I had to go to the Big City today. After being holed up in my room for months at a time again I had almost forgotten what a hostile and inhumane place the city is.
Advertising everywhere. On the train, at the train station, massive banners hanging from buildings, posters at bus stops, screens that switch between multiple adverts and are so obnoxiously eye catching that they rob you of your attention against your will. I don’t want to look at a damn advert but if these screens appear in our peripheral vision for a split second our monkey brains go nuts. If you know anyone who works in marketing you know where to tell them to stick it.
Even the hospital wasn’t free of this crap with banners telling you to download their app on your phone. If I exposed myself to this regularly it would not take long to become desensitised, but I don’t want to become desensitised to poison. I’d rather not drink the poison at all.
The foulness of my mood may be a little exaggerated, but I like to dream of a public space that’s free of advertising, okay? One the few public spaces I do like is the library. Unfortunately I can’t spend even a reasonable amount of time in the libary reading because their chairs make my back sore. But if I’m in the city, and have some time to kill, I like to go to the library and wander inbetween the shelves.
That’s what I do the most. Wander inbetween things, literally and figuratively, looking for the tail of some imaginary dragon to cut off.
God forbid I actually find one.
It’s far more appealing to stay as a puer eternus, a youth setting out for a grand adventure, but never actually getting farther than the edge of the village. No commitment, no responsibility, no danger. I packed my bags myself and I know precisely what’s in ’em. A warm blanket, a sandwich and some hot cocoa. Everything has been taken into account and under the guise on nonchalance I’ve secretly schemed to manouver myself into this position of safety and relative freedom, or freedom from relations, in life.
Atleast that’s what I tell myself. It’s easier to admit to being a loser by your own volition than being one despite your efforts to be otherwise. The coward’s way of making sense of chaos. But enough of this angst.
If I have less time to kill I’ll go to the bookshop because it’s closer to the station. Not to buy anything but to listen to the smooth jazz they play on the speakers.
It is hard to take oneself seriously in that situation. I wouldn’t want to spend too much time there or I would end up like the lotus-eaters. It’s still nowhere near as bad as shopping malls. Sometimes it’s quicker to cut through a mall than to walk around it and every time I enter those morgues of modernity I feel as if I’m being lulled into a false sense of security, like hapless cattle entering the slaughterhouse.
As I was waiting for the train on my way back home, I walked down to the end of the platform at the train station. I’d always got up the stairs from the tunnel, to get to the right track, and then remained at the entrance. Maybe I’d pace up and down in a radius of ten meters, but never had I walked from one end to the other. I didn’t know what I expected to find at the other end but I wasn’t really surprised when it turned out to be just another crossing and stairs leading down into another tunnel.
I remained still for a moment, taking in the surroundings, mostly abandoned buildings with fading logos of defunct businesses and broken windows, before turning around and heading back to wait for the train. I felt a little stupid, walking to the end and then turning around like I didn’t know where I was going. But that was the point. I didn’t know where I was going until I got there.
Next time I could start from there and go down the stairs to the tunnel, see where it leads. Though I could probably guess. I don’t think it’s that important for me to personally experience that route.
But what if the elusive dragon’s tail is waiting at the end of that tunnel? I know it isn’t. I know better than this. I know what needs must be done. But will I?
Railways and rumination go together in my mind. I like to go out late at night when the weather has cooled down and just stand at the end of the platform at my local train station.
First I’d go for a walk, to get the blood pumping, and then I’d stand there for maybe half an hour or three quarters of an hour, take my hands out of my pockets and let them get cold. Completely motionless, a lone figure in the dark in an odd place where I have no real reason to be. Sometimes it would be still early enough for me to catch a brief glimpse of the passengers on the last train of the night. Tired commuters most likely, chained to their jobs, being transported like prisoners. I wonder what I looked like to them?
In my head I’d be concocting some fantasy based in the universe of some Tarkovsky movie. Specifically the early part of Stalker before entering the Zone. There’s no motor trolley to take me to the Zone.
The railway is an important piece of logistics infrastructure for the wood processing plant here. It’s a sight that evokes mixed feelings in me as I’d listen to the rustling of leaves combined with muffled warning klaxons, bleeps and bloops, and the rough industrial sounds of timber and metal colliding as the machines did whatever it is that they do; if I closed my eyes it would sound almost like an experimental ambient lullaby.
Other times I would focus more on the sights than the sounds. Smokestacks spewing white clouds into the air above tin roofs and blue walls of metal plates. The railway narrowing into the horizon where a pair of red lights would be staring at me like the eyes of a serpent. Rows and rows of timber piled on timber. Sometimes a vehicle would come out from the gate that lead into the inner yard of the factory or I could see yellow lights blinking on the roof of a gargantuan diesel forklift. It was impossible to see what was happening inside, but that only adds to the dreamlike nature of the scene–everything cloaked in velvet shadows.
One of my extended reveries involved being a jazz musician called Frank Underhill. I had, or rather Frank had, just released his debut album called The Belly of the Beast and despite it getting rave reviews in the jazz world, Frank was unsure if he wanted to continue on this career path or devote his time to starting a family.
The album cover was a picture of the scene I was just describing, taken with a vintage polaroid. I could swear I came up with a songlist too but I didn’t write it down and I can’t remember any of the titles.
The name is a juvenile pun: his name is Frank and his initials spell out F.U. The last name Underhill comes from the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where Frodo introduces himself to the proprietor of The Prancing Pony as Mr. Underhill. I watch the LoTR movie trilogy atleast once a year and have been doing so for eight or nine years now. For some reason that small scene has stuck with me the most.
I myself have a habit of giving out false names to strangers on the street whenever I’m asked. Perhaps that’s why.
What’s a name anyway? If I meet ten strangers and give them ten different names and ages, none of them would be any the wiser but the world would be that little bit richer with variety in anecdotes. Sometimes I want to project a certain image and in the brief space of time we have agreed to spend socialising a name can go a long way to create an impression. An impression that evokes a particular mood by association or simply by the feel of the sound of the name.
There’s no way to know if these impressions are the same for you and me or them, but I like planting these little characters into people’s heads as we meet. They keep living on in their heads while I continue with my life, unshackled from the images of my creation and free to live without them weighing me down.
The word NPC gets thrown around a lot these days, as an ad hominem by people with a lot to say but nothing worth listening to, but when I’m out and about I try to live my life as a side character in somebody else’s life, because that’s what we all are. Treat thy neighbour as the main character. Every character is played by someone, even if they’re badly written and the performance is poor.
I want to do my part in making the characters of the world more interesting. Make it new. A bad writer doesn’t neglect his side characters. No, on the contrary, they allow her greater freedom to experiment. More often than not main characters are constrained to more rigid archetypes. What’s so admirable about sticking to old forms and fulfilling an archetype for the thousandth time?
When the wind had all but blown through me and dissipated me into the air like dust, with my mind cleared, I’d decide it would be time to leave the platform as the cold would start to spread throughout my body; and I would do so in a happy mood, with a red nose and aching fingers. I’d bury my frozen digits to thaw in my jacket pockets and start heading back home.
I had stared into the abyss and escaped from the labyrinthine bowels of the beast unscathed. Would I be so lucky next time? Or is it grace? Grit and determination?
I’d saunter with a smile on my face and usually it would be one of those rare moments when I would feel alive. Like I had just done something important. Something human. And now I was moving on. Imagine a great author writing his magnum opus and then having a heroic sneezing fit in the middle of his most profound thoughts. That sort of alive.
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