A day goes to waste if I don’t come up with at least one meaningful sentence on my train home.
Don’t you artists need that? It’s a little reminder that you can do a lot better than that zombie mode you’re in during work? You put all your efforts into your work tasks instead. I’m not allowed to elaborate here.
So, on the ride home, the morning breaths have dissolved, and you smell the sweat of exhaustion and farts. You become one of them, except that your head doesn’t switch off. In fact, it starts to focus on you. Unfortunately, it’s not always pleasant; it depends on your mood and your focus. Look around you–the people on the train pretend to be virtually comatose; maybe they are, or they might think the same of you–IF they even perceive your presence. As for me, I know they are all there. It’s just–I don’t think I am.
That’s what makes me a good unreliable narrator. Telling lies is not bad as long as you admit it. But in writing, your protagonist doesn’t admit anything; he or she shows it to you, which ultimately makes them stupid for trusting a person like you. Self-denial hides in stubbornness, which eventually defines the madness to which our sanity is subordinate. Nothing gets more irrational. Everything you can’t capture is irrational. That’s why people pretend that reason still exists, but the truth is that we’re all actors. One may be better than the other, but some of us don’t want to act. So they suffer. It’s not a choice; it’s the way some people are.
There is a haunting presence next door, and I’m dying to absorb it with my fist; it must be like grabbing a handful of snow. The temperature is rising again, and there is nothing that I can do.
Like last year, my attempt to delay spring will be impossible. Do I have to accept it? I will not.
I’m not done with this presence, which sounds and feels similar to the air that I breathed in Auschwitz twelve years ago–a place where no bird would make its nest; no storm would disrupt the stature of the lifeless trees.
Some psychics can retrieve memories and images hidden in objects or sense the aura of a place. Do you remember what Trent said about living in the house where the Manson family murdered Sharon Tate? And how the chicken that Tori Amos cooked for him at that place tasted horrible? I believe that when one dwells in a place where blood had been spilled, the blood will live on.
One of the murderers had written “Pig” on the door with Sharon’s blood. (As to explain the ‘Pig’ references on The Downward Spiral album.) The Downward Spiral is the result of that blood touching Trent’s heart and brain. But I shouldn’t tell you the initial message of that album? It might not be relevant to him now, but to me, it always will be. There is always that one last way out.
The very last.
I used to believe in Jung’s coincidence concept without intent, but I’m not sure anymore. Some sentiments are confusing and too overwhelming for no particular reason. We’ve already touched upon irrationality. Irrationality is nothing but an emptiness that pretends to have something to deliver. So we end up waiting. Waiting for…
It’s been almost a year since I dedicated the story to him. The more I think about it, the more I want to un-dedicate it. You don’t just say thank you for the story; you return the favour by writing something back, but he never did, neither did he ever tell me whether or not he liked it. And I was too chicken to ask. Not that I care now, but I wonder what he is up to. I wonder what effect a drop of my blood would have on his heart and brain.
