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Your Smoldering Now by abandoned station
-I doubt that, I say to Greta. And as I wait for a response and get none I remember she’s not here yet. So instead I crack my neck weakly and stare at my belt. Sometimes I only remember that I have a body at moments like this when I look over myself for no reason but to kill time. My hands I see all the time so I’ve internalized them. Kind of like how when people who lose their arms still have this psychological condition right after the amputation where they can still ‘feel’ them. But who really thinks about their trunk, their hips, their waist, except for those few seconds when you look at yourself in your bedroom or bathroom mirror when you are in the process of dressing for the day or undressing for bed? So when I look at these parts of me while I sit in this office chair with little else to do I realize that I’m all flesh all meat all tiny little particles that make up tiny little living organisms called cells that get together to create these organs and muscles and bones and brain tissue that make me. From not life to life to not life to life. Amen or something like that. The carpeting kept my wheeling around to a minimum, so I spent most of the time fighting against my oh so tired neck from letting my head drop and the skyline slash horizon disappear from sight. It is quite the descent into darkness this evening. I had a feeling it would be. One of those vicious circle feelings that feeds on your own unease and uncertainty and the power that does indeed pump and swell from those unseemly predilections. That last one was recently featured on my word of the day calendar. The sun was a blurring egg yolk fighting to stay atop an immense purple bruise cloud. This is no good. Never thought I would complain about warm weather in November. But it’s alien and flimsy like a silk curtain true intentions slightly transparent but obviously there ready to come at us all naked and all too willing. I felt this even before leaving the house only to go out and look at the world like I am right now as I think this from the something or other high up floor in a surprisingly dreary conference room which confirms everything. Although I only thought something was amiss this morning because Greta – who bails out of the house at an even earlier more ungodly hour than myself – always leaves enough for a cup in the pot which is still hot by the time I get downstairs but not today. So I did it myself. Odd. I felt like I was transgressing our unspoken duties by going through the motions that I hadn’t had to undertake for what, months? But now I had time, see? And I thought. And because this opportunity came about in an extremely slightly jarring way – make my own coffee! – I started developing that kernel into an obscene and over the top imaginative cloudburst of epic what ifs. Today will be a day of firsts and therefore also a day of lasts. Imagine that! Finally after all those cookie cutter unremarkable more of the same twenty four hour grinds. It all starts with having to make your own morning brew. Small becomes big. A spark becomes a forest fire. And further analogies. I remember diving in and out of such sweeping symphonic thoughts and into the mundane. I scratch my left forearm as I wait for the drip and I notice the skin around my wrists seems thin. I can see my veins. Perhaps I am wasting my time not being a heroin addict. Maybe I should I cruise through the shabbier parts of town looking for a fix instead of going into work for a couple pressure-filled brainstorming exercises. If I didn’t show up Dennis would call. They all have my cell number, but he would call first. He would offer with that near-genuine concern leaking through the speaker. We need you in today. A valuable part of the team. Always will be. Today’s different, Dennis, I would tell him, as I tied my thin belt around my thin arm or as the mountains turned to dust. Percolating coffee. Finally. Well almost. Then I had to wait for it to cool, as one of the advantages of Greta making it earlier was that it wasn’t scalding by the time I came down to get my share. Babies grew up and old and supernovas came and went as I lingered yet again. What a morning this was turning out to be! With this poor excuse for a sun escaping yet again I don’t bother turning on the lights and instead slowly let it get more difficult to read the torn scraps of paper strewn across the floor. Everyone kind of chuckles when they see me still break out a pen and paper to take notes. I didn’t for a long time, using all the latest technological gadgets like the rest. I only returned to the old way when I suddenly needed to jot down a grocery list and I saw how horrendous my handwriting was. Then I tried printing. It was like I regressed back to my eight-year-old self. Terrifying. All steps back, nothing forward. I didn’t want to lose that. Not something that simple. I yawn and as my eyes inevitably close I try to picture what the sun was like in the middle of the afternoon, before I got my hands on the damn thing. A simple switch if you really think about it, and that’s all I did. That’s what I’m paid to do, your honour, I would probably end up saying in the coming weeks or months. Everyone understands the sun, and if you understand it, it’s yours to caress or kick down the hall like a ball of duct-tape. Greta has come to get me out of here. Sometimes we are fearsome team. Today we are not, as half the team is experiencing a cognitional overload. I had to double check that the word ‘cognitional’ was allowed by the dictionary people. When it was obvious what had happened the word spread like a hurricane and the offices cleared out right quick. Funny how I pictured this stampede of chaos to go on and on and hit some incredible level of pandemonium actually took about five minutes and left me alone on the thirty-eighth floor. I was tempted to press my nose to the glass and look