Conversation clusters.

In the supermarket where we buy our words*, I idly stroll wondering how much money I can afford to spend and what is the best value**. I mean I worked hard to be able to spend so I want to carefully select the words I am going to use for the next while. Making my way through the aisles alphabetically I notice a flashing sign proclaiming a new product 'Take part in any conversation' it reads. Intrigued I make my way into a new aisle where laid out before me is packages of words grouped together termed 'Conversation Clusters'. A shop assistant bursts out of nowhere. 

-Hello how are you?' she inquires 

-I'm not sure' I stammer in surprise. 

She breaks into a peal of laughter. 

- I have just the thing for you she replies and motions at a particular pile of 'Conversation clusters' with the titles 'Small talk', 'Idle chit chat' and 'Passing pleasantries and casual greetings'. 

Together they take up the most shelf space in the aisle. 

-Our new conversation clusters save money and time, instead of wasting time actually thinking about considering and choosing your words, you can select your words for the coming week in one or two neat packages, She replies while beaming at me. 

-What's the difference between these particular clusters? I ask.

She looks slightly flustered before composing herself.

-These clusters will all essentially say the same thing but with different words that depend on the context.

- If they all say the same thing, then how am I meant to choose between them?

- Well your not choosing at all, its not about what you want to say, its about what situation you may find yourself in, in the future, so you save loads of time browsing because instead you can predict to whom and how much you may run into certain types of people. We also have clusters based on common personality types so you can equip yourself with the words appropriate if you are prepared to run into such a person in the next week or so. 

- But what if I want to respond to something I didn't expect? 

- We have a high success rate and our clusters especially these types are selling extremely well, we find that people partaking in a cluster such as 'Small talk' are rarely faced with anything unexpected that they have to respond to. 

- Do you provide clusters for 'Perspective altering discussion' or 'Inspiring dialogue'? 

- We do not deal in this nature of conversation. You will have to spend more money and time selecting your words from the shelves if you wish to undertake this type of conversation. 

- But what if I'm extremely anxious about the nature of time because of my over-bearing awareness of my own mortality in combination with.... 

Interrupting me the shop assistant now visibly frustrated snapped 

- I don't know how to deal with this, I only buy clusters, I don't browse the aisles.   

*The supermarket is a metaphor for your mind. 

**Spending money is a metaphor for learning. 

She Lied To You

She lied to you.

I was fourteen when she first when into hospital. It’s funny how you can normalize what is initially so shocking just with time. As if by sheer virtue of things going on long enough, they develop outside the bounds of your own mind and become something else entirely.

So of course she visited the hospital regularly then after, she lost her hair and she got free make up from support groups, which made her laugh because she never wore make up. “

“A scarf or a wig or does it matter?”

“Be a blonde for a while” I said.

“They’re meant to have more fun or something right?”

“Cut the crusts off the bread, I read it in a health magazine in the waiting room, this smooth rock, I got in the holistic shop, rub it every now and then its meant to have healing properties”

“You can fuck off, if a two euro rock and not eating bread crusts cured you, I wouldn’t be here in the first place”

We both laughed, I was so young, I looked at every option then and then one day I didn’t have to, one day it was all over, one day we said the ‘C’ word out loud, we said it ‘Cured’. I was fifteen.

“It won’t come back will it?” I said.

“Not if I have anything to do with it”

She lied to you. 

I grew up. It seems strange to say that. Past tense. Part of me still feels like I’ll always be a teenager, like teenager is attached to me after all my teenage self made the self who is writing this. My teenage self is as attached to myself as if it were part of my physical make up, as if it were a tumour.

One thing we loved her for was that ability to weave a story, everything could be anything and anything could be everything in her mind, of course generally these stories was to raise herself in higher esteem or to terrify us into doing what we were told but there were other types of stories, the ones that thrilled and tingled at what seemed like the very inside of our imaginations. Circuses under mushroom heads and fairies following the ventricles of the leaves like maps. Now they seemed marred, blemished. They were lies too.

She lied to you.

She had to keep going to hospital regularly of course like I said so regularly it was normalized so one day when she came back she looked a little more worn, a little more tired than usual but she smiled a weak smile and made a joke that she didn’t want to make dinner so much that night, she would rather eat my brother’s food, we laughed. I was twenty-one, I had just graduated, the next day I booked my tickets, globe trotting for a year, working in between, my dream in life, at my fingertips on my keyboard, I smiled to myself.

That night she came into my room like I was child to say goodnight except she said something else.

“You should do what your able to, what you want when you can”

“Are you alright ma?”

“Bitta food poisoning due to your brothers shit but nothing a good rest won’t cure”

We laughed.

An hour to go until the plane leaves. Bags packed, I sit alone with the nervous reminders of my mother at security echoing in my head. Did I have this, did I have that? It was her nerves that left me sitting in the airport with an hour to spare and nothing to do. I wondered about waiting, the space between now and then. I hated it, time emptied of occurrence. Empty time. I wondered if I could gather up all the time spent waiting, spent without happening and just allocate it to something else. If I could I would give that time to my ma. If I could do that, I would be on that plane now, if I could do that, I would not be thinking about time, I would not feel overcome with guilt, the guilt of leaving someone dying. If I did that, she would live longer.

Eighteen months the doctor had said.

“Are you alright ma?”

She lied to you.

The Story

The Story

I couldn’t tell anyone about the story. I saw it as too fragile in its trembling tenuous beginning, only the spark of an idea. The idea was too delicate and somewhere inside I thought it was too perfect to exist, would crumble and crack upon exposure. That was the nature of perfection I thought and it was something I thought often about, spent restless nights wondering upon. All my ideas seemed perfect without execution. I thought if only I was an idea I could be perfect too. So that’s why I was terrified of exposing the idea, of seeing its flaws. I knew I should tell them everything but I could not bring myself to tell them this. I had an idea if only inkling and that was the best feeling I knew of. Inside my head there was scratching, scrabbling the idea moved relentlessly, yearning for its freedom. I tried to slow it down, keep it apace, let it out slowly but it wanted to surge, to flow, to surround and suffocate, to consume and become me. Obsession gave pure purpose. Obsession respected time, regarding it not just as space to be filled. Obsession believed in never stopping at mere amusement or distraction. Obsession was a type of pleasure. Obsession made identity disappear. Part of me wanted to give up, to collapse helpless by the idea but I knew he mustn’t, for then it would be obvious. I mustn’t.  I was getting better after all, that’s what the doctors said and everyone seemed happy about it, so I should keep them happy right?

