airstream obstructed

The evening sky, when you can see a shimmer of pink on muted blue, is really the only thing that grounds you anymore. You don’t have an explanation as to why it should move you that tremendously more often than not, but staring upwards feels like learning what it’s like to have that rock that weighs down on your existence, lifted for the briefest of moments. Even more so, if your vision is clouded by treacherous moisture. The evening sky allows for a cinematographic framing of things. It makes you feel poetic, like you don’t have to worry where all this is headed; and the fact that you recognise the ease with which you breathe in to be a fleeting side effect of the benevolent appearance of the stratosphere, makes your indulgence in it twice as bitter. Yesterday, you went shopping and all was swell until you had to squish yourself past two other customers of the shop, who wouldn’t move - one was engrossed in reading the label of a prepackaged loaf of bread, and the other was just an asshole - and you felt a surge of disgust for all solid matter, a disdain for existence itself. The chase for food. The obligations. Your acquaintances’ questions about your life, although you don’t feel like answering but you do anyway. It would be silly to attribute this negativity to inconveniences within your grocery shopping experience - no, this is your essence, lying dormant beneath an innocent, unassuming face, until a scratch on the surface unleashes it for you to deal with yet again. As you think about all these things, the sun is quietly setting which means that the pink disappears from the blue, everything sinks into dim twilight and there’s nothing to hold on to anymore. The feelings of heaviness, the desperate longing for something more, are gone. Not pacified, not replaced, just dulled down until the next accidentally pretty sunset. You don’t feel sad, or on edge, or serene - just empty. It’s time to go to bed. You’re bracing yourself for the next day’s little eternity. You feel like you’ve got absolutely nothing to say.

untitled #25

She had no idea why she'd let him click on her YouTube watch history. "Jesus, why the hell are you even watching this shit," he said, scrolling past pastel-coloured, luminous video thumbnails with smiling girls. "How to organise your mornings. How to be more productive. What a waste of fucking time, man." They were sitting on her bed, her battlefield during the last few weeks, or was it months? No, probably years. She sighed theatrically, knowing full well he was right. She didn't see the point, either. If it helped someone to get their life together by meticulously protocolling the times they took out the trash, then by all means, they should steer the course. It could never, ever become her cup of tea, though - she could barely bring herself to write something on a life-saving post-it note every once in a while. "Yeah, I know. All those minutes I won't ever get back, nothing of this ever works for normal people, etc. I know. I suppose it's just some meditative way of judging people while trying to actually figure out your shit, at the same time. Something along those lines. Or just a waste of time. I don't know." He glanced at her with a half-smile and a furrowed brow, and proceeded to check out the other tabs in her opened browser: several videos opened and paused on YouTube - a video essay, two songs, a photoshop tutorial and a Sailor Moon episode - a fanfiction site, WhatsApp. Nothing spectacular.

"So that's it then?" he asked her, leaning back against the wall and letting his gaze wander across the accumulation of pens, post-its, paperclips, stacks of essays on formerly pristine white paper, crumpled notes and chocolate bar wrappers. Her gaze followed, regarding the mess through a haze of continuous sleep deprivation and dust particles dancing in the air. "Yeah," she said, "that's it." Both sat in silence for a while, pondering the meaning of that short sentence. Of course, nothing was "it". The ship was still in the middle of the ocean, and would continue to be for potentially many years to come. "I was waiting for euphoria to kick in," she said after a while, sounding far less bitter than she felt, "it didn't." In retrospect, she didn't understand how she could be so naive, thinking that overcoming one obstacle could impact the hollow feeling inside. "I'm in limbo." His gaze was still fixed on a point on the opposite wall. "How so?" She sighed, shuffling a little bit on the blanket - her legs had grown numb under her weight - and taking her time to compose a reply. "I feel like I'm standing beside myself? Like, whatever I do, it's not me who does it, but some projection that does her best to keep up the appearance. And I'm like, sorry for her but I also want her to stop. And I'm reaching out to link back to it, you know? Because I need to go on, and I need that to be me again. But I'm grasping at nothing. I don't look forward to absolutely anything. You know?" Her voice wavered a little. He was regarding the blanket now. "Do go on." She punched him weakly. "I don't even know why I'm talking to you." He chuckled at that. "Because I asked you, and you can’t wait to tell someone. And also, I was trying to figure out if it's wine I should fetch from the kitchen, or something significantly stronger. By the sound of it, I'll have to make a shop run for some Captain Morgan." She couldn't help grinning. "Yeah, probably."

Most people, she mused, would have been bewildered by their exchange. There was no sympathy, no words of comfort or encouragement. He just listened, and she just talked, and she was sure it didn’t affect him. He never talked about himself - in fact, they barely ever talked, he'd just dropped by to collect two books she had borrowed for her work - but she suspected that he felt the same, or at least out of place, as well, and there was a little space for quiet feelings of camaraderie in their alienation, and their shared, pronounced disdain for niceties, false sympathy, and false hopes. However, he was holding up way better than she was, which is why he the one asking, and she was the one explaining. She doubted that he could stop being enigmatic even before himself, and she didn’t know if there was someone he talked to when all these feelings threatened to spill out in the least convenient way possible. Actually, she didn’t know absolutely anything about him, except his name and that they shared some friends and were getting the same degree. Sometimes she wondered whether she didn't just make him up in her mind.

"It's just so exhausting to feel so detached from everything,” she said. “You know, the other day I actually tried listening to one of those premade Spotify playlists, like those for different moods or whatever, or for coffee shops. The stuff that most people just listen to, apparently." He raised his eyebrows in amusement. "And, did you enjoy it?" She met his eyes for a few seconds, and both snorted out in laughter. "It was a fucking nightmare. There were some songs on one of them, the sunny day one, I think, you could murder me with. Like, the absolute worst type of standard techno beat, and some woman squeaking her lines...Or even worse, these awful singer-songwriter dudes who just whisper their stupid lyrics to the exact same guitar chords all over, to the point where you wanna smack them across the head and tell them to just keep it together, you know?” He chuckled. “I sat through most of it. I thought it might shift my perspective, or something. I was just so tired from feeling so fucking disconnected all the time, you know." His silence was, again a welcome one. He knew the playlist hadn't helped, as did she, and both knew the remedy to whatever was haunting them was still far out of reach, if it existed at all. Out of sudden, he reached out for something tangled in the blanket, and when he pulled it out, she recognised her paperback copy of a Kafka compendium. "Giving old Franz a try?" he asked, flipping the pages. She smiled at the book. "It's really strange, I don't even see very much in a lot of what he writes, like, it doesn't always speak to me, or stir something in me the way some other authors do, but I have a really, really intense feeling that if we had known each other, we'd be the best of friends. I don't know, it's probably weird, and probably hella transgressive. I mean, poor Franz. He doesn't even get a say in this, and I declare him my pal." She was tearing up, she realised, so she stopped talking. He paused on some pages, reading a couple of stray paragraphs. Then he turned to her. "How long since you bleached your hair?"

The question came out of nowhere, but after a tiny pause, she just pointed to her roots that were doing their best to grow out in their usual dark colour as fast as possible. "As you can see, it's been a while." "Going from black to almost white, and no selfies on Instagram? Impressive," he commented, studying her hair. It dawned on her that he hadn't seen her with the new colour before, and she was wondering why he was only bringing it up now. She refrained from asking. "I'm over selfies at the moment. Remember? It's someone else, not me. I just can't. I really wish I could.” She did wish it. She wasn’t in the camp of people who judged others for posting pictures of themselves on social media, because there was something liberating in being at ease with your own shell. “It's so stupid. I just wish I could enjoy something, express something, just being me. God, that sounds awful. But I can't. Like I can't move, metaphorically. I don't know." She broke off. There were no words in her brain to say what she had wanted to. He watched her from the side, and she felt herself shrinking into the pillow her back was leaning again. Then he pulled out his phone, and her eyes widened. "No, oh my god, stop, I don't want people taking pictures, I didn’t mean that..." She buried her face in her hands, shutting her eyes, and ducked her head like a tortoise. There was no sound of a picture being taken, but she reckoned it was just because everyone had their phones on silent all the time. She stayed in her frankly quite embarrassing position through the noises of him sliding off the bed, tucking his two books into his backpack and taking a few steps towards the door. The she took a peek through her fingers. "Are you done?" "Yeah," he replied. He sounded amused, but she wasn’t sure. He probably was. She’d never know. "See ya." Then he left.

