About The Jester

I often see my adolescence as a well-worn, tattered tapestry or a dirt-stained quilt. The fabric is woven with trial and error lessons, backbreaking work, and long, tiresome hours. After some time and exposure to the rays of the sun, the colors of said quilt have become bleached. Seams split and worn out frays add to its layered texture. 

I often lament how this tapestry of my adolescence used to be in its humble beginnings. Perhaps in speaking of innocence, I’m speaking of a universal metaphor for us all, as we all experience growing pains adjusting to adulthood. Even so, I have always felt particularly intense about this matter, almost obsessively more so than others. I view the quilt as a ruined rug; shredded and defined by its ugly patchwork stitches. Others seem to hold it up as a museum piece of bold beauty, which I find difficult to understand.

They’d see the original fired bricks laid 4,000 years ago of a Babylonian structure in modern-day Iraq, and discuss its miraculous resistance to eroding weather. I’d perceive that same structure as carrying too much painful baggage; its 1990s Gulf War bullet holes are just the latest edition in a long line of endless barrage.

A common illusion that one has as a young adult is that adulthood offers rich promises. For some reason, that checklist of having a job, a car, and a romantic partner seemed to line up like an Egyptian sundial to perfectly illuminate the definition of ‘making it.’ 

In such a baseline, naive understanding, I truly had to have held all of these ‘checkpoints’ at one point or another to realize that they didn’t define adulthood in the slightest, despite society’s conforming pressure. In addition, I have known many people who had all those things or more, yet either they decidedly handled them wrong or suffered the burnout intensely. The grass was never greener on the other side, at least not entirely in that generalized sense. 

Some things are learned and then forgotten. Mistakes repeat until the lesson sticks. For instance, calculus had been discovered by Greeks, scholars in India, and others around the globe before Europeans developed it in the Enlightenment and the Industrial Age. As such, I’ve had to (as many do) learn these lessons over and over, until they finally stuck. It’s frustrating to know that the world would have advanced much sooner if the original calculus manuscripts hadn’t been destroyed, forgotten or overwritten in irrelevant Eurocentric narratives. However, we understand those concepts now, which is really what matters, even if it took us an eternity to get there. 

I had begun an idea around three years ago, in one of my long-lasting literary landmarks. It was a rudimentary poem that I privately sang, with an audio clip of my friend playing the piano in the background. To me, this was the Ancient Babylon that really mattered and chronicled my being as a whole. While outsiders admired the impressive Ishtar Gate, I cherished broken copper bowls once meant for the dead. They spoke more for the reality of life to me than just its surviving highlights of great magnificence. 

The words spoke of myself in third person, as a man who did not shroud emotions and who had a strong resolve like stones, more so than some. Contrasting peace and violent war, it was structured like a lost fable. Regrettably, it did not leave room for many nuanced complexities of the real world, making the vague concept easier to gravitate towards as an emotional anchor. 

It centered around the concept of myself as a medieval court jester, spreading cheer and joy to courts far and wide, yet the real irony was that such a jester could mostly not smile or feel that cheer himself. It was an evocative doomsday knock on the door, begging for self-love, but it remained equally polarizing as a tragedy without a set solution. 

While I speak of the past, I have come to the realization in its full, profoundness only quite recently, that my own memory is not often reliable. Externally, it may be easy to playfully tease a friend about their forgetful memory, yet I feel that that generalization does not account for all of the brain’s capabilities. I’ve always believed in a naive sense that my own memory was considered very reliable. I still really do remember a lot of my life, or a lot of my adolescence at least. 

However, I have noticed that an emotional bias attaches itself to certain memories, perhaps more so than with my peers. An otherwise spotless pane of glass is soon frosted over with ice, often without my awareness of its full effect. This unreliable memory, even if only blinding me in certain spots, has surely pervaded much of what may be otherwise fruitful logic with swift cascades of emotion. 

The joyful memories can appear ever more enchanted to points of minor delusion, and the sorrowful memories build atop each other, with the potential tension that one would expect from someone endlessly about to knock down a long domino chain that only grows with every passing day. This reinforces my intense pendulum swing of mood as not only a symptom, but a learned habit that builds off of itself. 

I often feel like a child, in the best and worst ways. I know that I am endlessly curious and full of desire to learn everything I hear about, which aids me increasingly in my chosen career of journalism. I know that this childishness produces knee-jerk reactions that plagued me more in my adolescence than I’d want to admit, although I am advancing significantly in ability to counter thoughts that may otherwise prove hazardous. 

Logic is the police to the crime of feeling too strongly. It’s just that the police used to take forever to get there, unfortunately, and sometimes still do.

