Woman & Sofa

Something is wrong with my mechanism.

Lay down and tell me more.

Why the hell do I find myself, at times, claiming specific, thought out scenarios and detailed accounts of alleged future sequences such as
When I'll get married I'll own a mauve couch,
My wedding party will consist of a DIY picnic,
My daughter will definitely be named Sofia
And my eventual son will bear one of the following: Gruia, Horia or Iacob?

Why the hell do I find myself speaking in awful terms such as
Husband,
In-laws,
Certificate,
Pregnancy,
No-more-time-for-doodles,
Retirement,
Will,
Asylum,
Cremation?

Why the hell do inadequacies come out 'my mouth when I let my guard down?
While remembering clearly how liberating a feeling is
to come to this temporary "at home", to be greeted only by my own aging, a shortness of breath subsequent to climbing four floors.

To throw the groceries on the bed and the pantyhose in the oven, to let chaos be its own rule.
To be able to walk from room to room in nothing but a pair of woollen socks if the season permits so.
To eat my soup like a dog, to wash my face like a cat, to postpone disposing of unsolicited mail until it piles up into something heavy enough to qualify as weaponry.

To invent three exotic dinner recipes in one evening and then test echoes in the fridge for a week if I feel like it.
To doze off with the guitar on my lap, my forehead set confortable, vibrating into a semi-conscious lullaby.

To get high on an accidental combo consisting of: cheap german wine, overdosed herbal tea (all herbs available at any phytopharmacy), acrylic paint fumes and the image of a blank canvas that keeps staring at me, begging for a brush-massage.

To watch a vampire movie
Then a war movie
Then a documentary about penguins
Then a Pixar feature, recently awarded,
Then an R-rated obscure indie canadian sexy abstract ...something
Then a comedy about women who struggle to find their ONE
Then realizing fuck it's fucking time to go to fucking work and I didn't fucking sleep. Again.

To dress in a haste, to wear the most inappropriate clothes at the office, to wear something even worse for a wedding and everywhere I go, regardless of my outfit, to be asked redundantly, in gazillions of enunciations
"why do your fingers still bear no sign of improvement?"

If I were you, I'd answer with yet another question:
"How the hell would I find the time to take care of something else than my freedom?"

Reason & Emotion

My brain is very much in love with your brain.

Your brain? What about your heart? Doesn't it bother with me anymore?

Sorry. My heart is in the basement. Trapped, gagged and bound. I had to do that. It was behaving inappropriately for too long. No punishment seemed sufficient. It caused too much damage and distress to every muscle and vessel around it and even to various entities outside the body.

And brains can only love those of an ilk? What if your brain could love my heart instead? That would be too genre-crossing? Too inter-species? Too mismatched?

I don't think that's the issue. It's just that reason has no respect for feelings. It pretends to do so, for the sake of liberal thinking. But deep down it despises them. Mostly out of envy, in my case.

Envy?

Yeah. As dumb, clumsy and embarrasing as they can get, feelings always win the jackpot. Whilst reason, treated as a virtue, always falls behind, unsatisfied.

Do feelings have respect for reason?

They don't care. Which is why reason's fury is a comedy show. Especially for my heart.
But it got outta hand lately. Due to circumstances I don't care to detail, the heart felt intitled to make decisions without consulting reason, took over the speech function, started controlling feeding and drinking habits, until the whole body turned into one big walking freak show.
And now, with the heart incarcerated, reason is humbly back in command and reiterates, with somewhat more dignity, the type of reaction you bring out of me.

Sister & Brother - mono.3

- The second she sat next to me, my mind erased all fear and doubt. I felt as if she was a childhood buddy or some long forgotten memory I had rediscovered. You know those times when our parents gave us dreadful chores like cleaning up the attick? It always took us about five minutes to turn the stubborn reluctance into fun. That enthusiastic need to reconnect every unscrewed mechanism, every damaged toy, every box of puzzles to the respective sequence of our tiny past. And the comforting feeling that followed. Being at home. With her by my side I felt at home.

- Those cookies at the inn really messed with your reason. :)

- I know it wasn't just the atmosphere of the inn. Gentle and shy, somewhat clumsy, she was as human as one can be. I felt absolute comfort in her presence so I quickly turned to my usual methods and tried to steer the conversation ahead. Straight to the point, in a motherly fashion, without an inquisitory tone, without the need to impose but honestly concerned: "I want to know you. Who are you, dear? What's happening in your life? What were you thinking about when the scenery turned unfamiliar? I don't need to know your age, your weight, your shoe-size. I'd rather you reveal what your soul is busy with these days." She lives a few miles north from you, dear brother, in the city where you were born. And she despises it just like you do. Certainly a coincidence, my first thought. She tolerates it for practical reasons and waits for oportunity knock-knocks. In my opinion she would have serious chances of spending her entire life waiting if not for these tricks the almighty relativity plays on her.