She stretched out on the bed after the click of the lock on her flat’s door, and exhaled, staring at the ceiling. Her phone vibrated. He had tagged her in an Instagram story. Slowly, she unlocked her phone and opened the app. There it was, the picture he’d taken - unfocused, just the wall above her head, and about a third of her actual head, including her outgrowing roots and the tips of the fingers she was pressing to her face. The space above her head said: “franz wasnt home but i found his pal paul scavenging his fridge for pizza leftovers”. She couldn’t stop laughing until breathing became difficult and tears rolled down her cheeks. This was absurd, but it brought relief and she wouldn’t be able to explain to anyone why to save her life. She reacted with a laughing face. Soon, the little grey “Seen” popped up beneath it, but no typing followed. She hadn’t expected it anyway, though, and proceeded to google “franz kafka friend paul”.

float by

As the sky outside his window darkened with clouds in the late afternoon somewhen in November, Ezra sat at his desk with his eyes closed, holding his face straight into the lightbulb of the lamp sitting on the smooth, black surface. The tip of his nose almost touched the glass, no heat radiating from the brand new LED lamp. He had started this practise as a child, when he longed for spring during the winter months, pretending that the blinding, white light was rays of sunshine meeting his eyes through closed eyelids. He would pretend to hear ocean waves, bird chatter, or the sound of a swiftly thawing brook, but as he got older, he found himself more and more yearning for complete silence and blankness of the mind accompanying this somewhat helplessly orchestrated blankness of sight.

He tried his best not to think, but his head felt like bursting. Life, whether lived successfully or not, always retained an air of wading through deteriorating debris. There simply were no moments of immobility, everything was adrift at the mercy of circumstance and the consequences of mediocre to bad decisions. Things were inevitably getting lost in the stream as you struggled forward. As far as consequences were concerned, he couldn't help feeling like both him and all the people he cared about had made mostly quite frankly terrible choices. Some had profoundly overestimated their powers, others had retreated into a superficial farce of normalcy that ate away at the ground they stood on, and yet others were gambling away past achievements for pipe dreams that they had elevated to life goal material for reasons beyond Ezra's understanding. He was scared that sooner or later, they would slip from his grasp, maybe even out of his sight. All of that, of course, on a scale that allowed to pretend that everything was ok, sort of. And while that happened, what exactly was he doing, a passenger on this apocalyptic merry-go-round? He honestly had no idea. Everything in life seemed ok, if you didn't pay attention, but boy - you didn't wanna see what you saw when you did. And, of course, there was nothing you could do about it on a scale where it would seriously matter.

He could only allow himself to react to everything every once in a while, to get it off his shoulders. So that's what he did, holding his face into the lamp and processing all these human defeats that sometimes concerned him, sometimes didn't, all the chaos and the unnecessary sacrifices. A drop of salty water made its way across the curve of his cheek - one tear for what could've been, if it weren't for. Another followed - for what could never have been, because things were what they were. One for all the losses that he'd already had to swallow. One for the losses he had to brace himself for. One for the hits he'd had to take, and one for those he'd handed out. He opened his eyes briefly and gazed at his reflection in the chrome-plated shade of the lamp, noticing a droplet caught up in his eyelashes. Sometimes, he mused, you probably even fail at crying. He actually hadn't intended to cry. He'd just had to mourn everyone and everything for a little while, because it was November again.

the ghost

Though he'd never been a bon vivant, Ezra had never felt as much as a ghost as he did these days. He worked, went out if he had to, talked. He sat in trams, smiled absently at cashiers, and replied to messages but all of it felt unreal. Actions on his part were reduced to an absolute minimum. He moved as little as he could, fueled no discussions. Just like people imagine spirits moving among the living, barely heard or seen, he mostly read and watched - messages, books, blogs, people, movies. When someone joked about him "finally leaving his cave", his smiles in reply were weak - he knew better. Ezra took his cave with him, wherever he went, existing in a half dormant state, watching the world around him move like Plato's shadows. He felt like he couldn't perceive anything without adding extra context - reality needed to be turned into film, or the pain of it would be overpowering.

He quietly and carefully added a score, wherever he went, his headphones being his surreptitious little conspirators. It's just a movie, Ezra, they seemed to whisper. There's a plot. It'll end. Never looking to the sides, his eyes were a camera, carefully choosing and framing what he needed to see: concrete beneath his feet, the hesitant, abstract movements of his fingers as they performed their mundane tasks, pressing buttons, grabbing things. He added subtext here and there - light was never just light, it was a mood, a mood he liked to think set the tone for everyone who happened to stumble into the shots his mind created continously. 

His presence was elusive. He went to one place yet it felt like an entirely different one, almost automatically. Events had to be turned into filmic moments, composed, controlled. Everything redundant had to be edited out mercilessly. Even to himself, Ezra felt like he wasn't there, like a bodiless artificial intelligence, unable to piece himself together to a simple human being. When did the mechanism stop functioning, he wondered as he forced himself to stare at his reflection in a shop window as he waited for a bus. When did he become a ghost, created of denial and numbness, dissociated from the person he was supposed to be?

At a time like this, he greatly appreciated diving into real films and books. They meant that someone elses mind was at work crafting and plotting, weaving a soft story bed to sink his restless mind into, to forget. He'd noticed caring more about the concerns of fictional characters than about his own life, and although that positively couldn't be healthy, he relished it, bathed in the absence of himself in his own story.

Not all was well, though: His alternative universe had to be computed 24/7 and the powers of his brain were getting exhausted. There were times when he almost blacked out in the middle of a street, simply because he was so thoroughly fatigued by thinking, and thinking, and thinking. All that processing was getting too much. But just like an old computer, he could do nothing but shut down shortly before overheating. There seemed to be no way out. Somehow, through all this imagining, he had gotten so out of touch with his human self that it seemed lost to him. There were moments when he realised that hours had passed and he didn't remember what he had been doing all the time.

One day, ultimately, he couldn't remember how he'd found himself sitting on a bench outside in the pouring rain, with his eyes closed, feeling absolute quiet, like some higher power had scooped him up to check what the hell was wrong, why ezra.exe had stopped working. The rain was overwhelming. Water splashed down from somewhere up above, smashing onto the bare skin of his face, soaking his hair and clothes, awakening his senses to the perception of pure physicality. He was, indeed, made of flesh. He felt it. The water almost hurt, in a fantastic way. The ghost in him had retreated, not trying to make sense of the rain, and all that was left in Ezra was the realisation that he existed, he was someone you could see, and touch. A material being, there was a chance for him to make it out back into the material world; a human with a name and a body and a life to live.

untitled #23

She was rummaging through her drawers, not looking for anything in particular, just looking. Jesus, how much stuff had accumulated over the years. Memorabilia from school years: her journals that were supposed to contain homework and school-related notes but ended up full of stickers and scribbles and doodles and the occasional funny teacher quote; the really good tests, or the weird tests that she had wanted to keep to remember the heated discussions afterwards ("Did you know what the hell was up with that poem? What did you write? We never did that kind of stuff in class before, why would she give us this weird shit for a test??"); favourite pens and pencils that reminded her of a time when she loved glittery pink Hello Kitty items; photos she had taken with her old film camera of a class trip to a disused coal mine.

She sighed. Here, in this room, was most of the evidence of one particular human having been around on this planet for quite a while now. Her eyes were on the book shelf. Wasn't it curious that you could trace a persons entire life back to their deepest childhood if they kept a tidy book shelf? There were all the books with huge letters and short stories and poems and lots of pictures that her five, six, seven year old self had learned to read with, the childrens books her eight, nine, ten year old self had devoured countless times, back when her schedule had allowed for finishing a book and starting it over again, and again if it was really good. There was "Robinson Crusoe" that she had read a million times at thirteen years, fascinated and disturbed by the idea of building a life all alone on an island scavenging from ship wrecks.