It’s interesting as the common definition of the word childish usually consists of images that come to mind of immaturity and juvenile tantrums. It holds a negative connotation, especially when used in a context of adulthood’s heavy responsibilities. I know that I may be immature in the sense of my silly antics, yet it does not reflect arguably more crucial aspects of my being. Childish also means light-hearted, spontaneous, imaginative, and open-minded. And a lot of energy, that too, which honestly isn’t such a bad thing now that I know my limits of exhaustion.

They see me as a unicorn, but I usually feel like a pufferfish. It is the push of crushing despair that gets me out of bed early and out of the house. It’s the reason why I learned to problem solve and articulate interpersonal skills. Why I’m creative and therefore humorous. They counteract each other like two enemies ever so eternally fighting tooth and claw, as is the way of reality, sadly.

Others that may be new to my life may pass through my illuminated window of hyper amusement and believe it’s desirable. I wish to explain as humbly and regrettably as I can that every extreme joy that I feel is matched every time, almost like clockwork, with a sorrow so anguishing and full of bitter blindness. The greater the suffering experienced; the greater the peace that is usually lived thereafter. 

This cruel exchange ping pongs back and forth seemingly a million times a day, forcing me to adapt, as to not be stretched between tidal forces of a black hole. Back to the jester, of course. Is it possible that medieval jesters were also intellectual authors or poets? Is that court jester who entertains the court also a practicing doctor or surgeon? Can it be that the judge is, in addition, a criminal? That a noble knight is also of poor humble origins? 

These things can certainly be true, yet it remains difficult to imagine that two contradicting ideas may both be correct in a realm of seemingly concrete beliefs. Some indeed say the jester lives life to the fullest, yet it may also be fair to say he feels more sorrow than many. Pulling apart these reinforced iron bars of deception that threaten to paint our world in such a narrow way that it simply never will be is a great struggle of the world, in my opinion.

Everyone has a nuanced story, believe it or not. This emboldened curse or horrid blessing that I bear, whichever it is, fuses with the rational intellect I borrowed from my father and the empathic sensitivity that I loaned from my mother. Coupled with that logic on police duty, arriving swiftly on time as of late, I have been allowed to see the world in a way in an abstract yet hauntingly beautiful manner. 

We tend to get wrapped up in our own lives. We believe everyone’s thinking about us, yet the only people who are worrying about ourselves with such intensity and destructive analysis are ourselves. We evade the reality that every passing soul is a being with family and dreams. Apply this to distant foreign wars or any massive statistic, and you’ll have trouble with this logical fallacy.

I was recently in the Yale British Museum for Art, alone with my near-empty iced coffee, waltzing around like a fool. I remember looking up at these paintings of long-dead people. Drawings of poverty-stricken farmers carrying crops in British-controlled India. I could feel the sweat on their back, the tiresome nature of their body. They may have been experiencing heartbreak, helping an elderly relative with ailing health, or reminiscing about yesterday's humor. 

I saw a depiction of a wealthy British woman in a sapphire dress, and wondered if she was married to a husband who gave her those jewels. What were her pastimes? What made her feel sorrow or fear? Ancient Babylonian structures are in sad ruin, yet they are also inherently beautiful due to their age. The tapestry of my adolescence (not even my entire life, mind you) is tattered and worn, yet its texture has built resilience and shaped character. 

These things sound obvious when spelled out so plainly, yet in the moment, you’re just a being of flesh on a spinning tilted rock in celestial space. And it’s lonely, even if you’re surrounded by ten million strong. Don’t pretend it’s not.

I suppose, if one such as myself really wanted to understand the jester, one would have to furnish art in pursuit of meaning, embrace light-hearted childishness when relevant, and walk the hills for centuries yearning for nothing and also everything. 

I’ll be sure to remember to clear my frosted windows with photos and writings to remember prior years. The moment I became an adult was not when I turned 18, 19, or 20. It was to not have a girlfriend or own my driver's license. It was not when I entered college, either. It was when I began to stop fighting reality and knew that I couldn’t control it all. It’s when I gave myself room for navigating tough decisions that needed attention with logic and care. It’s when I looked in the mirror and knew that some frosted glass in my memories was inevitable. It’s not supposed to be a light switch, as frustrating as that sounds, with most issues. It keeps on going, as it does without final resolution.

So thank you, loving court jester of the medieval courts, who brings such good laughter. I’ll forgive you for any wrong directions you gave or hearts you shattered. I’ll forgive you for any offended royalty you overwhelmed drunkenly or for your guilty internal struggle. The King just uses you for entertainment, I’m sure you know, but I really have seen enough of you to know that you truly, truly do contain multitudes.