IRC-Galleria

And there she sat. It was the end of the world.

The music played endlessly, it looped desperately. The last survivors of the dustbowl raved to the beat with devotion of an assured, lurking end. Everyone here had been lost, just like her.

She sat at the all-seen wooden table, listening to the hypnotic, surreal dance beat in a former highway rock bar. There simply was nothing more. Everything was here.

Yet everything was void. From the beginning to the end, it held no meaning.

She stood up. The loop grabbed her for the last time.

Rev. 3.11.2010

"Why is it that you never bother any of these people?"


The glass-walled street had suddenly come alive with the casual stomp of footsteps on the stone tiles below the catwalk. It was full morning by now, and all the identically faceless, well-clad business people were pacing to their glass cages. We'd been here for a while now, and despite the appearance of a harbinger, nothing had happened this time. I was starting to feel anxious. My familiar stranger stood there, leaning on the railing; his habitual smug grin attained dramatic features in the contrast of the direct sunlight. And casually he answered, "They make money."


His first answer never satisfied me, and I often grew irritable through our dialogue. I replied, "But they're always more stuck than me in their caffeine cycles and spacious cubicles. They'll make money to feed their insatiable urges of consumerism and all that sinister system dialogue we've had earlier. We've agreed I'll never walk along with this loose crowd. Why are we here?"


"Why does everything make sense?" He looked at me condescendingly. He'd always have patience to outlast mine, maybe the only merit of this unfunny jester of a mentor.


We had stood on the catwalk from early morning making such uneasy conversation. We arrived with the air still fresh of dawn and the quiet business district barely catching its first rays of direct sun. Today had been different from all our previous encounters. This time he had come for me, not just appeared out of nowhere in a public place as he had always done. I had been so certain for the whole time that he, as always, had something important to convey. He was, after all, my harbinger of dissatisfaction, of change. Slugging on without resolution only fed the ridiculous desperation I volitionally tried to fend off.


I settled to answer with a traditionally hopeless long-shot definition, "Because everything attributes to a rule. The real question is only whether we can play with that, even without knowing the rule."


"What do you have - more than these people?"


I rarely found logical transitions between his questions. He was again dragging me through something. It was progression according to his pace, on his terms. With him, I invariably felt I was a life away from a right answer. He knew I felt more and more insufficient with each answer I coughed up; this was his game.


Still, he never continued without my answer. I answered with a vague recollection of our previous conversations, "My freedom to end up anywhere - I've ambition and my dreams. There's the path thing we talked about earlier. I've still my options and junctions. I've only a fraction of their anchors."


Something entirely new swept his face: he looked the slightest bit worried. He turned to me, and with a grave voice perturbed me, "They are all satisfied. Tell me: when are you going to be any happier than these people?"

¨

He sat down - it would take its time before the train would depart and take him home. The covers of a leather-bound booklet opened, unlike had been the case for the months past. His pencil outlined:


"And today, my journal, I found out how my feelings had once again been so right for so long. This situation, as I knew it, wasn't the problem. Nor were its premises. My reaction cancered everything."


He always opened with the introduction of prose.

"Today, yesterday, I halted my quest, I surrendered and settled down. And that, dear journal, my primus motor could never allow me, which I dearly thank it for. The day to settle for what we've achieved so far is what we all strive for. But to give up ambition and persistence, which such would imply, isn't what I strive for. How could it be a merit?"


"Say, dear journal, I'd love walking. I used to walk to move forward, since it was kinda essential. It won't get me anywhere now if I start walking an conveyor belt in the opposite direction, even if it were just as pleasurable an action by itself. And when I'm rich and start staying home to just walk on my conveyor, it really doesn't solve my situation, does it? The moment we finally settle for happiness today, while still being discontent with yesterday and tomorrow, we cross out our need for ambition and will to develop."


"How can such happiness be a merit: to give up life for happiness?"


"I've substituted - "improved" - such large portions of my life into parts that ultimately make me happy without fluctuation; it's like the heroinist's paradox (note 1) all over. I have no need to develop them further, as the peak of the figure has already been reached. Yet all-in-all, I only feel alive in the ambiguity and unpredictable changes."


The implications of the conclusion he hadn't yet reached in writing already overwhelmed him.


"That very spot I lie in is not where I die."


