Now as you all know, the Black Rabbit of Inle is fear and everlasting darkness. He is a rabbit, but he is that cold, bad dream from which we can only entreat Lord Frith to save us today and tomorrow.
“So how are you?” You say what’s expected of you and I’m supposed to say what’s expected of me, only I don’t want to be expected.
“Fine, I guess.”
“You’re a little under-dressed for the weather. Where’s your raingear?”
“My umbrella’s in my purse.” Maybe I am trying to get your attention, and I’m glad I did as it might not ever happen again, but that wasn’t my primary motive. I don’t like wearing pants when it’s raining. The hems always get soaking wet and muddy and they don’t ever dry in this air. At least by wearing a skirt, I can dry myself of with some paper towels once I get inside. “It’s gone.”
“What’s gone?”
“There was a shiny piece of twisted metal on top of your filing cabinet last week that caught my attention and I wanted to steal it when I left, but I didn’t because I thought you might catch me.”
“I’m glad you decided not to steal it.”
“I’m not. It probably didn’t mean anything to you. Most likely it ended up in the trash.”
“So you think it’s ok to take other people’s belongings because you want them more?”
“Yes.” My eyes caught sight of your cheekbones and they were so beautiful I had to close my eyes. You probably just thought I was tired.
“Do you often steal from people?”
“No, not from people. I steal from jobs. It doesn’t matter what I take or whether or not I want it, I just like to take stuff.” I want to feel I’m a part of something, some piece of the world existing outside my head. So I collect small tokens to prove I was there. A paper clip proving I was in an office, with office people, making office talk. A napkin proving I could sit still, in the company of another person, for at least an hour, saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to the waiter. Souvenirs of a life I’ve only visited. Proof. Verification. I was there. It was real.
“What do you steal?”
“Whatever is available. Food, stationary, magazines, toilet paper. Nothing major.”
“Have you ever been caught?”
“I don’t think anybody is going to miss a few pens or post-its.”
“Do you steal out of retribution or defiance to your employer, or because you enjoy the risk of being caught?.”
“No. None of that. There’s no real sentiment attached to it. There is an anxious fear that I will be found out afterwards and I’ll often tell myself I won’t do it again because it’s not a feeling I enjoy, but once that has worn off I steal again.”
“What were you hoping to accomplish by telling me about your plans to steal from me?”
“It wasn’t a plan.”
“Did you think you would be rewarded for your confession?”
“Yes. Shouldn’t I be? I was going to do something bad and I didn’t. Shouldn’t I receive some acknowledgement for that?”
“No. All you did was what you should have done, which is to not take things that belong to other people.”
“It’s always like that.”
“Like what?”
“Everybody else gets rewarded for their achievements, but whenever I accomplish something it is disregarded as expected. It doesn’t matter how good or perfect I am, I never get any credit for it. Instead, like just now, I am condemned for it. And if I do falter, the chastening is exemplified. All I ever got for being good was ignored.”
“Do you think I’m ignoring you now?” Not me, but all the pieces that go together to make me.
“You think you know.”
“Know what?”
“What I am.”
“What are you?”
“If you knew, you wouldn’t have to ask.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Exactly.” It would be nice if you did though. Sometimes when you are looking at me, I pretend that you are indulging yourself in an intimacy not yet banned by ethics. For a while I can believe you genuinely care about me. At least until the end of the session when you let me walk away so easily and we separate into worlds where we are not allowed to know each other, into worlds where we would never speak to each other if we passed on the street. I politely close your office door behind me when I leave to return to my empty house. Soon, you will leave too, me already erased from you mind, and close the door behind you, to return to a home filled with family.
“I have difficulty at times ascertaining whether your mood has shifted or if you are being ironic for the sake of rhetorical debate. What you say doesn’t always correlate with what I see or the behaviours you describe.” Maybe you should pay more attention to what is happening. I can’t be that difficult to figure out.
“I’m ironic and you’re irenic. You being irenic is ironic and me being ironic is irenic. Maybe you need to entertain the possibility that I am telling you the truth and if my behaviour seems contradictory, it’s because I am trying to be less of a burden or nuisance to you.”
“You’re not a burden. And you’re not difficult.” You’re lying. You must be lying. “You expressed dissatisfaction with your job before. How is that going?”
“I don’t have a job anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I quit.”
“Any particular reason why?”
“Someone ordered a half-caff-non-fat-no-foam-extra-hot-sugar-free-vanilla-latte.” You’re laughing. I wonder what kind of coffee you drink. My guess, two sugars, no cream. Simple.
