Love is 24 frames a second (new book sample)
Chiaroscuro: Love is 24 frames a second.
Just imagine this: you step into a random café in a strange town where you know nobody. You step into that unfamiliar place and in the corner sits someone who mesmerizes you. Silence suffocates you. The scent of freshly brewed coffee hangs in the air. You hold a book in your hand and notice this person is reading the same book.
You think you’re already falling in love, but not yet. Wait till you hear the rest of the details, wait till you experience it all.
Now imagine this: the world outside these walls is forgotten. The people you knew, everything, gone. You want to hurry to conclusions, to believe that everything looks perfect from the start, but not yet. You want to write the rest of the story, all of it.
Experience is the worst tormentor. It teaches you everything before you even get the chance to ask the questions. Before you realize that you both were reading the same book, the book of destiny.
The person sitting in the corner lifts their gaze to you. Eyes green like yours, the color of an apple, the color of the first gaze. You wish your eyes were both blue, like an ocean where you could both swim deep, in ambiguity, in randomness, in mystery.
You wish time was never diluted. Delusions.
You wish your birth dates were different, your vocations, your artistic endeavors. But both of you are humans, dreamers, wanting to live a life outside these confined walls. Wanting to fail more, to experiment more, to swim in the odd rain of change. Because you truly never know which moments are the most precious. The past few seconds or these? Or do you hope to recreate every glance?
The same name, Malak, an angel. Malik, the owner of something. What if you imagine this was meant to be? You forget about not paying the electric bill, but who cares. You are a failed writer with a few self-published books. And she, an enigma, a star in her own world of art. Drawing pictures, sketches, tossing them into the river nearby, and repeating the cycle forever. She never knows. She never knew what the lines in the palm hide.
You write a poem. Improvise in blue ink and black. Your career is over, you hate writing screenplays. Why do you call yourself a movie maker? Command Z. Delete the timeline. You could be making a movie if only someone gave you 10 million dollars. Maybe 100. But is that what you really want? You could be making a different movie, surely a better one. You could mean it. Hell with materialistic success and fame.
This is the best movie you will ever make because it is real.
Now imagine, everything you ever lived for was waiting for this moment to come. You are both the same. Two in one. One in one. You both are everything you wanted to know about life and each other.
The conversation ends abruptly. There are no more words to say. You ask, is this a love story or more?
It is not a typical one.
You open the door, walk outside, and suddenly forget everything. What happened? A car accident? Something fell on your head? Or did everything you knew never really happen?
You want to go back inside. The story just started, but you don’t remember anything. You don’t know anything. Everything is forgotten.
Wherever you find yourself next, you have to find the traces, the frames of all the beauty that made your life’s movie. Did you forget what made you happy? Maybe she was there to remind you. To remind you like an old tape so that you can see again.
Everything is deep inside you, within you. It has always been, until you met her.
Now imagine, where do you wake up next?