There were Goethe, Schiller, Fontane, and the most terrible book by Musil, "The confusions of young Törless", that she had to read for class. There was "Homo Faber" by Max Frisch, a novel she had never had to read but had found it in her sisters school book shelf when she was way too young for it but bored, so she had read it nevertheless, remaining moderately appalled that writing something like that was, apparently, ok in western civilisation. There were books that bore the "remaindered" stamp, great books for just a few bucks because of a random scratch or stain on the cover. Finally, her university books, mostly novels, some that she had read thoroughly for a term paper or exam, some that she had skimmed through only to know what was up for a class. Several books that she had bought years ago but never even opened because there hadn't been time for them. Soon she would have the time, she thought.

Her hands had changed. Slightly bonier, more visible veins, no more bitten fingernails. She would never pick up her beloved "The Thief Lord" with soft, small, rosy hands ever again. Her gaze wandered on and paused in the mirror. She knew that for most people, she still passed for a teenager, with her round face and big eyes, but she knew better. Her skin had become patchy, with prominent dark circles around the eyes, and slight creases on her forehead from raising her eyebrows too much. She stared herself in the eyes, trying to remember if that was how they looked when she was eight years old. "Jesus," she said to herself after a while, "you're gonna stare at the face of a tired, bitter adult in the mirror for the rest of your life."

26 hectopascal pt. 4

Ben 13:44
yo, ronnie and i are out tonight, theres a kind of beach style rooftop party

Ben 13:45
simon is hosting it, idk if you remember him but anyways would be fun if you were down too

Ben 13:45
semester's over soon, etc

Ezra looked out of the window. The sky was an impeccable blue, not a single cloud and indeed, he did feel like a long drink or two. Things were happening. Outside his house, cars were stopping at red traffic lights. A plane was slowly gliding along the line of the far horizon, and high above the stratosphere, satellites were making their rounds around planet Earth. Ezra sighed. He sure could do with some weight being lifted off his shoulders by the mix of music and chatter, and alcohol's Gaussian blur.

Ezra 13:50
sure, im coming. when and where?

_____

"Good to see you outside the cave," Ben said, slapping his friend's back. Ezra smirked. "Yeah, I got sick of watching shadows of pots so I thought I check out the outside world." Veronica snorted into her cocktail. The festivities in honour of one Simon Trent's access to parental credit cards took place in an open-air rooftop bar right across the beach, with the obligatory tiki torches and several sunshades of straw placed among occasional benches and chairs. Thankfully, the place wasn't too crowded yet, so the three of them could claim a bench closest to the balcony, overviewing the ocean. "Boy, I wouldn't mind Simon's parents adopting me," Veronica said as they admired the location. "He literally doesn't even have an occasion to splurge this hard." "Yeah," Ben nodded, "I think his dad is a lawyer with some tycoon types in real estate, or something." Ezra wrinkled his nose. "How exactly did you two get invited, or where should I remember him from..? I don't recall this guy, like, at all." "Urm, he was in two of our media psychology classes, and we kinda hung out after uni one time, back at Vance's...he was the guy who was ranting about this club closing, Flamingos, or what's the name again..." Ezra's brain still refused to spit out an image, so he just gave a helpless little nod. Ben chuckled. "He doesn't remember, Veronnie. Honestly, do you ever even look at people?" Ezra started rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt, feeling caught red-handed. He tended to skim faces like pages of books, on a quest for whoever would catch his eye. Most people didn't.

Veronica stood up. "Boys, I'll get some more drinks. I feel like after surviving my marketing exam today I can totally drink half this bar and still be standing. I am invincible - I AM HE-MAN!" Ben and Ezra looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Veronica was anything, but not a skilled drinker. Her feet got unsteady after a beer or two. "I'll look after her," Ben said, sighing, as she pranced away. The surface of the ocean was calm, just steady ripples softly splashing on sand. "How are you?" he asked. Ezra shrugged. "Fine. As fine as I can be, I guess. I passed all my assignments. I'm slightly behind on applications. I'm tired. But I am quite content sitting here, staring at the landscape." Ben smiled. "That sounds pretty good, coming from you." "Don't be so ironic. How about you?" "I'm dope. Honestly." Ezra watched Ben cautiously from the side, but he seemed sincere. "Are you sure?" "Yeah. Uni is almost over, Vronkers and I are almost done with the appartment, painting walls and shit - we're doing pretty fucking well, really, the two of us - and I'm interning at my uncle Fred's agency in two months - I haven't told you yet, have I?" Ezra shook his head. "I only got the email today in the morning, he talked to people and showed them my CV and stuff - well, you know what he's like." Ben chuckled, lighting a cigarette. Ben's uncle Fred could talk people into selling their last pair of shoes in the pouring rain. Ezra smiled at his knees. "I'm lowkey relieved I haven't missed out on you being upset, or in trouble or anything, to be honest. I was wondering, the other day. I barely have my mind together for my own bullshit, usually." Ben looked at him, sarcastically wide-eyed. "You don't? I wouldn't have guessed, pal." Ezra punched his arm, but grinned. "Shut up." Veronica was back, gleefully carrying three tall glasses with pretty-coloured beverages. "I forgot what the hell this is called, but it tastes great," she said, placing each glass carefully on the railing beside their rattan bench.

The place was filling up quickly. Ezra glanced around lazily - it was mostly students he found he was vaguely familiar with from his classes, as well as some men and women clearly in their late thirties that he'd never seen before. A group of girls enthusiastically waved at Veronica, who waved back. Ezra recognised the red-haired girl from several weeks before, who had approached him at the wrongest moment possible, and flinched. A quick glance at Ben told him that he'd recognised her, too. "Isn't that your almost-date? The one you told to study some law before harrassing you?" He could barely contain his laughter. Ezra rolled his eyes. "Sure looks like it is." Ben was just about to retort something witty when he spotted the host. "Oh, there's Simon! Simon, hey!" he called and waved his hand. A boy, who Ezra now recognised, was grinning at Ben and walking over. His short, blonde hair that was previously held in place with gel was surprisingly dishevelled for the time being only half past eight. "Hi," he greeted them, "so glad you made it! Ezra, I'm glad they took you along, I didn't have your number saved..." "Yeah, I know, thankfully we've got Benny for that..." Ezra replied, having a vague premonition of impending smalltalk. However, the conversation didn't spiral into a circular exchange of pleasantries - Simon seemed to be in highest spirits. "I actually asked a friend to DJ tonight but he dropped out last minute, so a few playlists I threw together will have to do," he continued, "I was actually really tempted to just have a Phoenix-themed party and blast their last LP all night - I love it! In fact, all I'm gonna do tonight is corner everyone at the bar and have them sit and stand and dance through 'Tutti Frutti' at least twice." Veronica nodded enthusiastically. "It's ear candy, literally - I've been looping it for days!" Ezra did share the sentiment, which he was surprised to realise. "I wouldn't mind," he said, "It's swoony as fuck."

Simon almost stayed true to his promise. Phoenix were interspersed with some alibi jazzhop tunes, enough to please the crowd, but mostly it was the sugary, dizzy sounds of the french bands latest opus. Ezra didn't mind, at all. Everyone was getting increasingly drunk, conveniently decreasing their talkativity. No one would come up to him and talk him into depression about their search for apartments, campus gossip and how the cinematography in the latest Marvel universe installment was actually really something (it usually wasn't.) Several drinks had taken their toll on him,too - his vision ever so slighly blurred, movements of people around him appearing smooth and flowing, not clumsy as they probably were in reality. Several metres away, Ben and Veronica were swaying to the music, holding on to each other, Veronica obviously for stability. She kept stumbling and giggling into Bens neck. Ezra looked out at the ocean. It wasn't bad, losing yourself in the moment every now and then. When everything - people, music, waves crashing - melted into one single bed of white noise he would sink in it. He loved it. It was people with their individual troubles that overwhelmed him, but when an abundance of impressions came crashing down on him, he relished the feeling - it blended out his own persistent, nagging thoughts. It was almost like postmodern meditation: make it too much of everything, so it can equal nothing.

