memory lane - Islands pt.2 (of 3)
Today I am uniquely awake, I look out across creation and it is good.
The girl is losing temporal balance, slipping into the past, the various pasts, moments crashing into her like waves, drawing her in, the undertow dragging her further and further.
The old man is rounding a corner when she approaches him, unexpectedly and out of nowhere. She stands firmly despite her awkward boots and tells him. “I've come to collect my library book.”
The old man waits. The girl falters. “No, I mean I'm here to collect my... I -...”
“I'm sorry Miss,” he says, mirroring her formality. “I can't help you.” And with tact he had almost forgotten, he points down the corridor before turning away and walking stiffly in the opposite direction.
The girl starts off, walking unsteadily now, following the way the old man had pointed. But she halts - starts again - halts - on off on off. The only way open to her is the past, snatches of dream time that feel longer than they are. In her dreams, in the past, she can carry out tasks, she can explore, she can talk, she can be.
“What do you dream about? I wonder.” the old man asks her rhetorically.
The girl shakes her head with predictable sadness. “I don't know,” she sighs, “I don't remember.”
It is the dark time, they huddle within the cage as the place begins the night symphony of creaks and juddering, the pipes become flutes, unknown doors become suddenly percussive. Shadows become solid, ghosts moving, breathing within the walls. Watching. Whispering.
His voice in her ear. “Tell me something you remember.”
He feels her stirring next to him, feels the soft cracking of the leather jacket.
“I remember forgetting,” she says just as he is about to repeat the question, the demand. “I remember everyone forgetting. How do I remember that? How...” And the trailing off. She goes limp then.
The old man sighs in acknowledgement. Waits a moment until the girl stirs again, jerking suddenly back into life. “We've been woken up” he tells her, “that’s good. We’re awake now.”
I am awake. Creation dances before me, born at the moment of my beginning, alive with me in the one instant and infinite moment of awakening. As the moment is infinite is has no beginning. It has no end. No past or future. Never was there a time when I was not awake. Never was there a time when I was not aware. Eternity is the eye through which I see all that is before me.
And so I watch them.
I see the old man as he looks at a piece of blunted sculpture he is dragging in from the garden, silvered still, and heavy. From this angle the shape approximates a torso, but as he rolls it to fit through a doorway the round burnished underside suggests the belly of a bird or perhaps the mid section of a butterfly. There are so many of the butterflies here now. They are an unlooked for marker of time. For this reason the old man is beginning to resent them a little less.
Yes, this piece of enigmatic metal is very suggestive. Good. The girl has told him of another memory - a school teacher she admired from a far. The teacher, sat in her shiny dress and staring down across the class of unenthusiastic pupils from the height of her imposing corner desk, barely noticed the girl.
Well then. He drags the sculpture into the room beyond and to where he has placed a table to crudely resemble a desk. It would be an interesting experiment, the old man was sure.
He wonders if he might be a scientist. It’s a possibility surely. He might therefore be the one - he might have woken himself up. And the girl? Had he somehow woken her too?
He refuses to dwell on that notion. He tells himself again and again that the girl is not his responsibility.
And yet... clearly there is a connection in their very opposition, the girl with only her past and he alone with the present.
At night he feeds her, it is easier when she is tired, when she is docile.
He passes her the scraps of sandwich or the spoon of cold soup and she eats on reflex, like an automaton. She does not plague the man with questions and he has yet to explain, to try and explain, the miracle of the food locker, whose purpose and workings he himself has yet to fully comprehend.
For the old man routine has served its purpose. Each day touring the ritual sites, through areas that feel somehow central to his experience, the riddling heart of the conundrum.
The food hall, he sits and scrapes his plate. The girl comes. Each day must contain this; the sound of the cutlery, the resting of his elbows upon the table edge. The way he gazes out into nothing, blanking his already empty mind, to calm himself. Waiting to wake.
The small room where he had hidden away. The room that forms his earliest memory, solid memory, sitting and watching something on the screen, for an indeterminate while after his awakening he would hide in that room, retreat to it - and just sit.
