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I am borderline happy that I am borderline sad.
I am borderline happy that I am borderline healthy. One day, for a reason, a line was drawn. My awareness of it turns it into a border. When I forget about it, it’s just a line. It’s just the word line, really. Which is what it is when I talk about it too. Except that, when I talk about it, when I remember using the word to describe what I was feeling at the time and feeling frustrated with the word not conveying what I was trying to say — I get bored again.
And so it goes. A story about a line that becomes a border. A borderline story. A storyline border. A shape of things to come — or not. A shape of things to come eventually. When we reach the border. Not the line. Not the border line. Not the line border. But the border. When we reach the border and finally decide to stay there, then someone will have to acknowledge us, to see us for what we are and not for the “borderline” cases that conveniently confirm the existence of the line between what we know about and what we do not. If seeing a fat girl on TV promoting an organization that invites people to foster malnourished children from impoverished African countries makes me want to puke, am I borderline crazy? Am I getting there? If I say that believing in something that is not a “god” and didn’t have a son and a bloody cross for him to die on might be a better idea, am I borderline inferior? If I say I can prove with words what you can say in prayers or accomplish in actions, does it make me borderline pretentious? No, it doesn’t. It makes what I am saying outrageously pretentious — and strangely right. Just as there is a border between right and wrong, there is a possibility that one day you will find it. I write, therefore I exist as the border between what you will acknowledge and what you will deny. It is my duty to wait for you there, just as you are waiting for me here. We are equivalent. The border between us doesn’t need to be abolished. Waiting is what makes us human. In the mean time, let’s define our territories. Defining our respective territories, defining the border that separates us is as natural as the existence of both our minds in a world where they can be aware of each other. Maybe I’ll just go home now and bend over and pat my cat on the back and feed it and watch it eat. My cat is black. It’s survived a few mishaps. It’s caught fire. It makes sense 24 hours a day. It’s lightweight and flexible and perfectly balanced. Its name is — you guessed it — Borderline. I am borderline in love with my cat. My cat is borderline in love with me. The world leaves us alone — except for the sun and that stubborn moon. Lift me up. Bring me down. Lift me up. Bring me down. Lift me up. Bring me down. Me, the air, the water, the world around us and its peaks, its valleys, its plains, it explains nothing but it works, because the world around us is borderline real and a lot of people have been dancing on that very line for a very long time. One day, they’ll be rewarded with a proper border. In the mean time, there are the lines that I draw and the lines that get drawn by me. The lines that I draw are always on a surface, trying to trace the contours of a shape that I am trying to grasp by mentally connecting the dots and hoping for the best. The lines that get drawn by me are never quite as lucky as they are intended to be. Let’s just say that patience has very few rewards, and most of them are outdated. I am bold, in line of sight of a clearing. I am a tree that gets chopped for fear of a rebellion of the forces that don’t realize that I am already dead. Skip the foreword, I am borderline page three. |
