Esoteric

11/4/17

Nigel was angry, guilty, defensive. He felt trapped, hopeless – not that anything so bad had happened.

His cat had just ruined his great-grandmother’s curtains. “Of course,” thought he, “I should never have had a cat in an apartment so filled with antiques.

He was angry with himself over his inability to tell his girlfriend Angry—oops, he meant Angie— how unhappy he was with their relationship. He was blocked artistically in his what he thought was his life’s calling, designing wallpaper, though he did his job, got up every day before dawn, went to the office where he wrote reports on the accounting department’s latest financial statements- that is he translated numbers into consumer-friendly PR.

Wallpaper had always been a secret passion.

He was both fascinated and ashamed of his absorption in its design, history and especially in that it was so esoteric, so mundane and so…

So…

…yesterday.

The next day, he thought:

Esoteric could be cool. For a moment he stopped… he stopped caring what other people thought.

Passions, secret or otherwise could be energizing.

He called Angie who was less angry when he said he wanted to break up.

He sold his great-grandmother’s antiques.

He gave his cat to his mother, who had always loved it more than he had.

Nothing really happened, nothing bad at least. It was trivial seeming but struck him like an Aha! from on high. All it took, apparently was a slight readjustment of details- that’s where he heard god(s) lived. With those seemingly inconsequential details adjusted:

Hopelessness lightened.

He moved to New Zealand where he learned traditional defensive arts.

He opened a store selling gilt-edged wallpaper.

He was the opposite of angry Nigel.