[The beggar] Part six (and final)

Go To:

Part one
Part two
Part three
Part four
Part five
Part six
Behind the scenes!

---
* * * Part six * * *

'<<... and I want you to know that I've saved some things for you. I know I haven't been the best father in the world, nor such a pleasant company. But I have always been proud of you and Lilith. I love you both more than anything. No matter what I did, our lives went on, and you were always growing up, better, stronger, ready for life. How can a father not be proud of his children? I haven't told you much about me, and you don't know why I couldn't get over your mother. And even now, I don't know either. My last words for you are these: Love, dream and live.>>', she paused reading and sighed.
'I think he meant them in that order, Andrew. I've always thought when people write their last words, each letter is an enormous part of their heart. It's like... they set their life on paper, for one final time, you know what I mean? Andrew?'
There were tears in his eyes. He was not sad, nor did he regret the life he had enjoyed so far. The tears were not his, they were his father's.
'The world is a projection of your minds, isn't that true?' he told Susan
'It really is.' There was not much to be said, she thought.
'I love you', Susan leaned toward him, 'You're always here for me, I'm always here for you - we don't need each other, but we are a part of each other. Just as your father is a part of you. He'll always be, really. Are you sad?'
'No, no I'm not. How strange that you only know a person by what you experience, isn't it? You always think you know because it's there, but, in fact, nothing's there. It's just you, and the world. And the world is in you', he wiped his few tears. 'I was gonna meet him tomorrow. I'm not even asking myself why he didn't tell me he was dying - it's his way of being.' he said.
'What's a man's life, really? We are all here, in this world. Everyone has his/her own piece of it, and everyone things that's the real thing. You know what the real thing is? The real thing is that it is. There's nothing more to it. My world can be a sphere, yours maybe a prism, Lilith's - a spire; some can even be shapeless. Everything's possible. We know many but understand little. We want to understand what we already know, but there's always something we think we don't know that keeps us from understanding. Susan, what are people in search for?'
Susan could feel everbody. Ever since she was a child, she loved to put herself in other people's shoes. She wanted to feel more, understand more. She wondered how it is like to be someone else - would that person feel the same as she did? What would her mind and heart be like in another body? Or perhaps just the heart.
'I imagine they wake up into the life they've got. A few moments pass, and the feeling of something missing arises: And some don't even ask themselves these questions. Life - what is life? Life is less than nothing, and more than everything. We are advised to listen to our hearts, but what we aren't told is how to do it', Susan loved these long talks with her husband.
'And the way to do it is in you. The modern man feels he is lost because he's not aware of his being. We are human beings, aren't we? We are born with instincts and not thoughts. Our world comes from nothing, but is everything. What we are in search for is only the most basic feeling in the human being - happiness. There are a million ways to look at the world. And, sometimes, only one of these ways brings happiness. But it is not that far. Actually, all paths lead to the same feeling. Some are just too bumpy to see the end... '
'What are we, more than animals? We are survivors. The key to happiness is you. It's that simple. We are born a way, but alter ourselves so much from that day, that we find a lot of questions with very few answers. But the answer is found at the beginning (what answer isn't?). We are alive. Somehow, maybe for one man in a billion, that is enough a reason to be happy. Isn't that amazing?', Susan's eyes were shining.

Their life together has been a dream. The love they shared brought them upwards. However high they were, the didn't move from that apartment. The world changed, and they changed with it. But, somehow, they remained the same. Andrew was amazed. He was always fascinated by the way the world exists. For every action, there was a reaction, cause and effect, time and space - those were all just a few pictures of it. He understood that, in order to do something for certain, you have to understand or feel what it is. And for that to happen, you had to assign a shape to it, somehow... everything's about perception, in a way. Perception is about everything. Happiness... the same. He noticed that for something to be meaningful, it had to neglect every other point of view, and react on one of them. But insight into a world meant insight into every other, because the same truth was present everywhere.

They married a few years after he moved in. Lilith bought the place next door, and let them live in this one - 'for memories' sake', she said. They lived at the ground floor: two apartments and the former janitor's room, now a small place where a poor man lead his life. Susan still didn't know how come they connected that well, but she guessed they were just waiting for each other - like everyone's waiting for something. Susan was twenty-eight, and she was pregnant with their first child. She was happy, they both were. Life had been generous: Susan and Andrew had interesting jobs - she was a painter and he was a teacher, both successful due to their devotion to the art of it.

