Message in a Bottle

So, here’s how we’ll begin - this is me, sitting at the dining table on a different chair. Why, you may ask. Well, that’s fair enough. In your position, I would probably ask the same question. Mainly so I could make sure I wasn’t going to be wasting my time reading this thing.

Actually, no, that’s not true. I would ask a different question first. I mean, let’s start with the table. This dining table is made from wood, right? Ah, hang on, you can’t see the table. Maybe the best thing to do here is to start again. Got my mediums confused. Bear with me.

This is me (yes, I’ve changed it slightly), sitting at the WOODEN table on a different chair and the question I want to ask now is…

I want to ask if you noticed the word ‘wooden’ was written in capital letters in the second paragraph before you read the first paragraph. Did you sneak a peek ahead? I bet you did. We all do. Many’s the comic where I’ve looked to the right page before I’ve started reading the left.

Except this isn’t a comic, is it? Bugger. Hang on.

Page 1, panel 1.

Right. So, this is me, sitting at a wooden table and now you can see it’s a wooden table. Although now I’d only be talking to the artist, because that’s the way a comic book script works.

I know this because I bought some. I can’t remember why I bought some. It’s incredibly possible that I only bought them so I could tell myself that I was going to write comics. In the same way that I bought certain genres of books or DVDS so I could tell myself that they were research.

Carrying a poetry book around as it was the first little Rosetta stepping stone that would lead me to the person I was never going to be, if we’re being honest. Because I never became any of those people where research shopping was involved. Very possibly because I start sentences with the word because. Very possibly because I am never going to play lead guitar, win an award or finish another book or move a car with my bare hands…or my mind.

Damn you, comics. Setting such unrealistic goals.

Page 1, panel 2 onwards (Add infinitum)

Panel 2 will be like a flick book, okay? Yes, I’m talking to you, my artist. I’m starting at the table, but I will be moving on and the panel will follow me. You know, like a movie clip. Except it won’t be a movie clip, because this is never going to be a movie. There’s not enough universe to be expanded here. So far we’ve only got me and a table and a different chair. Also, it won’t ever be a movie because this is not a book. So, it won’t feature on the correct televised book club and it won’t ever get remade into either a bleak, hard hitting TV series or a film. Or a comic. Which is fine. I’m not even sure what this is. I’m not even sure how we’ve gotten this far and not talked about the table yet.

You remember the table? The WOODEN table. The table I am sitting at. Here I sit, at the table, in a different chair, basically practicing my typing. If not my spelling. Good old autocorrect. It’s stopped you seeing a couple of right doozies so far. Although I have to teach how to spell ‘doozies’ and I could’ve sworn hard hitting was one word. Don’t tell me: the dreaded hyphen. Groan. All of which might as well bring us to question two…or was it one? The table…

I’ve always like the words ‘add infinitum’. It sounds like a step in a recipe. It sounds like a step in all our recipes. We can all add infinitum to most of our lives at some point. For some of us, that bit goes on too long. The pain. The crushed expectations. The bleak, hard fitting stuff that dramas mine to fill a Sunday evening. The infinitum starts to hurt so much that we might just find a way to reach for an off switch.

My friend reached for an off switch this year. I don’t talk about it very often because I don’t understand it well enough. I know I’m not talking about it well enough here, at my wooden dining table. Still, here I sit, the sun setting and all I can think is that I didn’t even know he was that depressed. Which makes me wonder if I can introduce him with the qualifier ‘my friend’. Probably not. Except he left a lot of people feeling some version of this and none of us get to tell him that or talk to him about or to say the word ‘stop’. As if we could’ve stopped him. As if it’s possible to change one thing, like a chair at a table, so everything will be different and his private pain will stop.

We can talk about how we miss him. We can express how we wish he’d never even consider taking the course of action which he took. We can blame it, to some extent, on the lockdown at the start of the year. We were all in bubbles. We were so far from each other.

Why is the 21st century so full of bubbles? And when did bubbles become so bad? And when did I start thinking that starting a sentence with ‘and’ was any better than starting a sentence with ‘because’?

I’m sorry. This took a turn. My friend has been dead for a while and I don’t think dealing with it is really on the cards for me. I need to understand things to move on from them and I’m not ready to understand it yet. It’s selfish and it’s the only child in me, but I’m not letting go of the grief yet because I didn’t speak to him for a long time and now I can’t speak to him and the grief is the last thing he left in my life.

Life is time and time is fatal. As we understand it. As we experience it. Times contains everything we experience. Time contains us. It contains the exact second which will be our last second. The last second for the man I am going to keep calling my friend, even if I didn’t understand that he was going to take his own life before it was too late. Even if I wasn’t the friend who could’ve done much to stop him. He was my friend and I will miss him and that is okay, I guess. Time will, in time, heal that wound. Time will also introduce other wound and other friends. I will have to endure the deaths of some of them and some of them may have to endure my death.

I’ve been writing about robots and time and I am scared because the world outside my life does not feel like it needs me doing any of that. The world inside my life feels like it’s okay but outside of my life, people are dying and fighting and protesting and civil wars are brewing and politicians and the media are somehow becoming a cross between an apocalypse and professional wrestling and I am scared. I’m scared and I‘m angry and I’m losing my mind, only I’m not losing my mind. My mind is just having to think about things it didn’t want to have to think about. Comfortable is a lie, isn’t it? It’s just a state between actual states. Especially when other people are just voices on the end of my phone and the sea is exclusively to be viewed on my TV screen for a while and my friend is dead. I never realised how loudly that particular clock was ticking for him.

I should point out there’s a clock ticking to my left. I should also point out that the clock is made from wood, like the table. People take materials and they leave scars behind but, hey presto, we have tables and clocks. And coffins.

I don’t entirely know why I wrote this. I’m meant to be writing about robots and memories but I’m convinced I’m screwing it up. I think I might be screwing everything up, but that’s okay, because I’m doing it quietly. I’m white and straight and in my forties and comfortable enough to be overweight. I’m never going to change the world. The world is only going to change me. I sit where I need to sit and perform the tasks to pay the bills and some of these tasks are frustrating and some of these bills catch me unawares, but none of this is a threat to my life.

What was Houdini used to say? No permeant damage. You can survive the NPD. Add infinitum.

I wrote thirties back there. Autocorrect missed it. I had to correct it to forties. I am white and straight and I forgot my age for a little moment because, maybe, it was convenient. Or maybe my memory isn’t great. Or maybe my memory is deficient. Or maybe I am a terrible human being. I am white and straight and a man, right? So many men who looked like me made so many lives a living hell for people who didn’t look like me and I can’t escape that. It’s hard to make people believe you want everyone to be happy and equal and loved and not in pain when you look like so many villains. (To be fair, the beard doesn’t help.)

Other people might tell you I’m not that bad. Maybe. A lot of them would tell you that I am quiet. They’re not wrong, as much as it bugs me. I am quiet. I’ve been in my own bubble for longer than most people realise. Even this, right here, is basically me being quiet in my bubble. At my WOODEN table, next to my WOODEN clock, listening to a mechanism that I have to wind tell me that the seconds are indeed still moving. If time actually stopped, do you think the clocks would notice?

There I wrote about time. Even if I am still screwing this up. Damn it. This chair is more comfortable here.