It Was Never Meant To Last

Reaching an age like I had, these small moments rarely mattered. Instances come and go without ever really changing you. Though there was one day that would change everything. I call it a day now, but that’s only on account of the importance. It could have been an hour or even a glimpse, but all I know is that it seemed to last a lifetime. Well, maybe not as long as a lifetime of someone that achieved something, but certainly as long as mine.

I was on my lunch break at the time and it was quite a nice day. I remember there being no clouds, but I can’t seem to remember if the sun was shining. As I normally did on a dry day, I walked across the park to get a cup of coffee. I didn’t have a window at my desk and I didn’t want to make the mothers in the park think I was a freak. So I walked across the park, bought a cup of coffee and sat outside on the rusty bench I had come to love. Well, love is a strong word, but it was a part of my routine that I couldn’t go without. It wasn’t even a nice place to sit, but at least it didn’t smell like I old paper. The coffee, as always, tasted like gravel. I never gave any sign of not enjoying it, because the mothers always kept a tight eye on me. I knew one of them was married to Jake, a coworker from the sales department. As soon as she talked to him, he would tell her that the store across the park sells the same crappy coffee, as he drinks at the office. For free.

As always, I try to look as relaxed as possible when I see what I think is a smudge. But wiping glasses and my eyes doesn’t seem to affect it much. I put my glasses back on, then get up to check it out. It’s fairly quiet, so I walk up to this little spot next to the slide. Right there next to it is a small black dot, only not as round. You can’t see it when you’re looking directly at it, but it’s there. I don’t know at this point if it is curiosity that pushes me past the wild panic I feel when I’m unprepared for something, but I can’t stop myself. I lift my shaky left arm and gently try to touch the smudge with the tip of my finger. Just before I thought I could really touch it, the tip of my index finger snaps. The shock stuns me and I feel no pain. Instead of touching the smudge, my finger bends past and down. By the time I realize this is real, still feeling nothing, my hand is so stretched out I can almost touch my own wrists. The panic makes it more real, but I never try to get away, I just stand there watching my limbs stretch until my shoulder is nothing more than a small bump in an otherwise perfect spiral. 

The circles keep getting bigger and when I am hanging upside down I can’t even see my hand anymore. What I can see is my body and I am repulsed by it. For the first time I can see it as a machine would: greased up bones kept together by a sack of skin. I am about to pass by my feet when I feel a gentle tug in my ankles. But I try to keep my feet on the ground. Then I see her. It’s Jake’s wife. She’s wearing the ugliest sweater that looks as if she let the fat baby drooling on her arm pick it out. She’s giving me this frown. She’s frowning at me! And not just the way you would frown at something you don’t understand, but the way you would frown at a monkey holding its own feces: sad to look upon such lack of self-control. If I could’ve just yelled “twat” really loud, that would have been enough. But I was in no state to yell, so I jumped. I spun around the crack faster and faster, each circle smaller than the last. And after that, I was gone. 

Not much had changed. The spinning had stopped, but I was still in the same place. It was a lot quieter and I could see to every side. I must admit, that was kind of strange at first. When I tried to move I touched the slide, that crumbled and flew into me. When I was one with the metal I remembered how you always wore the same shirt when you made pancakes. I don’t know if you wore the shirt because you wanted to bake pancakes or baked pancakes because you were wearing the shirt. Either way, I don’t think you ever noticed. It was just a unimportant memory; a lost detail I haven’t thought of in years, but suddenly it flashes clearly back into my short term memory. And with this memory I seem to grow to such extend that the sand in the sandbox is now also flying towards me. I remember how you would always invented maneuvers when having sex and would take great pride in naming them. And afterwards, when we were just laying there and I would never know what to say, you would talk about me being remembered by future generations as being witness to the birth of the greatest innovation to sex since the invention edible lubricant. Slowly, the jungle gym is coming loose. I can see it tilt towards me as the foundations are being pulled from the ground. When it’s completely airborne, it only has time to flip once, before it reaches me. I remember how you would get bored of conversations, dramatically roll your eyes and then walk off into that direction. Only once had someone dared to say something about it and as if rehearsed you answered, “Just roll with it.”  We were left behind deeply confused and silent, as your giggling got farther and farther away. 

