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Bloodstains in the snow



“Words fail me, Clio.  How did you track me down, did I leave bloodstains in the snow?”

Whenever someone tells me to leave the past and live in the present, I am reminded of the above-quoted opening lines of John Banville’s novella, The Newton Letter.  The past will track you down even if you don’t leave bloodstains on the granite pavements you plodded on. The past can be a vindictive ghost especially if you haven’t managed to achieve something which the world of mediocre people perceive as success.  Mediocrity has a peculiar knack for sniffing bloodstains in snow.

The solution is not trying to live in the present.  The solution is not erasing the past.  The solution is keeping the mediocre as far away from you as possible.

The world belongs to the mediocre.  There is no real escape from them.  But you can keep a safe distance.

If you have political power, you can erase the past.  You can create new history.  Heroes become villains and vice versa.  Criminals have become saints in such rewritten history.  Saints have become criminals too.  Idols can be pulled down from their pedestals at any time and be replaced with new idols.  It all depends on which variety of mediocrity is on the ascendance.  

The ideal is to live in the present, in the here-and-now.  It is not impossible to do that provided you know how to sacrifice some of your convictions and principles.  Make compromises with mediocrity. 

Words fail me.  Compromises lie beyond the purview of the skills taught me by life.  The past was a failure.  Hence the present is doomed to fail.  And there is no future.  I have learnt to smile, Clio.  The smile belongs to the present.  That’s my only achievement.

PS. Written for IndiSpire Edition 212:  #followpresent

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