At the bar, several bottles of wine stood untouched. Apparently, the student clientele wasn't very much into alcoholic classics, but Ezra studied the logos on the bottles for a bit. Beaujolais. He'd heard that before, but couldn't assign a taste to it or even remember whether he ever tried that wine. Perhaps today would be the day. Suddenly, he realised that someone was tugging his sleeve - the girl, again. Ezra looked down at her in confusion - didn't he put her off once and for all last time? Maybe, having stomached a decent number of cocktails, she had come for revenge. "Dude, I actually said 'Hi' like three times, are you dreaming?" She was smiling, like they were pals and not actual strangers with a more than just awkward encounter in the past. He was slightly perplexed. "Er, I don't know, haven't heard you - music's loud, etc. Hi." The girl - Tess, he remembered - leaned against the bar, seemingly pleased to have his attention. "So," she said. He felt cornered, like a wild animal behind a trash can in the suburbs, the local wine mom coming for him with a stick and shouting things like "I'll teach you to ruin my front yard...".

Ezra took a deep breath and ran his hand through his fringe. "So, what." "Well, last time was kind of unfortunate, if you remember... let's have a drink, maybe? You looked quite bored, so I thought I'd say hi," she said, playing with the straw in her glass. "That's very considerate of you, but I was just checking out the wine bottles, actually, so..." "Wine it is," she beamed, "which one do you suggest?" Ezra was suddenly very protective of his Beaujolais. "Er, I'm not much of a connoisseur. I don't know. Maybe the Riesling, or something. I don't feel like it though. How about you find someone to dance?" It wasn't that she was particularly annoying or anything - she wasn't. She was just like any other person, and he didn't see why he should follow protocol and engage in chatting and flirting that wouldn't lead to any place he felt any desire to investigate closer. The general public of his environment was often confused by his backing off of people whenever they approached him, but the truth was that, as bewildering as that reaction was to most people seeking acquaintances and company, he couldn't stand it: the walls of empty words moved around for what seemed like ages, all the uninspiring characters who triggered absolutely nothing in him. He wasn't arrogant about it, in fact, he was certain that most people were as uninterested in him as vice versa. He just took the freedom to act upon his feelings - he considered it a progress on his side that he refrained from physically shaking his counterpart, asking them what the hell they were doing with their time.

"How about a dance, then? This song is quite nice," the girl said, kneading her straw and looking him straight in the eyes. It was Fior Di Latte playing, seductively and terribly on point, had this been a movie scene. Ezra sighed. To hell with the niceties. "Pal, you really could do better than waste your time here, ok? I'm trying not to be rude, but it's not happening," he said, locking his fingers firmly around the bottleneck of his newly-found french mystery. She frowned, half embarrassed, half agitated. "But why? Literally, why won't you just give it a try? I don't usually clinge to people, you know, and just really wanted to get to know you a bit - that's it! Why are you so stuck up?" she protested. Some people nearby turned their heads, sniffing the delicious scent of drama. To this, Ezra would't cater for certain. "I am not stuck up. I wouldn't see why anyone should be entitled to anyone else's attention, I'm sure you'd agree if I was the girl," he said in a tone as neutral as possible. Tess crossed her arms in front of her chest. "You don't even know me, don't you think you could change your mind? Why can't we just hang out for a bit?" "Because I don't want to." "That's not a reason!" "It's a perfect reason, now will you please let me through. I've got plans." With the bottle in his hand, he slipped past her and made his way down the stairs, across the ground floor and out the doors, to the beach.

The promenade was a bit of a night club cluster, so even right at the shore, distant chatter and fragments of music were audible against the soft swish of the water. The night air was fresh, the sea a beautiful purple-tinged blue and Ezra was beaming. The almost starless night, the coolness of the wind, stray seagulls - he just let the sensations wash over him, basked in almost-silence and air, and realised he truly wasn't thinking anything. He wasn't analysing. He wasn't considering what to reply to anyone. He wasn't listening. He wasn't rearranging schedules, wasn't worrying about the next day - nothing. His mind was at peace. He opened a few buttons of his shirt, took off his sneakers and sat in the sand for what seemed like moments to him, but in reality was almost an hour. He only moved when the flood made the waves lap at his feet. Grabbing his shoes and the bottle of wine, he obediently retreated a few metres up, sat down again and uncorked the bottle. Beaujolais. It was too dark to properly judge the colour of the beverage, but it was definitely a red wine, though it seemed paler than he expected. A mouthful proved it was also fruitier, and less intense than it could've been. For that night, it was perfect. A breeze ruffled his hair. Soft white noise, the vastness before him, being close to something as pure and primal, and unbothered as the ocean was his oxygen mask in an existence that tended to suffocate him more often than not. He didn't harbour any hopes of being saved or healed by it, he was still doomed to be human, after all. But for now, he savoured the feeling. Slowly he sank into the soft, sun-dried sand that immediately gave in to his weight, and laughed quietly to himself, the sound of it drifting out into the night.

26 hectopascal pt. 3

When he woke up from his fever-induced slumber, the sky had already darkened over San Francisco, but the clouds had dissolved. He groaned, shuffled a little in his messy sheets and realised he felt completely dehydrated. The phone was silent. Ezra reached for the plastic bottle at his feet with a faint hope it would contain anything liquid, but the bottle turned out to be empty and he had no choice other than to drag himself to the bathroom and the kitchen. The thought that he, the Universally Ungrateful Beast, probably deserved to develop a full-on head cold, lurked in the back of his head. That'd get his mind off his pretentious existentialism. He sighed.

When your bones feel like they're splintered and your skin is on fire, moving and walking isn't fun. Hanging over the sink, he threw a clouded glance at the mirror. His face was almost always unusually pale, but today a sickly yellow-ish tinge and rosy cheeks ruined the marble white of his skin. Not that he could care less.

The item that saved his kitchen - to use the attribute 'tiny' would already be very well-meant - was a plant with luscious green leaves in a yellow pot that hung from the ceiling. Against the background of little blue tiles and dirty dishes loosing their patience next to the sink, it saved the room from undirected chaos and made it seem like everything, mutinous as it may be, was still under the inhabitants control. It wasn't, though. Ezra rummaged through the cupboards feebly hoping to find anything of nutritional value, but apart from an expired bottle of ketchup - who even bought it, and when? Certainly not him - and a bag of letter soup he found absolutely nothing. He mustered the letter soup. This one he didn't buy either. Veronica did, after she and Ben had played around with his fridge poetry magnets. Currently, they spelled "no carps in this diem pond". He crinkled his nose at this fairly dadaist nonsense but didn't move the letters.

A cold shiver ran over his back. This was a terrible moment to get so sick. He had work to do and papers to write. He boiled water for both soup and a cup of herbal tea, determined to at least uphold the illusion of functioning, and wasn't soup magical when it came to colds, anyway? His kitchen didn't have a table, but it had a stool and about 15 free square inches of space, where he settled with a small bowl. Letter soup. My life is a letter soup, he thought to himself, a mess of signs that mean nothing, the possibility of a good stir ruining absolutely everything and, as a finish, the entire mess growing colder by the second. A sudden buzz almost gave him a heart attack. It was Ben again.

Ben 20:37
you alive? hopefully not out of aspirin again? junkie

Ezra ignored the message, staring out of the window. In terms of his appartment's view, he was very lucky - on the 4th floor of an old town house located right between two streets, he had the classical San Francisco panorama right before him whenever he glanced through either of the two small windows: two roads hurrying downhill, pastel colours, cafés, the beach somewhere always near, if you walked long enough. The sky was beautiful. An intense indigo bleeding into a wishful yellow tone. If he just weren't so miserable all the time, he could be happy here. He loved this place. "I can sort everything out," he said to himself aloud. Ezra's voice was hoarse. He pushed around letters in his bowl. Hello. Ezra. Help. Pls why. You're ridiculous, he thought. People would kill to be in your position. Eating a few spoons of soup, he picked up his phone and answered Ben.

