Devil’s Paradise - Youssef RZOUGA (popular e readers .txt) 📗

road. Blind corner. Good and evil. To always see the bad side or to zigzag along is getting only normal and to be on the right track is getting strange, Ha!, Ha!
Only a miracle…
5
Wellwell Jr collapsed.
“How can I do it?” asked Well Jr.
His father pretends not to hear, and then he starts laughing, while relieving Well Jr.
- So, you have not read Devil's Paradise!
* Listen daddy! I need to escape.
I don’t know where to go.
I need some fresh air.
Yet it all started so well but those big clouds are sure a sign of a storm.
6
Wellwell is mixing time. He puts on his laptop while singing loudly. Suddenly, holds his breath to say something important.
Come to see Well Jr!
What else? Another blackjack ?
Ha ha ! No! No! I’ve just read the email of Elsa d’ Ouragan concerning our conversational context.
Well, go ahead! Read it!
Well reads:
“I’ve greatly appreciated the comment of Olfa Philosophy, it’s true that it’s a general comment. Being an internet addict for only one year and a half now, I was myself trapped in the ‘web’ of the virtual web and I’m still fighting inside in order to arrange things and restore order to my life.
It’s so difficult! Olfa is absolutely right! But the heart is so fragile when it stops beating for anyone or anything…in that case, the screen acquires such an indescribable hypnotic power!
Now I can see clearly and I can fathom the depth of your story and mainly of your last chapter in the light of what you’ve just said…
Naturally, the writing style can mislead us, but the core is quite there, even though the message is not clearly stated, yet it’s implicit… Sorry for the bitter truths, but I congratulate you on the text and the way of approaching the issue, which is far from being superficial…
I wish the best for Well Jr henceforth, and wish that his lost happiness will be found again in the years to come given his painful experiences…”
7
A wave of grief overwhelmed the face of Well Jr, yet, thinking about the implicit message behind Elsa’s thought, he smiles. She has just refused a symbolic gift by Wellwell.
“It’s so kind of you, but I think I’ve already subscribed at Gmail, yet given the problems mentioned above, I avoid any thing/ trap like chat, MSN, or other direct conversations… I only respond to my Yahoo emails and Facebook messages.”
A well – grounded and rational excuse! Congrats Elsa ! Applauded Well Jr. The father, shook his shoulders while consulting his mail box…
LOL ! I think I’d rather shut up otherwise you’ll modify your chapter again! Wrote Elsa.
I really like it…a mirror of reality, it seems we are numerous to have been caught in the devil’s paradise…a glimpse of light in an empty and dry life… a mirror of the larks that we are in a so -to- speak ‘modern’ shape…Time has come for us to deconstruct reality in the light of these thought-provoking comments..
* Millions of shipwrecked victims...
- Yeah, as I’ve said, we are no longer a minority to sail in the mesmerizing ocean of virtual illusions…may be because, disguised behind that damn screen, we drop out our social masks and let it hang out …Behind the screen we give voice to that inner part of us we usually keep in the shade…Curiously enough, behind that screen, this inner frustrated part of ourselves is released, and only our virtual contacts manage to perceive it…that part which is much closer to our real selves…It’s for that very reason that it kept striving for resurrection and found the screen as the best shield to hide behind and survive…
Behind that screen, we let drop that part of our soul in order to better understand ourselves… The danger is when that real socially frustrated self interacts with another through that well-chosen adjustable self-picture and surprisingly enough pleases them… Similarly, if that virtual other grips your attention and nails your heart in that enchanting and fairytale-like way, here you are harpooned. Once this link is strengthened and intensified contextually and emotionally and may even evolve into passion and love, your imagination and the satanic whispers are released and relentlessly dream of the ‘eternal’ joyful life you would cherish in the arms of that other, even though he disclosed only part of himself …You start dreaming about that would-be-life as the best alternative for your boring, monotonous and passionless life which turns out to be the damned fate of us all…With the colourless heart stories lingering still in the memory, yet too far in time, we find ourselves eager to hear our hearts beating again, to embrace the cruel princess of love again, to get burned again with its flames before the ghost of old age takes us in its grips…With that in mind, and finding or having the satanic illusion that the one behind the screen is on the same wavelength as yourself, while may be in the ‘reality stage’ you may have not even given a single gaze to that person, is one more reason for falling into the devil’s paradise…
In addition to all these facts, I can invoke also the innate human desire to dream and spread one’s wings and fly away from the monotonous reality which drives us absurdly to blind intentionally ourselves in order to keep on dreaming and dreaming, and childishly refusing to land on earth… Nevertheless, this virtual passion is a double-edged weapon, as we get cornered in the devil’s paradise /hell we start giving roots to new forms of frustration, that of the cruel denial and postponement of gratification for these desires and lust created by the virtual realm…
But how can we land back again on earth without being hurt? That’s the real problem…what will be the interest of the people surrounding you, those who didn’t make yet a single move…
We must have all hundreds of silenced painful stories to tell…
8
Everything is oscillating, wrote Wellwell; the moody human nature, the details of a heart story trivialised and sunken in the mass…the daily costume balls…egoism…the abuse of freedom already within the reach of everyone in this world…the courtesy of sympathizing with the strange disguised other(s) ? But to what extent? to love? which love? Reality ? which reality ? that of the double- sided coat…the viper of the dreadful virtual world…the hand stretched out for you…is that hand really the right person’s hand or rather that of the devil dragging us to hell ? The one who loves you or is likely to be your would-be-lover, would be able one day to save you from this enchanting yet sinking boat and its magic hypnosis?