My attraction was growing and more things flew and were digested. First, a trashcan and I remember how you would always flash me a piece of your shoulder in a very naughty '20ies way to test to see if I was looking. I always was. Even though I had seen you naked, it was still indecent fun. Then, a soda can, and I remember how I once found a doodle in my neck at work. I followed it down, in a bathroom mirror. I found there were drawings all across my back. I got angry and called you. You just said you couldn’t sleep and I was boring. You never used the word asleep, because you didn’t like ugly words. 

When I am hit by a bunch of roof tiles, I remember how you used to yell at people who used abbreviations when they speak and I am suddenly hit by this intense loneliness. I want this to stop, but I can’t even move. So I just try to burrow, but the dirt disappears around me and I fall deeper and deeper into the ground. First it gets darker, then I get warmer. There is fire al around me and everything crumbles into the darkness.

I remember a mole at the base of your spine, which is almost the same colour as your skin. 

He Cells / She Cells

A giant heap of imperfections, surprisingly capable of cellular respiration stands here before you. Go ahead, take pictures while you are at it. See these scabs and scars, and here,… this infection is starting to crawl through the skin.

Wouldn’t you like to be in this mess we’re in? Just for an afternoon or two?

I have found myself, more than once, carefully throwing a raw egg over my right shoulder and salt at those carrying the evil eye as they walked away from me – being unaware of the impossible mix-up that lifts none of the curses I sense impending pompously over my head. 

‘Good lord, did she try!’

‘Ah yes, but she did not have the knowledge needed.’

‘Clueless, surely. Be it true!’

No luck in the magic department yet. Maybe in a year or twenty when I will be as old as those who shake their heads now, confident that they know they know better by the grace of accumulated time.

Brain size? – Similar. 

Innate wisdom? – No way to measure.

So here we sit, with our sex cells and our lemonade. Pretending, for none other than our selves, that we know a thing or two about our wishes and commands. How we wish we did not have to command anything, and how we command, from life or the grand organization of human conduct, to grant us somebody to make those wishes come true.

‘Oh, how lopsided!’

‘Shhhht, don’t ruin the show!’

‘Sorry, carry on…’

Gee, thanks.

Is this that part of life’s cycle in which I stand defeated by my youthfulness and inexperience, or the fact that I am not yet fifty? If so, let me then focus for a minute on the only set of patterns left to trust; a calculated intake of nutrients in the margins of a 24-hour day. Look at us, feeding these giant heaps of time-bound imperfections approximately 3 times a day, so we may wake up, so we may produce all the energy our cells can magically manufacture. Then, maybe someday, the very best of us will surface and shine brighter than these scabs and scars.  Low and behold, we may even move beyond this mess we’re in with time having our backs, instead of our arrested eyes.

Devices For Curving

The boomerang accumulated so much leaf and feather on its way back, we mistook it for a bird, attacking the dog.  And we yelled “What the hell is that thing doing to Fluffs!” Forgetting our boomerang, that, had it not been the bird attacking Fluffs, would still have been on its way to our heads. In religious terms we were the Christians eying the Messiah, abandoning all else, while a Jew would have still been waiting for the Real Deal. Either way, Fluffs was fighting his attacker, and we panicked while hair, leaf, feather, and dust were twirling around the playground in anxious urgency. It goes without saying that this scene went down in slow-motion. People gathered ‘round, mouths dropped open, arms slowly swung into the air, stretched barks of the dog came from the tornado of particles. We waited.

When the dust settled, a heroic dog with a bump on his head, and some fur missing, stood firm on his paws, holding in his mouth a clean yet tooth-marked boomerang. We turned around to the part of the sky in which we had thrown that particular piece of wood, and then back to Fluffs.

