Esteban’s goals in life could be summed up by one guilty admission. Merely the answer ‘more’. He was the ever distracted and tired repeater of the sickly phrase ‘jack of all trades and most certainly a master of none’. As a small member of the cultural sector of society he had enough knowledge to blag and brag his way through most conversations on artists, poetry and cinema. Mostly regurgitating something a much wiser and admiral person had once said to him.
It was this terrifically pretentious and vile group of self sodomizers he secretly despised however he did understand their importance to his own success. He was aware, after all, that artistic creation could be born in his own mind but only made profitable in others. So he would stalk the halls of some disgusting modern art gallery, showing films of naked men running into walls. He would even turn a blind eye to all the shit sprayed on the walls. It would finally be the spectacle of an art critic raving about a blob of blue tack named ‘my depression summed up’ with a £40,000 selling tag hanging of it’s frame that would retire our forlorn Esteban home.
You see he was an Aquarian. The starter of all great ideas, and the finisher of none. His nicotine stained fingers had about a thousand unfinished songs to his name and dozens of unfinished stories. He pondered in the perplexities of commitment and time, ‘It takes to long get rich in this racket so I’ll just move on’ he thought daily. He had his bread and butter, always so, but bread bored him and he despised the taste of butter. Yet there was certainly some method to every ounce of madness that resided in his ambitions.
Esteban’s saving grace was self awareness. He knew both his strengths and weakness and he knew how to use them to his advantage. You see he was consistently unlucky but a persistently hard worker. This sad little fact would depress most, but Esteban saw only profit in all his realisations. A chance encounter of money would seem ever so unlikely so he would not waste his time in gambling or the lottery. Instead increase his chances of finding success. It was a mere numbers game to him. Increase your chance of success and luck becomes irrelevant.
Fiascos of the Fortune Minded 
Esteban’s mother had a secret…..she had untold resevoirs of patience. It was both a virtue and a curse, however she had never really figured out which one it was for it swung, almost on a daily basis, from optimistic expectation to nail biting depression. Mostly she tried and succeeded in shoving it to the back of her mind, obliterating it with the daily nothingness of work.
Not housework of course – for that she had the patience of untold, unmeasured procrastination knowing that even if she vigorously cleaned, mopped and polished within a few days it would accumulate once again. And so she had the patience to wait and delay the trials of housework, put off and ignore until it got so bad that her nose wrinkled so abysmally when she opened the front door that she could almost vomit.
Viola’s words from Twelfth Night sprang to her mind:
“A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? ”
Yes Esteban’s mother had patience, patience in love, patience in waiting, silent patience, asking for nothing and smiling at grief.
Viv Moghal
both lovely and sad at the same time, A true moghal tallent.