Meditating Ophelia

“ There is a willow grows aslant a brook

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.”…

Ophelia did not just dislike the others. She despised them. Everyday the pent up rage swelled in her heart and she recoiled deeper into her despair. When she looked into the resigned ever-smiling eyes of the elders, she found a twinkle of acknowledgement there; but where their knowing faces spoke of forbearance, she rebelled against the very idea as all her ferocious innocence precipitated whatever semblance of order was left into the sinking sky, defying the very stars. Her thoughts became some unstoppable tempest, ravaging the luscious countryside of youth. It was in times like these that she held her head high out of disdain, staring straight ahead with determination, trying as hard as she could to prevent tears of desperation from running down her cheeks. She knew perfectly well that if those tears spilt, she would break. And she knew that if she broke, the truth would burst and the inevitable would happen. So she walked through this night of the unknown, drenched by the rain spilling from a starless sky, her alienating grace inhabiting the proud beauty of long cold stone, the flicker of immobile lights. At other times however, her fury relented and she relapsed into believing like the others that there was nothing, no purpose and no ideal. Then she became the very thing she abhorred and once again her wrath would consume her.

“Therewith fantastic garlands did she make

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies and long purples,

That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

But our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them.”…

Ophelia had never quite been able to explain what made her so angry with her own generation. There was no rational explanation, only a multitude of irksome trivialities and an inexplicably inherent premonition that something was terribly wrong. There was something mechanical in the way they lived, something profoundly unnatural. It was not so much the fact they were constantly brainwashed and spiritually annihilated that disturbed her but the utter lack of humanity and will they seemed to possess. She was disturbed by the way that they were all identical; by the way they seemed so shallow and unreal. Above all, their eyes scared her: blue ones, green ones, brown ones, cold ones, empty ones, static ones, sordidly unfocused ones… It frightened her to think of them all sitting there, menacingly braving the dangers that dared cross their paths. They scared her, with their carefree elegance and their demented search of pleasure that was nothing less than an essential desire of forgetfulness. She could feel their deception and their self-disgust, it hurt her to know and she hated them for it. She hated them for their beautiful vitality and their self-destructive exuberance. She hated them for refusing to believe. She hated them for harbouring the deceptions of the elder instead of the illusions of the young. Once upon a time the young had thought that in order to get something, you just needed to want it enough. Now they only believed in what they saw, what they felt; but worst of all she hated them for not knowing how to love.

“There on the pendent bough her crownet weeds

Clamb’ring to hang, an envious silver broke,

When down the weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook.”…

The city was silent and empty. The streetlights danced on the surface of the river. As Ophelia sat there on the bridge, feet dangling over the side, lost in thought, eyes glaring unseeingly at the swirling waters, she sighed. Was it too much to ask that after all these centuries of torturing and slaughtering each other, the young could at last learn to love? Were they not supposed to embody renewal and hope? They did in sorts, but they lacked the will and the imagination. Some of them thought they knew. They would lock eyes and lips or walk down the streets in the sunlight, holding hands and laughing; but it was only some cruel parody in which the master puppeteer drew the strings of what was expected to be: petty arguments, moments of blissful comfort and refuge, affectionate words re-used again and again until they completely lost their meaning. Was it that the puppeteer lacked imagination; or was it their fault for not wanting things to be different, for not wanting enough? Of course it was so easy to satisfy oneself with an unambiguous life; but she could not stop from wanting more. The others either lapsed into what was easy and understandable or stayed forever lost and never seeking. The first lot, those who thought they had understood, were just content to put every thought tidily away into pre-labelled boxes. The others just did not know where to start looking; but looking for what, for life, for love, for meaning? They had no idea, all they knew was that they desperately needed something different, something more…

“Her clothes spread wide,

And mermaid-like a while they bore her up;

Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes,

As one of her own incapable distress,

Or like a creature native and endued

Unto that element.”…

Suddenly, Ophelia realised that she could not spend the rest of her life being either one or the other; that she needed to be in control, to make the choices be they right or wrong. She would teach the world how to appreciate the value of small wonders and how to believe in ideals. She would do anything, everything! Nothing would ever stop her, no puppeteer, no unspoken rule laid down by the propaganda of appearances. She would be free of the world, of its history, free to live and to love at last. Ophelia felt elated, she felt like all the glass walls that had been separating her from what she desired had finally shattered. It was due to this unprecedented euphoria that, forgetting her feet were dangling over a long fall into the river, she stood up utterly enthralled by her own will, at last seeing the way to realise her one most ardent desire.

“But long it could not be

Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,

Pulled the poor wretch from her melodious lay

To muddy death.

LAERTES: Alas then she is drowned.

QUEEN GERTRUDE: Drowned, drowned.

LAERTES: Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia,

And therefore I forbid my tears.”

Hamlet, W. Shakespeare, Act IV, Scene 7.