someone recently wrote on another forum that ‘all the women sigh for mr darcy’. i had to take exception with the statement.
i never knew this figment as this name, for all i have known the book and the movie. in my world, he was called ‘the man who does not exist’. i have written of him, here and there, and for many years, would write to him every year… foolishly… on holidays, on days whose only meanings rest here, with me.
i used to write to him of all things. dreams, hopes, fears. i used to tell him i didn’t mind waiting for him because i knew his name was a lie. i believed.
i haven’t seen the movie since it aired on pbs some years ago. and i never owned the book. and the idea of mr darcy never rested here as the symbol of much of anything.
but blue eyes and winsome smile and kind and gentle heart… and above and beyond and just because and despite it all and hopelessly lost-found-lost-found-and-found-and-found… did.
did.
mr darcy shares something with the man who doesn’t exist. in this sharing, they are the same, even as they are utterly different.
for a brief while, i thought, perhaps, the man who doesn’t exist was the lie.
but in truth, they are equally illusion.
in the meadow, in a dusty, rusty red truck that i always seem to call a car, sits the man who doesn’t exist. he is driving. he is driving down a road i have never traveled, and he tells me he knows where it leads.
a small cricket sits on the dashboard… playing falsetto symphonies in the dark… i was sleeping in the seat, but i am awake now. i am awake now and blue eyes and winsome smile and all the rest sit in freeze frame security… the truth, the lie, all the same in the end.
nothing. all of it. how could it be anything but nothing for me… for me and the man who doesn’t exist?