Saturday 18 September 2010

Papercut. Chapter 5.

“Roman, you ok?”

“Roman?”

“Roman”

“Romannnn”

“Roooomaaaan”

It echoes through out my brain, as if I got hit in the head by everything and its spinning heavily. I feel my head pulse, as if it’s about to blow, it starts to spin, but then the pain eases leaving me rather dazed. But myself.

What happened? I blink trying to recall the past few minutes. The gap huge, as if it might fall into it to fill it with some stupid excuse. It feels like somebody took the past minutes with a memory eraser and rubbed hard, hard, pressing into my memory and rubbed so hard, nearly leaving a hole.

“I’m just exhausted. Sorry. Several sleepless nights in a row.” I gave out a small smile. Liar. It sounds of out place, out of character, but then, we all are. People like saying that we all have masks we put on and barely reveal ourselves? But then, who reveals themselves now? To friends? So they’ll blur out everything being drunk or not? To a lover? Love doesn’t last, it’s everywhere, I get bored, the girl gets bored. Family?

I stopped on that. I never really opened up to them. They knew I love drawing, but the phrase, saying it out loud came to me in years. They could see me sketching in a corner with homework piling though. I knew that, I just didn’t want to open. I wanted something for myself as kids are the topics of gossip in families because their lives are so empty and dull, repeating the same crappy job they got shoved into, that they require to steal a glimpse of a not failed life. Yet. I let them think what they wanted, I knew that they saw it as a useless hobby. But to me it was everything, I ended up even opening tubes of oil paint just to feel the smell, dipping my nose in the paint, imagine how my brush would feel against the canvas. I was obsessed with oil painting rather than anything else. Tracing my fingers in it.

Circles, squares, rectangular.

But then back to the masks with the people standing in them. If you take everything away, what will you see? What’s the point. No, no, I’m not sounding all pessimistic. The masks are the person, the personality, you can’t just take them off leaving an empty, screaming, dying, begging and pleading self, can you?

Revealing the hidden vanity and fear of dying. The desire to be in this world, as the other had never been touched by a man.

Vanity our true essence as we dance with birth.

The word just goes around by itself. We created it. We tore off those masks which people desired to get rid off and end up with what we truly are.

She just nodded and was gone with a small bang.

Did she have it as well?

Then I press my back against the wall.

Gone.

As if a light breeze passed by, taking my memories with it. No, I did not secretly took drugs in a millisecond and there was no cig between my lips, its tip in the process of chewing as I’d light it to inhale. Then I’d breath out the smoke slowly, watching its own mix with the one coming from my mouth. What about drugs? Never took them, but I guess the idea could have crossed my head some day when I’d feel my anti-muse grab me by the collar or when I was alone without any of them. Screaming for inspiration. Climbing on the walls, grasping the ceiling, seeing white instead of patterns.

All artists used drugs or drunk maybe some went without plain cigs, but I went without anything of that. What for? To kill myself before I’d get bloody rich and see Branson pout at my own beach house. I choked when I saw him running around in cribs grinning from ear to ear. I’d grin too if I had my own freaking island and a beach house like that. Lucky. Why give us a reminder? We are self-obsessed enough. I’d add bastard, but the word doesn’t seem to collide with the president of Virgin here. I was proud of him and happy for him, so I doubt that I’d stalk him with a CD and choke him with it or poke him until death.

Seriously, I never really felt jealous for anybody having something more than me. I mean, I am jealous in a good way, in a damned happy way that I wish them better. I’d wish them to have the mask on forever. Who knows if its likewise, but then you can’t just know absolutely everything in life can you? Then… you’d go freaky and Wikipedia would go bankrupt and you’d be everybody’s Wikipedia. Everybody either asking you or you’d lay killed and forgotten. Wait, won’t that make hell loads of money?

I just asked from Mr. Wikipedia himself. Maybe I should go and learn Wikipedia, in my other life, where my abilities and addictions to art will be unfairly taken away. That’s sad. Maybe this is the only life I’ll ever get to paint. Maybe I’ll be, no definitely, something else, something more radical or boring. Like some award winning doctor who is great at surgery and if I ever find out that in my past life I was an artist, I’d go ‘huh? What the hell are you talking about?’ Well, exactly like I go now. Maybe that’s the reason, why we die, it’s something so shocking, that we cannot hold it, as death whispers it into our ear after the final grasp of air.

