Friday 12 November 2010

Nothingness and Arithmetic

For a moment, it is quiet. One of those moments that are few and far between but when they arrive it leaves her wondering what she should do with the time. She is leaning against her apartment door, breathing deeply and slowly. All that noise is overwhelming and she doesn't realise just how much until it stops.

"I'm not well" she thinks. The pounding of her heart and the long moments it takes to steady her breathing bring a fear into her soul. A fear that comes with that point in time when one realises they are not, in fact, invincible. She is sitting inside her own skull, viewing her surroundings and thoughts through her eye sockets. That is what has brought the quiet. The retreat inside herself. A place where the stillness and silence is heavy and loaded with conflict and despair. So much so, it brings stalemate and numbness.

She can physically out-run the strongest, fastest athlete. She can climb mountains, jump from the highest buildings and destroy anything in her path. But her mind cannot cope with people's conversations... the noise... the effort that goes into listening and wondering and the exhausting process of formulating replies. It is impossible to not become utterly drained listening to others when there is already a constant conversation going on inside her own mind.

Life has become a series of rooms with a different song playing in each and she can no longer pick out the familiar melodies.From an outsiders perspective there are no cracks in the woodwork. There is nothing to suggest that the foundations are crumbling. But a battle rages inside... a battle with a history of years that has recently become a silent struggle. Swords are locked in every direction and she can no longer make a move or a decision as she now does not know what she feels or which way to turn.

There is hate in there somewhere, and love and anguish. Resentment boils the pot steadily underneath. Is it the calm before the maelstrom rages once more? Or is it defeat? She cannot see that there has been a victory at all ... although she always thought that winning would bring a deadening of sound just like this one.

The moment becomes an hour, she cannot return to normality. Remaining inside her own head is the only option she now has. There are no controls, she can only watch as the details of the corridor in front of her become burned into her memories and she can no longer remember anything else. Layers, that's all she can see... like cardboard cutouts and pop up books... her world becomes a series of 2D images one behind the other. Her mind has taken control and she stands helpless against its will to shut down.

Counting the flaws in the thick, uneven gloss-paint on the door frame becomes an obsession, until she has enough numbers to start adding, subtracting and dividing. Carrying over hundreds, tens and units in her burnt-out brain becomes a need like no other. She loses her way and has to start over again and again. Retreating further into herself, she becomes a calculator of pointless details as her life slowly disappears from view.

Life becomes nothingness and arithmetic.

SRWB 2008



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