I wanted to write about an author. It’s easier to put yourself into characters, become lost in one’s own territory where you could invent the landscape. It’s easier to write when you could relate. You could spend lifetimes exploring yourself, make a thousand characters and still not find you. You could wholly immerse yourself in the story that way. That was why the main character would serve two purposes. It was easier to write about yourself, thereby facilitating your own immersion in the story and second that was exactly what I wanted to write about happening to the character making it doubly easier for me to write about, for the creative process. The character, the man I was writing the story about would be writing a story. The idea was that my character should have the intention of writing a story that when read, the lines between fiction and reality would start to melt away. My character would crave to make the distinction between reality and art slip seamlessly away, which was also my intention in writing the story itself. Indeed that was the best form of art, art that made you forget it was art, art that fed upon you, art that required so much of your attention you felt as if it was digesting you, that it was taking you, that you were becoming it. That it had taken your now, that it was your now. Yet most will be able to draw themselves back, re-establish the distinction, step back from what was and carry on with the daily but this was not what I wanted to write like. I wanted to write something that had life in it so that it was inseparable, something without ending because in art a good ending defies the meaning of an ending, it stays with you, a good ending never ends. So I was writing about a character who wanted to do the same thing. The character was mirroring my pursuit but the character was unaware he was being used for the exact thing I was trying to achieve. A problem emerged then if I was writing with the purpose of blurring others reality and doing so by writing about a character with the same intention, how could I keep my characters reality intact in the process of writing it? The problem frustrated me, how could I literally keep my character sane and have my character achieve his aims? The problem felt like a physical presence blocking my way. I incubated the problem and continued writing; it would come to me surely as one thing comes after another.

 The words became like dominoes, tipping one after the other, blending together into line into pattern, one brought about the next and so the solution came to me. Why did I need to keep my character’s reality intact in the process of the character writing his intended masterpiece. They would become their masterpiece. They would suffer for their art. They would have hallucinations and delusions. Their art would invade and infect their very life. The character in my story would start to see the characters in his story as if they were real, would be unable to tell the difference. The characters the character invented would harass and follow him, keep him awake force the character in the story to keep writing the story to stay true to his intention. Yes I thought, that was what was needed in the story, a dream and then pain. The pursuit of perfection and the pain that comes in the process was needed, not the resolution of happiness and completion of the intention. For happiness was difficult and tedious to express although beautiful to live. Pain was difficult to live but was beautiful when expressed. Fuelled by my idea, I stayed up into the night writing, writing about a character plagued and tormented by his creations, a character sleepless and bent on a dream and I too became sleepless and bent on a dream. After writing for hours, deep in the night I collapsed asleep amongst my work.

There are three different pills and you must take them once a day, that’s what they said. They’ll slow you down, they said.

But where did the days go, I was still writing, when did one end and another begin? I was still writing.

Why should we slow down?

There’s not enough time to slow down.

I didn’t finish the story. I became the story. I’m not real. I’m a character in a story, a character created by a writer. I’m writing from the hospital now and they’re trying to tell me, I’m real, that this is real, and that I’m not in a story. But I am. I tell them that the writer will finish the story soon and that they’ll see, the ending is coming and it’s a good ending and like I said good endings only end on a page but not in the mind.

It’s a story like this one. 

A Letter for a Stranger

Dear stranger,

I don’t know who you are; I don’t know how seriously you’re going to take this letter. I don’t know if you've even read this far, maybe you've scrunched up the letter and put it in the bin immediately. Well if you haven’t - don’t. Please, give me a chance. I need one. Give me what I've been neglected.

Let me explain.

The room you’re standing in. The place you reached into at the back of the bookshelf where the brick pulls out and this letter lies. This was my room, my book shelf. I've gone now obviously, taken the books chipped away at the cement until the brick fell away so I can leave this letter. Why did I hide it? I had to. I hope you never have time to find out for yourself. I hope you just read these words and take heed. Where am I? I can’t tell you, I wouldn't be able to anyway, I have to keep moving. Who am I? Well that one’s easier I can start with that.

We moved here in the autumn sixty three years ago. Things were different then.  We were in love or that’s we thought anyway. You think that’s an irrelevant detail? Well it’s not so keep reading.  

They called us Memorias. Phenomenal memory, every detail of our lives etched into our minds. Not just personal memory, recollection of facts words, speeches, numbers anything. It wasn't apparent immediately of course, earliest recorded sudden appearance was at the age of twelve. The latest was twenty-five. How can I describe it? I was nineteen. It was so sudden, like burning, euphoria almost a rush. I imagine if I was a machine it was like being oiled after a long time, the words flowing water come to mind. It wasn't like autism, hyperthemisia, it wasn't any mental condition associated with memory because our memories were so inclusive to the details that we didn’t even have conscious awareness of at the time, inclusive to the point we seemed to remember ideas as well as memory itself as if either nothing left us or it was always there. It was as if we had access to something. Something, such a mere word and yet what name do you put on it. This if or when it was combined in some with a capacity for original thought made them something different, different again a mere word but definitions elude me when dealing with the scope of the situation. We were all different but one thing we had in common was we were all reported to be mentally healthy otherwise.  What caused it? Genetics? The environment? What was happening? No one knew but there we were a whole sub population of us. The government were astounded. Special accommodation they announced. Scholarships for college if we wanted and if we didn't  the money to sustain us, the capacities to work on any project we desired.

I bet you felt lucky when they offered you this flat, I bet your parents congratulated you, I bet your thinking of organizing a flat warming. One of the lucky ones, I remember the announcement, that’s what they called us lucky. I shudder to think of it now. So I've missed out on the details, how did they tell you to move here? Did they award you a college scholarship, did they tell you it was a grant for socio-economic disadvantage or maybe it was even some competition they created for the purpose. Whatever you were told, it’s a lie.  So who are you? What’s your type? Or how ‘lucky’ are you? There were types because we all retained our separate individual personalities which combined with the ‘gift’ as they called it. ‘Types’ as if they could classify us that easily, we were as individual as the rest of the population. The ‘rest of the population’ I speak like we’re a different species, but it was suggested by some at the time. One thing is certain you’re young and you haven’t properly realized who you are. But they have, they have and that’s why they put you here.

Now you’re thinking. That’s why you’re here. Those compulsory brain scans they implemented in schools, they weren't for the sake of your health. They found a way; they found a way to detect us before we become what we are. Yes I said, ‘us’. You are one. It hasn't happened to you yet but it will. That’s why I’m writing this letter, you need to escape. You need to leave.

