2022, Early Summer
Bare boobs, fluorescent green pants and the DJ is out of his mind. Light feet stomp on a heavy beat and I don’t feel at home here. People here are kind, they accept even me. With my dark blue buttoned-up shirt and dirty jeans. I look weird, I look normal. For all my disappointment and critique, I do thrive in polite society.
I live as an uncomfortable synthesis. Between the free nipple and the buttoned-up shirt. I tell myself a story, a story of how I fit in both. Yet my experience is that I fit in neither. My narrative and my experience sing in discord. So I am not yet a Self, I do not yet Be. The human being is a synthesis between its narratives and its experiences. To develop a Self is to find harmony between narrative and experience.
The DJ in all his madness captures my mood quite perfectly. Pushing dissonant tones over a thumping beat. As does the girl on the swing set, swinging excitedly over the dancefloor. Creating a fluctuating bridge between the two highpoints in her movement. A moving metaphor. I just sit here. I sit here on a block of hay. Sitting somewhere between weird and normal. Though, things considered, normal can be quite weird, and weird, for some people here, can be quite normal.
Let me describe the setting I find myself in. The setting a man, wearing nothing but long socks, just walked into. I am sitting in the attic of what the French call: a Chateau. A type of building that holds the elegant middle ground between a castle and a villa. The attic is part of the main building. I have been told this is a medieval structure which has been ‘modernized’ in the renaissance. It kept on being modernized until, well, this happened. It post-modernized. Whatever French lord called this attic his own, never expected this would happen here. This beat, the gracious girl dancing her heart out, the balding Frenchman taking lines off the bar. All around me people are dancing, talking, passing out. Maybe the farmhands used to get drunk here. Though this kind of hedonism, it is hard to imagine they could foresee this future for their boss’s attic. Imagining the future is weird, and imagining this present is odd enough as is.
I don’t really know the rules. When a man walks in, wearing only socks, what are you supposed to do? Is it rude to look? Is it rude to ignore? What is the opening line? Nice sock or nice cock? I don’t really know. There is also a girl here, a girl with, what I can only describe as, ‘magnificent tits’. She is, like me wearing a buttoned shirt but if you don’t use said buttons, things tend to escape. I can’t deny that I would like to experience a good look. But I have told myself that I am a well raised boy who doesn’t look. Not without an invite at least.
I can’t deny that I feel comfortable in, whatever this is. I feel comfortable but not at home. I like this place but do not love it. That is nothing new. I have friends whom I like but do not love. Friends that do not make me feel at home in the world. I have even collected some that make me feel deeply at odds with the world. I may like these friends but I do not love them. In such a way do I like this bar.
Anything that harmonizes the narrative and the experience makes us feel deeply at home in this world. In doing so, these things create love’s inspiration. This isn’t quite the feeling that the gracious girl is creating within me. This isn’t harmonizing, even though I could fall in love with her in a heartbeat. Experiencing her movement pushes the experience to dominate my narrative. Who knew grace could be this oppressing? I look at her. It is mesmerizing. It is enthralling. How she does this is a mystery to me.
The window in the back is open and a nightly breeze joins the people laying in front of it. What a view this is! The bright half-moon shines upon them. The open shirt, the graceful dancing and the balding Frenchman. There is much beauty in this old attic. I am glad that I get to marvel in this bar for a bit. These hippies sure are beautiful! Even though, I do not feel at home here.
I do wonder if the farmhands would have made me feel more at home. No doubt the visage would be less beautiful. But I often feel at home among heavy drinkers. Those who linger between worlds. The artists, the journalists, the bartenders. I do think the music would be less maddening. The lutist might have been a nutter but the DJ is mad. We have the technology now to go mad properly. Who knows, maybe I would never have been able to feel at home in this attic. I feel sorry for those who do. This bar isn’t normal and is thus quite rare.
If this is your home it takes an awful lot of work to create it. Society does not encourage this. People at home here do not quite have the freedom to indulge in their home. They really have to work for it. If we truly value freedom in our society than surely we would try make it easier to harmonize the Self. Easier to find a home. Easier to love. We talk about freedom, we still have a lot of work to do.
There is authenticity in this bar, there is beauty, there is freedom here. I do relish in this bar. For all its hedonism, its weirdness, its discomfort, I do like it here. The DJ might be mad but at least there is music in this place. I am enjoying my time in the Chateau, even though I do not feel at home here.
You should always give one song with each short story to listen to, in the background while reading! That way, it would feel a lot more immersive.