“Not your kind of coffee?”
“Artificial complexity.”
“I’m sorry?”
“People talking for the sake of hearing themselves talk. Pretending what they are doing is important. Forcing others to listen. I don’t get paid enough for that kind of auditory rape.” Nobody is ever really listening.
“Do you think you’re maybe being a bit dramatic?”
“No.”
“That was a quick reply. Don’t you want to take some time to think about it?”
“We don’t have time.”
“No, I guess we’re done for today. Have yourself a good week.”
“Thanks.”
……….
It didn’t make sense. I thought it was me. Some distortion of my perceptions. Miscalibrated intuitions. There was an absence. I wondered if you felt it too. If you really thought I was empty and shallow. Mostly empty. Because you can’t be empty and shallow at the same time. To be shallow would indicate that you have some substance, where I lack any. You seemed angry. I suppose it’s possible it was something I said or did. Sometimes the things I say are not reflective of what I’m trying to say, but I don’t think it was that. Then I started putting it all together. [Aside: was it my lack of “raingear” you noticed or the amount of skin my skirt revealed?]
You were late. You don’t usually go behind the reception counter before you call me in to your office. Did you forget whom your appointment was with? Your hair was dishevelled. The weather was terrible, but you must be used to that from riding your bike to work everyday for the past few years. And you do have other shoes that you wear when you’re riding, I saw them underneath your desk, so why are the ones you wear in the office so damaged? I never say the things I want to say.
Or I was angry with you. For not being there with me, because you did not hold me in the same regard I reserved for you, because you won’t talk to me. Wow. That’s terribly wrong of me. What have I made of you? This has gone much, much too far. And yet, sometimes when you are creating metaphors, in your head, not in mine, I see you beautiful and I don’t see that in many people. Maybe I’m not looking. But I don’t want to let that go. I don’t want to let you go. Here I am grasping at ideas made of fog as if I could somehow make them tangible if I could only catch them and hold on to them. But I can’t. That’s my point. I can’t hold you. How do you contain that which doesn’t even exist? Except you do exist. I like that you exist. Maybe that doesn’t have to mean anything.
……….
There are these moments where time is lost, like the minutes existed for everyone else, but, somehow, I missed out on them. These moments have an air of importance to them. It’s not just anything that was lost, but some incredible, life altering, world changing event that will never occur now because I wasn’t paying attention. This happens too often.
But time isn’t discrete. So, can it even be lost? Is time a wave? If it isn’t time that’s being lost, it must be life. Which, I guess means, since it’s being lost, life must be composed of discrete units. That doesn’t make sense.
Maybe, when time interacts with and is observed by life, it becomes discrete. Like an electron. Or a photon. Then it can be lost. Or maybe the waveforms of life and time interfere destructively. That makes more sense. Like spherical standing waves. Except time and life aren’t matter. I’m confused. Whatever. All I know is there are huge blank spots in my brain where memories should be.
Sometimes, I think I have told you about what is missing, but because I can’t remember what is missing, I can’t remember telling you either. Sometimes, I think you really are paying attention and you know all my secrets. Secrets so secret, I don’t even know them. Unless I’m wrong. Then you don’t know anything. I found some blood on my wall. Did I tell you that? I don’t know how it got there. I mean, it obviously came from me. I remember making myself bleed. But that was when I was in the living room. And the blood I found was on the wall in my bedroom, next to the window. I don’t remember standing by the window.
I do remember lying in bed. My bedroom has become the hospital room that I am so terrified of being condemned to. I have been sent home to die in peace. No, not in peace. So much of my time is passed staring at the ceiling. It’s an ugly ceiling, made of square pressed-board tiles that were once beige and have been incompletely painted over with white primer. I should paint some clouds on it, to go with the glow in the dark stars I glued up there. Something more comforting to look at when I’m paralysed by fear and depression, waiting to die.
Anyway, I was lying in bed, staring at the plastic, yellow stars still faintly glowing from when I turned out the light, thinking of all the ways I could use to describe depression when I remembered it doesn’t matter how any depressed person describes their situation, no one can understand, and the more you try to convey the horror, the less they believe you could actually be experiencing it. So, the more people talk about their illness, the more they lose credibility.
But it is horrific. A strange place. It reminds me of how they describe death in fantasy novels. A Pressing, unending, vacuum of darkness. Yes, vacuums can press. Only in this special place. And when you’re there, it doesn’t matter if you’ve ever experienced a trauma or not. The experience itself is a trauma. And there, in that place, you are subjected to every anguish any person has ever experienced - hurtful words, rape,
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