They shouldn't have put us together that was their mistake, we started talking, those conversations, the future was so bright, we were going to shape society. We were a catalyst for each other. Plans came to the fore. They started to feel threatened.  I fell in love, we moved in together, that’s why it was a relevant detail. They didn’t understand what caused it but they suspected a  genetic component, although now they know that’s not the case. They were threatened then; they didn't want us to reproduce and we wanted to share a new life with what we had. Everyone was forcefully separated. That was the start. You’ll have heard about what happened after of course but they skim the details in history don’t they? They said it was due to a decline in the earth’s magnetic field. That was a lie, it was engineered. Technology ceased. The media shut down.  Food production was so difficult. We had to eat what they gave us, government supplied food packages. So many died. All of us of course and more, the ones without our ‘gift’ so it would look like it wasn’t genocide but that’s what it was, that was its purpose. No one even needed to blame anyone as there was no trust from anyone or anything. There wasn't any media so no opinion could spread. Later history would have to be written, the temporary collapse of technology, widespread illness and no efficiency in medical attention, society destroyed. 

So how did I survive, well to engineer such an operation over the whole population they needed our help, we had more skill. By now we had spent years using their money, developing our minds and we were vastly more capable. They manipulated us psychologically, they physically coerced us. You’re probably sickened, how could I have collaborated? But of course most died rather than co-operate. We were endowed with superior intellectual capabilities, but we still maintained the same emotional capacities, they told me they would save me if I co-operated but more importantly they told me they would save him. Then they used us to re-build society after the collapse. That’s what we’re still doing now, there are few left, I cannot say the exact numbers but our job is nearly over and if they don’t kill us, age will.

Then they started the research, they didn't want another generation of us. Generations passed and then they isolated the chemical we are born with, they didn't know the cause, it was just a seemingly random chemical distributed along generational lines. Do you still feel lucky? I’m sorry that was pessimistic. Now you have a chance, this letter is your chance.

I had to find my old flat, this flat and I did. We knew it was happening again, the compulsory scans followed by the property grants and this location was on the list. They contained us of course because they knew we would figure it out. But then the hurricane happened. All that has happened in the history of the human race and we still can’t exercise any control over the weather. There was chaos as relief was provided and they let their guard down, with a little free time, I stole across the city, I composed this letter, I left it here.

Still I’m gripped with the futility of this action now, maybe they found the letter, maybe you’re not reading this, they are and now they will attempt to find me. It’s a risk I’m willing to take on the possibility that it has come into the right hands. You must tell the others, I don’t know how you can identify them but they’re grouping you in disparate locations, young people who have moved because of any scheme, initiative etc, it’s so they know where you are, as for the plan after that I have no idea but you need to get out. At least I don’t have to tell you to remember because I know you will. Burn after reading. Erase my thoughts of their physical reality. 

The Expectation of Interpretation

He was the last person I expected do that. On the other hand what were those expectations based on, not evidence anyway, assumptions, presumptions, impressions, abstract and theory with no substance, expectations which were based on other expectations, a trembling tower miraculously suspended with no base at all to rest on.

To describe him, we’ll pretend we’re at a party. He didn’t  speak to many people. They encouraged him first and then felt frustrated. They gave up. Rather than simply give up, they talked, they bitched. They made assumptions he did not like them. They decided to dislike him based on the false assumption that he did not like them.

As if a reason to hate someone is because they do not  love you. Something reasoned by its opposites absence. Reasoning something is beautiful just because it is not ugly. On the other hand, emotion, it’s a whole different ball game. If we had discovered a way to defeat it with reason, I would make the reasoned estimate that we would have done it already.

So why didn’t  he speak to many people? He had too many expectations and he feared disappointing himself. They bubbled up inside, the urgencies in every moment and intention with every word. Conflict surged inside, the drive for action competed with the desire to avoid, to avoid what he saw as the inevitable result; failure and all of that inner turmoil led to an external paralysis. All of that paralysis led to social isolation to everyone until he met me, yet feelings linger, they remain and cling even when their causes are eliminated and they influence the very way we think, the way we interpret all occurrence. All of this, was something he himself could not even express so how is it that I know this?

We discovered a way. I met him in college in medical school. We used to perform autopsies to figure out causes of death but there were so few bodies to examine, physical ailments and illness were all but absent and all who died, died naturally and painlessly (due to technology to predict death and the consequent administration of drugs to alleviate associated pain). Yet suicide rates were rising so much. Suicide was prevented in no case as the individual was deemed to  have full body autonomy and was even helped to achieve death painlessly on expression of the intention. We did not examine those bodies. The cause of suicide traditionally were an area for genetic predisposition but also one for social or societal circumstance, context, conversation and memory. Interpretations essentially. We had no authority to determine cause in those situations.

Your forgetting, we live in Utopia. Genetic predispositions are predicted now, they’re isolated and examined, even spontaneous emergence of a brain chemical can be determined with the regular and compulsory school health checks and either are offset with the excellent and effective medication provided free by the state. The context was perfection, it was no longer considered to have any cause in suicide, the same for societal or social circumstance. All that was left was conversation and memory of the person which are things held by others but in that regard these were then subject to their interpretation. The only factor we deduced that could give us a clue therefore was interpretation itself.

We needed to find out how an individual interprets occurrence, any occurrence. After years of painstaking research, in Utopia not only did we trust the state but the state trusted us and funding was given without application to all who pursued it and after this research we found a way. The problem was our way required access to the bodies. The rates were rising and we still had no authority to access the bodies. It was deemed illegal for medical students to discover the functions of thought itself by way of physically examining the mind and that is just what we thought we had discovered, the reasons for this illegality was that such a discovery upon the processes of thought itself would allow alteration of these processes, anyone with yearning for power could then alter the thought processes of others to make them lose their trust in Utopia, everyone trusted this declaration by the state and we saw some suicides as a necessary sacrifice to maintain the trust we both received and invested. It was the only illegality that existed.  As I said those rates were rising, on a personal level, I lost my brother for no determinable cause, I tried to defeat the consequent emotion with reason, reason that to find a cause would prove eventually dangerous to the state which we all loved, but as mentioned before there is no way to defeat emotion with reason (Possibly this could also be discovered after the defeating the one illegality that existed) and I was helpless in grief  We examined an option to steal them but it seemed impossible, all dead bodies were nearly immediately disposed of by incineration. There was almost no interim, we had advanced to a point where families and friends were able to grieve and accept without the tangible confrontation of a dead body. The state was so trust worthy in Utopia that everyone naturally trusted it and thus death was recorded and accepted automatically. Then he suggested something I had never expected him to suggest.

