Tezgodov: Turning Idle Days into Wasted Years

Now and Never

A giant stretches out its arms through the length of a continent full of virility and hope. It looms over fertile fields, loyal friends, model families, memories waiting to become ash, and an immense breadth of time. The monster blots out the sun, takes the hopes of harvest away, ready to cannibalize all that is under him. Each of his feet are planted on now and never.

~~~

Deep orange lighting covers the table and obfuscates my already blurry view of the world surrounding me. My eyes aren't the best at working overtime, but they know as well as me there's not much to see, yet there remains much to listen. It's my friends all chatting between one another.

I like radio far more than the television. My eyes have shown me a world far poorer than how it sounds. This blissfull chatter, to me, is my conch shell whispering me Poseidon's melodies. Not to mention the theatre of the mind, what a grander scene than the peanut gallery offered to us by means of two peepholes.

Wooden you damn wisecracker, can't you let Flint finish his story for once? Man I sure enjoy hearing them yack about some more serious stuff sometimes, but generally more mundane the better. My favorite was when they were talking about shoe size conventions. They have a gift for making insight out of the most mind numbingly minute subject matter, but sometimes when I want a little more, I try to eavesdrop on Kwai and Gesta.

Gesta is such an enigma. There's so much hesitance in every word these two decade old friends part each other. Their conversations used to be much more animated, but I suppose they only grew quieter towards one another. It doesn't escape me to break into the conversation from time to time to provide some levity, but why would I? Sometimes my state might seem pitiful to an outside observer, but it's those who try that are worthy of your sympathies. I am as content as I can be while everyone else is laboring under the pretext of putting your voice, your whole being on the line, up for discussion by someone other. The other is the most unpredictable animal in our jungle, each one hiding their rabid self.

Serene waves of the tide of our many conversations continued to flow under the watchful moon, although partially obstructed by the dormant giant. The point of it all was as little as the world we lived in. Little as we were in the grand scheme of things, we were the giants of our own narratives. I could hear the waves clashing with the shore, over the ur-argument.

They talked and talked as if it was going to last forever. Every word that I cherished faded as they were uttered. I am the one safekeeping this treasure, somewhere in there they keep playing on and on. After the event I had to go back home, and so did my friend Kwai. We were sitting at a bus stop, traffic covering our content silence. I saw her gaze drift into the distance. Weirdly enough, although my other friends have accepted my silence overtime, mostly due to what I talk about when given the chance, there has always been a concealed pittance towards me from Kwai. So at the most inopportune times of silence like these, I become the one to break it.

She smiled a hair more shakily than before as though it was the only thing that could resemble a rest for her mind to latch onto. That moment was the oasis before the desert winds of her id called her to stare absentmindedly once more.

We sat without talking much on the agonizing benches of the bus stop. Soon we went our separate ways. These truthful conversations that breach through our masks of banality are what I really crave at the end of such formalities, but this one unsettled me more than it brought joy. Deep in a mental tailspin, I couldn't notice that the bus driver was expecting me to pay. My needless waiting made other people in the bus take notice until I finally snapped back. The more I was unseen to myself the more the entire bus was taking notice of me. It was as if one monolithic eyeball covering the rest of the bus was standing next to me, staring at me unblinking. The roads and the roadsides were empty as limbo and the constant hum of life was noticably absent while my mind kept pondering to keep me busy. There were two cold seats, colder than a carcass, almost like they were reserved for me.

Winds were howling with the withering motor's wisphers. Stray dogs standing under dim streetlights like dead shurbbery. There was a shop or two with their morgueish fluorescent lights still open. For all I knew they could be funeral homes, I only really saw solid space and spiraling stars in my mind-theatre.

At some point or another I got off the bus, went up some apartment stairs and found myself at my shelter's door. Deep orange lighting swallowed me again. I dropped my keys and picked them up, while trying the lock I dropped them for a second time. As I was awkwardly crouching over, rapture's light beamed on my face. My roommate had already opened the door.

I want to sigh for the entire human race every time he follows his obtuse literalisms with his incoherent similies. Without responding I managed to find my keys and shuffled inside while he was giving me his usual quizzical looks of half-caring disappointment.

When I entered I still wished that I'd hear the chirpings of my pet parrot Maté, whom I buried last week. Although I might make less than dismal remarks on his intelligence, my roommate has been hugely helpful throughout the burial ceremony and my journey of recovery since the unfortunate events. I'm not ashamed to admit that he even consoled me as I cried on his shoulder during the part of the ceremony in which we played some of Maté's hauntingly beautiful melodies. Our short and dimly lit hallway's left wing supported a bathroom, and I saw that he was having trouble with his electric toothbrush again. Although I use the word "saw", it was mostly the sounds of whirring interspaced with mumblings of some bizzarely specific cusses. What the hell I thought, he wasn't such a hopeless annoying prick but a good roommate at the end of the day. I decided to help him out on the matter despite my own cautionings against myself.

It's pitch black in my room. I never got over my fear of the void and still at my age I use night lights. The floorboards creak as I walk to the light's designated corner. My roommate had begun snoring, the dogs occasionaly howling and the crickets were intensifying their chirping. Among this quartet of the night I managed to illuminate the void. Right next to the socket laid the mirror of my dresser. I could see my face in the soft green glow radiating throughout the room. I was staring at someone called "me." This "me" person is my role in the grand play of life. Motionless. I stared to find something. It's such an odd feeling, it was like there were no plays to end and all the world were real and not but a dream. The whole of my vision shaking, I couldn't stop smiling. And it hurt, it hurt so much to be in this body, in this moment, destined to die. A wonderful feeling that I don't want to ever experience again.

My shaking legs had propelled me to my bed at last, returning to the dream of life to fulfill the role of sleep. I usually let my mind off the leash, let it show me its delightful acts and shows. The theatre would not end, however, preventing me from entering the silver screen. In two minutes time I'd wasted twenty, rolling back and forth to fade away. Two past midnight became three, 3:42 am if my alarm clock wasn't out of sync again. That was the last thing I remembered from that night.

~~~