Ezra 20:44
im good. well kinda

Ezra 20:44
will probably skip work tho

Ben 20:46
dang man but better get some rest than turn up there tomorrow and get everyone to hate you because you share your flu or whatever it is youre dying from

Ezra 20:46
haha

Ezra's laptop made a bubbly noise. It was sitting on the fridge from when he was watching a film earlier, and the Skype window was blinking. Ezra sighed and clicked to take the call. "Whassup, Benny." Ben's face popped up on the screen. He had curly, brown hair and an abundance of freckles all over his nose and cheeks. "Yo! Nothing, just wanted to check up on you, Hamlet. Have you got some food left? Veronnie and I could drop off some takeout, if you're interested. We're off to the cinema in a minute." Ezra shook his head. "Thanks, you guys got me sorted with a bag of letter soup the other day, so I'm well-fed and on my way to recovery. 'N stuff." "My bag of letter soup?" Veronica's voice off screen startled Ezra for a second, then she appeared right next to Ben. "Hi Ezra!". He just waved his hand briefly. "I'm fine, kind of, I'll better get some more sleep I guess. Today was stressful as hell, I was gonna get some shit done but I ended up almost passing out, it's probably a fever but it'll pass, I just need to sleep." Ben raised an eyebrow. "You sure? You look like shit, to be honest." Ezra nodded, winked at the pair and clicked the red button.

He wasn't doing too bad. He was close to waving university goodbye for good and, in the meantime, working freelance at an up and coming PR agency where people certainly did realise they were up to something with him. He should be thanking the universe. Something, however, was always nagging him. Even though opportunities came to Ezra every once in a while, they never seemed to be more than that: brief encounters with luck. He pulled a grimace at his own thoughts. When did he become so biedermeier? That's just the way things are in the 21st century, he thought to himself, you should've become a gardener or a baker, if you wanted a contract job and a schedule cast in stone. Or was that really what he wanted? He wouldn't bet on it. There were only two ways: come to terms with constant worrying, or just stop. Just ignore the toothache, it's here to stay. Was stability really the nonpareil gold standard for a happy life? Debatable, and how he detested himself for craving just a tiny bit of this meditative, elusive, magical stability in his existence. The unexpected email, assignment, appointment always came round. Things broke. Things didn't work out. Things that worked out didn't always have the best timing. His bank account wept silently more often than not. His folks at home had their own micro- and macro-disasters to take care of, that sometimes involved him, and sometimes didn't. All the people he was close with were tired more often than not, and by God, he was, too.

Ezra 21:16
i feel like 40 years ago you just had to float along The Great Stream to live your life, and now the world swims in the opposite direction and if your arms are weak its your problem

Ezra 21:17
people 40 years ago probably said the exact same thing about people from 40 years before that

Ezra 21:17
or probably they didn't because world wars I and II

Ezra 21:18
i hate everything
                                                                                                   
Ben 21:21
bruuh.

Ezra 21:21
i know

Ezra 21:21
i'll shut up

Ben 21:22
you're delirious. everything is glittery and fairy-sparkly and beautiful. cant you see

Ezra 21:22
SORRY i said i'll shut up. there. im silent. im sleeping now

He knew that Ben knew what bothered him, and he knew that neither of them had a solution. Somewhere someone might have found some psychoanalytic way to change people's perceptions of their experiences on planet Earth, but not him. Not today. He guzzled down the rest of his letter soup before it had a chance to turn completely cold, picked up his laptop and made his way to the bed. He wasn't intending to sleep, however, not yet. The room was just a few square metres, but Ezra didn't mind. He didn't own anything too much to clog up the place, and he was far from claustrophobic. If he propped up his pillows against the wall at his bedside, he could lean back and watch the city, and the sky. Before covering his pale shoulders with a blanket - he was shaking, and he could feel blood rushing to his cheeks - he pressed 'Play' on his laptop. Only recently, he'd made a playlist that Ben had described as an "acoustic hurricane of wistfulness in the evening sun", and Veronica had subscribed to it and shared it on Facebook, where it, absurdly so, gathered a large following. The varying progressions of major, then minor, then major chords again in the songs he picked did something to him, and apparently to other people, too. He savoured the sounds that tended to all his grazes, reassured him it's fine to feel the way he felt, and that he wouldn't necessarily be stuck with that feeling forever, and he didn't notice how he slowly drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.

26 hectopascal

Even though the sky was grey and a drizzle was mercilessly making its way into the collars of everyone who didn't carry an umbrella, the streets didn't seem glum. It felt like the neutral background of wet concrete only made all the other colours pop. Flashy signs and ads were scattered all over tall office buildings with shops on the ground floors, and if greys and blacks prevailed in the stream of raincoats and jackets, they certainly didn't in umbrellas, which turned the shopping street movement into an almost psychedelic flow if you squinted.

In this scenario, a young man was walking fast straight down the road, his movements stiff and tense, his black fringe wet where the hood of his rainjacket couldn't shield it from the persistent water and his face contorted in a way that most passerbys identified as extremely annoyed, and therefore tended to move out of his way. What the rain thankfully hid were some rare, angry teardrops that ran a race against their peers from above on his pale cheeks. He had decided to walk home from running errands despite the fact that it would take him almost an hour, and in spite of the weather and the cold he had already caught several days ago and was inevitably going to worsen. He wanted to feel numb, for once. He couldn't wait for the moment the mechanical movements of his legs and the never-ending pattern of cobblestones in the old city centre beneath his worn out sneakers would dissipate his doubts, the pressure of everything, stop any brain activity in the area of thought in general.

Why did everything have to be this way? Why did everything have to be? Maddening, pointless, overwhelming. He was being bludgeoned by rules and schedules, by patterns and obligations. He couldn't breathe, for god's sake. When he'd get home, he would call Travis at work and tell him he was sick as hell. Croak something through the phone about the flu, give his thanks to everyone's phony get-well-soons and shut off his social media, bury his phone in the laundry basket. Nobody at work would understand if he told them. They thought he was doing well. They saw the dynamics, the frisson of his never steady perpetuum mobile life. The whirlwind of steppingstone projects he was involved in, they've heard, wasn't he? He was still so young, he was promising, surely everything was working out? Wasn't he doing well?

He cursed under his breath, sweating and shivering at the same time. The rain got just a little heavier, not enough to coerce him into seeking shelter but certainly enough to drench through the fabric covering his chilly skin. They knew nothing. Their day jobs were secured, but he wasn't actually set up yet. He was just starting, hesitantly setting foot in the halls he hoped he could stay in, one day. He could be dropped anytime. And anyway, they had no idea of his baggage. He had a goddamn hard time wading through the detritus of the human relationships he was entangled in. He technically had nothing whatsoever under his belt to gaze into the rosé coloured, gleaming bright future everyone thought was his to claim. His coworkers thought everything was peachy, and his classmates thought he should be the last person to worry about what was to come. But he was overwhelmed. And he was goddamn tired.

A red traffic light stopped him at a junction, and he found himself in the company of an elderly lady and a handful of school children. He glanced at them through the rain that kept getting stronger by the minute. They old lady was sporting a beautifully cliché umbrella with geese and kittens, suspiciously eyeing the children who were too busy catching pokémon on their phones to notice or care. God, how easy was the world when he was one of them. They were about eight years old, probably called Finn or Dustin or Max, hadn't done their math homework yet - page 28 in the book, multiply 23 by 114, why do I have to know how to do it on paper, when there's calculators? - and were going to spend the rest of today peacefully pursuing the Meowth one of them spotted on the map several streets away.

The traffic light just wouldn't turn green, and he was suddenly acutely aware of the fact that someone might be making up stories about him, too, in this very moment. Ascribing God knows what to his clothes, or that he carried no umbrella. His frown deepened, he looked over his shoulder to find a ginger girl in a puffy blue jacket looking at him. "Hey, sorry, I - I think - did, um, did you drop this?" He lowered his eyes on her outstretched hand to see a piece of paper that he recognised to be a museum ticket from two months ago, when he had, in spite of a terrible mood and a raging headache, dragged himself to the Weinstein gallery because they had been hosting an exclusive Chagall exhibition he wouldn't have missed if he were dead. Damned be his habit of never emptying his pockets, and of clenching and unclenching his fists inside of them whenever he was nervous. "Thank you," he muttered, swallowing half of this non-sentence and taking the ticket, then shoving his hands back inside his pockets and directing his gaze back to the stubborn traffic light.