We then, feeling quite sure this somehow needed an announcement, yelled out the final score in this fight; “The Bird took our Boomerang!” The gathered audience shook their heads in astonishment. “But Fluffs saved it!” Applause from the hands of the relieved passers-by; they could now calmly continue their otherwise somewhat lame Sunday morning walks, knowing they had their epic story for the home-front already in their pockets.

One of them said to an other while walking away; “Can you imagine a bird swallowing that entire Boomerang, and the Dog devouring the thing alive! Incredible!” Yet another whispered to a friend; “I heard they went to some place somewhere in Africa, and got that Boomerang from a Voodoo Master. I wouldn’t want to play with things like that! Who knows what kind of spells you bring home with you!” A father told his Child to be careful playing in the park next time; “There are some extremely dangerous animals in this park, you should always be very, very cautious!” Nobody seemed interested in verifying either story, or statements made. Therefore it was not a long jump to the conclusion that Sunday morning souls are rather attached to whatever it is that causes commotion. Abandoning all else.

We took Fluffs by the collar and petted him on his head, making sure not to touch the bump. The three of us stood silently in the mess of leaf, and hair, and feather, watching the people go about their day contentedly. “The show is over guys,”  you said in a soft voice, almost sad that the ado had run its course. I took the boomerang from Fluffs, and cast it back into the air, staring patiently in the distance for its return.

We'll Always Have Paris

 It wasn’t even that much of a change at first. It was more like a discovery than a real change, people acknowledged it, tilted their heads to say “hmm” and went on with their lives as if it didn’t concern them. For years people kept pretending, as people often do, that these things only happen somewhere else. “Those scientists sure were crafty to think all of this up, but they can’t mean us, down here in <stupid backwater city on the other side of nowhere>, so we’ll just keep things as they were...”

Then, very slowly, people started noticing the cracks. Little things that slipped between the bars of their mind to make them realize that nothing would ever be the same. Agencies were founded, that counted the number of people that thought of you daily, semi-daily or sometimes. Still, most people were able to ignore them. Only the truly scared were members back then. But when they started hiring people to fill the gaps, they couldn’t be ignored anymore.

Some people paid good money to be thought of and didn’t care who did it. Anybody could rent a sometimer, but to be able to buy a real dailier was a luxury reserved only for the ultra-rich. But I’m getting ahead of myself, I’ll have to start, at least near the beginning.

The first clue that led to all of this, was Paris herself. During her third marriage, people started noticing that her husband (what was his name again?) started to get old, while sweet young Paris stayed exactly the same.

During that time, she herself believed that this was because of the care she gave her appearance. She kept repeating that line in every interview, for so long, everyone started to believe it.

By the time she was in her nineties, her grandson died. The boy, infamous for his unnewsworthy face and life, had rejected the Paris name and legacy long ago. He went on to become a college professor who specialized in 18th century cotton farmers. He went out like a common house cat: of old age and in his sleep. The only thing the papers said (besides the huge pictures of his grandmother’s new line of swim-wear) was that in the weekends, he liked collecting miniature trains.

Paris, realistic as ever, hired a team of scientists to interpret her new found immortality. They quickly discovered that attention, when harvested correctly, could be more powerful than time itself. By this time, the news was all over the world and the We’ll Always Have Paris Corporation (WOHP) quickly became the front man of this newfound science. Being the oldest and richest woman alive, Paris quickly adjusted to this new position and took up her throne as unquestioned Queen of Earth.

When new companies were stealing members away from WOHP, it was only a matter of time before Paris would launch the next step: the constant. The constants were people bred purely to think of others. They were kept in stimulus free environments and were never introduced to anyone except their specific member.

