January 19th 2024
Hail, the airplane flight delayed by a common enemy. A quick announcement that led Britons towards a perceived exit, ushered by the yellow-jackets without apology or remorse. All looked quiet, as I avoided the initial reactions of the upset by hiding in the airport corridors, breaking the law by secreting poison.
The trip wasn’t meant to be, yet it nevertheless continued with a quick call and a glance towards the future; the advantages to the one-percent infinity pool. I have a companion with me, a friend of the nearby past. A fellow lost-boy who considers the world to be dangerous, and doesn’t hide said fact. We live in tumultuous times, say the newspapers by the airport-exit, but have a coffee to speed up the anxieties of today. We leave the airport with an amount of suitcases that others would use to move houses with. Yet for us, it’s a couple of days in the Alps.
I recollect the early morning wakeup, where I found myself where I am now: around a wooden roundtable, coffee by my side, and a sense of rush-fueled excitement that only pervades during the days of travel. What else is there to feel, when the Eternal Recurrence is interrupted at last by imagery of mountainous ranges and ecstatic speeds carved by wooden planks alongside the skinny anthropomorphic savages known as skiers. But perhaps not this morning, nor anytime soon, and as anger escapes me at the Father of Upset, we end up where we started, back at home, more livid, more lubricated, more confused.
But the next flight was upon us shortly, and off we flew away from the Motherland of No-Mother, towards the peaks of existence, where the crisp air refreshes our soiled bones, and there we can meet the New Year with consequence and revelry (albeit it never happened, nor will it ever, as tomorrow becomes today, and yesterday a story for the clouds). We arrive, hours later than arranged, and enter cubicle-vans that separate the Main from the Extras. The map reads out a defined two-and-a-half hour journey. It only expands as we move closer towards Courchevel.
The one-lane roads along the mountain-ranges become more and more crowded as the sun sets and the stars appear. The two hours become five, and now we sit in silence as the driver groans and haws, as if he too was one of us, perhaps comforting us, inviting us to think that the immobile forces of the Law weren’t caused by his miscalculation. Oh well, I rest, hiding in the back row as if it were a sarcophagus, wrapping my stomach lining with fast-food salads since the French have no need for solutions that please non-meat eaters.
Eventually, by the grace of Kronos, we arrive at the chalet. It’s not a simple chalet, but a four-story necropolis, containing the leisures of a pool, a steam-room, and even an elevator. What extravagance, what fortune. Already attached to expectation, I lingered in the servant’s cabinet that will be our resting joint, shared with the lost-boy, our nights become restive festivals that award our motivations of the day with deep-slumber and a cold-air blanket. The days ahead will be filled with contemplative co-existence, where strangers, friends, and family meet together and share bread. The strangers are Dionysian twins, each cradling their preferred wines that never seem to run out. Lovers of the festivities, they embody yes-men, as their children all seem to be their personalities that have been split apart by a fury’s lightning, and they trot alongside, proving only that it’s my friend and I who are the strangers to this gathering.
We, like ghosts, exist in the walls and speak only when seen. We watch, observe, how the families share stories that only exist in the Pseudo-Occult gatherings, and they drink and those who do not share stories as to why they do not drink. It is a classic gathering for New Years, as they compare stories about previous New Years and decisions as to why this New Years is the way it is, and thus all justify their reasons as to their presence being here. But the lost-boy and I, party of two, simply observe and have our own conundrums, our wanton ways of fretting over particularities, our own methods of awareness that really serve to blind us in the end.
Courchevel, filled with the slopes and pistes for all shapes and sizes, yet the roads to walk about are unimpressive and clashed with the constant droning of the decaying future commandeered by vehicles. Nowhere to walk or go, nowhere to spend a breath of respite. But the mountains have it, yet still constrained. The sense of freedom, not found back in London, is doubly limiting within the confines of a singular road leading nowhere; even the bus does not run, nothing runs. Nothing save an engine that is so impartial that it could kill a child the same way it vaults a speed-bump.
Nothing exists here, and it further externalizes a mental prison I have been finding myself in as of late; only discovered recently, I teeter on the verge of insanity as reality itself provides signs of a locked-up soul, where it only continues to project itself outwards as I reminisce for a future soon filled with asana and philosophy held only for the other side of the infinity pool. No matter, says the clown inside my head, keep your tongue inside and your shoes untucked, we have chaos to create!
So the groundhog has indeed taken the flight with us, and finds herself amongst the dead trees and no-life and repeatedly sticks her head out only to be disappointed; it is no wonder you drink, for your life is a never-ending cycle of no-cycles! It’s just what you need, a simple glass, to help play your role amongst society, and therefore you shall perish because the laws of grammar permit you too. Yes, the clown likes to talk.
There it was, the festive period of embracing an exoteric fallacy. But at least being surrounded by family and a friend allowed for love to pour out in byte-sized chunks. It allowed for a moment of sight, and a pondering of what is indeed important in life; the breathtaking beauty of not thinking. Of not working out what doesn’t need to be worked out. And although we left the trip with a torn ligament, a fractured rib, and a crooked tail-bone, my lost-boy pal and I have seen more disaster in the form of mental illness and a form of hatred left for the innocent to bargain with.
And, of course, the greatest reward is the no-reward: an exemplary performance of temperance; the maintenance of teetotaling. Despite angry outbursts, delayed travel, strangers, strange places, strange arguments, close-quarters, previous history, previous attempts, previous circumstances, and a family holiday… there was no drinking.
Thus the dharma was upheld. Blessed be.