It turned green instantly, he stalked forward but noticed the girl was keeping up with him. "Hey, sorry," he heard her chirp, "I was thinking, are you, er, heading anywhere?" He turned to her, bewildered, as he continued walking at the same pace. She was blushing but also beaming up at him, while trying to keep up with his strides. Oh boy, he thought. "Would you like to grab a coffee? I know a really good place, not far," she said, nervous as hell, evidently so, but looking determined. He absolutely didn't need this today. "Thanks, I'm good," he said hoarsely, not sure where to find the patience he would need to part ways with her without triggering the asshole department of his brain. She blushed a little more, clearing her throat: "Well, you might be better even, afterwards. Also, you run around losing your stuff, and I pick it up, I guess I might as well say you owe me, right?" He stopped. This was too dumb. He knew it was supposed to be a mischievous little line, nothing else, but what the hell. If he'd been the girl, everyone would scream harrassment. She looked at him, expectantly and fairly sure of her victory over his will. "Correct me if I'm wrong," he said, looking her straight in the eyes, "but attempted blackmail is considered a crime in these parts. Try looking it up in the civil code." He left her standing, baffled and probably weirded out, and sped up a little to disappear in the next subway station. Hades' realm, he thought to himself, right where I belong.

Later, when he had changed out of his drenched clothes and fallen face down on his bed, his phone vibrated inside the laundry basket where he had, true to his promise, placed it upon returning. He ignored it. It vibrated again. And again. And again. It wouldn't stop. It gave of a series of little buzzes for over two minutes. He groaned and shifted on the bed hoping to sit it out. Silence spread in the room, and just when he sighed it started over again. He lifted his head, glared in the direction of the pestering little sound and basically fell of the sheets in the most inelegant way possible. His head and back hurt like hell. He was definitely getting sick. He pulled aside t-shirts and sweaters in the basket, only to see a billion messages crowding the screen, from the one person on the campus he himself would call a friend. 

Ben 17:34
omg ezraaa you absolutely brilliant cold-blooded bitch you hahaha

Ben 17:34
"try looking it up in the civil code" my ass hahahaha

Ben 17:34 
i love you man

Ben 17:34
i wish id been there

Ben 17:35
ezra

Ben 17:35
EZRAAA

Ben 17:35
helloooo have you gone into hiding again

And several similar texts, including a chain of emojis, gleamed at him. He texted back.

Ezra 17:40
i dont find it that funny. howd you know? i didnt see anyone around there

Ben 17:40
people know you, hamlet, and people talk hahaha

He cursed quietly. He'd been miles away from the university, in the south part of town, so how on earth? He could already sense a web of petty gossip and intrigues unfold in the cloud of modern campus lore.

Ezra 17:41
srsly. who did

Ben 17:42
just kidding, no one was there but this girl who tried her luck is actually taking some of the classes you take

Ben 17:42
and she happens to be friends with people who are friends with veronica

Ben 17:42
which resulted in veronica texting me a flood of OMGs and OMG BENs

Ben 17:43
thus, i am informed of the opportunity you decided not to take today in the most dramatic way possible hahahaha

Veronica was Ben's girlfriend and only just bearable when she wasn't jumping all over him with personality makeover ideas. He was 97% sure she was going to end up as a life coach after graduation. She even had a matching blog. His phone buzzed again.

Ben 17:45
i can hear you gritting your teeth pal

Ben 17:45
at the universe and the common, lowly human craving for companionship and warmth hahaha

Ben 17:46
ive seen pictures tho, she wasnt that bad, actually pretty good looking. dont tell veronnie i said that haha

Ben 17:46
maybe you could use some distraction from brooding all by yourself

Ben 17:47
whatever it is this time, itll work out buddy. i dont know for whom it will if not for you

Now he was, indeed, gritting his teeth. He was shaking a little bit, something very close to anger welling up. Pearls of sweat were on his pale forehead. There it was again, the assurance. He knew it was usually well meant. Spoken with familiarity and affection by those who cared about him, with slight annoyance by those who knew him superficially, and sometimes even with jealousy and a certain air of personal defiance by those who really should be worrying. But that wasn't the point.

Nothing ever worked out automatically, for anyone. Anything could happen at any given time. This wasn't some shabby talent show. This was life. He just didn't understand why everyone spoke and acted like they couldn't wrap their heads around the idea that it was the process of doing things that killed him on a daily basis. The inevitability of observing cause and effect gnawing away at every action he took, of being responsible for simply everything. Being neurotically aware of this responsibility with almost every breath. He lived his life with the tension of a harp string - ready to collapse upon impact and tear down everything in a radius of 50 metres. He knew it wasn't the only way to carry the torch of your existence, he knew it was probably sabotaging and undermining everything he did when he was calm and focussed but that was the state of affairs.

Ben 17:51
i know you hate when people say that

Ezra 17:53
you know i dont owe anyone normal behaviour

Ben 17:53
i know

Ben 17:53
and tbh im kind of flattered to have figured out how to deal with you anyway

He couldn't help it, the tiniest of smiles crept on his face. Ben wasn't as plain as he always made himself seem. Ben had mastered the tightrope act, he had his cake and could eat it, too. Casual and unfettered on the outside, attentive as hell, sharp and flexible on the inside. Ben knew something about the way he, Ezra, functioned and he let him be. Ben was okay with him coming and going, okay with him not replying to messages for days, okay with any abstract shenanigans that wasn't exactly in his lane, but he didn't mind. It was nice knowing someone understood something.

He was feverish. He texed Ben that he was getting sick and that he would go to bed, and threw his phone back into the pile of shirts as it buzzed again. He sighed, defeated, and picked it up.

Veronica 17:59
hey

Veronica 18:00
ben messaged you right? you man of the law haha

Veronica 18:01
tess lowkey hates you now and shes super self conscious and she actually told everyone in the girls' lacan class whatsapp group

Veronica 18:01
can you believe? like wow, how petty is that and totally weird, i mean why would you message that around? but the other girls kinda gladly jumped aboard the gossip wagon

Veronica 18:01
ya know, someone approached the enigma himself haha so they gotta do some analysis

Veronica 18:01
i am screaming at the fact you didnt even recognise her (did you? bc she said she thought you didnt)

He shook his head. This day was crazy. He went back to his mind game of someone viewing his life as a story. He was fairly certain he would either make a marvellous book character or an incorrectably shitty one. His head felt like it was splitting in two, and every new thought or sensation was over the top. He lay back down, like a broken bow, and typed one last message, before finally giving in to his rising body temperature.

Ezra 18:03
i didnt. god, i thought at this part of my life i was supposed to be surrounded by people with a certain level of maturity. but who am i to complain, its probably just what i deserve

a letter to J. D. S.

Dear Mr. Salinger,

you probably wouldn't be particularly dying to read anything like the following, but since you made Holden love the idea of just talking to the author of an appreciated book, I will be bold and write anyway - it's not like you can do much to stop me or just shake your head in disapproval of such an irrational endeavour since this letter is either six years or a lifetime too late.

As embarrassing as this is, Mr. Salinger, the point of writing this escapes me since the recipient is eternally unavailable and the content of the letter in question is thoroughly chaotic, albeit as sincere as can be. After spending yet another several days with the Glass family instead of everything else I should be doing, I am harbouring a vague necessity to tell you something - what exactly, I do not know. Yet, I intend to keep typing until all the peculiar little thoughts I had whilst watching Buddy Glass's belletristic home movie return to me.

I am deeply impressed, Mr. Salinger. It may delight you to know that, in my excitement about your writing, I had decided immediately to dedicate my MA thesis to your protagonists as examples of American existentialism, but I withdrew from this plan in horror after researching secondary literature on your short stories and discovering that critics are oh so stupid. Why are they so stupid, Bessie? To have someone I have never met, driven by scholarly narcissism and normed education, ruin a thing that struck me like thunder in its honesty and accuracy? Nay, Mr. Salinger. No academic paper shall ever be written by me on the subject of the Glasses, since doing the opposite would result in estrangement of newly found - who, in fact? Soulmates? Best case scenario. Role models? Flawed ones, but yes.