down, down, down to the ants and action but I was so disappointed with the internal chaos and generally exhausted from all the work I put into it that I couldn’t be bothered to take in the pre-apocalyptic view. Besides this was a class-A office chair. This company couldn’t be seen sparing any expense. A voice blurted out of a speakerphone I didn’t have to answer and informed me that someone was on their way up to assist me. They didn’t name any names like a good standup phone voice that you can rely on, but I knew who it would be. Security clearances and all. Plus she’s my emergency contact. I’m sure they have this all on file. On a freelance employee contract I had to fill out fed into a scanner that turned my untidy scrawl into pristine cookie cutter Helvetica. I yawn and my ears pop and the pop sounds enough like a bang or crack that might have occurred hundreds of feet below at the exact same time. I’m projecting probably. It’s probably just another early evening on the crowded street. Even if everyone who worked ran screaming out onto the sidewalk and yelled in the faces of mild mannered passersby, who was going to believe any of them? The whole idea is just crazy. So let us doff or caps and raise our glasses to the well-worn cliché: just crazy enough to work. But I’m not crazy. That would make everything easier, actually. No it was just one of this mornings. And now I’ll admit that it wasn’t completely alien and weird from the coffee moment onwards. There was just a funny feeling that permeated throughout the day, kind of like air pressure, maybe. Always there, rarely thought about, but today I did. Or maybe the nerves were on edge because they were already feeling the effects of the future. The detonation point so strong it affects matter and space both forwards and backwards through time. Now I sound crazy. So it’s perfect that right at this moment my knightess in shining, well-cut beige office wear rides in. For a moment Greta just stands in the doorway and lets the light from the hallway create a perfect silhouette. She puts her hand against the open the door which I try to read as knowingness, exhaustion, understanding, or exasperation. I can’t cut away some of these observations because her face is still in darkness as she ambles over, her sneakers barely making a sound while avoiding my recent floor handiwork. Her slow speed means she’s trying to read them, to get an idea of what’s happened, but it’s just dark enough to make that difficult. She’d have to pick them up and hold the scraps at the end of her nose to be able to understand them. And now Greta is right beside me I feel her heat her soul her presence her silence her concern and I suddenly want to kiss her like a saviour and then maybe just maybe a hint as a lover but I know that laziness talking and would just cause problems. -I hate this place, she says, without a trace of that particular feeling. She sounds knowing. Reassuring. Maybe she’s playing that up for my sake. -Maybe that’s the point, I reply, with a smile that was at first forced but then grows naturally as I blink for the first time in what seems like ages and stare outside. Earlier it felt like I didn’t recognize the tops of buildings that stuck out above the sickly trees, and now that it’s almost dark they truly do blur into one big black. Difference is out for the night. All the streetlights in the world not powerful enough to change that. Now she leaves my side to stand in front of me. Then lowers gradually to rest on her haunches. She has to look up to me, which means I can finally look at her: I see hopeful, bright, understanding. Brushes some of my hair out from dangling over my face. I feel like the village idiot about to be explained something obvious. -so, she begins, what did you figure out? -I fucked up. I don’t like swearing in front of her because she does it so rarely. Sometimes if I let that word drop in casual conversation I can see her shoulders arch slightly for a split second. She seems fine with it now. -yeah? -I went into it today with a clear idea. -an outcome? She couldn’t help her voice from rising sharply as her reply became a question. -yeah. -which was? -I had to make coffee this morning. This took second to absorb. -Oh right. A new place opened up a block from the office. I decided to give it a try. -good? -better than how we make it at home. She’s never tried my coffee. -Car…, she begins. Greta has a tendency to reduce all names to a single syllable. I tried doing it for her, to see how she’d like it, but I was the one who found ‘Gret’ unpalatable. They called me freaking out, she continued, they said they were all leaving immediately. That I had to talk to you right way. -was there much traffic? She looks away for a moment. Rolls her lips on top of one another. Then back to me. I wonder what she thinks when she looks at my face and waits for a response. -they wouldn’t tell me anything else. I look beyond her and into the coming night, the light of the makeshift day -I made this evening’s sun, Greta. And I’m tired. Exhausted. Like, really, fucking…out of it. Pause. Not as long as I thought it would be. She’s got quite the head on her shoulders. -But- -I’m sorry. I’m so…I don’t know why I did it… -what’s happening on the other side of the world right now? -well…, I begin and immediately trailed off. I’d been stuck digging at the peripheral, hoping to find anomalies and miracles in alleys and under the couch, trying to find particular trees separate from the forest. And in doing so, forgot some of the more important bits like the state of the universe and the laws of physics and all that. But then I wonder how we’re still spinning if I truly did replace the sun with some bizarre Van Gogh mental belch that seemed like a charmingly indulgent idea at the time. Were these laws of science embedded in my processing, or did I just become a mass-mass-mass-murderer, in addition to obviously making a complete ass of myself? -Carly, Greta said, with a