You’ll die at 76 being a housewife.

What the hell I’m I actually blabbering about?

Now, I had to deal with something completely different, something glaring at me. My luggage was glaring at me, ready to explode due to the amount of clothes stuffed inside for any possible weather, as if it would be under -20 all the time with a thick layer of pink snow causing me to question why did I need such a large amount of wool sweaters, but then I was quite the freezing type and if I felt down I’d feel cold and practically wrap myself around the biggest amount of wool possible. Wishing I was a sheep and dumb as two. Well, I’m not the first.

But then where actually are you the first? Everything was done before you, over fifty percent of the person’s thoughts were in the head before leaving a small spot for the new and borrowed from other lives literally. What was new? What was extraordinary? What made me first? The red oil I used frequently was surely a favorite colour to other artists. Why was I special?

The thing is I was special. I was. To myself. Oh, the vanity. With that I opened my bag and took out some clothes.

Then I began ruffling through my clothes, as if I was desperately searching for something. I did not know what, but I could feel ‘home’ stuck in my throat, the other home, the one which I wanted to cut out disgracefully, but then what did it do besides build roughly what I was and nearly destroyed what I’d be? I stopped, with my hand stuck between a bright t-shirt I took for no whatsoever reason. I exhaled slowly, I took them out. Everything which would give me the faintest hint of remembering Lola. Did I want to forget her? I tried to swallow the memories, but I couldn’t. I don’t know what I felt, I just felt weird. Was she a drug? Was she a machine? Was I one? Was she a detail? Maybe I made her up? But no, I could still remember her laugh piercing myself, her confused stare and shout. Oh, that shout.

I gave out something which seemed to resemble a squeak and I held my knees close to my chin, wrapping my arms around them as if I was a wrapper holding my childish naivety inside, trying to become invisible. To let time go past me, leave me here, as if I never was to be there, tasting the end and spitting on it. I was so tired. I was sick, sick of reality. I need to sleep. For eternity. Maybe then I’d greet the morning light with a smile maybe I’d wake up happy, pleased… exhausted instead of feeling its light burn my frown converting it into a grin.

Why was the morning light was so magical, so intense until I grasp the star in the first inhale to let it ease the night to greet the day with a dumb hello and goodbye as the cover will be pulled upon the dark to remain until it drills a hole as the day shall scream and bleed forming the clouds of sanity to grasp? I stood up and pushed the curtains open, letting the light fill up the room. It hit the room, devouring the shadows where they wanted to be, holding everything by the throat. Then turn now for a mere second, forcing them to be where they were supposed to at this time of the day.

Maybe morning was like the light at the end of the tunnel, the symbol of that blank canvas, the time where besides from several occasions I wouldn’t… change, where I looked brighter, where I believed that not everything was gone with a huge final grip to lose once more. I felt an urge to poetically press my face, my lips, my hands against the cold window to kiss it, to express the narcissism as I’d see the reflection and the neighbors gossip upon my tongue, as if I were an exhibitionist, as if to feel the light take over me, take away that darkness, ease the pain.

Only it wasn’t possible.

What did I want?

What was it that desired?

Popularity, to see people point at me, surprised, pleased expressions plastered on their faces, their eyes eating, tearing, chewing, spitting, vomiting me over the fact, that they had seen somebody who was known and sparkly.

Love? Did I want Lola back? Did I want to see her look up, her eyes in a familiar, given lull, thinking of something she never told me? She had billions of ideas racing through her head, as she’d tell them to me with her eyes shining brightly. That was what we needed with the hand in hand. More people like that, to the core optimistic, egoistic, demanding everything out of life, struggling out of every possible situation and chewing on the rest, laughing as looks would flood the reality we once took over.

For looks to describe.

For looks to burn and be read, as I’d paint and grasp that they were not about me,
but my essence and presence.

