Saturday, November 25, 2006
Behind Closed Doors
We live with the objects of our past; the worn out toys, ornaments that decorate the ledges and mantles of our rooms. Old clothes that remain at the end of the racks, compressed into the corners of our second-hand drawers. Items worn from trundling around with us everywhere, shuffling around from one rental room to another.
Books are piled up to keep the door open or to hold the computer screen at head height, else leaned on to form a shelf. These things induce the hoarders’ guilt of not wanting to give away or borrow for fear of loosing; feeling the urge to keep but not actually re-read. We create a familiar space, maintaining the order of a familiar world. Perhaps I delude myself that they will have some use some day in the future when I am dead and buried and gone.
Uncaring men or women wearing government uniforms will in the end be allowed to enter and clean the rooms, rendering my complex storage system that I have striven tirelessly to construct over the years meaningless. Unmarked trucks and cars will drive up next to the black mark scribbled on my door. A silhouette of cut-out people will be seen to fold out across the garden path, forming a chain. My things will trundle along from outstretched puppet arm to outstretched arm towards the back of the vehicles. When the job is done the men retract themselves backwards, clinging on as the vehicle bounces them back up the hill and away.
Due to a continuous neglect of layers, objects sink gradually downwards. They submerge and are gradually compressed into a peat bog of time. Nobody but the owner can prevent this process from happening. Particles dissolve to form a thick encrusted layer at the bottom. Dark figures pass through the drawers and cabinets snatching items and passing them from hand to hand, piling them up into a mountain of things. The tables finally begin to break, crumbling under the inevitable force of gravity; the slow motion demolition of a tower block, wavering awkwardly before finally crashing to the ground. What looks like a cloud of volcanic dust is in fact millions upon millions of human hairs drifts up, forming a dense cloud that disperses its content across a the wide area, killing the nutrients in the soil, spoiling the vegetation, killing the cattle for miles around.
Resuscitating Friends
Ladies and gentleman, I have before me a person whom I had once befriended in the past. His name is Gary I think I remember. I knew him for quite some time in the eighties. You say that his face is not real but I say that that is not what matters. You see him lying there on the table with his eyes glazed over, a wooden doll you think, a mannequin, one that you might find in shop windows but no, watch this, watch my actions now. I begin projecting my thoughts onto him like this look, waving my arms like so. You can see immediately a small flow of blood beginning to run through the veins there, just there, look, where I'm pointing. The inert object will then miraculously become alert. Look! his arms, they are grabbing the table. No need to be alarmed, he won't hurt you. He is harmless, really.
I have now shown that I can project my memories onto limp body of a friend and resuscitate it temporarily to life. It is next my aim prove to you that it is possible to carry out some unfinished conversations or indeed say in reality what I had wanted to say long ago but could not. Now, with him there breathing in front of me, I can reflect upon bad ideas and apologise for my being so insensitive in situations past, no questions asked. I will take him for a trip out and around my home, explaining about my life now and how I’ve changed, how I’ve altered my clothing style etc. We will probably have to cut the odd sentence short, you know, try not to fall into the same old behavioural patterns. We attempt to break the strange new silences. We launch into familiar conversations, argue, fight, but then you cannot expect old habits to die just like that on the first night.
Finding that I have less common with him than I had thought I find trouble capturing neither quite the same atmosphere of rebelliousness nor the intensity of emotion that once first drove our friendship. Trying in vain to remember and recreate crazy situations that have been lost in memory we get increasingly frustrated. Inevitably, towards the end of the day he will get tired and slowly loose breathe, crumpling to a heap, head crashing loosely against the floorboards. In the end there is never enough time to say what you want to say. I place him back safely inside the cupboard, lean him up against the side like so. He will be O.K. there till later when I will probably resuscitate him again. Even though I know that it will not be successful I still try. Until, after a while, he no longer re-awakens and keeps perpetually falling to the ground.