In the initial strangeness and uncertainty of his arrival to consciousness he failed to notice something. Being unable to separate one element from the miasma of his new experiences, the man did not know how long it had been before the man began to realise the very specific peculiarity of the room; that it was alive, functioning, the screen looping through the same stream of animated visuals.
That if there was power, electricity and therefore, perhaps, purpose - a purpose beyond him.
There was a voice reciting words over and over, elucidating their meaning. The man would sit, rocking back and forth, back and forth and listening for so long that he would fall into a dose and awake to find himself murmuring along with his invisible companion. It had given him great relief to focus on learning (or remembering) words, concepts.
He discovered he could retain the information - he would stagger down the brittle corridors almost drunk on the sensation, of being so completely conscious of his own brain and the pleasure of recall.
Not long after that he discovered the girl and with her came the beginning of time.
He begins to mark out periods of darkness and daylight in a rudimentary way. And so he knows how long after taking her under his guard - how long it was until the girl had shown him that cigarette... offering more proof that they are not alone, that a third agency, some other is here with them or behind them.
But today the old man is trying to push these queasy thoughts aside. Today they are rearranging their architecture, playing with their space. The old man points to a chair. “Like this one?”
“Yes!” the girl's voice is enthusiastic. Leaning down the man slaps at the chair's fabric, disgorging a cloud of dust. It hangs in the stagnant air motionless.
“How did you find all this?” she points at random.
Something goes -click! in the old man’s head.
“I made it,” he lies, “that’s what I do - since I was a boy growing up here.”
The girl nods seriously - then blinks, her eyes widening in the familiar way. “But who are you? Where..? help…”
“I’m here to help,” he says moving close to stare into the clear orbs of her eyes. “What do you need?”
The girl begins to look about her in dismay. “I think something bad happened here…” she looks at him hopefully a sudden shift in her expression, something he has not seen before.
“Are you a policeman?” she asks.
The girl's questioning finally drives the man out from the building, the scrap of garden and the outlying places he has so far explored. He circles the island. He tracks a stream through the trees from the coast to the inner clearing of the woodland. Oblivious to the weather, he ignores the sun as it beats his skin to redness, he ignores the wind and the weak drizzle carried with it like a sickly child.
If I am clumsy the old man might see me. He has got so confident in his bearing he stomps now like an animal let loose from a cage. Dangerous. He sniffs the air his ears catch the slightest rustle from the undergrowth. He has become a hunter.
He searches for clues, for signs, evidence of any kind. He examines what he finds carefully attempting to scry out their meaning, the hidden history of the island.
Yet there is nothing but frustration.
Every attempt to extrude a rational conclusion fails before his developing imagination, the new capacity for fantasy. His brain seems intent on layering ambiguity and possibility. And upon what? Small pieces of metal, a twisted piece of window glass, the remains of a fire, the heel from a broken shoe, the possible impress of a face in the silt slicked lake-line. These objects are the markers of a narrative he is creating himself, his life, day after day after day. Did something bad happen here? The old man has no definition of 'bad' any more. And 'did' is the past. He has no past.
Of course it is the girl that finds me. She always does. She freezes, rigid on the spot, standing by the gates of an abandoned outhouse. She is often to found here gazing at the walls as if studying them, examining the difference between this worn, rustic construction and the still gleaming building she inhabits.
The old man has told her many times not to go there, the place is empty, nothing to see, might attract dogs or any sort of animal.
It attracts her. And here I am.
Her face twitches grotesquely, expressions chasing and erasing each other; fear, joy, blankness, puzzlement, peering through the matted locks of her hair. Her eyes, almost wide enough for my reflection as I approach, are greedy for recognition.
I stop, put my heavy bag down and look into them.
“I think something bad happened here.” She says to me. “Did something bad happen here?”
“You've asked me that before.” I say to her.
She jerks a hand up to her eyes.
“Are you a policeman?”
The same questions, always.