'How did we get so lucky, Andrew?'
'There's just something... in this world, for every single person. And when you find it, you know; because it clicks, it trembles, it sings - like a chord, maybe. Like a drop of water in the ocean, you can't even realize it's different, but the feeling of it remains forever', he said.
'Imagine how it must be to be the ocean... a new passion every moment, a new drop of water.' Susan said
'I love you too, Susan.' They were used to late replies. Like the brain knows when it's forgot something, but not what that something is, inner traveling is also a natural course for human beings.

The accident was left behind, it was ten years ago. That month after the accident, Andrew moved with her, and they spent all their spare time talking. She didn't know much about the accident, but the questions were always fading when he was around. He felt lonely and lost, but never when she was next to him. They vowed to live together, and naturally fell in love.

'Yes, it was a dream. It is!', Andrew thought.
'You wanna go see what your dad left?'
'Sure', he said.

After an hour, Susan and Andrew arrived. They went in and found the place almost empty. There was a note on the table.
'I know this will make you smile.
Check the closet.
Love,
Dad', Andrew read.

'He left me a fishing rod! Made by himself. A handmade fishing rod!' Andrew repeated, his smile was wide and honest. 'Maybe he wants me to understand his passion for fishing. But I did, already, from his letter. Love, dream, live - that's how he could do it all. Love me, dream mom, and live eating fish, hehe. And I've always misjudged fishing as his passion only, how silly of me!'
'We live to be remembered, I guess', Susan thought about her dad. It's been long since the last time she thought about him. She wished she knew more, but there was nothing more to do...
---

Epilogue

We returned home. The police was in front of the small janitor's place. It seems he had died yesterday, and I was invited to take a look, and take anything, if I wish to. He had no living relatives.
I went inside, while Andrew left his new handmade fishing rod at home. I saw a notebook, and headed for it; right when I turned around, I saw something that blew my mind off.
It was me: my face was painted on every wall of the room, in indefinite circumstances. There was something familiar about those paintings, they made sense in the order they were painted. Who lived here?
I stared at the cover of the notebook: 'A life of a teenager', by Susan! This was the notebook I had lost when I ran from that accident.
I opened the notebook, and read...
---
The final passage of the notebook said:
<<...Somehow, I see it in every human being. I walk the streets, and see people like her everywhere - everyone has it's path, and every path has it's shape. Any shape. Love is the sun, and we are the world. And as the sun spins upwards, the world circles around it. Is it in search for something, like we are? No. But it is spinning, amazingly quick, and seems unstable, as a life of a teenager; in fact, that life is the most certain life we will ever have. What is the sun heading for? Nowhere, he's circling around the galaxy, and the galaxy around the universe, and the universe... God is the center of everything. Love circles around God, and although human life seems to be circling too, it is not. Life is not like an orbit - it is like the line of a tram, or a roller coaster: it has its bumps, it has the same basic path for everyone, but what's around it when you pass by is always different. What remains is what lasts, the line itself - love, and what changes is the driver and the tram - life, and the person who benefits of it.>>
I read it all. Half of it was my own writing, the other half - my father's. He lived here for ten years, and I didn't know: Oh, sweet ignorance! He wrote he can't paint anything else but his daughter's face. But the paintings show me like I am right now, not like I was when I was young!, I told Andrew.
'No. You haven't changed much, but you look like you were back then; I remember you very well. Are you alright?'
I don't know. It's amazing. He paints every feeling I ever had, and so well... Look, here I have that "I lost my dollie" face, and here I'm telling him I love him, and here...

From birth to 18 years, everything I have felt lies in this room, in these paintings. I am living in my father's ten year life with ... me. You know, somehow, things in this world have always happened similarly to us. Our parents are full of surprises, aren't they?
'Yes, I can't believe it! Look, he even left a note, I think.'
I was so shocked, I asked him to read it to me...
'I am thought of as a poor beggar, but there's a "beggar" in all of us, just like there's a Susan in there, too'.

Love is the sun, and we are the world... My mind was looking for the sense of it all, but that was just a point of view. From another perspective, it already made perfect sense.

What do you think about this part of [The beggar]?
	Love it, made me curious!
	I'll probably wanna see what happens next.
	I think you were too succint, the story seems rushed.
	Vaguely interesting.
	You haven't made me curious at all!
	It's kind of silly. I don't like it...
	A different answer: good opinion.
	A different answer: bad opinion.
Free polls from Pollhost.com