- So you've found yourself a new doll. A puppet. Only it's not you that's pulling the strings. All you have to do is find out who's doing it.

- Don't get me wrong. She's not a couch potato, a fatalist, nor the housewife type. She speaks with great passion and self-assertion. It's just that contemplation seems to be her main game while action is triggered only by borderline circumstances. As all of us, when faced with the question "who are you?", she paused her breath, stared in thin air, let go of a slight frown, then smiled. No words within reach. Sighing, humming, searching for that elusive starting point at an arms length. There it was - under the edging of the quilt:
No matter how special and weird I usually present myself to be, I think I am an absolutely ordinary girl. Hyper-emotional with a cynical protective mask, pretty without being noticeable, ugly without being frightning. Non-standard. Shy and polite, if not threatened. Alone without being lonely. Busy without being stressed. I spent my childhood and early youth devoted to my parents' word of advice and my last 3 years demolishing most of my ancestors' expectations. I did find a certain sense of freedom and relief in bending the unwritten rules. I'm not sure it made me any happier. But I have no reason to complain whatsoever. I don't see my life in any other manner...
I found a deep pleasure in listening to the monologue flowing out of her whispers. Her tone was honest yet somewhat amusing. She spoke of herself with a comforting peace, unaffected, slightly self-ironic at times. She moved easily from one subject to another and everytime she switched themes I found myself fancying her as a life-time friend. With most people I don't have the necessary patience to listen to phrase after phrase of autobiographical recollection. And maybe if I would have met her in other circumstances I would have treated her with a request to cut her story short, too. But not this time. Not covered by that quilt. Not amidst that scenery. I ended up asking her, when I could steal a minute to speak, to stick around for as long as she could, to try to take control and perhaps join me in a trip to Mexico. I honestly didn't feel like going home to my man. We needed the break anyway. So I called Ted and told him I had met a very old friend and she couldn't leave San Diego. He was surprinsingly "ok" with it. I think that if I would have returned he would have found a reason to get out for awhile himself. See? Do you still envy my picture-perfect relationship?

- There's no such thing. But I know yours is pretty close. Don't tell me the girl actually stuck around ?!

- She did. I don't know how she managed to control her presence. I don't know if she was missed back at home. Who knows, maybe time was somehow altered and those 12 days she spent by my side were compressed in a good 7 hour sleep on her side of the earth. Maybe she got lost between space dimensions. I certainly hope she's fine, alive, in a place she belongs to, resting her straggly hair on that particular shoulder she yearned for.

- What exactly did you girls do?

- Well, I couldn't tell you exactly... I was so excited the first morning when I woke up with her in my arms that I sort of lost touch with reality, plans, my usual self-absortion. Of course she was no longer there when I returned from the bathroom. But I did not panic. I told myself that I must have a connection with her by now. I figured out that all I had to do was to maintain a certain state of delirium, to stay caught between sleep and wakefulness. That's how the bridge between our worlds was built. So I just let myself get carried away, aimlessly throughout those 12 days and Mrs. Potter's hospitability. I made friends with her and her three hounds. She taught me remedies against insomnia. She was so kind, very sympathetic towards us - stressed people with high-paying jobs in the metropolis. So I was basically high on herbs for almost two weeks, hanging out with my girl.

- What was her name anyway?

- I have no idea. I think she had told me once, but I must have fallen asleep. I remember asking her, she said something but I couldn't recall it the next day. I was too embarrassed to ask her again. You know my pride. But I can't say I needed to know. It would have helped in telling you the story, that's true. I think I could have stayed there for all eternity for all I know if it wasn't for that wake-up call from Ted. He asked me if I was planning anything for our anniversary. That was the best way he could hint at his need to have me back home. That was the moment I realized I lost track of time. That was when I remembered what I was doing in San Diego in the first place. After spending all those moments talking to her about everything except her inexplicable presence on my side, on my last evening there I held her hand and dared to attack the issue. I remembered she had told me she was listening to music on her player the first day she lost her way. "So what was it? What was the sound, the riff, the voice that hypnotized you so?"
She uttered your name, dear brother, and then she vanished for good.

Sister & Brother - mono.2

- I couldn't think of anything better to ask than what was on her mp3 player. She took her time to answer. It seemed she only paused so she could figure out the level of honesty in my curiosity. She knew exactly what was on her player. She merely chose to grab onto my question as if it would provide her with a key to the mistery. With a melancholic smile, she placed a firm grip on the heater, almost afraid of falling off. I asked her if she felt alright, if she was cold. She denied politely. But she clutched that heater so. I reached for the green blanket. It had fallen off the bed earlier. You know, I thought it would be a clever reason to approach her. To touch her. To assess her consistency. Flesh or emotion. The blanket got caught on that stupid night table I've been meaning to fix. You know...the one I keep finding excuses for, like "it has a certain charm, with its chopped wooden edge". It's not charming. It's just damaged. Anyway, I tried to untangle the threads caught between the splinters as fast as I could. While I did that, I asked for her name. The silence was different this time. She was no longer there.