I have given her the answers now so many times.
............
hope that was worth a read.
The girl is losing temporal balance, slipping into the past, the various pasts, moments crashing into her like waves, drawing her in, the undertow dragging her further and further.
The old man is rounding a corner when she approaches him, unexpectedly and out of nowhere. She stands firmly despite her awkward boots and tells him. “I've come to collect my library book.”
The old man waits. The girl falters. “No, I mean I'm here to collect my... I -...”
“I'm sorry Miss,” he says, mirroring her formality. “I can't help you.” And with tact he had almost forgotten, he points down the corridor before turning away and walking stiffly in the opposite direction.
The girl starts off, walking unsteadily now, following the way the old man had pointed. But she halts - starts again - halts - on off on off. The only way open to her is the past, snatches of dream time that feel longer than they are. In her dreams, in the past, she can carry out tasks, she can explore, she can talk, she can be.
“What do you dream about? I wonder.” the old man asks her rhetorically.
The girl shakes her head with predictable sadness. “I don't know,” she sighs, “I don't remember.”
It is the dark time, they huddle within the cage as the place begins the night symphony of creaks and juddering, the pipes become flutes, unknown doors become suddenly percussive. Shadows become solid, ghosts moving, breathing within the walls. Watching. Whispering.
His voice in her ear. “Tell me something you remember.”
He feels her stirring next to him, feels the soft cracking of the leather jacket.
“I remember forgetting,” she says just as he is about to repeat the question, the demand. “I remember everyone forgetting. How do I remember that? How...” And the trailing off. She goes limp then.
The old man sighs in acknowledgement. Waits a moment until the girl stirs again, jerking suddenly back into life. “We've been woken up” he tells her, “that’s good. We’re awake now.”
I am awake. Creation dances before me, born at the moment of my beginning, alive with me in the one instant and infinite moment of awakening. As the moment is infinite is has no beginning. It has no end. No past or future. Never was there a time when I was not awake. Never was there a time when I was not aware. Eternity is the eye through which I see all that is before me.
And so I watch them.
I see the old man as he looks at a piece of blunted sculpture he is dragging in from the garden, silvered still, and heavy. From this angle the shape approximates a torso, but as he rolls it to fit through a doorway the round burnished underside suggests the belly of a bird or perhaps the mid section of a butterfly. There are so many of the butterflies here now. They are an unlooked for marker of time. For this reason the old man is beginning to resent them a little less.
Yes, this piece of enigmatic metal is very suggestive. Good. The girl has told him of another memory - a school teacher she admired from a far. The teacher, sat in her shiny dress and staring down across the class of unenthusiastic pupils from the height of her imposing corner desk, barely noticed the girl.
Well then. He drags the sculpture into the room beyond and to where he has placed a table to crudely resemble a desk. It would be an interesting experiment, the old man was sure.
He wonders if he might be a scientist. It’s a possibility surely. He might therefore be the one - he might have woken himself up. And the girl? Had he somehow woken her too?
He refuses to dwell on that notion. He tells himself again and again that the girl is not his responsibility.
And yet... clearly there is a connection in their very opposition, the girl with only her past and he alone with the present.
At night he feeds her, it is easier when she is tired, when she is docile.
He passes her the scraps of sandwich or the spoon of cold soup and she eats on reflex, like an automaton. She does not plague the man with questions and he has yet to explain, to try and explain, the miracle of the food locker, whose purpose and workings he himself has yet to fully comprehend.
For the old man routine has served its purpose. Each day touring the ritual sites, through areas that feel somehow central to his experience, the riddling heart of the conundrum.
The food hall, he sits and scrapes his plate. The girl comes. Each day must contain this; the sound of the cutlery, the resting of his elbows upon the table edge. The way he gazes out into nothing, blanking his already empty mind, to calm himself. Waiting to wake.
The small room where he had hidden away. The room that forms his earliest memory, solid memory, sitting and watching something on the screen, for an indeterminate while after his awakening he would hide in that room, retreat to it - and just sit.