The balance quickly shifted as the rich now not only had better living standards, but never seemed to die. From the hatred of the poor, the Anti-media arose, a group of violent guerrilla warriors set out to rid the world of all media. The papers were quickly defeated and so were television stations. A building can be bombed, a CEO can be shot. Eventually, only the Internet remained as an all powerful information source. The Anti-media tried to stop the Internet by bombing power plants and hacking sites, but the information still came through. The Internet splintered into an endless amount of little news outlets. Everyone of them clinging to their readers because they were the only way for the poor to attain sometimers.

I had just finished my blog around midnight, when suddenly I thought of Paris. I hadn’t thought of her in quite a while. Long ago, when her need for thought was less, I was one of her dailiers. Suddenly I couldn’t suppress the need to see her, but that might have been a side effect of my work as a daily. I drove to the Paris estate and took the employees entrance. The only security guard there was caught up in a vLog made by the best friend of a girl that looked like Paris the way I remember her from my dailier-days. There was a lot of mail on the kitchen table and since no one was around, I read it. There was a letter from WOHP that spoke of the growing need for constants and the absence of payment. I skipped through it quickly because there was also a printout of an article about the girl that looked like Paris. Turns out she went by the name of ParisX and the article was about the illegitimate child she had after a fling with a European prince. She had raised her in secret, but had no choice but to give her up when she was forced to go to rehab. The daughter was now suing her for that and the pictures were showing ParisX, crying. Even with her make-up running, she was lovely. I couldn’t believe she was 20 years older than me...

Still holding the print-out, I walked into the living room. There, behind her laptop, was Paris, the other one. She was a horrible sight, her gray skin barely covered her bones. I carefully pushed her body aside to go search for more about ParisX, when I saw that her blog (http://wellalwayshaveparis.prs) was opened and she herself had been her only visitor. (kinda desperate, really) Her latest entry consisted only of one sentence over and over again: “everybody dies alone” I looked at her and frowned. “The old coot was on to something there,” I thought while looking at a couple of pictures of ParisX naked under a waterfall.

I think that this will be enough to start you off. The men outside said five to fifteen minutes, but I simply don’t know what else I should talk about. I’ll be back to visit you next week. Oh wait, no I have a conference on Wednesday... Probably in two week, okay my sweet? I promise.

Until then, remember:

Think of me.

Always.

There Is Something About Time That Numbs Us

I am not going to do it anymore.

I said, I am NOT going to do it anymore. My head has been in speed-mode for years and years and it is spinning so fast and so controlled that nothing has been able to stop it. There’s schedules and agendas, appointments and deadlines, I can’t even find time to go to the toilet.

Yes you did hear that right, I have been constipated for ages.

It is always buzzing around me, something is always making a sound.

I see my husbands shape in the heap of blankets beside me when I leave for work in the morning, and I believe he is able to define the curves of my hips and waist in the blankets when he comes home from work at night. I consider the times he talks in his sleep to be the most valuable conversations we have. I whisper back sometimes, just soft enough for him not to wake up. The sun comes up, the sun goes down, I crawl in and out of bed, and the moments in between are filled with buzzing sounds. Buzzing sounds and yellow post-its.

We have a system, my husband and I. The yellow post-its are for general information, the pink post-its are for emergencies, and the blue ones are for personal comments.

The other day when I woke up in the morning and went to the kitchen to get some breakfast, there was a yellow post-it on the refrigerator door saying there was left over Chinese in the plastic bag on the vegetable shelve inside the fridge. There was a pink one stating he had to cancel dinner appointments with my parents on Saturday because there were problems at the office, and there was a blue post-it that said;  “I think it’s time for a baby.”

I stared blankly at the refrigerator, and fell with  my knees to the floor a few seconds after the glass did that I had just dropped from my hand.

I remembered what I used to dream about, I thought of the birthday parties, the dinners and the trips to the park. I remembered the fresh air that always seemed to breeze through my future dreams. Back when impulsiveness didn’t make me angry. I looked down. Back when I felt things. I took a yellow post-it and wrote; “I am at the hospital, my knees needed some stitches”.  I took a blue post-it and wrote; “I quit my job,” and on the pink post-it I wrote; “We need to talk”.