That evening in the laboratory, I was near breaking point, surrounded by the bodies that we did have the authority to examine the minds of, the natural deaths, in there we saw no conclusive end to our research unless we had access to a mind which genuinely wanted to commit suicide. Research on the other minds prove futile, the thought processes of their interpretation of any occurrence were expected and already known without any of our research at all.  What he said made something occur to me which had never occurred before during the years of our research and indeed the realization struck me as obvious as well as the definitive end. I knew why I was doing the research, I wanted to help, merely help not solve, alleviate, merely alleviate, not eradicate, some, merely some not all of my own grief by the discovery of why my brother killed himself and in doing so help others in the same position and yet I never knew his position and I never thought to ask and then I became all too aware of his reason.

“I want to die, I have no idea why, but it is a genuine intention, an intention which provoked me to carry out all this research in the first place and once I commit suicide you will have full access to my mind, in some way my mind won’t be ideal because although I had intent to die prior to the research, the motivation that my mind could then be used will somehow have influenced my interpretation of occurrence but I urge you to pursue our end regardless” He said.

Those were his words, the exact formality of his speech of the man I never expected to want to die and in that way the man I never really knew but the man I now know more intimately than I know anyone, even myself. 

There

There’s not a lot of places to go in my town. There’s an industrial estate on the outskirts, warehouses blotting the landscape. We went there as teenagers after failed attempts to get into the local nightclub. We sat on cold wavin pipes, concrete tunnels and wondered. Wondered about climbing the cranes that were always there. During the day it held none of the same appeal. Desolation and emptiness suited our moods, cars coming in and out of the car park, students attending the youth reach, people spending their days in blocks, during the day it was just ugly not dangerous. Dangerous. Thats why I can’t go back, too many memories. Danger used to excite me, not frighten me. We drank too much one night, idle wonderings about the crane turned into a reality. Sometimes my mam wheels me by on the foot path, we have to go by there because there’s not a lot of places to go in this town – I try not to look.

Secrets are like fire

You sit at your table and do your work. Your teacher might not talk to you because they are trying to control the class. 

The other children might not talk to you because you're not particularly noticeable although for no definable reason. 

At school you can get lost. Its peculiar that you still feel lost when everyone around you is there to tell you where you are. 

There are spaces outside school, spaces to go. She went to the football pitch at the edge of town, not the new one, the one across the railway tracks where no one goes. She brought her dog. He never asked any questions. She took the petrol from her dads garage, she took a lighter. Watching those flames consume everything, everything she had gathered. Weeks of careful selection of what exactly needed to be destroyed most. The things they would miss. The things that meant something to them . At the same time, those that were easy to steal. A favorite pencil top of a classmate, her teachers framed photo of her children. Carefully, carefully, day by day so it wasn't noticeable. In the end she had quite a collection. Watching those flames curl and smolder  she didn't feel lost. You can draw your most substantial sense of identity not from others but from the actions you carry out even if those actions are in isolation especially if they are maybe because you draw those actions closer to yourself to the point they become more a part of yourself,no one knows and no one judges. 

She doused the fire with more petrol, she watched the it burn brighter but now it rolled too, balls tumbling from the center and into the air. She did not cower in fear. 

Secrets are like fire, they have the potential to destroy what made them. 

The family dog never returned home. 

The Pleasure of Guilt

Everyone was laughing except you and that's why I noticed you. You were new and you wanted to laugh too and you would. 

 The night was so dark and the space was so wide, the sky curves to meet the horizon line, the edges in the field in which we walked. A barely discernible line at the front of our vision marked the elusive boundary where space meets solidity. Darkness holds more silence than light and in the distance the laughter seemed louder than it should. We circled a fire orange sparks sprinkled the air around us. Hug your coat closer, quickening your step now as the previously star lit sky is blighted by clouds moving in from somewhere behind.  Let your eyes rest on the edges of the surroundings before letting them travel up on the curve of the sky.  It can be discomforting  can't it like a dome or a boundary? The way the space stretched so far and the sky reached to meet it. Only if you think about it, but then so is everything if you think about it. Think is the operative word here if you haven't noticed.

 The clouds seemed to roll and gather, a deep roll of thunder reverberated around the rain fell hitting our faces, sliding and trickling down our coats. Frozen now, trapped in your thoughts, watching us from far away. 

And you were trapped, that much was obvious. You were imprisoned by your own awareness but we were trapped too but in a different way, we just didn't know. Ignorance had set us free, we were free by consequence of just thinking we were free, regardless of whether it was true or not, what you knew had enslaved you yet all you knew was that you were trapped. Knowledge will not set you free when the nature of that knowledge confirms the opposite. 

You approached. We met.  You felt the need to give reason to us even though we didn't want it. 

Oh we all have reasons. Justification is alike but reason is justified in its own different ways. It didn't matter that you had different reasons because you wanted the same thing. Outcome and result trump intention and motivation. Outcome survives, your reason will  live and die, die with you. Pleasure, its always right, its always justified. The very nature of its definition makes it self-justifying. I don't need to explain myself. It defeats reason, it destroys reason so why should I give a reason I pursued it in the first place. You arrived and you wanted to explain why, the reason you wanted to be one of us, your reasoning to become one of us was to eradicate that incessant urge to reason and justify everything, your reason to act was to destroy any future or potential reasoning for any other action your reason to act in the first place was so that you could eventually act without reason. 

All drugs are legal, everyone can take them, when and how they want. In that way pleasure is not only justified because of its very nature but is also expressly accommodated for, it is deemed right and because it was deemed right no one could feel wrong about taking them, no one could feel guilt. 

They're not drugs, we needed a new name for them and we hadn't come up with one yet. The nature of drugs is that they have a physiological effect that effects the processes of mind or body and this was more. I wish I could explain how it was more, this was beyond mind, this was beyond body. Yes they were drugs in the sense that they were a chemical substance that we ingested and they gave us something that related to mind and body but they were different because they somehow managed to go beyond it. They gave us pleasure, drugs give pleasure but this was pure pleasure, true pleasure, this was pleasure with guilt, somehow we had discovered a chemical that gave us pleasure but at the same time made us feel like the pleasure was wrong, which subsequently further enhanced the pleasure. We lived for this. We abandoned everything, everything but to remain alive and feel like this. We had to keep it a secret, the chemical we had found, its discovery would be manipulated, used for control, if someone had control of it, then inevitably they would deprive others of it to control them, it was so addictive that anyone would do anything just to remain taking it, so we had to keep it a secret, we had to deprive it from those in power, those who would deprive it from us if they knew. 