He'd found his answer; his separate thoughts had finally intertwined and found the same outcome his feelings had, already months ago. These feelings marked the imminent end of the ongoing era. And now a border had already been crossed, and the cycle had already begun anew.


Without formalities, he closed the covers. The doors of the railway station proved no trap, they swing both ways. The sunny autumn day is an endless space.



note 1: The heroinist's paradox: While on a fix, a user achieves a unique state of bliss, which in part, if contrasted to the normal life, makes the substance highly addictive. The paradox is: if normal people could achieve such a state of happiness sustainably, constantly, would it still make the world a better place?

Prelude:

The world woke up a while ago
as it did not really care.

Even its hero passing through
is just another fare.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Narrowing Stairs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I cough up my own light bulb,
and there I sit awake

To move, to see, to grasp again
The system'd held my fate

~

In this realm, it appears,
We're the first to be

Living inside bricks of walls;
that wasn't you, that wasn't me

~

How did all my moments shift,
the sand's back on the beach

I'm churning with all the lessons now
the world bothered not me teach

~

Rake the halls and cardboard walls,
the shore seen out of reach

~

Long passed a mile of murder
filled up with humble peace

~

Now I saunter this man made scene
so harmonious on freeze

~

Talking sense, a third of us
never cared to wake

Even us left standing up
hold each a different plane.

He hadn't the slightest idea if he'd missed someone like this before. The night was lonely, the day was empty. She'd been away for quite a while. Opportunities had fallen into short supply, like most nice things in his life. There'd been a momentary answer, but everything quickly stalled again. This time he'd be ready to walk the night to be there in the morning; just to talk to her again. Even talk. The ironic part was, they never really talked when they got to share a moment. He encountered the same feeling each time they met: they had something very important to discuss, which others shouldn't hear. Visions of hundreds of urgent conversations ran through his head, even when he had no clue on what they would consist of. Eventually time would just pass, nothing would come up and the feeling would persist throughout the silence. When he'd finally have to leave, she'd smile at him. She'd look satisfied, and the pressure would be replaced by a soft emptiness until he got to missing her again.

Metaphorically she'd read through a phone book just to find out the name of who she'd seen. The world is a pretty big place when you're searching for what's literally a face in the crowd. Some would say the whole situation was absurd, but she knew this day had been in store for her. The more important a person is to become, the swifter one might be to realise. This time it took one blink in a mass of people, maybe less than a second of just the other face paddling to or from the trains at the station. And she knew. This wasn't a case of love on first sight or anything as dramatic; she clairvoyantly knew she had to find this face again. There was nothing as clear, hadn't been since. She couldn't even identify emotions she had for the person - might they even be important.

It was dead simple. The most important person in her life had suddenly passed her; something she had long awaited. And this person, now permanently engraved onto her soul, might never pass her again.

"So tell me girl, do you believe in blinking; do you believe I just saw your future; do you believe I grasped the fist of what awaits you?" He said as he straightened his mantle and perfected his pose against the concrete wall. There was no knowing what the cane was for, but at least he wasn't placing any weight on it. "No, I don't believe. No such magic vision exists, nor would you of all people possess it. What you are trying to feed me is some form of manipulation. What do you want from telling me this?" This was just another day for her.

He'd never been too fond of the drama, even if the tendency was for such to emerge. Now it all was suddenly a battle, no longer just a piece of narration - story telling. If he wanted to carry out what he was after, it would demand an amount of working around. But today he'd just pull a long shot.

"So you're afraid." He spoke as if it were a logical continuation to where the conversation had dropped off, like there was no pause at all.
"Afraid of what? I'm afraid of a lot of things."
"Of course you are. You're afraid of most insects, loud noises, strangers in the night, your sister falling into a well. But they aren't as relevant."
"How did you-"
"Even that's not important. I've been here a long time, as you should acknowledge. I know things, I feel things, I see things you don't see."
"Then what do you know, and don't start me on that 'I can see your future' crap again?"
"I know hope burdens you."
"Then I guess it's easiest not to have hope at all, easy?"
"I know hope is what you most desperately have sought a long time, nevertheless."
"That's not very logical, is it?"
"Well who would have guessed you part roads with logics." [sic]
"But I'm not here for this."
"No, you're not. There's no far enough for you." His comment sounded indifferent, which sparked her rapid, intensely defensive reply.

