The Man in the Beat-up Jacket

He asks you unnerving questions that would make you sweat to the knees. Any person who fears for the well-being of their sanity would just walk away and forever abandon the thought of such nonsense. What is very intriguing about his inquisition though, is that it is impressively inventive. And what is even more intriguing to me is the incoherent comebacks he comes up with.

I'll call him the man in the beat-up jacket.

An instrumentalist of Romanian origin and absolutely intelligent demeanor.

A worn-out yet clear accent sounds from his mouth.

The man in the beat-up jacket reads a lot; he talked to me about Quantum Physics after an embarrassing mispronunciation of the word from his side, and utterly embarrassing ignorance from mine. One of the first facts about himself that he happened to share with me.

One day, for no reason, the man in the beat-up jacket struck up a conversation with me about questions. He was particularly interested in deciphering the ones which cannot be cracked--a subject that has been discussed countless times. His speculation was that there exist tiny perplexities, concealed and undetectable, fixed inside us; the confusion that radiates from them is overwhelming and... well, it simply drives you nuts.

During the flow of our conversation, he mentions that my superstitious beliefs--which I earlier conveyed--are one form of the perplexities I mentioned before. He said that I am the way I am because of the immense load I carry of unanswered questions.

Confused, I argue with the intelligent man in the beat-up jacket that everyone, every living person, carries a hell of a load of questions that they will never fathom out.

He disagrees.

I reconsidered my initial impressions of him, and began to think that the man in the beat-up jacket is ill, mad, or perhaps very keen.

"Twelve," said the mad man in the beat-up jacket.

Again, confused, I think to myself that my new-found friend is deranged.  

"There are exactly twelve people in the world who have figured out the answer to their questions. You see, they are very clever."

I must warn you in advance that I very often am an uncommonly crazy person. I will chase strangers because I will get an uncanny feeling that will convince me that these are not ordinary strangers, but they are exceptional strangers, and I will probably strike up an impromptu conversation that will just end up getting me terribly humiliated. Nevertheless, I'll just walk back to you and poke your nose and kiss you and just walk and never care again. That's how I met you, if you remember--and of course you do--I just walked up to you and asked whether you agree that Woody Allen is a pretentious prick with a brilliant taste of scenery and a very impressive choice of words. I left for a while after your very confused self responded. I'll ask you about the instruments that make your spine shiver and the music that gets you high and that's all over two glasses of very unpleasant wine on our first date, I'll make my way back to you after my short-lived disappearance. I honestly couldn't stop thinking about you. I will speak to you like a madwoman in languages that I think are beautiful and don't know the first thing about, I'll even write you letters that will most probably make absolutely no sense, but I'll do it because I love you. You'll get to know what this word means to me by time, because I will have developed countless theories about love; the first of which is that we never lack it, not a single moment in our lifetime do we ever lack love because it is there--always. God is love and God is omnipresent, hence love is as well. I'll tell you how I believe in very little, I have faith in only a number of things and that, without my faith, I am lost and confused and scared and empty. I hate feeling empty. My frequent, incessant ravings will definitely make you reconsider loving me because I will wake you up in the middle of the damn night and tell you that life is meaningless, and just like my parents, you will ignore my petty philosophy which will probably have been triggered by a second-long dream. Believe me when I tell you I'm crazy because I will ask you to spend all our money on airline tickets even though we might not have enough of it to feed us, I'll ask you to leave everyone, leave with me, and sleep somewhere else. Somewhere unheard of and we'll make money off your music or art and I'll write about you. I'll write prose and stanzas all about you and the notes you play and the lines you run over a canvas. I love you. At night, you'll read my words and detect a strange familiarity between one page and every other; because like the energy of the universe, what I feel is never lost or gained, it stays the same. I always have the same of everything flowing inside me, it's just that on Sundays I may feel a bit more disconnected from the world while on Tuesdays I may feel slightly less disconnected; the sense of detachment is always there nonetheless. And here I am ranting and vexing you with my delirium. But, honest to God, I am crazy. I'm so crazy that I am actually waiting for someone like you who will have no problem with all of this crazy shit--with me. I'm so fucking crazy that I actually believe that someone like you is waiting for me back.