Vain vagueness

Alexander’s feet were on the ground, but his mind was somewhere between the clouds and the sky where melancholy, sorrow, and dreams condensed together to fall unpredictably on the everyday whirl of life.

At times, it appeared that gravity was on Alexander’s side, as if it had enough pull to attract foreign actors from distant realities to remould Alexander’s perceptions. During other seasons, and much less frequently, Alexander felt the minutes stretch, creating a parallel longevity where antagonist emotions clashed to conceive perfect storms over an indescribable tempestuous sea. Cold and warm, dance and stillness, reason and confusion, rush and tranquillity. For him, this was the duality of life’s concerning insignificances.

Somewhere in the physical world, the alarm broke the silence of a foggy morning amidst the stillness of a new, unexplored environment. Alexander had come overseas to deliver expert words on matters of great human concern. He had been doing this for ten years now, hoping that one day, along the way, he would find the truth behind self-discovery. In the meantime, it was time to get up.

The mirror in the ensuite bathroom returned an unfocused look of what it seemed to be the ungraceful outline of his head’s silhouette. Once Alexander’s pupils were enlarged and his eyes had focused, they unveiled asymmetric brown eyes, a straight nose, an expressionless mouth and brows, all expectantly waiting for the morning adagio. The night before, Alexander had shared drinks with an old, snotty humanoid born during university times, having a trifling chat about books, cinema, and arts. Thomas had wasted long years reading research papers just to become an aberrant literati. In no surprise, Alexander’s morning hangover predicted that the rising performance would most likely shine with lag.

The grand drape raised and le routine a commencé. The first position of arms and feet smoothly became the fifth, resting en haut to then fire a sequence of unconscious movements. Croisé devant and Alexander grabbed a pink, tired toothbrush that should have been replaced over a month ago. Epaule, and with his twin hand he choked a drained tube of toothpaste, sitting ready to be the victim of the anger of an unruly fist. Back to the fifth position en avant to unite the two objects in ludicrous joy of becoming, for the last time, of use to their master. Glissade, jeté, coupé, jeté, pas de chat, entrechat quatre, soubresaut, and voila. Surprisingly, the morning routine had become a petit spastic allegro, and in matter of minutes, Alexander had a perfumed neck, lavender scented armpits, and ‘shiny as you can get’ teeth of a wise but stubborn smoker.

The unbeatable pace of Alexander’s morning routine had presented free time for him to work on his stalemated publication. The sun was still snoozing behind the grey, quilted clouds as Alexander struggled to put a few words together in what was self-expected to be the greatest book of self- discovery of all time. Some days ago, he had subserved to narrate the exciting adventures of his tours around the world and the grandiose discoveries of re-owning consciousness. A magnificent piece of inexhaustible cliché. It would definitely be an ephemeral best-seller. Sadly, his inspiration lasted no more than the magical scent of morning sex before a busy working morning.

Astonishingly, Alexander’s will to work on his delightful story got high-jacked by his ceaseless, asymmetric obsessive- compulsive disorder and the detestable symmetry that the hotel room displayed. Alexander was well aware that even a normal amount of disorder would trigger a compulsion in him to love symmetry and order. His childhood therapist had repeated this several times. Nonetheless, he had sworn not to yield reason to a therapist that would blame everything on Alexander’s relationship with his parents. Alexander was not at fault if his parents were as selfish as they were imbeciles. Even more, Alexander would not take any responsibility for all different types of psychology practitioners who lacked empathy as much as pigs lack fresh tap water to take two warm showers a day. Alexander’s obsession disliked symmetry and that was it.

The hotel room needed redesigning.

No doubt, Alexander felt a sudden, familiar, and yet uncontrollable turmoil inside his stomach as his eyes and nose got into a symbiotic relationship to create deathly emotions. The naphthalene aromas that the building exhaled were disgustingly harmonized with the room deco, both possibly there since the first generation of owners around two thousand years ago – according to Alexander’s sassy calculations. Everything matched in revulsion as the sun started to rise shyly. ‘Disgusting!’ Alexander yelled hoping the wrinkled, almost bald receptionist could hear him suffering three stories above the hotel réception. Alexander kept scrutinizing the room and finally fixed his eagled eyes on the four-pairing chairs sitting quietly around a perfectly square table near the perfectly square front window which framed an unattractive parking lot across the road.

‘Why would someone consider placing four chairs in a single bedroom?’, Alexander thought. Within reason, he decided to smash three items of the complete chair set against the hideously symmetric table. Skilfully, he shaped the four- legged coffee table into a three-legged spawn. He would take care of the remaining chunks of chair when returning from his conference.

He found inner peace and addictive relief after the first round of battling against world-ruling symmetry. Next was the TV and the absurdly matching TV furniture, perfectly aligned in boundaries but grotesquely mismatched in chronological sense. The TV seemed to have been bought two days ago in a sort of ‘cyber Monday’ for taste-lacking humans. On the other hand, the furniture was probably the first wedding gift that the original hotel owners unwrapped and rapidly and randomly decided to place it in Alexander’s room. It almost felt like for its whole life, this room had been waiting for him, as if his therapist had planned this encounter. He could even sense that there was some sort of mini, hidden security camera through which his parents could see if their child had championed any progress with the disgraceful disorder. As Alexander heard his own thoughts in his mind, anger erupted in him as if someone had increased the pressure within a steam pipe, making all the bolts fly aimlessly across a room. He could hear the sound of steam inside his head. Burning. Hurting. Stinging.

