― Akira Kurosawa
I take coffee black – concentrated matt dark which gives me
no hassle of a reflection. It is a usual routine, though some may call it
unusual – we all have our own patterns I guess. I sit staring through the
frosted crepe covering over the apartment window. I like to leave the window
covered like that, the lacy trim almost a veil through which I can look at the
outside world and feel pure and chaste, like a bride bundled into a ceremony
over which she has no control. That is how we all operate, I guess. All part of
one great ceremony. On the street below, people clot in a human saturate of
confetti. I will have stared long enough for the coffee to go cold, for my eyes
to focus, so that the piercing wakening white of the box-room is nothing more
than a dirty beige. We notice the truth after a while.
I have been practising to smile. The mirror invites me –
drawing the confused animal to the sheet of pure water – and I practice,
curling my thin lips upwards, forging a façade of reassurance. Of course it is artificial
– everything in the damn room is artificial, the light which seeps slowly like
the matter from behind a bandage and permeates my senses sore, the plastic
window plants which boast of their eternity, the toast which lies untouched on
the plate like a piece of exhausted earth. I haven’t much appetite these days,
for I am gorged with memories. I lie awake at nights, embryonic, squeezed into
such a position in which I can imagine a pair of arms around me. Just for the
sake of being alive.
But existence is the definition of loneliness and I am
trapped in time – endless time which does not even need to unfurl itself amidst
the artificial light, and sound, and occasional synthetic smells of some
microwave meal from another room. It is difficult to be implicit, though I am
usually quiet. Sometimes I imagine that I have been kidnapped, that I am kept
in this room by someone who is utterly transfixed, captivated by me, watching
me, holding me in this way which is hardly physical. I do not like to think
that this is my existence, mediated by myself, for I am such a waste. I can
take whole days in my hands and tear them to nothing.
The dry drum of my heart confirms that I have to continue. I
rinse the remaining coffee down the steel sink, watching intently as the harsh black
liquid dilutes and dissipates to a quivering grey. We are all diluted in some
way – spread to hideous expanses in order to work, to operate. I start at 9 am,
the official time I am reckoned to begin as a human being. I do not tend to
wear very much when I first wake up, for that way I can stand as I think an artist’s
model would do, imagine flesh and bone invested with a life of charcoal and
graphite – most likely feeling much more than I do now. I do not look at my
body as I put on my clothes. Tears waver tauntingly on the edge of my eyes but I
dig my nails into my cheek to stop them, hold everything still. I feel numb.
Sometimes I enjoy feeling very little – I float between the
hours in the kind of ecstasy. That way, an approach can be entirely medicinal –
the array of scattered sheets over the single bed now an open wound with the
skin scored back. I think it looks beautiful. Sometimes I wish I could take
pictures, just pictures of here in my apartment so I can send them away to some
distant art school and say something like ‘THIS IS MY LIFE.’ That is all.
But I don’t. in the mirror my face swims into view, some
kind of terrible reminder. It has scarred cheeks and eyes which seem to grapple
with the flesh for some kind of exposure. I apply face cream, foundation,
powder, foundation again – working in short sharp concentric circles, slowly sifting,
skimming, building - -if only to hide myself for a few hours. I hear a man
screaming at his wife next door, followed by that undeniable dull thud of
physical violence. I hear it every day, pulsing in my own ears, straight
through my chest like a tight fist. And it doesn’t stop, no matter how hard I
try. It is like a course of mockery.
I wonder why I have to live, why I was chosen to live. The
red lipstick I slick over my lips like a lie seems so absurdly alive,
throbbing, almost arterial. It makes a nice clean cut between both cheeks, I
decide. That is the wonder with cosmetics – I ease life back into my face, some
rouge or another beaming over bone, so I can blend back into the lines of
acceptability. People will smile and nod at me and I say I look well, and I
will probably mirror their behaviour back and everyone will smile or at least pretend
to smile and we will feel convinced that we have done something right. Ha. Ha. Ha.
I don’t think many people want to live in the human sense.
The perfume pools in the nape of my neck as I spread it hurriedly – we all try
to cover that horrible salt scent of human existence some way or another. I
laugh. A horrible puncturing sound – as if
a foul animal has been suddenly uncaged. A horrible red row of mouth grins back
at me. Ha. Ha. Ha.
When I throw my make up into my bag there is a comforting
metallic click, somehow preparatory. I look at the calendar, pull the knife
from the drawer. Mark another day clear. Wipe my wrist clean. Pull down my sleeves.
It is time to head for work. I look back on my apartment in confusion
as if I am no longer the inhabitant, for how alien it looks, the strange furniture
of existence spreading miserably in its confinement! I cannot remember when I last
cleaned it properly – it just lies there like as soiled body, gaping and
miserable. It is pleasant to have control over something, like torture of the aesthetic
sense. One day, if I have the energy, I will buy a great number of cheap prints
on canvas which do not correspond so I can smile bitterly at these stupid four
walls in their injury.
Of course I choose the shoes I struggle the most to walk in.
For females flutter about the wards like insects, constrained in some kind of secret
male ideal – it gives the patients something to watch. Somehow like walking
upon needles, waiting for the familiar jar into flesh. As I walk the jar, jar,
jar of my breath. The hospital is only across the courtyard. I am two minutes
early. At least.
The double doors
smack back against the walls of the hallway like a pistol.
I am met with the sterile stares of other synthetic staff
members – for we are all the same, though no one thinks of admitting it. I wish
that I had stayed in bed, practised the art of my preservation of hours, seeing
how long I could lie perfectly, cleanly still – slowly shifting the thoughts
from my mind, every mechanism, in the hope that there would be nothing left. But
I haven’t. There are so many things I have not done – for I am weak.
A new patient on the ward is in my care. Her eyes barely
register as I slide in front of her cubicle curtain.
I tell her ‘Good morning’, but I know that’s a lie. As I take
her temperature, the explanatory laceration purpling the throat like a necklace
is inches away from my fingers. I want to ask her – how did you come to think of doing it? Did you write anything down before
you tried? I wonder how it felt, I wonder if you did it so you could finally feel
something, so you could see the vision that has haunted you all your life
become an array of coloured circles and stars and a beautiful pressure – for I should
know because I’ve seen it. .. –
She stares up at me and I am lost mid-thought. In her eyes
lies a strength, a steely determination I could never grasp myself. For I am only here, just
as everyone else is, because I need something to channel my madness into. We
hold these people, under an act, under steel beds and straight-jackets, we hold
them with the desperation of children. We let them personify our madness.
I choke on the emptiness and pretend a hasty exit to get
some psychological papers. I go to stand at the window. It is a beautiful height
and the people in the streets below clot like confetti. They have all jumped
too, some way or another.
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