Glaring Shadow - A stream of consciousness novel

Chapter 2 - Pains of Regret

"Not to speak ill of the dead," he began as I readied myself to take notes, and continued after a pause, "what to make out of this social nicety when man is so much prone to speak nothing but ill of his fellow-men. Does it imply that since one should not speak ill of the dead, he should go the whole hog about it when the other is still alive and kicking! Maybe, that's what man thinks; why he wouldn't let go an opportunity, so to say creates one, to pour out his venom on his fellow beings. If I were to subscribe to the perverse proposition, you would never come to write my memoir for I should keep mum as most of those who came into my life are dead and gone. Whatever, didn't Shakespeare put the final word in Antony's mouth – 'The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones'. Well, gloating about her 'woman behind the successful man image', it was Ruma, who goaded me all the way to my doom. Now that I'm failing our common cause, won't her soul feel let down over there? What of my mother who kept herself away from my running shadow all along? Won't she welcome the return of her prodigal son to her pragmatic bosom? But even if she does, how am I to bear her kindness having got used to her indifference for so long. Oh, if only my father were alive! What a character he was really; when did I last think of him anyway? Wonder how, shorn of a few bucks, I'm inclined to think about them! When I'm finished with the lot, what if it's a deluge of human compassion? How nice the prospect of its happening feels!"

"I can feel your pain in the pangs of regret."

"I'm glad that your feel of my remorse might help you to capture the pathos of my life," he said stoically. "How my life mirrors the stupidity of man in spite of a wise upbringing. What idiocy it was that I toiled to destroy the toil of my parents in tending my life in a meaningful way. Why not make it easy for myself by making a bonfire if it. (He started throwing those wads of money into the fireplace) What if I choke myself to death and suffocate you as well? It's not the relief by death but the reality of life that I seek to picture for you to hold it as a mirror for man."

"I find your passion infectious and feel your story could be illuminating," I said as his eyes lit up watching his wealth beginning to go up in flames.

"Of what avail is a passionless writing, and the feeling-less reading," he said turning enthusiastic. "Hope your empathy provides the cutting edge to my memoir. Well to give the devil its due, what warmth money used to provide me! But in the hindsight don't I see the falsity of it all; why it was the warmth in the company of the inanimate. Wonder how I had endured it all myself being passionate about love! More so, what a paradox it was as it was love that motivated me to covet money? Is love a false notion then? Isn't love a mental affliction to which sex affords physical gratification without which it becomes a by-gone emotion? But does sex fare any better in fruition? No denying possession tends to dampen passion but won't sex beget love in cohabitation and so while love owes to sex in the beginning, it is the love that serves sex in the long run, and that's the grammar of the sexual relations."

"In the biological tense," I said. "What with one's waning ability to attract a new mate what else can one do than to stick to the spouse for sex? Why make a virtue of a necessity?"

"There you are, but nothing in life is black and white as money too imparts its own hues," he said. "If the rein of passion is on the groin, the lure of money sways the head, and the craze to possess it matches the urge to retain it."

"Why not dole out your moolah instead of destroying it?"

"Not that I haven't thought about it," he said. "It makes news for a day but leaves no lasting message."

"What better message than philanthropy?"

"Man might be rich without wealth and could be poor in spite of it," he said continuing to throw the piles of notes into the fireplace. "It's not the needs of the poor that I want to address but it is man's craze for riches that I wish to dispel. The story behind my insane destruction of my mindless acquisition might picture the character of money in all its ugliness. Don't you see what a sight it makes, the burning money! How its flames seem to clear my view of life from the smokescreen of wealth! Why did I allow my life to be ruined by money and its minions? What else are pride, greed and such but money's minions? If I let the money go, won't it take its minions along with it? By shedding the blinkers of the moolah, won't I be able to pull my life out of the glaring shadow of wealth? It's so long ago but what a life I lived!"