Everyone was laughing except you and that's why I noticed you. You were new and you wanted to laugh too, we gave you what you wanted, you took it and you did. You laughed with us, you laughed without reason. You had so much pleasure, your reason was defeated because you were immersed. You weren't able to reason and without reason, things can't be justified, you couldn't justify it so you felt guilty because it wasn't deserved. Your guilt enhanced your pleasure. 

Please fill out the form clearly.

.

Please fill out the form clearly.

Reason/s for dying:

It was the time she stopped believing in the mission. Customer number fifty-three. Customer number fifty three was unremarkable at first, but then he threw the whole purpose of the mission. We sold him purpose and he came back and tried to return it. How we sold purpose is we erased their memory of buying their purpose so they felt they always had their purpose, that we didn’t simply create it for them because if you knew your purpose was a creation, a purchase you would not believe in it and the nature of purpose requires belief and that is why no one has ever tried to return the purpose they bought from us because they don’t realise they bought it. They think it real when it is a fabrication. Yet there he was.

- I want to return the purpose you gave me he said.

She glanced furious at me, something gone wrong in the memory erasing.

-What are you talking about, we don’t sell purpose because there is no such thing there used to be in the past but its extinct now, everyone knows that, it’s been proven.

-Well I have one, I don’t know how, but there are rumours about this clinic and I’m following them up.

-This clinic provides assisted suicide only. There’s no such thing as a rumour anymore, it is also extinct a rumour is a claim to knowledge that may or may not be true, all knowledge is known now, it’s been proven.

-Except for one item, what happens after death?

-Wondering what happens after you die is counter- productive in trying to live, that has been proven.

- I find it baffling that many of your customers come out alive with no memory of ever visiting here.

She looked genuinely scared. We should have prepared for this before number fifty-three, prepared that this was going to happen. That someone would realise, that they would shut us down, they would rob us of our purpose, the service we provide, taking our purpose away from us and making us like any of the population and then we would too have the desire to die again. That’s when she stopped believing because surely someone who now held the joy of purpose should have understood its importance should have understood not to take it from others. That’s why she said we didn’t have to prepare for this situation and yet there it was happening. So that’s when she stopped believing in purpose and the nature of purpose is that it requires belief.

 Life is not a gift, gifts can be returned. Yes we can return our life but then we face the unknown. When have you gone into a shop, returned a gift and instead of being returned the money you’re given a question, a question you can’t answer.  Maybe things would be more interesting that way. Some people find a thrill in the unknown. People like that might find the prospect of death the biggest thrill of all because it presents the ultimate unknown.

So how did we create the mission? The society we live in knows everything except what happens after death. Everything but that. This was great for some and detrimental for others, after all there are those who strive on searching, on discovering and there was only one thing left to discover and there seemed to be only one way to find out. The result was an increase in assisted suicide. She was one of those people like me. She was looking for purpose. She found me. We were in the waiting room of the assisted suicide clinic. Reasons for dying read the form, I looked over my shoulder, she wrote to ‘discover the unknown’.  A shock ran up my spine. Other people thought this way. Others had lost their purpose because of certainty. I spoke to her immediately

-Do you think we’re the same, of a certain disposition?

-No, it’s been proven that people who commit suicide are a variety of different dispositions….Everything’s proven.

She ended rather bitterly then continued.

-Everything but what happens after we die.

-Is there another way to find out?

-No it’s been proven that this is the only way; it’s been proven to account for the slight increase in assisted suicide recently.

-Do you think it’s a bad thing? People like us dying

-Bad, there is no bad or good, that has been proven. No one caring about us dying is probably a consequence of that. Consequences are relevant only to those who care, no one cares anymore because when you care about something you believe it to be bad or good and now we know nothing is either bad or good. No one cares anymore, everyone just knows.

We sat in silence filling out our forms but my mind whirred. You can’t create answers, they have to be there, you have to discover them but what about questions.  Could we create questions? Answers came from questions so we indirectly create the answers. We are only given answers because we ask for them. So we should ask how do we create more questions and we would be given the answer.

-I have another question that we don’t know the answer to.

-That’s impossible she said, there is only one question no one knows the answer to and that has been proven.

-How do we make more questions? I whispered furitively.

Her eyes lit up. She had what I now had, she had a purpose, we both had a purpose together. We both possessed something unknown that no one knew was unknown.

-We can’t die, we need to find the answer

-I agree.

That was the start of our lives together. We truly believed that finding the answer would benefit humanity, that if we could find more questions and give them to people so they could also look for answers, then they would have purpose and purpose would make their lives worth living. We found the answer. Now we had to give people what we had. We called it the mission.

We live with many different purposes, but the nature of purpose is such that there can only be one true purpose. Life is the purpose. The only true purpose is to live. Some would say there is no way to die without having fulfilled that because only the living can die. Yet we kept witnessing the young coming to die, but you didn’t have to be young to have not lived, you just had to have not tried, which wasn’t your fault in this society where everything is provided and there is hardly anything to try for. This is where the mission has brought us. They filled out the forms in our clinic, it was for assisted suicide but we provided another illegal service. Reason for dying the form read. The answers varied but if they fitted the broad category of no reason, no purpose, no meaning, to find the unknown. We welcomed them, we told them we could provide another service if they were interested.

She is dead. I am waiting now. Has this answered your question?

'Hero'

She feels old even though shes not. Oh but she never knew what the weight of this position would be and now shes bent by it; crippled under a life she did not choose. In her head she feels trapped, her thoughts relentlessly pace behind iron bars like a lion in a circus and just like the lion in the circus, they must be ready for performance, lest she let her guard down. She must perform, she must pretend and if she were to let her own thoughts free, it would be like the lion letting his jaws crush savagely down on the head of the ringmaster. The ringmaster would die and the audience would be horrified. However the lion would be brutally shot and the show would go on regardless. The banners strung and bright lights switched back on. The facade would continue. A new audience would come, that worried her most, there would always be a new audience, sitting on the edge of their seats, trusting, listening, ready to believe. The lions death would be utterly fruitless.

She gripped the edges of the sink, knuckles paling to resemble the white of the ceramic bowl, they so forcibly clenched. The back of her throat burned and stung with the pain of stifled sobs and pent up emotion. Her whole physical frame drew together in an attempt to hold everything in. She willed herself to stay calm. The shrill noise of the bell suddenly cut through her thoughts followed by the sounds of dozens of small bustling bodies, the clatter of their shoes or scuff of their slippers. Giggles resounded on the corridor and somewhere a ball bounced. She let her hands fall to her side and her back straighten up. She exhaled a labored sigh and attempted to cast a look of defiance into the bathroom mirror. On the way back to the classroom, she tries to actually prepare, she needs to fit a role and face her audience again but memories and images crowd in on her mind.

