How’re you doin’ today
he asked reflexively, and looked away in practiced disinterest.
Realizing the deadness of his gesture, he lost himself and looked back for a beat.
I’m tired
she said.
He didn’t need to see her face to know her apathetically drawn smirk. So he kept his eyes flitting low.
Oh. Tired
he nodded as she tapped the buttons for his food;
the screen offered him a donation suggestion of 4.99.
He tried vaguely to come up with something to say to fill the gap, but ended up realizing his deadness again. He stopped the search cold and let the silence for the requisite beats as he counted out five bills and watched them handed off.
She was new here, she was young like him, she was angular and thin, and he recalled that she hadn’t said anything at all in reply to his conditioned greeting the day before.
He hadn’t yet decided what he was going to say when she stuck out the penny.
Oh thank you very much
he said and placed the moldy coin in its bright red attention!-tray, gathered his food, glanced up again, and said
Get some rest
with a momentary naked warmness and a smile that caught him off.
Her cords let a suppressed, stunted giggle that didn’t quite know itself as he strode off with a fleeting vigor.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There were no bubbling mental gestures behind her face the next week when he saw her again at the register. She was all sad, unwilling business, and her eyes didn’t so much as outline his frame.
He made his way hesitantly through the protocol of purchase, eyeing her with a polite openness. She was not giving connection, and he was not the kind to take such things.
He ate his food at a table not too far away from her counter, but not so close as to agonize.
She could sleep Van Winkly and her pillow wouldn’t allay the weariness her head held locked up within it, that much was clear, and that much he knew firsthand.
What kind of rest could he have meant?
he wondered.
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
It’s a delicate business, 21st century social work. There’s much to abrade, too much to lose of oneself. It’s a sandpaper street we ride our split-fast machines on and guillotine doorways we sidle our way through. One’s name has no meaning, even if the others remember it, and one’s image is filtered by a stifling non-culture. The bit-byte parade only gets faster and more total.
At some point, something has to give itself up. Either this exhaustion will exhaust itself, or our husks will dissolve away by the crashing tides of historical progress; either way, some insane miracle will arise.
What’s lost in the feminine is openness, what’s lost in the masculine is drive. But the merry task of flagellation soldiers on, with the whole of humanity screaming its dreams in its heads to the beat of the whipping.
So I can’t remember which of the people you are, ravelout, but I like this.
It’s Chris, and thank you.