted with me, as I’ve written plenty to them…

Love knows just how devoted I’ve been to finding her; my life is a throne beneath her feet. I’m just awaiting her arrival. Patiently waiting, always.

Time knows of my deep, deep fascination with him. Time; the pulse of everything, the core of all that I do and pursue. It is the thread that holds it all together, and simultaneously pulls it apart.

Death… well, I’m not brave enough to call upon the ears and eyes of Death to hear what I have to say… so my subject is slightly different here; I’ve substituted this with Infinity. Yet Infinity primarily questions mortality. Death marks the end and the beginning. It’s the finite and the infinite. It marches to the same beat. Infinitely.

Once Without a Time

For someone who is so obsessed with time, I seem to forget that most people move on with it.

It is not an attribute of the common, to hang up a broken clock in the hall of their stagnant lives. That is a pattern of my own.

I’m typically atypical in my state of standstill. I’m inspired to aspire from the walls within.
The lure of the day marks just the coming of the night. The night beckons me to sleep, for the coming of a new day.

But others, they venture forward and seek to get lost, knowing that the discovery of life comes in the adventure of its course.

Their tales will be told as a time they were once upon, but mine will be told as being without, for I live in a place where the ticks do not applaud me, so I am not accepted as part of that story.

“Once without a time” will be my only legacy. I’ll be lost outside of the ages.
Unaccounted for, for I didn’t count the score, counterbalancing the accounts of times galore.

Yes, it’s a strange thing to sit and write about time. For actually, it completely eludes me.

∞ T
Diary of a Deluded Heart

Written: September 7^th 2016
Published: January 31^st 2017

{Written with Vallendri Arnout in mind}

Water|as|Love

If Love is Water, then I am a desert, for it is something my lips have never tasted, a thirst that’s never been quenched, a sea I’ve never stepped into.

I’m often asked why I don’t take a plunge into the unknown and dive into the sea of love that awaits before me; the water of wanders, an ocean of life. And here’s why….

Lost Art

There’s a part of me that fears death in the face of all of my unfinished business.

Life is so fleeting… our moments here are evanescent. I have so many visions in my mind; I don’t want them to be put to sleep before they’ve been realised… to have my ideas martyred at the expense of my idleness… to have them die before ever having lived. More specifically, as an avid writer, I don’t want all of these words to become a memoir of madness (for if madness isn’t the result of such obsessive, chronic chronicling which advances ahead with no purpose or use, then what is…?) Wasted words are one of life’s greatest shames, one I wish to play no part in (but lead the march nonetheless in all of my Words Unspoken and Dear Nobody’s.)

Echo Through the Museum

Walking through ancient history, reminding myself to live it before I become it…

One day we too will be another story in the grand tale of all tales, and our wonders, our hopes, our fears, our decisions and our actions, will be another shot of hindsight for another eager soul to walk through… C’est la vie… C’est magnifique.

Let’s make future history.

*Egyptian Exhibition; “Faith after the Pharaohs” | British Museum*

∞ T
Diary of a Deluded Heart

Written: December 29^th 2015
Published: July 20^th 2016

Tick Tock Said The Clock

Today I got lost in the clock room at the British Museum – I love this place, tracing back to when & how people first started measuring time. On the one hand, it makes me reconsider my own notions of time; how I spend it and how precious it is with each passing day. On the other hand, my mind races ahead to a place where everything is infinite and knows it’s not bound by the hour. The ultimate discrepancy: Time versus Infinity.

Reflection: The human appetite for time is endless; it’s the most precious commodity, but the sorrow of lost time becomes a permanent hole in the human heart.

Result: We’re consumed by the count – Dictated by the ticks, move with the tocks. Pause for the chimes, obsessed with the clocks…

But there are consequences to counting the moments when you measure time with a clock. How very human of us to do so; to mark the minutes, but not use them wisely. To measure the days length instead of focusing on its miracle. I suppose that’s why I like my clocks broken…

Dear Larissa: Night Vision

Dearest Larissa,

Imagine for one moment, it was all genuine. The words, the smiles, the look, the touch, it all meant something. And when he swept you away it was intentional, with aim. You were sought after, you were looked after. It all meant something.

Just imagine for one moment, it was all real. And you weren’t crazy. And it mattered.

Because whether you’ve lost something that was real, or holding onto something that wasn’t, it was a flame that’s now lost to the dark – but it’s as present as the stars in the sky, the one you always find yourself looking up for. Has the darkness consumed it or does it light up the night? Will your star be a dead fire from the past or a flickering light in the distance? Will you resent its absence or appreciate its existence?

Whichever way you choose to see it, just choose to see it… for if anything, he illuminated your path if for a moment of time. To deny it in any which way – for better or worse – that’s the real loss. You traded in your time for a memory, it’s your duty to make it a good one. Because nothing changes the past other than your perception of it.

Time|vs|Infinity

Tonight I switched on my night-lights hoping to drift away, but staring at my lights, with those particular words – “INFINITE” – staring back at me, it took me away to someplace different…

It got me thinking about several concepts; the perception of age, the balance of living in an idealistic idealism vs. living in the actual reality, paired with the idea of the finite time vs. being “infinite” – And so began my journey into merging these theories and creating a quixotic concoction of sorts.

And here’s what it came down to:

We are all born with a time limit; a conjoined, invisible hourglass attached to us. It is Time that has essentially created ageism; it dictates to us the phases of our life and as such, the order and outcome of it, thus adopting a co-master to our own fate. Despite this, time affects our exterior physical selves but is void in our interior spiritual selves; our bodies age but our mind is ageless, for time does not exist there. When we delve into our mind – in our purely cognitive state – there is no time; it’s a standstill and a source to infinity.

This cognitive state never dictates to us our age; it never tells us we’re only 5, we’re finally 16 or nearly 30… our cerebral self knows that age is a number and not a checkpoint, however our surroundings tell us to think that way. Actually, our mind journeys outside the spell of time and is simply present in the moment that we exist in, where our thoughts are valid and final, irrespective of the decree of age. Whether time dictates that we are ‘young‘ or ‘old’, cognitively, we just are. We are shielded from the effects of time, so we are shielded from the prescription of age. In our own space, we control our own time, and we become infinite as a result.