They would discuss 'heroes' in her early college days. In bars resting on marble tables, places with blooming potted plants and green and red stained glass windows. Places filled with smoke and experimental jazz. Their table was full of energy, they would all lean together in earnest discussion. They considered real heroes, artists, writers, musicians; the immortals. They all thought they were going to be great of course, join the ranks of their heroes. The stream of ideas was constant and as the bar would grow fuller, the drinks would flow. Ural would sit beside her. He was doing a joint honors in politics and philosophy. He was always the most animated, most passionate, most prone to outbursts and eventual blind collapse on the table. He constantly evaded the present. 'The only reason that I'm in the present, that I'm living is to defy my own mortality, the only reason I'm living is so that I can live on' he would tell her with an intensity and seriousness. She never knew whether to laugh or not but somewhere she agreed, somewhere she could see that, that was how real heroes were made, that such was everlasting, unlike societies ever fluctuating concept of the term. However little did she know, how twisted and yet simple the creation of a hero was to become but that was still ahead then and the possibility was unimaginable in those good times. Now the bar was empty, the potted plants long withered and Ural was a faded memory. He became a disappeared man. O how dangerous youth and intellect is, she thinks.

She never thought it back then but if asked now, she would say her mother was a hero. She was a hero for what she didn't say rather than what she said. Every child will believe. She never understood the full malleability of youth until she found herself forced with words to feed them. Doing what your told to do is something imprinted and ingrained in you. The full implications of this simple premise, if not eradicated when need arises can prove disastrous. She was told to tell them to do what they're told so she told them. Every child will believe, that's why human nature is so dangerous because every person has the capacity to lie. Art can be like the telling of lies that are beautiful. Her mother would spin tales so detailed in their execution, she finds it hard to dismiss them as fiction even now. She would look closely at flowers, their fine veins were maps. The fine arterial lines running along their fragile petals could be interpreted and read she told her. When your able to read such a map, follow it and you will find a land full only of the beauty such is present in the heart of nature itself and devoid of the things humanity made to keep us constantly distracted. As a child full comprehension was lost but in her imagination she saw a land constantly festooned with the gaiety of the circus. She had not yet realized the pretense of the circus but perhaps that's what beauty is, everlasting pretense, an everlasting lie, everlasting art. So this is why she now saw her mother as a hero because she had come to realize that one with the capacity to tell such beautiful lies for no other purpose than their own sake could also have the ability to tell lies effectively for a purpose, for control but then these lies wouldn't be art for arts only purpose is in itself. Her mother wouldn't have been able to tell the lies she herself was telling but her mother had gone like Ural. Does a hero need to die?

Her home town was always grey but grey used only be a color. Now whenever she returns grey is the color of the sidewalks, the buildings and the expanse of sky but it is also the overbearing feeling weighing on a people. Her father was an artist but now its hard to know what to call him. Before his palette was limited in color, preferring to stick to charcoal and sketching pencils but now his palette is full of the colors of the rainbow. Red and white preferred for the slogans and the banners in the posters whereas the backgrounds shine of green fields and yellow sunshine. Her father is brilliant at his work and that is why even she too can feel transported by those commissioned works, plastered on every lampost, billboard and shop window but everyone else who looks at them do not know the man who painted them and the tears she over their very existence.

She feels the weakness that these thoughts are causing her and at the back of it, the sheer hopelessness in them. She knows she must go in as she has been standing outside the classroom for some time. She turns the handle with the practised calmness the routine requires. The class hush up and sit up straight immediatley. She assumes a stance in front of the blackboard and faces the rows of expectant faces. Along the walls of the classroom are the posters her father made. A solid solemn face gazes out at them. He has depicted a kindness and light in his eyes and an elusive smile to his lips. 'Yagoda our hero' is the message emblazoned on most of them, whatever is on them it never veers from jubiliant praise. She speaks to the children, today we are going to learn of the revolution caused by our hero Yagoda which brough us to have this most triumphant and brilliant of societys but first let us stand and pledge the creed of loyalty to our hero Yagoda. The children stand up in unison. Their faces are full of the blankness associated with the banality of everyday routine, the unquestioning acceptance of the daily and perhaps this is what breaks her or perhaps it is her memories which will still not leave her or perhaps it is the noise from the playground outdoors, the exclamation of 'lets play a game, lets play pretend' breaking through the classroom walls. It is this, it is the added realisation that such a monstrous act of complete control hsd been rendered over an entire population through lies; the urge to pretend morphed. The tears well and flow silently but continuosly from her eyes. The class stand in confusion and astonishment. It is as if the lion has collapsed at the feet of the lion tamer, unable to go on with the performance. The beast has crumpled and out of its mouth crawls a child from a carvernous costume, not a fearsome ferocious beast but a child, just like all the children in the audience watching, a child pretending. The lion tamer doesn't seem to serve a purpose now. This was a how a 'hero' was made.

Sedate and Isolate

He started the story on the same day; they began another report on him. He couldn’t tell anyone about the story. He saw it as too fragile in its trembling tenuous beginning, only the spark of an idea. The idea was too delicate and somewhere inside he thought it was too perfect to exist, would crumble and crack upon exposure. That was the nature of perfection he thought and it was something he thought often about, spent restless nights wondering upon. All his ideas seemed perfect without execution. He thought if he was only an idea he could be perfect too. So that’s why he was terrified of exposing the idea, of seeing its flaws. He knew he should tell them everything but he could not bring himself to tell them this. He had an idea if only inkling and that was the best feeling he knew of. Inside his head there was scratching, scrabbling the idea moved relentlessly, yearning for its freedom. He tried to slow it down, keep it apace, let it out slowly but it wanted to surge, to flow, to surround and suffocate, to consume and become him. Obsession gave pure purpose. Obsession respected time, regarding it not just as space to be filled. Obsession believed in never stopping at mere amusement or distraction. Obsession was a type of pleasure. Obsession made identity disappear. Part of him wanted to give up, to collapse helpless by the idea but he knew he mustn’t, for then it would be obvious. He mustn’t let them know or they would take it from him. He fought with himself, he pulled himself together. He must act like them and they will never know of the idea.

