What am I?
What are you?
What, indeed, is anything?
I look at myself in the morning, and feel not like a breathing body, but as a thick fog shrouded by frail wisps of silken web. I am the spider, knitting a web for my sustenance; to catch myself. I am the hunter, as am I the prey.
I step out into the still gloomy morning and get to my office. The sunlight drives the fog away, but to what end? The fog defines me. I am a shell of myself without that fog.
Clarity in thought and action has been a phrase of such antiquity at this point, that I can't remember the last time I made a good decision by myself, for myself. The spider works on, unaware that its web of self-preservation is getting cut by its own sting.
I hold onto my thoughts, afraid to forget. They are murmurs on the wind, like the flutter of a hummingbird's wing, so delicate, so ephemeral. Their transience makes them valuable to me, as I see all those times I have, or could have changed myself for the better.
The dewdrops drip on me, coating the web in that cold morning nectar. The fog is thick, I am as opaque as a rock. I see through the gloom and get on my bus. Nameless faces stare at me as I glide to my seat, my eyes half-closed.
The little window is open, the cool breeze gently wafts through it. The fog is disturbed, as the bus slowly picks up speed and lumbers through the frozen daylight. Little sunbeams shine mellow through the murk, standing still as though struck by the gaze of Medusa.
The trees whisper to me when the bus passes them. They are old, their trunks gnarled and twisted by their centuries of existence. They sigh and shudder, their wisdom falling like snow on the ground, only to be blown into the disappearing brume. I see this, but still I stay together, the strands of the web fighting to keep the fog from escaping.
I look around the dimly lit bus. The faces around me have no features, there is naught but one gaping hole in them. They too are made of the thin gossamer strands that I so need. But they are covered, fully covered. They breathe, their breath misting the glass. The fog in them is strong, but so are the spiders that wrap them.
I glide out as noiselessly as I came in. The air is grey with smoke, the bus judders forward and covers me with its exhaust. I do not cough it out, I gather it up to stuff back into myself.
I am dirty now. My head changes color, a puff of fog leaves me. But what is it that left me?
Am I the fog, or the web? Or am I the very space that the web shrouds?
I stop thinking. Thinking too much is a bad thing. It spends all my clarity.
Perhaps I am the space, after all.
The office is brightly lit, a thousand little suns shine from the ceiling. They hurt my eyes, but I can't do much. I get into the elevator, and press a button to go to the tenth floor.
The buttons are interesting. They are all fading, slowly and surely, their plastic lines melting away into nothingness. How many memories even the buttons hold. Happy workers, sad workers, angry workers, all of them press two buttons a day. One to go up to work, and one to come back down.
"Tenth floor", says the female voice. I get out and move towards my cubicle, all the while looking down at the ground in front of my feet. I do not see the people around me, they murmur and mutter to themselves as I walk amidst them.
I despise this place. I have nothing to love here, except the promise of cold, crisp cash. It's interesting though, I thought, that I could leave my individuality and peace all for the sake of some printed paper. And still I felt I could leave my peace a thousand more times. Is that greed, or is that survival?
My system boots up, filling the cold air-conditioned cabin with the clicking hum of the hard disk. The worn-out keys of the keyboard clash against my fingers as I type my password in, one at a time. How crude. A simple word that one knows to be a "special" word, yet nobody else will ever assume that word to be that special for you, because they don't know you at all, is something that unlocks your deepest secrets.
I work for survival. I could never see myself being happy doing what these people do, sitting and talking to each other like they enjoy each other's company.
I come early into the cafeteria, empty except for a group of five sitting at a table with colorful party supplies. The air is warm, the smell of coffee and burnt toast wafts through.
(To be continued in Part 2)
(This is something I found to be a very interesting concept, to show a person falling into the depths of his own misery and eventually losing his mind to himself. I have attempted a simple writing style, similar to the high-description layout and winding thoughts of Ruskin Bond, though my writing is neither as positive nor as good as his.)
Comments
Post a Comment