“As for your comments on this Latin American person,” writes Elsa, “and according to my personal experience, I do share her view that we are victims of our own misinterpretations, seizing those alleged big deals and unconsciously influenced by our empty or ruined emotional life, instead of standing back a bit from things and to objectively analyse situations or only having enough good sense to enquire about the reason behind everything and every single act independently of the arguments we may find whether satisfactory or not…
Generally speaking, we have that tendency to judge a person on shallow bases like a word, a letter, an attitude, or a multi-interpretable silence which is so hard for us to bear…
In that very bizarre virtual relationship from which I couldn’t get detached yet, that of the secret lover, how many wrong judgments arose from the frustrations of being misunderstood, exactly in the same way as it happens in reality with the person before us…We tell ourselves, that if that person loves us, he must have reacted in a different way, the way we expected him to do…Yet, we should all be conscious of our own shortcomings, something we usually and intentionally lose sight of to pinpoint to the shortcomings of others, while deep inside we know all that no one is perfect. One should think about giving a chance to the one who deserves it …after all , if ever we are interested in that person, can we reject him overnight with no single convincing argument? Will we be able then to easily forgive ourselves or we will keep bearing the pang of remorse for that unjustifiable error/ excuse? Taking one’s distance is
sometimes a must and I think we generally avoid that given our own weaknesses and fears so we prefer to reject the other under the pretext of committing a certain mistake...Actually, we rarely come across our alter ego…It will be wonderful if we meet it once in our life course…
9
Sunny time intersected with downpours.
“If only taking our distance is the best way to bring us back to reality…” said Wellwell, while opening another window to answer his Moroccan friend Tina D’ Atlas.
That’s right! (with a sigh). History repeats itself only with you.
I was expecting you to tell me something else but... It’s hard to tell. If I may say so, childishly simple, I was and I’m in a wretched state. That’s what you have to concentrate upon, asking me the question of the whys.
I was out of sorts that’s why I had to leave in order to withdraw into myself.
The idea never crossed my mind but in the state I was in, situation of potential conflict, the bludgeoning, to sink into depression, to collapse with exhaustion, etc, all this compelled me to die a little, in the distance, far from noise.
Friends, for their part, are wholly engaged in navigating elsewhere, they have their own paradises.
I’m not blaming you for anything Tina, there’s no need to worry.
You have been really nice to me but instead of relieving me, in the state I’m in, you’re going away.
What’s stopping you writing to me? Is it the artificiality of virtual reality? Now it’s raining, marvellous!
To leave me all on my own, without even speaking, I was not expecting that.
Sunshine interspersed with showers.
10 wait
In a wink of an eye, Wellwell clicks on his mail box.
“Needless to say that I appreciated your text,” wrote Elsa again, “everything is copied in the chapter…But I’d rather stop chattering because I find myself inexhaustible.”
“I’ll carry on myself,” whispered Wellwell.
Step by step, the black clouds started to clear away.
The curser grew angry, another click…
- I’m convinced that the romantic Wellwell is alerted as soon as a woman is caught in his grips, admitted Tina:
“Personally, I don’t need to blush for the feelings that I have for you Wellwell. I’m not living in a virtual mirage because I’m quite conscious of myself and my defects and also my openness to you is not a simple evasion , but rather an accomplishment of all the realizable things and precisely mine…
Wellwell, the romantic is more skilful in exerting on the readers the magic power of his fantasies, of his romantic mornings, of his revelations and later transforming his messages into novels, yet are his confessions the fruit of his objectivity? Does his subjectivity coincide with the world views? The discourse hackneyed on the nose and his harmful effects are so easy, but transforming it into a novel is quite a different task!!!
On the net, everything that is harmless becomes dramatic and the romantic Wellwell is putting into light the troubles