He wanted to write about an author. It’s easier to put yourself into characters, become lost in one’s own territory where you could invent the landscape. It’s easier to write when you could relate. You could spend lifetimes exploring yourself, make a thousand characters and still not find you. You could wholly immerse yourself in the story that way. That was why the main character would serve two purposes. It was easier to write about yourself, thereby facilitating your own immersion in the story and second that was exactly what he wanted to write about happening to the character making it doubly easier for him to write about, for the creative process. The character, the man he was writing the story about would be writing a story. The idea was that his character should have the intention of writing a story that when read, the lines between fiction and reality would start to melt away. He would crave to make the distinction between reality and art slip seamlessly away, which was also his intention in writing the story itself. Indeed that was the best form of art, art that made you forget it was art, art that fed upon you, art that required so much of your attention you felt as if it was digesting you, that it was taking you, that you were becoming it. That it had taken your now, that it was your now. Yet most will be able to draw themselves back, re-establish the distinction, step back from what was and carry on with the daily but this was not what he wanted to write like. He wanted to write something that had life in it so that it was inseparable, something without ending because in art a good ending defies the meaning of an ending, it stays with you, a good ending never ends. So he was writing about a character who wanted to do the same thing. The character was mirroring his pursuit but the character was unaware he was being used for the exact thing he was trying to achieve. A problem emerged then if he was writing with the purpose of blurring others reality and doing so by writing about a character with the same intention, how could he keep his characters reality intact in the process of writing it? The problem frustrated him, how could he literally keep his character sane and have his character achieve his aims? The problem felt like a physical presence blocking his way. He incubated the problem and continued writing; it would come to him surely as one thing comes after another. They have no idea he thought happily to himself as he continued writing. It gave him pleasure knowing they had no idea what he was working on. No idea he had an idea.

The words became like dominoes, tipping one after the other, blending together into line into pattern, one brought about the next and so the solution came to him. Why did he need to keep his character’s reality intact in the process of the character writing his intended masterpiece. They would become their masterpiece. They would suffer for their art. They would have hallucinations and delusions. Their art would invade and infect their very life. The character in his story would start to see the characters in his story as if they were real, would be unable to tell the difference. The characters the character invented would harass and follow him, keep him awake force the character in the story to keep writing the story to stay true to his intention. Yes he thought, that was what was needed in the story, a dream and then pain. The pursuit of perfection and the pain that comes in the process was needed, not the resolution of happiness and completion of the intention. For happiness was difficult and tedious to express although beautiful to live. Pain was difficult to live but was beautiful when expressed. Fuelled by his idea, he stayed up into the night writing, writing about a character plagued a[i]nd tormented by his creation, a character sleepless and bent on a dream and he too became sleepless and bent on a dream. After writing for hours, deep in the night he collapsed asleep amongst his work.

He awoke startled. The man next door was screaming. He quickly came to his side. He tried to calm him, tried and tried but the man was raving hysterical. There was obviously no one there but the man kept screaming ordering invisible people to leave him, to let him sleep, to let him alone, saying he would finish the work in the morning. What work? He asked but the man only screamed more. He phoned an ambulance and the man was carried away. Concerned and curious over the man’s well being, he went to the hospital next day to enquire. Since the man had received no one thus far, a nurse drew him aside assuming he was a friend or relative. She seemed oddly familiar to him although he could not place her. The man played along using the situation to ask his own questions while secretly thinking this would be good material for the story. Has there been a diagnosis he said. He’s highly psychotic she replied, he was writing and now he believes the characters are real and are constantly harassing him. The man suddenly felt uncomfortable. Really? He asked gingerly. What was he writing about, do you know? He happened to keep his journal with him until today, until they found it. The doctors have examined the contents... she paused and seemed reluctant to go on. The man prompted her. Convinced himself he was not lying he was acting, for lying was only an act the audience is not aware of. She relented and continued, this is the peculiar thing she said, he seems to be writing about exactly what has happened to him, he was writing a story about a writer trying to write a story and whom eventually loses his sanity under the belief the characters in the story are real. Suddenly he was infuriated, that was his idea, and somehow the man had stolen it from him. He wracked his brains thinking of how this man he had not seen until today could possibly have gotten hold of the material, confused and annoyed he walked away from the nurse back to the man. How dare he? He thought. He confronted him at his bedside, your story is exactly my idea he said. The man started from his sleep, opened his eyes and grinned slowly but I am your idea he said.

The man drew back terrified. He paced the room. He closed his eyes and opened them again. What hospital was this? He could not answer the question. How long had he had this neighbour? He could not answer the question. How come he had never seen this neighbour until no[ii]w? He could not answer the question. The man in the bed kept talking to him, talking about endings, the best way to end the story. Suddenly he felt so weary so exhausted so tired. Shut up he screamed, let me be, leave me alone. His screaming triggered the other mans and mirrored his own. Another nurse came into the room; she walked straight past him as if he were a ghost. A doctor followed again ignoring his hysterics and tending to the hysterics of the man in the bed. We need to sedate and isolate him the doctor said. The last thing the man shouted was, now you have your ending.

He woke up almost in a fever, his brain felt almost on fire, I have an ending, I have an ending he thought and yet he could not remember what it was. He had dreamt the ending. He must keep writing he thought, if he kept writing it would come back to him, come out of him, he would have his ending. He must act normal. He mustn’t let them know, he mustn’t let them know for they would be calling him soon.

Across the table, the doctor spoke, you can’t remember what happened during the night? He nodded. You had to be sedated, you had another psychotic episode. We need to find out what triggered this episode the doctor said, what were you doing that that might have triggered the episode? He looked outside the window in the interview room. There was an oddly familiar man talking to a nurse, also familiar but whom he did not recall working here from any other day. Suddenly it came rushing back to him. He had his ending. I need to finish, I need to finish he repeated and repeated. Finish what? The doctor enquired but he only continued to repeat I need to finish, I need to finish each sentence reaching a higher pitch. The doctor despaired, put his head in his hands called two nurses. Sedate and isolate him he ordered.

After committing him to isolation, in his room they found pages and pages. Pages of a story. A story just like this one.

