INTAKE

This was the winter I began tapping into people rather than avoiding speculative aspects of society. I mean what could anyone accomplish wearing estrangement everywhere? My sisters were dead, and sometimes I would think about what they would think – and say, mind you – when and if they happened by on a sunlit-drearied afternoon of sorts as if they were cartooned to me somehow. I closed the door of the closet and made two pots of coffee for no other reason that there was really nothing else for me to be doing at the time. (The television [non-speaking of television] didn’t work [I by accident caused its demise] so I failed by design to afford myself its semi-arguable pleasure.)

Attempting to enchant my senses by opening myself to what was outside, I arrived at (for me) the revelation that being outside was just that. Light from the perky surroundings led me further into it – so much so that I found myself encapsulated in my car (I had just paid the bank what they had been leading me to believe was their final cut). Grasping the key to self-motioning in the requisite directions (reverse then forward then a series of rights and lefts, etc.), I then was aware of no longer being motionless.

At the precise minute of entering the marketed parking lot I noticed people frequenting spatial planes of dimension; some were faces without much leg presence, mostly arms and hands, occasional air-fingerings, and all the chittered chatter seemed to detonate the other vehicles in the concreted expanse. The silent traversers were of course soloed by design, with no one else per se to speak into except through internal realization, if any. I remained ensconced, but only for a time of no one’s acute awareness.

“Hello,” I spurted toward the face of one of the chatterers, causing both of them to rotate their vocal-sources into my stationary proximity.

“Hi there?” posed one, the question engrained inside them escaping without full permission. The other merely stared.

“Are you planning to buy something, or are you just out for a jaunt?” I proffered, without mining my facial insides for any semblance of anything perceptible. They (both of them) emitted a unified guttural and kept walking. Over the next hour, a seminal parade of unresponsive faces appeared and vanished in my purview, not availing to me a pointed aspect of purpose, positioning me in the smacked center of existential disregard. Upon returning to my housed origination, I felt as if someone other than myself had driven.

 

*

 

While the typicality of extending former, itemized plans past innumerable stopping points produces (for many/some/none?) a plethora of problems, allow my deviation: the aforementioned tongued exchange occurred via much-repeated verbalizing over a period of a few, unnumbered weeks, employing, of course, an amusing variety of participants. The halting of it evidenced itself upon a mannerly but stern request by a badged and gunned person sporting broading shoulders and a rough-hewed mustache. Despite the stated mandate to refrain from fusing my existence within the premises, I retained the unspoken freedom to commence my hope-laden banter elsewhere, which would have served as a potential solution albeit wrought with its own populous lack of success.

 

*

 

The passing of additional weeks has transpired, as has potted coffee. My non-debt car retains its capacity of use, but what action does one take when relocation via mechanical means holds no apparent urgency? I discover, therefore (with proposed intelligence), that a substituted television creates less of a plight, and surrendering to sedentary devices achieves a more agreeable (and less energied) relationship for all involved, my non-existent/-breathing sisters excluded in the equation, one of which is one of many but also the one and only.

© 2023 Jeffrey S. Callico