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[Dec. 26th, 2008|11:16 pm] |
The point is, I had forgotten everything. Well, not everything. I knew the name of my mother, and my father, and my sister, and the name of my pet dog that died when I first went to secondary school. But otherwise in relation to the events of the past few weeks my mind seemed to have decided on an all-expenses paid, self-determined vacation, and left. Like that. And now it was back. And I woke up to a strange room, that was oddly familiar, because it was how I would imagine my bedroom in my dreams, not exactly, not every nook and cranny, but the gist of it was there, and I could taste it. The curtains were how I imagined it to be. The light filtering through the curtains, too. The bedcovers. The bed. The bedframe. The floor. The walls. The cupboard.
I pushed the covers aside. I was wearing my t-shirt, and my shorts. The air-conditioner was humming, in the bright morning that was even now trying to peek its way in. I opened the cupboard. It is rather shocking to be greeted with the contents of a cupboard, contents that you've seen all your life, and find it in another cupboard. A cupboard that was familiar in dreams and imagination.
I didn't know what the hell was going on. But I was going to find out.
What happens subsequently I already mentioned, actually. I sat down in the living room, and I stared accusingly at a telephone, that I couldn't quite come to terms with, and the blank television, and I had breakfast. And then I decided to go for a walk.
By the reckoning of my watch it is sunday, and I'm also vaguely aware of the fact that three weeks had passed. I didn't know the exact date that my consciousness decided to go AWOL, but yes, it was roughly three weeks, by my estimation. A lot of things can happen in three weeks. Back in the days three weeks can pass by blissfully with the endless spinning of ceiling fans and long drowsy afternoons, and the sounds of mahjong tiles, or it can be the deep nights where you force your eyes not to close, to keep staring into the half-blackness, and there is the smell of metal and oil and everything is wet from the condensation, and overhead the artificial leaves of the net are swaying in the wind and you're just praying and hoping and praying that it please just please don't rain. And before you can even recover you're on a plane to the middle of nowhere.
So here I was, strolling down this pavement, through a park, of sorts, and there is this tiny playground, strictly for children, and I was feeling like a captain of a tiny vessel adrift in the sea with the radio broken and the antenna mast washed out, without a map or fax or sextant to my name. So I walked. I took stock of my surroundings. I had an apartment. Of my own. At least, as far as evidential circumstances had led me to believe. And it was really quite lovely. It was an apartment that I wanted. A home I called my own. And that was about all I knew.
Did I have a job? Had I found one? Where's my mobile phone? Is the bathroom as nice as the rest of the house, or whatever I had seen so far? Did I have cable tv? What position was man united at now? What the hell has been going on with my life since I made that decision for a change, and more importantly, who can I ask? It was funny, and ironic, the way I had been so optimistic with change, and the sudden panic I was filled with now that it had happened. Nothing felt secure, or safe. Maybe that was what it meant. I could vividly remember the girl in the cinema. The half-silhouette, the intensely feminine scent that she had, when she leaned in, that was like no perfume or anything artificial, and the soft lilt in her voice when she said, "You know?" Change had arrived, like a storm, and I still wasn't sure whether I liked it.
That was when I saw this girl. Another girl. She had on a white dress, and she was perched upon a bench. One of those benches that you tend to find at parks. She couldn't be too old, no more than fifteen, I was sure, and she in one hand she was supporting this paper pad to her calves, and she was completely engrossed in whatever she was writing. Or scribbling, judging by the way and the intensity that she wrote. Her hand gripped a pen, and it contained black ink, and there was a single concentrated furrow between her eyes, and her lips had curled up into a slight pout, although I do believe she wasn't aware of it. I wanted to know what she was writing. It was too surreal. The late morning light, it was probably half past ten, shone down on the path, and the beautified trees, if you could call them trees, that real trees probably turned their noses up at, and the swaying breeze, and on a bench along the path there is a girl in a white dress writing. I had to know. Some things come along in your life that you know must be said, or done, or acted upon, and this was one of them.
So I sat on the bench next to the girl. I said, "Hello." I cringed, because the voice wasn't my own; it was fake and forced and sounded like a very self-conscious paedophile. She stopped writing, at my voice, I noticed, not when I sat down, and she gave me this singular focused look that really placed the emphasis on all those thoughts that just ran through my head. Then she ignored me, like a princess, and I was her groveling subject, and really I almost got down on my knees to beg for forgiveness, because of that imperious look she had bestowed upon me, and now I was unworthier than scum. Oh god. |
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