I could see her, smiling from ear to ear, ruffling her hair, the dark dyed tones of her nails, wondering out loud, holding a conversation with herself trying to understand the secret behind my frown and the asymmetric grin of her as she’d grasp my cheek and kiss my upper lip, the bottom swollen from yesterday’s fight upon the stars as I’d try to grasp and eat and stare with a vegetarian. Then she’d tilt her head, blonde steaks falling over her face, touching her cheeks, her lips, her jaw line. Then she’d whisper that everything was alright and kiss me. Liar.

The last two words echoed throughout my broken brain. How long was it? It was… a day. I gave out a sob without any tears as a sigh of realization. I was shaking again. I was exhausted. I was tired. I wanted to end it all. Without a snip. Memories, images, feelings were clouding up myself, chocking me. I pulled my scarf, as if it was the culprit. It wasn’t.

I was so clingy. I’d do it and then wear the burden, a second skin of regret towards everything I did.

Memories. There were so many I couldn’t just erase them, delete them, watch them fade into nothing. I wouldn’t allow it and I couldn’t do it. Did I love her? Was it love? Something I could get rid of. A heavy contrast to that what people explained it as, a big gap in your soul, sucking you in like a black hole shredding you apart until nothing was left. Sucking the life out of you. Was it the parasite we were fighting against the passion the other belief, the religion, the only rock in the way to immortality we always wanted to take with us? Was the closest ally our main foe? The passion which caused us to grasp the beloved’s hand?

I could let it go. The thought scared me sometimes when everything remained still, no passion, no longing.

But then I’m saying that because I’m depressed. Because I can rub it off. Soon that frown will be replaced by a smile, my ego will come, do some stupidity and then I’ll sigh and fix its mistakes. I smiled at that thought. It seemed… so familiar. It felt as if I was still me. True, I was going to take the break-up depression pill, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

Not yet.

-

Laughs. Smiles. Giggles.

Sun. Boy. Son. Mum. Dad. Such a showoff, the painting there/ head falling apart.

Dark brown hair falls in curls around his face.

That’s right, I had chestnut hair. Echo.

Blah. Only not that dark tone.

“I love crayons. I mean it’s so fun!”

Gossip.

That’s not my voice.

Shh.

The boy exclaims, his voice deeper than mine was when I was seven as his hazel eyes shine. Bright.

I don’t have hazel eyes. Green. Blue. Red.

Because that’s not you.

Nor me.

They hug him proudly, /love, affection/ I see my sister grin in curiosity observing his abstract painting with colours bursting from side to side forming some unknown shape in the middle. He seems to be attracted to everything abstract.

Gone.

I love abstract stuff. The kid has style.

Back.

I hate abstract stuff. I mean look a seven year old kid can draw the same abstract crap like a forty year old egoistic creep can.

Forth.

They love him a lot, they love me a lot. But I’m sure my eyes are olive, hell with the hair colour maybe it was as dark. They all pull together in this teletubies big hug and laugh, and smile proudly at their son, me.

I love laugh.

Are you sure it’s you?

Grasp.

I see his face, he is looking directly at me.

Hello again.

He’s not me.

-

I stirred in my sleep. I’ll never be him. I’m just a broken fragment, a shard, letting him leak out the insanity to make him as innocent as a feather, a banality as he’d go on to get hold of Lola again, leaving me in the corners, as it once were, once, of something, filling that pessimist, making him more confident in the face of other. Ruining him on another. But then, I want to break out free. I opened my eyes seeing the endless pitch black surround me. Nail varnish? What change was it, to look at the black ceiling or at the back of his black surrounded in the same thing waiting for a glimpse of the outside, the morning, the day faking that I was him? I was like a parasite, who mocked him behind his back, because once I’d see him, I’d lose words, just stare, but I’ve been able to speak up in the past years, get hold of him, as he loses consciousness, I never even acted like him, I pretend that in my head, knowing that when I break loose I spoil my plan.

Maybe if I’d act for a while, I’d form whole with him, eating him, devouring his existence and replacing it fully with my own, making him the unwanted ego. Him, the one to admire and watch my life with some popcorn, amused, boredom never taking over, as it once took me, when I chop a few things off. But then maybe he was the ego, the parasite only who was winning..? Maybe he was the one who tied us both up, releasing himself, leaving me to sleep until I woke up, my dreams gray and dull as his were bright, red and filled with a certain blonde, fated.

Chapter 6

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