9:00 AM
Well, here I am at the library. For once, Macy arrived on time; she was here in time to help me ready the library for opening. I hope she makes a habit of it.
9:10 AM
No one in the library. Except, of course, Macy, but right now she's pacing at one of the windows and looking up at the densely clouded sky, as though hoping for Jesus to pop out of the clouds and say 'yes, Macy. It's all true. Repent and believe!'
9:23 AM
Except I don't believe Macy is talking to God. What's she saying? Something about friends forgetting her.
9:25 AM
I'm bored. I think I'll drink some tea.
12:25 PM
Macy left to go out on her lunch break, but she came back rather quickly, running like a madwoman. She kicked up her heels off the ground very high and slammed the library door after her. I would scold her, but my mouth is full of cheese and crackers. Ah well. She looks like something just tried to eat her.
12:28 PM
Checked out the window for suspicious, man-eating animals. So far, no Godzilla is visible. I think Macy just had a nervous breakdown, poor girl.
2:45 PM
Drank 2 liters of hot tea.
2:46 PM
More importantly, I've gone to the bathroom more often than I think must be healthy.
3:00 PM
There's a bird on the window sill outside the library.
3:01 PM
Quite a large bird, actually. I haven't got my glasses on at the moment, so I can't make it out very well.
3:02 PM
Perhaps it is a pigeon.
3:02 PM
I hate pigeons.
3:05 PM
I'm going to bang on the window pane and make it go away.
3:05 PM
That is definitely not a pigeon, now that I get closer to it.
3:06 PM
Good heavens, it's a chicken. And there are about five more in the ratty little scrap of grass in front of the library, pecking away like mad. I suppose all this wet weather really brings up the earthworms; a chicken's smorgasbord.
But that is not the point; the point is, there's a posse of chickens in front of my library. And the second point is... Why is there a group of chickens in front of my library?
"Macy, come here a moment." As weird as that girl is, she might know where the chickens came from. Or maybe because she's so weird she might know. "Look--there are chickens in the front yard."
Macy looks rather terrified. "They tried to get at me when I was outside before! Why are they there? "
Drat. My source of neighborhood information has failed me. She also appears to be hanging onto sanity by a thread. But I'd best respond. "I haven't the foggiest."
"Foggiest what?"
These young people. Don't even know a commonplace idiom. "I haven't the faintest idea," I translated out of the goodness of my heart.
"Well, should we do anything about them?" I can detect a note of worry in Macy's voice. Perhaps she thinks I will make her do something about them.
"No, just leave them. They're only chickens." And even mad birds like chickens have the right to roam free. Just as much right as an old woman, I should say.
3:10 PM
Macy's gone to hide in the Astronomy Section.
3:30 PM
Hahaha. Chickens move in a funny way, jerking their legs in time with their heads, like little wound-up clockwork toys. Bokbok. Bokbok. It's fun to make a chicken voice and strut about like one of the silly birds.
3:32 PM
I should stop doing this in public. One of the people in the Romance Section gave me a funny look.
15 years ago
. . . AND BACK AGAIN
ReplyDelete“The Road goes ever on and on / Down from the door where it began. / Now far ahead the Road has gone, / And I must follow, if I can, / Pursuing it with eager feet, / Until it joins some larger way / Where many paths and errands meet. / And whither then? I cannot say.”
-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
The days have been normal ones. Each day I still eat my breakfast, and each day I still make my way down to the library, though only today have I managed to write anything. The sky is still there, hanging above this forgotten city, perhaps just barely managing not to scrape the top of Wilshire Tower, but yet still managing.
It seemed when I arrived as though this were a place at the edge of the world, a stack of plates spinning on a stick on a clown’s finger. One would need only a small nudge to send everything careening down into shards of shattered china. Things didn’t fit together right here, all the patterns were wrong, and the seams were tearing. Now I know I was wrong.
The end of the world did happen, but the scenery is just the same. The sky hasn’t fallen, the tower still stands, even the carnival will outlast me, it seems. No, even I am still here.
The day after I was delirious, it’s true. I went to the library, searching in a daze. I asked the librarian if there was a book about two. She told me they had One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish if I wanted it, and asked me what I meant by all this. I told her two was important, but she didn’t listen to me. I don’t remember what else she said.
Yesterday, I finally went back to the carnival. I had tried for three days, but each time something stopped me. I saw a battered old man by the side of the road one day, a sick man coughing there the second, and on the third a wild-eyed preacher tossing sermons to the wind. Each one of these repulsed me in a way no street-side vagrants ever had before. Maybe I was scared of them, or maybe I was scared of the street they traveled on. When I looked at them I could see ten to the eighteenth water molecules in dizzying arrangement, and it was a terrifying vision. This time though, the fear did not stop me, or perhaps it drove me onward, as I went to the carnival.
Once again I stopped before the Fortune Teller’s tent and thought to step inside. Before me, the purple canvas rustled with the unknown.
In Schrodinger’s famous thought experiment a cat is placed in a box. Inside the box is a poison gas cartridge that has a perfectly even chance of going off immediately or never going off at all. The question is, before we open the box, is the cat alive or is it dead? The answer is, in equal measure, both. That is until the box is opened. Once reality is observed it cannot be undone.
The tent was another one of Schrodinger’s boxes. While I remained outside my life was still an infinite branching of quantum universes. Entering would collapse the waveform. I saw this and stumbled backwards, allowing myself to sit beneath a small tree. It was a parking lot tree, contained within its square, held steady by metal wires, but it was also the world tree, the tree from which our eons-great-grandparents descended to the African plain. It was the tree from which Eve stole an apple, and the tree under which Newton tried to nap. For a moment everything was still and clear.
Some time later, a trumpet played, heralding the end of the calm. I arose, filled with the restless energy of the well rested. Swiftly I walked down the road to my apartment, and set to work.
I toiled long that night. My only companion was the intermittent lightning. How appropriate, to be accompanied by such Promethean pyrotechnics, traditional music of the mad scientist. The crackling energy of its melody echoed my joy.
Wearily, Altan made his way back to the Tower and dragged himself inside. He'd gotten so used to the chicken that he'd forgotten that it was still tied to his cart. The doorman made exaggerated movements and screamed at Altan to "get it out!" before the super heard it. Altan hastily grabbed the chicken and threw it out the door, not wanting to displease the doorman. Altan called for the elevator and it clattered down, screeching to a halt, and its doors opened. Altan saw there was someone else inside, so he waited for them to exit.
ReplyDelete"Well, are you coming in or not?" Altan's head snapped up - it was Edith Evans, the lady who'd helped him out of the elevator the other day.
"Oh, how's is your ceiling, Ms. Evans?"
"I could tell you if you just got on the elevator," The elevator door was trying to close and it kept rebounding off of her thin arm.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, excuse me," and Altan backed in, careful not to roll the cart over Edith's toes. The door slammed shut and the elevator began to haul them upward.
"Still dry, thank you."
"What?"
"The ceiling, the thing you just mentioned," Edith gave him a "what's-wrong-with-you" look.
"Oh, yes, very good." They didn't speak again until Altan got off the elevator on the fifth floor.
"Can you fix heaters?" Edith had flung her arm out to stop the door from closing.
"Well -"
"Come by my apartment tomorrow at six and see if you can't fix mine. No one will want to buy that... is it coffee? after five will they? Won't be able to sleep. I'll expect you."
The elevator door shut and rumbled upward. Altan stared at the door confused. Well, he'd never actually fixed a heater before, but he was not one to stand people up, especially not a lady. Sighing, he pushed his cart down the hall, ready for sleep.