It's very funny you should mention people thinking they're "a bunch of insufferably 'superior' little bastards" because even if you shove it in some critics' faces, that they are, in fact, not; some won't listen and bemoan literally this alleged insufferable superiority as the major flaw in character design. In the first decade of the 21st century, mind you, well over fifty years after you've proven them wrong through your story, if only they had read it with an open mind. At least that is my opinion. I am, however, perfectly aware that this opinion is dismissable for various reasons.

I just need to tell you, Mr. Salinger, that I found it refreshing as hell that someone dared to create characters whose troubles lie deeper than the average man's, and chose not to focus on those who modestly hold up a credible level of naivite and false compassion whilst still giving lessons, thus appeasing the common, nervous reader: no, my friend, relax: I am not above your level in any way. No, Mr. Salinger, you dared to create brilliance without a deus ex machina scent, you made Seymour and Buddy and Zooey, who are ideal and restless, nevertheless, and too aware of the snares of self-absorption and narcissism to display any of the two without self-reflexivity. Once upon a time - just hear me out - I made up someone not quite far from Zooey in his properties, for a story of mine, and a lecturer thought I should give him more to worry about - "how about some trouble with a woman?", he suggested. I couldn't comprehend how he could miss the point of this character not having such a problem at that particular point in fictional time, of not dealing with anything that could be easily resolved by me, the writer. I am, unlike you, probably just not as talented a wordsmith to convey someone like that unmistakably.

I am absolutely certain you would object to a comparison of Zooey and this character of mine, and you'd be right - so far, I am just admiring, not quite comprehending what fell into my hands with your stories. Ideally, I will, someday, but for now, let me just thank you, Mr. Salinger, for providing perspective, solace, hope and rest. For yet uncharted reasons, I felt quite at home in that East Seventies appartement, and reassured by the words of wisdom coming from a certain Zachary Michael Glass.

Sincerely,

me

ficus no. 2

He looked around the room with a sigh, as if to assess the situation. She was sitting on her bed wrapped in a tartan blanket and side-eyeing him like a dog who chewed up a carpet when their human hasn't been watching. It was a sunny day, and the pastel colours of her place could suggest serenity if it hadn't been for the shadows around her eyes and a puffiness he was already familiar with from previous encounters. There were children's books scattered on her bed, her laptop rested right next to them displaying several tabs of football match moments on YouTube and "Mrs. Robinson" was blaring out of small speakers in a corner. Apparently, the player was put on loop because the song ended and began again right away. Dust particles were dancing in the air to the music.

He drew a deep breath and she watched him with the same guilty expression. "So?" he finally said with a huff, crossing his arms and leaning against a shelf. She shuffled in her tartan. "I'm fine," she replied and it sounded very much like a threatened porcupine raising its quills. His mouth twitched a little to almost show a half-smile, almost. "Yeah, sure you are. Determined, working on your life, focused on all the great things to come, aren't you." He knew he sounded harsh, but he also knew that it was exactly what she needed - anything more pitiful and compassionate would have her throw a fit, probably, or worse - burst into several minutes of crying she'd be utterly embarrassed by at the end of the day.

"I am." she said, almost offended. "Well, I'm getting there." He did not bother to keep a straight face anymore, raising his eyebrows and grinning widely. "Interesting, I'm just at a loss a little here - what could anyone possibly be up to with a bunch of kid's books, football and late 60s folk rock..? Is that film script inspo, or performance art..." She rolled her eyes, and he mentally ticked the situation as a point past any imminent moments of hysteria. He was a master of his art. Any art actually, and he knew that she knew. "It's therapeutic," she said. "I'm having a bit of a... I'm... You know. Life, and shit." He picked up one of the books, and turned it to read the summary. "You're blanking everything out again, aren't you." She looked out the window.

And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know.

"Yeah. I need it. It's getting too much again. I need a break. I've felt out of place again, and so alone. I need it." He nodded absently. She watched him. The otherworldliness would never leave him, whatever exactly it was. He put the book back where it was.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

"What's up with the football videos?" He sat down on the bed, too, and cautiously picked up her slim, small laptop, clicking through the tabs. "I had no idea you were into that?" She shrugged. "I'm not. Not really, at least. I like some aspects of it. These people dedicate their entire lives to it. It's a physical thing, and this physical thing extends to a mental thing. They're so upset when they lose. They're literally children. It's like watching children react to something, and they're so happy when they win. Just look at that." On the screen, the national team just scored the first goal three minutes before the final match would be over. The boys were beaming already - exhausted, sweating, barely able to run, but so, so happy. "It's so untainted. Primal, almost, because they're too drained to pretend, too weary, and too emotionally invested. So I'm borrowing some of that happiness." Their eyes met briefly and she felt a dizziness return, as always when that happened. She gave up on trying to understand why. "And the books are a time travel, aren't they." A sad nod from her. He looked at her for a minute or two, like someone conducting an experiment, waiting for two chemicals to react. They didn't.

Hide it in the hiding place where no one ever goes.

"And the song?" he asked finally, playing around with the hem of the tartan blanket. Her reaction was a barely noticable shrug. "Though there's a funny story to it," she said, "years ago my sister bought a CD from some buskers in Italy, and they had covered that song. I was only 12 or so, and I absolutely loved it. I had no idea it wasn't theirs, and the most hilarious thing is that it said 'amplification prohibited' on the disc, and I didn't know English well enough back then to understand what it means, so I had absolutely no doubts that it was the band's name. I literally only realised why they wrote it on there years later, when I stumbled across that CD again." He beamed at the thought, and she at the memory. "You can file that under time travel, too, I guess." Her features hardened.

Look around you all you see are sympathetic eyes, stroll around the grounds until you feel at home.

He didn't say anything, still looking ahead pensively and now she looked him up and down. Quite the sight, frankly. "You know," she nudged him in the shoulder, "I wish I could paint. You'd make a superb subject." He looked her right in the eyes, and there it was again, the vertigo. "A friend of mine is a painter, I think I will pay him to track you down and follow you around for a week, and make a series of portraits without you noticing." He smiled. "So much effort." "So worth it," she replied. The song went into the chorus for a billionth time that day. He got up, took her hand and almost dragged her off the bed, so unexpectedly that she lost her blanket and almost fell over her slippers on the ground. "Come on," he said, swirling her around, dancing a few steps. In her vision, the room started swirling too, again.

Koo-koo-ka-choo, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know.

God bless you, please, Mrs. Robinson. Heaven holds a place for those who pray.

Hey, hey, hey

Hey, hey, hey

cosmic screw up

There is a place for everyone in the universe who's here, because you're already here and so your place is exactly where you are. Hence, the question is not "Where do I belong?" but "How the f-ing hell do I deal with where I am?"

space elf

This song makes me dreamy, and Grimes in general just makes me dreamy, and Haruka and Michiru make me dreamy as heck, so here you go.

***

They were several people sitting around in the living room and sipping beer on a fairly lighthearted, early evening. Giggles and jokes, very layed back. Afterwards, she couldn't quite recall what everyone has been talking about because she was trying to watch him as inconspiciously as possible. He hadn't noticed, or so she hoped. She had no particular plans, and even lesser hopes, none, actually - she was comfortable as she was, just an innocent bystander where he happened to exist, to smile at lame jokes and to seem quite content. Watching everything from a short distance, in an elvish manner even, or so she sweet-talked it to herself. The view was quite the enjoyment though - he looked so soft, the idea of what the skin on his face would feel like if you just touched it passed through her mind momentarily - and she was surprised to notice that, even at this thought, nothing stirred inside. She was imagining it pragmatically, and she drew great joy from it. Better not let it get out of hand. Behold, but do not touch. Best not to get invested into something that will be a certain bankruptcy. 

