The beginning of philosophy is wonder.
Philosophy is man's expression of curiosity about everything
and his attempt to make sense of the world through his intellect.
I once met a boy who happened to be so selfish that he stole the world for himself.
He was also the most human person I knew.
His name was Alfred F Jones and he only ever went outside during the summertime, when the grass blades whispered and the landscape shimmered on the horizon.
It was at an utterly asinine party, with cheaply smuggled alcohol and sweaty teenage hands, all clustered together and screeching like children, pretending it was the most fun they had ever been pleasured with since the once blasé hallways of high school had dropped them shamelessly into the vivid certainty of the real world, a deep ocean filled with hideous freshwater fish that nibbled at the toes of the divers who did not know how to swim. They knew absolutely nothing about their selves, but were expected to know their exact future, when they were in all reality just small children in large bodies, trying desperately to stay afloat on the lifeboat of ignorant playtimes.
I stood against the wall, the citadel of the outcasts, nursing a cup of diet cola, watching as a tall boy posed for pictures and snapped his own shots on a disposable camera, winding and crackling in front of his fogged glasses.
The lens was suddenly turned on me and I blinked rigidly, caught off guard by the piercing noise, victim to the dollar store paparazzi.
"Man, you could have lightened up a little," Alfred smirked from behind the plastic, tilting his head up to capture a forgettable shot of the featureless ceiling, "I think I'll like the lighting in it though."
"You won't even be able to see anything," I somehow stuttered over my own breath, lips stalled with a silent sip of a carbonated sword down my throat.
"Oh no, you're so wrong! Follow me."
So I did, because I had always admired Alfred, the way he held control over everyone around, tucked them inside of his jean pocket and jogged away with them rattling against his thigh, keeping them intoxicated and cheering with laughter the whole time, perpetually entertained by his presence, even if all he managed to do was smile and scrunch his face into a lopsided wink. He fascinated me, because he had the absolute power to become the dull and hackneyed person the path before him entailed, but he always managed to escape it, finding artistry in everything, one time spending a whole sixth grade recess explaining to me the beauty of our bodies, the trillions of cells, and how they multiplied with every passing second, creating a replicated universe inside of us.
He turned up his staircase, boots colliding with the ground, before flickering the light on in his room, revealing a mess and a wall of people.
Well, they were not all people, and in fact most involved no humans at all, but the ones that stood out contained all kinds of beings, spiked hair, dark skin, rolled lips, smoky complexions, ornate eye lids, every kind of identity you could imagine, all smiling, tacked up against his plain white wall, giving the average room life, breathing into the static rolling all around.
The pictures surrounding them were lights and darkness and orbs of fireflies, all things that did not make sense in anyway, but tied together the aesthetic of human importance, framing the sprawling shots of transient strangers, without names but a clear face of their own, and even their own story, told by the distance of their eyes or the placement of their grin, screaming details of their lives over glossy surfaces.
A pile of empty disposable camera sat in the corner, and I watched as Alfred removed the film from his newest one before discarding it to the pile.
"Who are these people?" I walked over to run my hand over a portrait of a black haired boy, simple and sad, lips barely quivering above a frown.
"People, friends, strangers, just anyone really," Alfred tossed the capsule of film back and forth, thumping in his hands, "That's Kiku, I met him at a library. I think he lives in Japan now, at least that's what he said he wanted to do when I saw him last."
"And this one?" My fingers glided to a new picture, insatiably hungry for stories and information on these distant creatures, some sort of celestial anomaly I just had to capture.
"Gilbert, met him at a rock concert. I think he's dead."
"And her?"
"Mona, she owns a casino."
I slid to the floor, shifting my legs underneath my less than voluptuous body and kneeling next to the collage of faces. Alfred sat down next to me, Indian style and rubbing mud across his pants, grinning as I greedily singled out another person, so enthralled by the stories spewing out of his mouth I could not stop to contain myself, to disguise the childish glint of my eyes against the stark paper, to stop and hear the roaring crowd a floor below.
Alfred's breath was grease and oak as he laughed, leaning back on his palms and speaking of a male prostitute turned fashion designer, condescending beam washing down from above. An artist, a salesperson, a housewife, corners of the Earth breathing around me when he opened his mouth to list off their achievements and loves, never growing tired of entertaining my games, seemingly enjoying it just as much.
A bottle shattered outside and I pointed to the last person.
"Michelle, a Starbucks worker. She had the cutest gap in her teeth."
I dropped my hand and slumped back, stuck in the rivet of excitement and feeling but now left with nothing to fodder it, and Alfred watched me, expectant and fixed behind his electric eyes.
"So, what should I say when I put your picture up and people ask me about it?"
"I don't know."
Because I was not interesting like any of them, or beautiful, or anything Alfred needed to explain to anyone. I was not what his lens captured; the flash bounced straight off me and turned me to a waver of neon light, falling into the faceless wall behind the hundreds of dazzling smiles and lives.
"Should I tell them it's the boy who I'm in love with?"
"N-No."
Alfred had tried this card before with me, in the ninth grade, with a stumbling confession and poorly accepted refusal, almost crying behind his new pair of glasses and uneven bouquet of dandelions. It was not as if I did not love Alfred, I loved him since the day I met him, but it was because he did not belong to me.
He was never mine, never mine, never mine, and that was okay. He belonged to every recurrent world other than my own, to the hundreds of people gazing down at us, to the billions of stars that combusted every second, singing out for Alfred to touch them to sleep, to take his eyes off of the pointless, meaningless boy disintegrating on the hard wood floor next to him and pay attention to what was really important, all that he could do, and none of it involved me.
"Alright," as always, he was not deterred, and would not succumb to depression, continuing to pursue me, even when we were fifty and with families of our own, when he had a wife that kissed his cheek and a degree of Logic and Philosophy of Science illuminating his wall, he would appear at my doorway, same awry wildflowers clenched in his hands.
"It's like you think you aren't anything special Arthur, but you really are."
"Define special."
"Oh, I don't know," Alfred rolled back to the floor, arms intertwined behind his head, "The reason I wake up in the morning or what I sing about in the shower. You're really all I want to take pictures of Arthur, and you're the only thing missing from my wall. If you would just let me, I could finally feel complete."
I twiddled with my toes, snapping the toenails back and forth under the slowly oscillating light.
"You think I'm some kind of genius god, but I'm just a boy with a camera."
I scoffed, turning my head to glare down at him, eyebrows knitted together, "Don't be so vain, just give me a minute to get my smile ready, alright?"
The smile he fashioned across his own face pillaged the village in my heart and finally ransacked everything for himself, lips sucking in my whole being, stealing my soul away with the inaudible click of the shutter button.
Hello.
I love photographer!Alfred, and since America is the melting pot of the world, I think he would like to take pictures of every single beautiful person he finds, of every different background.
Arthur, then feels he does not deserve such a cultured, amazing boy, but he does he does.
The opening quote is from the song Isabella of Castile by Starfucker.
Please review, favorite, and have a beautiful day.