Instantly, his sight doubled. Breath became still. Attention was dispersed. Pause. A long, painful second. Swiftly, full of passion, Alexander stared at the mirror across the room and in it could see his parents shaking their heads in despair in the neighbouring suite. Just then, Alexander distinguished without truly comprehending, that one of the legs from the broken chairs had found its way through his skull, in much the same way that someone places a flag at the top of a mountain as a sign of achievement. A new head had been conquered. Alexander decided not to panic because he had once read about Phineas Gage’s improbable survival from an accident in which an iron rod was driven completely through his brain. Instead, Alex proceeded to extricate the wooden piece as naturally and carefully as possible. Alexander paused to rest for a few seconds, only to remember that the ‘born in the thirties’ tacky wallpaper was still perfectly glued to the wall.

The only thing Alexander hated more than symmetry was the feeling of being stuck in time. For there was nothing like old, classic, flowery wallpaper to create the feeling that humanity had not encountered any success in become creative in an artistic manner. Nor was it efficient, in a technological sense, to produce a range of different wall coverings. Dazzling and dancing peonies spread from one corner of the room to the other. A forest-green background with taints of petroleum puke at the front created a sense of swamping splendour. The room was owned by a 16th century look that made Alexander want to décor the walls with the remains of last nights’ pub cuisine that rested within his guts. Alexander could almost hear the voice from the wallpaper’s advertisement claiming in charm – ‘There is a flower for every person, there is a flower for every home’. No need to imagine the name of the design, something French for sure.

Alexander was now somehow feeling depressed but also surprisingly empowered for what was approaching. Destruction, it seems, is a powerful action that thrusts human ambition even more than creation, or love for that matter. Human life develops in the duality of making and destroying. We build houses, apartments, and malls only to bring them down to build more modern ‘sustainable’ architectures. We work to earn money then we spend that which we have earned. We love to conceive relationships that we then end to create sadness. Sadness that we then fight to create comfort. We shape ourselves in a way we’ve agreed to be. But then, years after, we become another self. We all live lives within lives that could easily be attributed different names. There is an addiction to destroy thus we create. All because we are stubborn animals incapable of committing mistakes. Society has let us know that failure is unaccepted and unbearable. ‘Success’, on the other hand, is the all mighty God of a life worth living. Alexander had learnt that from his father, and his grandfather – “A Pritchard is only a Pritchard if he is a successful Pritchard”, the archaic males of the family would chorus in every family reunion.

Without further ado, Alexander ignited the flame of destruction. A shred went up the first corner of the wallpaper. The sound was sharp and loud. The kind of sound that rips someone’s soul apart. The sound you would hear if you could take a person’s heart with both hands and by the simple action of opposing forces, you could destroy the essence of humanity. As he continued shredding pieces of wallpaper in a violent and unmanageable manner, he felt hundreds of bullets being fired at his emotional stability, feeling an outflow of salt water running down his cheeks. Tears that would never stop in his heart.

Alexander knew that the fragility of one’s self allows microscopic actions to create the perfect eruption of the unwanted unconsciousness on the surface of the real world. Yet, Alex had never experienced it before. The next thing Alexander saw was his biggest fear. Underneath the flowers on the wall there was a previously empty space that had been filled with the unwanted. Resting with a ravenous smile, there laid Alexander’s previous self. The one he decided to resign and swore never to relate to again. The one he hated for years and had come a long way to accept. A previous Alexander crafted by his town and his beloved parents. The one who sought help with his therapist. The one with the sleeping mind. Alexander was numbed by the confrontation. He could see his old taste for fashion. His old ‘cool’ haircut. Alex could even hear the sound of music he used to like. He could reincarnate his old way of being as a scary Deja-vu. He revisited that exacerbating sense of ‘not-belonging’ of a mind in a strange body. But that previous self was now laughing at Alexander. Things had been easier before. The world was a straight, single-unknown equation. No problems. No overthinking. No double-thinking. No sadness. Just plain, enjoyable emptiness. Alexander could have taken the body off the wall to examine its resemblance, but just as he decided to, the alarm on his phone broke the calm that had come after the tempest. Time to catch an Uber to get on time to the convention. Always accountable for his punctuality, Alexander decided to get back to his previous self at night.

Alexander opted for the ‘pool’ option that allowed up to four strangers to ride in a car owned by another stranger and driven by a completely different stranger. It was cheaper and time demanding by only a few minutes. He would make it on time to the presentation.

Alexander got to the level ground with a fresh look unrelated to the morning events. The pick-up demanded a fifty meters walk down the road to meet Teper, the driver. In accordance, he turned right, got to the crosswalk, and then forgot to look in the direction from which cars were coming. Alexander was used to a different sense of traffic direction. A white, cube-shaped truck was barrelling towards him. It was painted with a green logo in shape of a ‘W’ and a catchy phrase ‘your goods, delivered fresh for a good morning start’. The truck couldn’t stop its motion. Just as Alexander was waving at Teper in compliance, his feet started to elevate from the street. In an anticlockwise motion, his head started spinning around his gravitational centre. After four or five spins, Alexander laid on the grey, warm-then-cold asphalt. His vision levitated to allow for a panoramic view of the whole scene, covering a radius of two blocks around Alexander’s body. The truck could be seen to the right of his sleeping self. To the left, a bunch of unknown but concerned citizens stared in astonishment.

Now, Alexander’s feet were still on the ground, but his soul joined his mind somewhere between the clouds and the sky, where melancholy, sorrow, and dreams condense to fall unpredictably onto the everyday whirl of life. Once again, Alexander Pritchard had successfully killed himself.

AUTHOR: PEDRO PLUSCUAM CASIPERFECTO