***

A brief moment of her negligence and his glance catches her eyes. Her gaze in turn drifts away as if he had never been the subject. He's not that easily fooled though, and there are several almost-eye-meetings. She looks around, waiting for a moment to retreat from the party. Of course, he preempts her and ruins her nonchalance-emergency-leave. When she thinks he's out the door and gone off, she bows out and heads for the exit. He is still there, but leaving- really leaving, this time, and they look at each other in a way she does her best not to interpret as mutual understanding of what just occured in a fraction of a moment back in the living room. They only share about three seconds though, as awkward as can be, and she walks into the chilled evening air feeling thoroughly uncomfortable for potentially having been defeated in this game of pretending that there's nothing to pretend.

stalkie talkie

I oughta get into drawing comics, it's mega fun even tho a load of work, too.
You know what's problematic? When you feel like you're expected to figure out what you can do best. I swear I don't know. I won't even try. I'm a bit scared. A tiny bit hopeful, too, but way more scared and insecure.

PS: I did stalk your girlfriend on Facebook and she really isn't pretty. Your loss tho, I guess.

haze IV

He peeked into the room, to see her tucked up in several blankets on the bed, scrolling down some site on her laptop. The blinds were closed, but only just enough to let a number of hazy dots of sunlight, obstructed by the moving branches of a tree outside her window, dance around the room, and, when the wind would stop blowing, hang on walls motionlessly like drops of some lurid liquid. Everything seemed pretty serene. "No need to stick to the door frame, come in," she said, still looking at the screen. He didn't move. "How very formal. For your information, I find this posture rather comfortable, and the view from here is almost pre-raphaelite." He knew she was probably smiling, even though he couldn't see her face. Sensing that the wind had somewhat changed, he parted ways with the frame, waltzed over to the bed and sat down on the side, hands in pockets. She glanced over to him briefly and resumed swiping the touchpad upwards.

"You're destroying the elaborate composition of folds and drapes right now. They were molded after that Laokoon group cloth, if you care to notice." A slight smirk rushed across his face. "I said pre-raphaelite, not a century before Christ," he replied. "Well, the pre-raphaelites were inspired by a whole bunch of renaissance people, and the renaissance people were inspired by the Romans and the Greeks. You lose." "Fine, "he said, smiling faintly and stroking a pillow with a fuzzy cover. "I lose." They sat in silence for a while, she- typing up a few replies to someone, he- watching her fingers with their formerly bitten nails and dry skin gently, but quickly tap the keyboard. "Do I sense a change of mind?" he asked finally, looking up, and she looked up, too, noticing that his face and neck were dotted with the bright spots the blinds had created all over the room, and where the sunlight hit his black hair, the reflections were  a surprising dark red, instead of blueish grey, as she'd expected. "What do you mean?" she asked as innocently as possible, knowing the very moment she opened her mouth that she only asked because that was just what you did, when a conversation was inbound you were not sure you were ready to have, and that he knew, either.

He studied her, waiting for a reply. "Well, I have recently come to the conclusion that it doesn't make a lot of sense - being stuck," she finally said, exhaling and curling her lip like a child who had lost a staring contest, and then turned back to her laptop. He looked amused. "Elaborate, please?" She shrugged. "There's very little to elaborate on,“ she said, typing again, „I guess my suppressed pragmatic side showed itself for once. If you don't think you can die just yet, your life will suck more if you wallow in how it sucks. So I decided to start doing things. That's about it." His smile grew a bit bigger. "You didn't know that before?" She turned to him, with an expression he could not quite determine - it seemed delighted and bitter at the same time, rushing across her face like late afternoon sun across a tile roof of some small suburban house some place far away. "You really believe that's how it works?" she asked. "No."She stretched her arms and shoulders out from under her blanket and sighed. "No matter how you twist and turn it, there will always be moments when I'll feel miserable, when I'll be trying really hard and still failing, when things won't seem worth it but I will still be here. Dwelling on the bullshit is just painfully unproductive. I don't think I could stand it anymore, that's it."

She eyed him suspiciously. "Can we drop this patronising expression, please, will ya?" He did not answer, but she felt like those few seconds of his gaze she met told her a million stories and jokes, the history of the world in the speed of light, before he turned his head and looked around the room. The light spots and tiny particles in the air seemed to set the entire room in motion. "Look at all this dust. Do you never dust in here?" he said with the same knowing look on his face. She mustered him. "Why do you always make me feel like you know something I don't? Like your mind's preoccupied with greater matters of the universe, while me and the other mortals just try to get by on planet Earth?" He turned back to her and suddenly, she was plain vertigo, the flares in the room spinning quicker and the room blurring and growing luminous like a forest glade from John Everett Millais' most desperate dreams . "I'm just visiting," he either said, or thought, or maybe she was just imagining because after that everything turned a mellow, scintillating green, and then black.

haze II

haze I

Everything was in a haze. The other day he had gone out with some people he knew and had sat quiet through a lengthy conversation about appartments and landlords and rents before leaving early. All the exclamatory remarks and compliments on low prices and great numbers of square metres, together with exaggerated approval and encouragement in one issue or another across shiny woodboards holding numerous glasses of mediocre beer- it choked him in boredom and loneliness, and reeked of pretense. "This is it- youth," he thought walking down a dark and narrow street, past brick walls and shady entrances, hoping there'd be a train station somewhere in a few dozen metres. The whole world suddenly had a tilt-shift effect to it, everything was so small and unimportant and disgusting. He shuddered. Young people came together and had nothing better to discuss than issues of housing, in the most biedermeier way possible. He found it slightly difficult to breathe and that feeling didn't pass when he entered a train, avoiding everyone's eyes in the neon light, and ducking away into the corner of an almost empty compartment. He wasn't any better though- he was a goddamn coward. He had sat there and stared at his coffee. He hadn't asked anyone to tell about the last book they read and thought was significant, or special. He hadn't suggested to change the topic to what everyone's biggest dream was. He hadn't suggested to change the topic at all, even though he could have. He had just smiled politely when he'd felt addressed and answered a few question. He had practised invisibility and then disappeared completely.

ficus no. 1

"Really, I cannot see this goddamn bleak, puffy face of yours anymore."

                                       ***

There are days when an overall asshole vibe takes over the world, as if my mindset wasn't fragile enough already, and makes me either walk around aimlessly, just away from everyone, or stick to my bed like a mosquito to a flypaper strip. These aren't cosy days in bed, these are silent battles. It's like having a panic attack in complete silence and inertia.

                                       ***

I walked down a road, watching the sunset rather than where I go. I felt like The Gnossienne No. 1 kept breaking my bones, one by one as I listened, and I couldn't understand why. I kept playing it until I became a factotum made from splinters of myself. The sun had disappeared above the rooftops. I thought I was seeping through the asphalt.

                                       ***

"Are you going to pull yourself together or not?" He was looking splendid, she looked like a half drowned sewer rat. The setting was a small bathroom with a yellow sink and a neat little ficus in patterned pot next to it. He mustered her briefly and heaved a long sigh, ran a hand through his jet black hair. "I guess that's a no." Tears were streaming down her face. "What do you want to do? Kill yourself?" She shook her head, still crying noisily. "Ok, do you want to address your goddamn problems, or whatever there is that stops you from functioning, and act?" There was a pause filled with occasional sniffling and other very pitiful noises, then she shook her head again. The look on his face could well be described as weary. "What do you want then? Wallow in self-pity forever?" She started sobbing. He sighed again. "Ok, crying until dehydration it is." She leaned her face against his white shirt and continued her muffled sobs. He leaned against the sink and crossed his legs with his hands in his pockets, staring ahead. "I don't want to do anything," she wailed after an endless six minutes. "I just don't. I don't know how to do things. I don't know how to be profoundly happy. Nothing seems worth doing it, working for it. I dream big, but dreaming is all that ever happens, I have no clue how to get anywhere near those dreams. I don't want to. No matter how colourful and bright and massive they are, I can't bring myself to see how they're worth all the long way there. I don't know what to do. I just don't know what to do." Then her face was pressed against his collar again and he looked down on his jeans, feeling like a premonition of quicksand. "There are no reasons to keep going," he said. "There is only a reason not to pause. Going out of the way of madness is just easier when you're friends with pipe dreams."