Meaning of Life and Man

I have spent years chasing the tail of my darkness. I cannot catch my past, like a dog trying to get hold of its tail, seeing its tip, I see the tail wiggling, making fun of me, but whenever I am about to get hold of it, whenever I am close to catching it, understanding the mystery, bringing some light to the darkness, it goes further away, mocking me, making a fool of me…

So I carry on further through days and nights…

I have met many people on my way, some were old some were young, some were slow, some were fast, but I have never spent enough time at one place to make real friends, to share a drink, a moment that could last forever, a moment immortalized like a painting in memory.

I have felt closer to some, though, and more distant from others. I have had some children, here and there but never stayed behind to watch them survive. I could not have stayed… I had a tail of darkness to chase… a world of wonders to figure out. Did I wish I could stay?… I am not sure… This life of wandering, hours, days, weeks of wandering, hoping to find out what life had in store for me consumed me, made me restless… I believed I could figure it all out only if I kept on, and saw what was hidden in the dark.

I had no one to ask about my past, to direct my questions… I never knew my mother or father… I never knew where they had met, how they had decided to conceive me… Probably they had acted on an impulse, a raw urge to copulate rather than a thoroughly designed plan for the future. Much like the way I came to be a parent, I assume. Probably, they did not brood much over it, and followed their instincts, their inner drive to be close to someone, to feel fluid with another.

Probably I followed in their foosteps without even knowing them, and most probably my children are no different. Probably, my past is nothing but a vicious cycle, a ferris wheel that returns to its starting point, sooner or later and over and over…

I wonder how similar my children have grown to be, how much a part they are of this cycle… I wonder if they are on an endless quest for answers… An endless quest to understand why they are the way they are… Why they do what they do… Who they are… I wonder if they ever wonder about me… I wonder if they feel abandoned like me, or accept it as part of life and move on. Moving on endlessly, slowly…

But I am certain, soon I will find an answer to all my questions, soon I will know why this darkness haunts me, why I cannot stop moving, why I cannot break out of it, why I am alive, and what my existence holds for the world, what it means to-

 CRACK! SQUASH!

Without even bothering to look at the snail and its philosophical quest he had just obliterated under his foot, the man walked on counting the money he had earned gambling.

The first line of this week’s Speakeasy challenege was to write a piece of fiction of 750 words or less starting with “I have spent years chasing the tail of my darkness.” and making a reference to Paul Cezanne’s painting the Card Players.