He longed for a messy room, believing it to be a sign of
a creative mind, and he’d tried to create one in the downstairs rec room but as
soon as there were more than two empty cans or a blanket casually tossed on the
floor he’d clean it up. Don’t clean it up, let the mess grow, fester, blossom,
he’d tell himself but it was as if an outer force compelled him to tidy up,
forcing his hands to pick up the cans and put them in the recycling bin or fold
the blanket and place it neatly on the corner of the couch. As much as he
wanted to blame an outer force he knew it was something in him that was
fundamentally broken and as such had to control his environment. These episodes
depressed him greatly. Incapable of creating a messy room, he felt sure his
mind was dull and unimaginative. His partner did not talk to him about these
episodes. His partner only asked him if he was going to make dinner. If he said
yes, his partner would inform him that she sincerely hoped what he made this
time was better than last time. I guess maybe you should make it then, he’d
say, with no real emotion. He would then retreat to the room he’d failed to make
messy and put on an old David Bowie record and wish that he could have alien
thoughts and sing in an alien tongue.
The voice in his head was not alien. Maybe it had been,
once, long ago, but the familiarity of it and the fact that it had been part of
his life for as long as he could remember rendered any sense of strangeness
nonexistent. The voice told him what the voice considered to be important things,
such as when he should go to bed and whether he should have a salad or
spaghetti or both for dinner. The voice reminded him that the wheels could fall
of his car and that he was old enough to have a heart attack. He could understand
why the voice considered these things important, especially if the voice were
truly part of him, which he wasn’t actually sure of. It was a chicken-and-egg question
and like many things in his life, it didn’t actually matter. The voice was flat
and unemotional most of the time, but every once in a while it teased him with
a random line like “the silence of forgotten landscapes” that he was sure must
mean something, something profound and important to his sense of spiritual
well-being, which could use a buff and shine these days. He’d walk around in a
semi-daze, repeating the line, humming it, letting it conjure pictures in his
head that were impossibly far from the reality of the objects surrounding him.
But he could never make the connection, he could never take the line and do
something with it, write a grand novel or paint a grand picture or make a grand
movie. Like the attempt at a messy room, this effort was doomed to failure. He
didn’t blame anyone for this, though in his more bitter moments he’d make a
list of everyone who had ever wronged him and pretend he was assigning blame.
This sometimes made him feel better for a moment but he knew it was folly.
Things were as things were, and the rec room remained ordered and spotless.
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