- But she returned, right?

- Yes. The very next evening. Funny thing is... I spent that evening somewhere else, in a motel outside San Diego. I went there to visit Diane. Well, truth is I had a feeling the haunting story wasn't over and I wanted to cheat it. I went there to hide. By the way, Diane asked about you. She seemed so happy to be forgiven. She thinks I did forgive her. She thinks I didn't spend the night with her because I can't stand the children crying.

- You're cruel.

- Compared to her, I'm an angel. But this is not about Diane. After I've told our redhead friend why I've avoided her for so long, we made our formal peace, we shared our shallow hugs and I was on my way. I checked in at Potter's Inn, a very cosy place that reminded me of our grandma's summer house. It smelt like cookies and raspberry jam.
I don't usually travel alone here. Not because I'm afraid or anything. It's just that I hate the feeling of displacement you get on this strange continent. Or maybe it's just this country. Or the desert. I don't know. But this particular inn was a different story altogether. It felt more like home than my own bedroom. I didn't want to rush to sleep even in my state of exhaustion. Mental exhaustion mostly, the natural consequence of any encounter with Diane. I was sleepy but inlove with the view, dying to taste something from Mrs. Potter's kitchen and amused with the old school motown tunes on that radio, playing too loud in the carwash next to us. I can't even begin to tell you how confortable it was. I fought my alpha waves to prolong this suspended childhood feeling as much as I could. Eventually, around 11 pm I gave in. I turned off the lights, smiled at the tomcat outside my window, beginning his nightly pursuit, and almost sleep-walking I pulled the shades down. Well, I tried to. Her daunted whisper stopped me when she asked if I could stay awake for a few minutes more. She had returned.

- You must have freaked.

- No, not at all. I was bit startled because the atmosphere in that room kind of erased the recent past. But then again I felt like I was in good company. She apologized for the vanishing the night before. Apparently she has no control over her travels. I invited her on the bed. Again, a reason to force a physical connection. This time, it worked. We both got under the quilt (yes, the bed was covered in a traditional hand-made quilt) and resumed our conversation.

- So was she flesh ? Or emotion?

Sister & Brother - mono.1

- Good evening, brother. It's morning here, on the other side of the earth and I'm barely awake. It's been the 12th night in a row that I've been experiencing something utterly weird. I wouldn't normally bother your scientific pretty head with this but I fear it's your fault.

- Good morning, sister. Funny, I was just thinking of you while watching a glorious sunset. It reminded me of the desert scapes you live amongst. I was going to write something about it while it's still fresh in my mind but I'll do it later. Anyway... What did I do now?

- Ok. There's this girl... she's haunting me. She keeps popping up in my dreams. At least I think I'm dreaming. Sometimes I can also hear her when I'm awake. Like an echo. Strange thing is, I've never seen her before in my life. I don't know who she is. She never told me her name. Apparently she doesn't know mine, either. I have no idea how she found me, how she got in touch with me. But she did. And she constantly knocks on my subconscience door. Right the second after my brainwaves shut it behind.

- Trying not to raise an eyebrow here. :) So, what does she want from you? Do you have reasons to be scared?

- Well... her first visit scared the shit out of me. I was in my bed. You know me, I still twist from side to side a dozen times before I black out. I did the mistake of opening my eyes when I turned towards the window. I froze. Truly frightened. At least for the first 30 seconds. Because she just sat there, on the heater, staring out the window with a puzzled look on her face. Then she turned her head and studied the room. In silence. First I thought she was a burgler, or a homeless person, someone real who happened to enter my room while I was brushing my teeth a few minutes back. Didn't strike me as a vision or a spectre. She was as solid as anyone surrounding you, dear brother, on your daily hunt for cigarettes. I still have no idea why I felt no impulse to call 911, no survival instinct whatsoever. The expression on her face must have caught my attention and pinned me down. Looking back, I think she was even more scared than I was. So I sat on the corner of my bed, the furthermost away from her but close enough to study her and I tried to utter something. I don't know if I managed to say it out loud.

