don’t you just love labels? Little bits of stereotyping nonsense that just magically develops when a group of people reach critical mass — kinda like the one about intelligence, monkeys and a whole boatload of time. the worst are stakeholders who, like astronauts out on the moon, plant flags all over the place. let’s all deplore the fact that complete, utter, unmitigated nonsense is no longer allowed.
it’s so bizarre, it’s like a scene out of the first few sections of the PI: a baby in nappies pointing at a block saying, “That. That. That.” over and over again while other babies in nappies huddle around with sober expressions on infantile faces, repeating “This. This. This.”
bloody hallucinating.
A bizarre illusion. I was sitting at the office today with an unexplained bother running up from the base of my spine like the promise of goosebumps and exploded in wondering. I looked out the window and I saw cars go buy like small matchbox versions of real ones, on wheels and automated. They didn’t move in synchrony, it was like a syncopated performance of dancing metal floating on grey-black bitumen flats. The lines in regular dashes kept time and the sky looked blue.
I could imagine a man falling off from his perch in the clouds and wondering aloud if his suitcase was locked properly. A man in a suit, tie flapping like a gaggle of flightless birds free-falling this way and that. Flapping, a vain attempt at flight, and I don’t see him fall splat onto the undulating ribs of a roofing sheet. It’s just as bizarre as someone walking about with an M16, firing bullets into massive bodies of dead meat. The tunnels of smoking gaps in logic, the showers of improbable pieces of eviscerated archania.
Or imagine instead your companion with a sharp machete striking down passers-by who fall silently. We are showered in the blood of many while we discuss Kant’s kingdom of ends, our poodle in a petticoat trailing behind us, ripe on well-chopped food.
“We must act in accordance with the maxims of a member giving universal laws for a merely possible kingdom of ends,” he says, smiling. His face is peppered with remnants sliding off in bloody trails.
“We must? We must,” I say, and bridges stand before us like a concatenation of chopsticks.
“The intuitive idea behind this formulation is that our fundamental moral obligation is to act only on principles which could earn acceptance by a community of fully rational agents each of whom have an equal share in legislating these principles for their community,” he says. A machete for a soapbox: bastard, just stick to machetes.
The crowd of the faceless before us fall like dominoes. I could imagine waking up in horror. My bed will be wet. I will be horrified and I will hold my hands to my face and smell blood, and then laugh because I have absurdly dramatic dreams.
At the swimming pool: a hive of activity, oh god spare us cliche’s. You could spot the knitting circles out there: old women marvelling for the first time a shared embarassment for taking pleasure in the water, and of reassurance in that communal shame — bodies aged beyond Kate Moss, beyond Beyonce Knowles. You could spot them a mile away, because, as the cliche suggests, they are distinctive. They move in herds. A herd is a collection of dumb animals grouped together by instinct. But these aren’t herds. They move in herds. I saw them today as I adjusted my overtight swimwear, ushering themselves into the communal bathroom, thick glasses, shaded, jade-bangled tai tais in retro-fitted uniformity. So much gold on decaying bodies. It fascinated me. You bury gold and precious jewellery, pots and pans, cauldrons, clay jars, scented perfume, silk, frankincense, tubular madness with dead bodies. To be weighed down with the trappings reserved for those on their final journeys: I giggled.
A daughter was in tow. A daughter-in-law, maybe. Long-suffering: you know the kind; self-less, giving, and intolerably patient. The swim with the old geese is to test her patience; she accomodates and therefore is anathema to old men and women. Her face is blank, she looks nervously across the water, as if seeing such a huge body of gently flapping and slapping blue disconcerted her. I call her something or other because I see her there often enough. It irritates me that she doesn’t like the water; she accomodates dead bodies in dressing rooms trying out retro-styled swimming costumes, caps, and world-wisely advice delivered in jarring chirps. I long to watch her swim alone in that pool.