sharpness I haven’t heard since we were both drunk and had a huge argument that was simmering for weeks over something I can’t remember exactly but it might have been one of us being embarrassed previously at a work party. And now I get caught trying to remember this exact memory at what Greta would agree is the worst possible time. And I see the frustration in her face that was lingering in certain crease and corners coming to the fore. I won’t tell her that I listened to Scary Monsters at lunch and became enraptured by the line midwives to history. It sounded exciting. Being there. In the room. Making and seeing it happen all at once. Such moments can get the better of everyone. -I hit so many particular notes today, I begin again and think this time that I sound better, it became a one-track mind thing. You know what that’s like. I knew she did. I’ve bailed her out of certain situations in the past which is one of the reasons I knew she would come here for me. Even steven. -they’re stuck, aren’t they? Greta replied, caught… -I…yeah…I suppose. -in your smoldering now. Putting it in so many words made me feel ill. Greta stood up. I could tell she was disappointed but I wasn’t firing on enough cylinders to care. Maybe I need a – hyuk, hyuk – coffee to get me going. -I wonder if I could find some photographs, she said almost absentmindedly, looking around the near-dark boardroom as if a coffee table book of the sun might be only a couple meters away. -I didn’t put a timestamp on it, I announce to the room, it’s not going to burn out anytime soon. Greta turns the lights on. The cold, clinical artificial light never seemed so accurate an observation. Such high-tech trickery isn’t worth our wondrous eyes. I feel like we’re about to plot a crime. She begins to study the scraps of paper littered across the floor. I busy myself by trying to keep my head as steady as possible. -‘ The sun was blurring egg yolk fighting to stay atop an immense purple bruise cloud’, she reads. -oh yeah, I say without any real thinking. -‘ I remember diving in and out of such sweeping symphonic thoughts and into the mundane.’ -right. Despite the carpet’s ability to mute her sneakers, I hear Greta stomp out of the room quickly. Too quickly to leave for good. As I stare at my belt yet again and consider my belly it rumbles sadly and I start to hope that Greta is foraging for food in the break room. But then that particular hissing noise starts up and why she left comes into textbook focus. I guess it’s good that someone can keep their head around here in times of crisis. -it’s the damn machine again, I mutter to no one, whining into all the quiet and closed hours of the night that are supposed to be ours alone! -you’re the one who ruined our evening, Greta says flatly, returning briskly to the room, picking up as many scraps of paper as possible on her way to my side. -I hate using that thing, I say, bringing my thumb and index finger to the bridge of my nose, it’s cheating. She scoffs at this with a grin that just as well could have been covered in recently eaten shit. I feel bad for such a thought. I’m turning from tired indifferent to tired moody. I blame the device. It’s a misbegotten son. I’m glad it’s imprisoned in an empty corner office that gives off haunted vibes. -you’re one to talk of cheating, Greta retorts, if you’re going to bend the rules, you should be thrilled that there’s still a way to bend them back. -so now what? -don’t play dumb. You only burned half your brain this afternoon. Up. -up? -up. -can you get me my earmuffs? -where’s your bag? -Dennis’ office. She goes out again. I try to impress her by standing up on my own and am quickly in total agony at how heavy my everything is. I weep for the work of my feet. I feel like the bones should simply shatter into pieces with every step. I make it to the meeting table and get on top of it, relishing the opportunity to lie on my back. I undo my belt and feel so good that I shimmy out of my slacks and slowly writhe pantsless on the cool what I am guessing is plastic. It’s all I can do to take my mind of the ever-increasing volume and frequency of the machine. I stretch out like a starfish just as Greta returns and gets an eyeful of my barely concealed crotch. -charming. -this is better than the chair, I say loudly for no reason, as Greta isn’t hearing the din like I am. She walks alongside the table and tosses my earmuffs next to my left arm. I put them on and immediately feel better. Cleaner. Fitter. More efficient. Properly ordered. And ready to position, calculate and reassemble with my superconducting doppelganger down the hall. Greta says something with her hands on her hips but I’m already reacting to different very small things and not too worried because she was smiling as her mouth moved. Then I heard it as an echo because time was getting funny just like it was supposed to. She asked ‘what it’s like’ and I blathered on for some time only half paying attention to the words because I have other fish to unfry and quantum entanglements to divorce but that’s probably for the better for both of us as my answers are probably more honest and direct when I’m not paying attention. What it’s like, Gret? It’s like a bad explanation fixed with marble blood. It’s like holding a punch and following through into space between the target. It’s like stopping a grizzled freeloading freight train. It’s like waiting for a call from 1995. It’s like sweating out a rare forgiveness extract from an imaginary South American plant. It’s like a moment stretched like skin over the only drum. It’s like a bank error in your favour during the game of life. It’s like finding a machine’s self confidence and massaging it to nirvana. It’s like a clock free of its broken hands. It’s like expected coffee dripping into your smoldering now.
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"Time", as an earlier incarnation of the Thin White Duke opined, "falls wanking to the floor." | |||