Apprehensive, first thing she said to me was "I left my confortable bed this morning not knowing where to go". After a pause, a little more confident, with the confirmation that I was listening and understanding she continued: "It's a weekday so even if I didn't feel like it, I took the bus, on my way to the office, put my headphones on, sorta' hypnotizing myself with the oh-so-familiar streets and stop signs and advertising billboards. It was all boring and fine. Then, instead of the abandoned railroad and scattered garbage that were usually beneath the bridge I saw a highway. And the traffic was frantic already. I wanted to laugh at my own delusion. How could they have built that overnight?! It wasn't there yesterday. At the end of the bridge I was waiting for a confirmation that I didn't take the wrong bus. I wanted to see the fishmarket on my left. No fishmarket. Instead, a gas station. The movement stopped. No more driving. No more engine noise. It was time to figure it out. I looked further ahead trying to identify my city, the polluted industrial area that should have raised its severe silhouettes against the horizon. Instead, a suburban area, with middle-class-type houses like those in american movies. That's when I knew something was off. Still, I wanted to check with the people on the bus when I turned my head and there was no bus but a bed. There was no sunlight but moonlight. There was no white noise on the radio but silence. There were no bus people but a woman in pijamas. You."
Then she waited for a word from me, a word of comfort, something she could hold onto and prevent her from losing her mind.

- Sis? So what does it have to do with me?

Paranoid & Android

What are you doing? What did you write on that flat screen of yours, automatic creature?

[Uploading... Please wait]

No, before that.

[Log entry 3021911903294186032]

Oh.. please stop messing with my head, twisting my every word. I'm talking about the information within the log, between the lines and odd characters. I need to know what it means. Was it about me? Are you deciding my fate? I'm going mad here reading your encrypted tales from an outer world.

[Initiating clean-up sequence]

What?! No! Are you trying to erase me? Please don't erase me. I need that confortable entry in your data base. Why are you doing this, anyway? My error was not that grave, not unmendable. Give me some time to troubleshoot.

[System restore. Please wait...]

Oh... I get it. Are you turning back the time? To recommence from the day before my first connection? Then what?! Will you pretend you've never met me? Will you pretend I've never pushed your buttons? Will you pretend I've never refreshed you? Will you pretend you don't know what it feels like?

[Operation complete. The changes will occur at the next restart.]

How can you be so cruel? I know you're all plastic and wires but, come on... we've read each other's thoughts so well before our falling-out. Doesn't it count for something? At least say something directly to me. Use my name. Confirm my theories. So I could have one last satisfaction: that I caught on, that I'm not 100 % paranoid.

[Unable to connect. Try again later.]

What if there's not going to be a next restart? What if I will unplug you, dear, when you shut down and I will pretend there's no more electricity left in the world? I could survive with my paranoia as a blanket. I'll be alone, but alive. You'll be mute, blank, inactive, obsolete, a piece of furniture. Come to think of it... with you in a coma, my conversations won't be too different from this one now, would they?!

[Reconnecting...]
[New update available. Accept install? Y/N]

Tower & Bridge

- I'm perfect for her - tall and slender, amazing view. And the view is reasonably important once it becomes the last thing you see before the resolution. What else can replace that feeling of impowerment mixed with frailty when you see the world unveiling at your feet, industrial scapes breathing the fields around, the ravens patiently waiting for their due. It's the world at its most affectionate. And she will embrace it as it is. With no more improvements to be made.

- Are you serious? There's no way she would choose you. She prefers things clean. She doesn't like to bother anyone. Plus, water will sooth her, give her pleasure, take her on a trip, make her try new moves before the resolution. She will finally enjoy the taste of relinquishment. Slowly. As she used to do with wine and french truffles.

- I'm telling you, flying versus floating - pretty obvious choice, dude.

- Well, I provide both :)

- Hmm. Caught me there. But you're forgetting something. If she chooses me, there's artwork left behind. In vivid colours.

- Street Art. [...]
I can't believe it. This is getting hilarious. I mean, I feel kind of guilty talking like this. It's disrespectful. She might be listening.

- Don't worry. She has a sense of humour. Especially in times like these.

- Well anyway, I don't think it's the kind of art she wants to be remembered for. She does appreciate the varied ways of self-expression available out there. I know that. But she herself would not choose shock-art as a final act of creation. I believe she would find it distasteful.

- So, even death is subject to aesthetics.

O.D. & D.O.

I'm sorry. I was harsh.

(Silence)

I know you didn't wrong me in any way. I must have overdosed on my own poison. Bitter blue. Your sole fault was using a trigger word and there I went, pouring my cyanide all over your kindness.

Kindness?

Yes. You give meaning to things others are oblivious to, making my world seem a little better and asking for nothing in return... that kind of kindness.

(Silence)

And I managed to betray it in almost 300 words. All true nonetheless. I believe what I've said there. I'm not trying to recant. But the words were misplaced into the timeline, wrongfully arranged so they would point at you and hence so damaging.
Will I be forgiven?

(Silence)

Mrs. Inadequate & Mr. Misfit

- We are not snobs.
- We are just misplaced.

Me & Mirror

- I see a spot, a scratch, there's a corner that's a bit dusty...
- Let's explore that, shall we?