the angel…

Yes we are all watched over. Benignly probably - or maybe not for those with wicked consciouses. Maybe those with wicked deeds in their past are troubled nightly by their ‘watchers’ - by their angels? Who knows? Anyway I don’t speak for them, no – I only speak for me. And that’s enough. No, I merely say that all of us, maybe, are watched over.
 
For myself though I don’t make the claim of maybe, I would state definitely I am watched over. For sure there is an angel for me – at least one whom has made herself known.

What?

What is he talking about? What on earth…?

No wings. No white robes or drapes. Definitely no halo. No religiosity. No unmasking of self. No, this is more a hypothesis, an idea. But it is also myself putting a score together and making sense of a meeting and words spoken. And it feels better to arrive at this conclusion.

If one has an event in one’s life – either traumatic or otherwise, whither it be meaningful now or later... If following this event, one is visited – unwittingly and probably unknowing at the time by a complete stranger, a stranger who somehow seemed to know of this person’s recent mental and spiritual upheaval... Or at least hinted at it in their spontaneous (seemingly) conversation... Then one, in my idea, could be said to have been visited by an angel.

My own is based upon banality really, and events which I have added together to make more - much more - than the sum of their worth. Yet here I sat, and there she sat, and together we talked.

We talked lucidly – as fluently as total strangers wouldn’t be expected to talk.

She was so very familiar, and then asked me the kind of questions and spoken thoughts that were actually tumbling through my head and stretching out – reaching out for an answer. She seemingly knew my thoughts behind my dashing eyes. She spoke the kind of words that I would have had her speak.

And she unbiddenly did so.

And then after she disappeared. Not literally unfortunately. She left afterwards. The nature of her going and the spirit in which she will probably wander means that I will most likely never hear from her again, but I will – probably – I will hear of her. I will hear her, I'm sure.

She is here. She had been here, she made herself (almost) known to me. I only knew – or thought I knew later.

She has gone now.

Maybe she will let herself be known to me again. But it will, I believe, be under a different guise. But this is irrelevant and speculative.

The important part is not was she there, was she this, that?

The important part is what she did say. And how I will act upon her words.

…and the ring.

And everything moves on. With no exceptions. There are no exceptions.

All things will pass, all beauty will diminish, and all unblemished surfaces will tarnish. All memories will fade.

And love will die.

My story is your story – is his story, is her story. Mine is everyone’s. I loved, I laughed, I lost, I cried. I got over it.

I eventually moved on (of sorts).

And so did the only physical part of her that was still with me - her ring. For it was needed no longer, it had served its purpose long after the time I thought it was still serving. I thought it was simply me being sentimental. And maybe it was. But all things serve their purpose, and then they are discarded thereafter.

One can make too much of these things. I suppose every last lost sock, every cut and bruise – every unexpected turn of the day can have as much significance as any of us wishes to add to it. And simply the fact that my ring was to go missing has somehow instilled in me the idea that its going astray is something more than carelessness or fate.

Why?

Well partly the significance of the day – of my mood that day and the step I took. And yes, partly out of a desire to attach to this act of disappearance a meaning beyond that of simple carelessness. But then I am as human and as desirous of fantasy and the erratic in my everyday world as the next foolish soul.

But what of the significance I claim?

This day was a day in which I spent a good deal of time writing. No difference to that of many other days then. Indeed a common activity of the past fifteen or so years. Except by hook and crook, and through my own thoughts, my mainstay of inspiration over the last four or so years had been that of her. Of the immensity and depth of my feelings and of the monstrous nature of the lowness of feeling. And of the long, long ripples that pan out thereafter.

But on this day I took a different step forward. For the first time in years I began to write something – something of an intended length and import. Something that was very much unconnected with her and the relationship we had. For the first time I was writing after her, my thoughts were not influenced by her sitting opposite me, laughing near me, moving under me…

For sure, she will be a part of everything that I do - and in perpetuity. But in some minute detail, so will everyone with whom I have had some real contact, some deeper interaction. For we are all shaped by those around us and the events they help us to trigger. So she will, in a sense, always be with me – and for sure she will always be in my writing.

But this day was the first day that upon doing that which is one of the deepest activities for me, and certainly that of the most honest and soul-searching, I took out my pen and began to write words unconnected with thoughts and ruminations on her and what she and it meant to me.

She was not there.

And neither was her ring.

We, like the two foolish impulsive lovers we were back then, exchanged rings and kisses and probably silent vows. Too early – much, much too early to verbalise our deeper feelings, but, speaking as I can only do of my own feelings, the placing of the ring on her finger was more – much more than that of simply pushing a band along someone’s digit.

And forever, it seemed after, the band stayed on my finger. Not on her's I noticed… Ho-hum, but then I already knew that I had been the most loved-up of our unequal relationship. Ahhh… enough anon.

No I mean that - enough already. If you don’t know the story of that, then look elsewhere… Don’t ask me now; not again and here.

But on there – on my finger the ring stayed for whatever reason. Yes maybe – most likely it was 'sentimental value' time again. But it remained. It didn’t move. Until the day that I moved on.

Until that day on which I turned my thoughts to something – maybe unknowingly – to someone else. And her ring moved on too.

Indulging in my own usual humdrum activities, I, during the afternoon, took off her ring and then later came to replace it.

But it wasn’t there.

And of course I searched – high and low and under and over most every surface I could find. And beyond the confines of my room, in the places where I knew it wouldn’t be.

But it wasn’t there. It had moved on.

In a sense this is very much how I would like it to be. There is a feeling I have when I still look for it, when I find a place in which I haven’t searched, that hopefully it won’t be there. But also at the same time, striking out the list of places where I haven’t searched means that I am becoming more and more sure that this is the activity that has taken place. Indeed, I have attached a higher and deeper reason to its disappearance than that of banality and misplacement. 

She had moved on.
 
And now the ring has moved on.

She served her purpose, and now I know her time has passed.

And now I don't whether to laugh or cry.