In the initial strangeness and uncertainty of his arrival to consciousness he failed to notice something. Being unable to separate one element from the miasma of his new experiences, the man did not know how long it had been before the man began to realise the very specific peculiarity of the room; that it was alive, functioning, the screen looping through the same stream of animated visuals.
That if there was power, electricity and therefore, perhaps, purpose - a purpose beyond him.
There was a voice reciting words over and over, elucidating their meaning. The man would sit, rocking back and forth, back and forth and listening for so long that he would fall into a dose and awake to find himself murmuring along with his invisible companion. It had given him great relief to focus on learning (or remembering) words, concepts.
He discovered he could retain the information - he would stagger down the brittle corridors almost drunk on the sensation, of being so completely conscious of his own brain and the pleasure of recall.
Not long after that he discovered the girl and with her came the beginning of time.
He begins to mark out periods of darkness and daylight in a rudimentary way. And so he knows how long after taking her under his guard - how long it was until the girl had shown him that cigarette... offering more proof that they are not alone, that a third agency, some other is here with them or behind them.
But today the old man is trying to push these queasy thoughts aside. Today they are rearranging their architecture, playing with their space. The old man points to a chair. “Like this one?”
“Yes!” the girl's voice is enthusiastic. Leaning down the man slaps at the chair's fabric, disgorging a cloud of dust. It hangs in the stagnant air motionless.
“How did you find all this?” she points at random.
Something goes -click! in the old man’s head.
“I made it,” he lies, “that’s what I do - since I was a boy growing up here.”
The girl nods seriously - then blinks, her eyes widening in the familiar way. “But who are you? Where..? help…”
“I’m here to help,” he says moving close to stare into the clear orbs of her eyes. “What do you need?”
The girl begins to look about her in dismay. “I think something bad happened here…” she looks at him hopefully a sudden shift in her expression, something he has not seen before.
“Are you a policeman?” she asks.
The girl's questioning finally drives the man out from the building, the scrap of garden and the outlying places he has so far explored. He circles the island. He tracks a stream through the trees from the coast to the inner clearing of the woodland. Oblivious to the weather, he ignores the sun as it beats his skin to redness, he ignores the wind and the weak drizzle carried with it like a sickly child.
If I am clumsy the old man might see me. He has got so confident in his bearing he stomps now like an animal let loose from a cage. Dangerous. He sniffs the air his ears catch the slightest rustle from the undergrowth. He has become a hunter.
He searches for clues, for signs, evidence of any kind. He examines what he finds carefully attempting to scry out their meaning, the hidden history of the island.
Yet there is nothing but frustration.
Every attempt to extrude a rational conclusion fails before his developing imagination, the new capacity for fantasy. His brain seems intent on layering ambiguity and possibility. And upon what? Small pieces of metal, a twisted piece of window glass, the remains of a fire, the heel from a broken shoe, the possible impress of a face in the silt slicked lake-line. These objects are the markers of a narrative he is creating himself, his life, day after day after day. Did something bad happen here? The old man has no definition of 'bad' any more. And 'did' is the past. He has no past.
Of course it is the girl that finds me. She always does. She freezes, rigid on the spot, standing by the gates of an abandoned outhouse. She is often to found here gazing at the walls as if studying them, examining the difference between this worn, rustic construction and the still gleaming building she inhabits.
The old man has told her many times not to go there, the place is empty, nothing to see, might attract dogs or any sort of animal.
It attracts her. And here I am.
Her face twitches grotesquely, expressions chasing and erasing each other; fear, joy, blankness, puzzlement, peering through the matted locks of her hair. Her eyes, almost wide enough for my reflection as I approach, are greedy for recognition.
I stop, put my heavy bag down and look into them.
“I think something bad happened here.” She says to me. “Did something bad happen here?”
“You've asked me that before.” I say to her.
She jerks a hand up to her eyes.
“Are you a policeman?”
The same questions, always.
I have given her the answers now so many times.
............
hope that was worth a read.