---

The Dome

The Dome

The grass is wet, long, it streaks smoothly against her calves, clinging as she continues to walk. A million capsules of dew hanging precariously off the slender elongated strands. Unbeknownst to her, some fall melt into the already sodden ground. They no longer occupied their unstable and insecure existence on the edge; they became unified with the environment as a whole. They are unlike her as she still clings to distinction and division, to herself. The night is so dark and the space is so wide, it as if the sky curves to meet the horizon line, the edges in the field in which she walks. A barely discernable line at the front of her vision marks the elusive boundary where space meets solidity. Darkness holds more silence than light and in the distance the laughter of her friends seems louder than it should. They circle a fire orange sparks sprinkle the air around them. She hugs her coat closer, quickening her step now as the previously star lit sky is blighted by clouds moving in from somewhere behind her. She feels the packets in her pockets shift against her thigh due to the added pace. She thinks of them now, their round white forms, the physicality of something that holds feeling. She lets her eyes rest on the edges of the surroundings before letting them travel up on the curve of the sky. A sudden discomfort arises in her, the way the space stretched so far and the sky reached to meet it was almost dome like. The clouds now seemed to roll and gather, a deep roll of thunder reverberated around her; the rain fell hitting her face, sliding and trickling down her coat. She was frozen now, trapped in her thoughts, watching her friends far away. Making movements suggesting the lowering of heads, pulling up of hoods, gathering closer together. They seemed so utterly separate to her now. Her breath was coming shorter as she struggled to think. What was wrong? Suffocation moves in and she feels trapped as if she were in a real dome. She imagines a hand encircling her whole surroundings, her entire perception at that moment until the rain falls and her head trembles unearthing memories untouched, memories never remembered, whatever it is that comes before a memory stirs. The walls of her skull quake and memories are born.

When her dad came back he gave her a snow globe. She sat it on its base of plastic, on the locker beside her bed. The plastic swans gazed out solemnly from their small world, resting on a mirror to appear as if floating on a small lake. She tapped the glass and wondered if they could see her, wondered if they could see the line that prevented them from escaping. Her small hands would lift it, tip and watch as the glitter softly settled on the heads of the swans and their surroundings. A little world, immutable, unchanging, immune to the effects of time itself. Unfortunately her mother was not immune to the effects of time and as time passed all it came to symbolise was the length of the father’s absence. Innocent to the ‘shoulds’ and the ‘hows’ of living, forgiveness was not even needed for her fathers disappearance as constant discovery was how she lived her life, his departure and return was hardly significant in the rich patch work of experience she was creating for herself. It only took its place among other notable discoveries such as chewing colouring pencils would give you a beautiful rainbow coloured mouth. This was starkly different for her mother where she had one frayed thread, her mother experienced a huge tear, a gaping hole, and one, which could not be filled or forgiven by a snow globe. So they moved. School was a vastly different place from home. Home was freedom. In the evenings she would find herself in the fields. There were no boundaries, there was light and dark but no time. She would always inevitably return to her mother, to stories and comfort and sleep and awake to find the prospect of a new to even further her explorations. In nature the lines were not wholly apparent, shapes were misshapen organic, and blurred but in school there were lines everywhere. You must stand in a line before entering the classroom, you must write between the lines and colour inside them, even the chalked markings of hopscotch represented structure that was unknown to her. the trouble started around five, at a time of growth and absorption. She was a child of trouble the teachers said. Her upbringing was totally wrong they said. She should be taught discipline they said. She would be forced to the front of the classroom, small and meek below a stern gaze to explain, drawing on the walls or not coming in when the bell rang among other things. She would return home daily in storms. Inside confusion brewed that she was incapable of expressing. Why were there certain things we had to do in the first place, where did rules start and end? As she grew older she still sought the comforting solace of open space but one day as she gazed at the horizon a decisive shift occurred in her very self. As she looked out into the distance, discomfort arose, the same discomfort and from the same source that would later force her to remember this moment in the future. Too young to wrestle, to reason with emotion, she only felt an overwhelming suffocation. If she had been able to find the words she would have said she felt trapped, that in place of space and solace boundaries still existed. She would have said that in that moment the lack of control she had became apparent, that she felt the world surrounding her, even in nature was trying to impose limits on her. It was at this point that she began to desperately yearn to escape. She would have said it reminded her of a snow globe, surrounded, trapped characters unable to see beyond and there was always a beyond, even beyond beyond, subjected to the fate of others commands but instead she was unable to express any of this, she only felt something shift, something change like the wind as it rustled through the nearby trees shaking the branches and letting droplets plummet to the ground.

And so anger grew within, boiled and bubbled from the source of the discomfort. She couldn’t explain what she had felt in that moment and she had no direction in which to place it. Soon it took on a life of its own, garnering a path from outside experience, the influences in which she had grown up with, direct example. Why had her mother felt angry? She answered that question herself and in doing so found her anger direction. The small hands which joyfully accepted a gift all forgiving and completely unawares and innocent of the context in which it was given now gripped that same gift with an intensity which made her knuckles pale. Emotion can be so powerful, it was separate itself from consciousness as if it is a separate entity, broken free, released from a cage and not of ourselves. In this way anger blinds and she is unable to remember how those hands moved, what thoughts ran through her mind, she can only see smashed fragments of glass, a silver sparkly stream of water dissipating through the wood grains staining them darker and the intense flecks of red, their warmth present on her hands, her cheeks damp with tears. The eye of the forever silent swan gazing up at her. A swan who had escaped the place in which it was trapped, something she herself felt would never happen to her.

But now she felt the world quaking just as that swans must’ve. She looked at the sky imagining huge cracks running through it as if it were broken glass. Beyond the hedgerow a car stopped. She heard the door slam, footsteps on the tarmac. She saw her friends silhouettes moving, smoke spiralling through the air, heard hissing as the fire quenched from the rain and stamping feet. The orange of the fire, their forms against the black night reminded her of the melting malleable colours that seep in between your eyelids when your half way between sleep and wake. Now they had spotted her, gesturing, calling wildly, running hoods pulled up, backs bent. She was trapped in her thoughts, somewhere a voice urged her to move to run after them but in her a deeper sense felt calm, devoid of urgency. She looked at the curve of the sky, seeing it now just as the sky rather than a dome, a wall, a barrier. How had she felt these things? How had she carried this anger? She was never trapped by the world, for she had given names to things, she had called the sky a dome. She was trapped by herself. She let her hands rest on the ziplock bags in her pockets, she had no need to escape now. She used to be so sure but now she didn’t know what she was escaping from so she let them fall into the long grass. She was aware of the flashlight walking towards her, details emerging from the shadows. She was used to authoritative demanding voice that now ordered her to stay still. Somehow she felt choice in that order, before it was pure order, stay still, therefore she must bolt but now it was choice, she could remain or she could flee. She felt her life suspended, frozen in animation. She felt as a drop of dew as it precariously holds to a blade of grass, clinging to the unstable life it had lived while a new weight pulled it down.