"Absurd for you to be telling me this. I know you: you're the one who hasn't moved from this haze for the longest time. You must come out only when you're really bored. Playing tricks on people." He raised his brows in an expression of narrow empathetic worry, and replied with a calm voice:
"But you're the one who can't get far enough to forget that they need hope. Until you can bend to admitting that you actually need to believe in some absurd concept of hope, for yourself, you're stranded on this endless odyssey."

"Oh, and here comes the future again."
"What I see is that believing in a future seems repulsive to you."
"There exists no future, ergo you can't see one."
"Then what's your calendar for?"
"Knowing what to do on my todays."
"Then why do you have tomorrows?"
"Because my today doesn't stop when I want it to. It's dynamic, see?"

She looked into her calendar and saw every day scheduled full with the phrases "Dismiss yesterday, decline tomorrow" in her own handwriting.

"Now that was a nice trick. Why'd I need the hope in the first place?"
"Why do you think it burdens you so much?"
"I'd hate to believe in something good happening and be turned down."
"Now you're cruising. You can do better."
"Because I actually think I care. And that's something I might not be ready to admit to myself."
"So where would that leave us?"

Situations never ceased to emerge. Solutions were an episode by themselves, but usually they were manageable - in terms of either a clear right solution existing or comparatively better alternatives creating a show inside the situation. A process always happened sooner or later, and occasionally she had the rare opportunity to pull a double take, even triple, if she was lucky. This game was one she seldom lost, and she could remember none such a case.

So when she was finally facing a junction, where all considerable paths were positive, and of equal value, she was hesitantly puzzled. Unless she could pull the impossible and make the paths intersect, she would have to dismiss the other. Even though not covered - making a decision felt like giving up something: every decision that had led this far, distilled to the point where all the alternatives were the best. The paths were viciously unlikely to overlap, and trying to force them could mean a path of pure loss would follow. Making a selection at this point would inevitably render half of the previous ones fruitless. Making a selection would also mean giving up the alternative future. So all the while half of her past would die, so would half of her future. Inevitably. No double take this time.

And she was supposed to finally be happy, had her life led to the point she can no longer make bad decisions. A single honest compromise could hurt more than a life in a tube: knowing a larger life exists is more painful than living in the narrowest one.

His mind was suddenly in shambles, his thoughts falling into irrational and unrelated heaps. The crash entry she had made into his space, intentional or not, had passed through him entirely and in an unforeseen manner. He was still in utter confusion, reeling the moments in a random order and growing more and more insecure about himself. This never happens to him. He knew what many of the most granite people he knew looked like when they lost their ability to resolve a situation, and couldn't help but notice it was happening to him. All composition gone, an expression best defined by the spacing gaze and speech lacking all the eloquence it once had. He had been pierced, and the feeling came accordingly. So sudden. So uncalled, so honest.

Unique people weren't anything new to him. Ever so often he'd come across someone, who'd change him permanently in a matter of days or weeks - sometimes even hours. Such a feeling was usually a generally passive, somewhat disorienting, but positive one. This time it felt more like something had passed through his head at the velocity of an aimed projectile, coming at a speed that makes the impact moment irrelevant. He had metaphorically been caught in a pigstick, and couldn't figure what had hit him. There had been no prior warning, no signs of escalation, no sense of danger; just an unexpected slash and he was stripped to the very soul. This was just his vision, of course, in truth he had chiseled parts of himself as they had conversed, and left mere framework to stand. These people could only be a new promising path. And the funniest part was, everyone behind it was entirely clueless.

Bliss, that it would be. To sleep again. His eyes burned, the night died and the ambient screech of the metropolis awakened into yet another day. The only thing he really wanted was to lay down anywhere and let the world rest. Feel the pleasurable transition from this world and back. He couldn't figure out the enjoyment, though. There's nothing more rewarding than a two-day slumber, but what one remembers is less vivid, and thrilling, than repeatedly waking up, and falling back into, moments of light snooze. In the moment he felt like the best choice would be to be able to sleep for years, but it scared him. He could experience more in five minutes than he could in months, when it was drawn into comparison. Anxiety axed the moment of peace in the darkly breaking morning. He no longer wanted to sleep forever, and what his body naturally needed seemed more like a burden and biological conspiracy than an chance for mental pacification.