(The title is a payback for me holding back from using R2-D2 as a simile in the description of the observatory)
There’s a hallway – in burgundy red and fusty gray, immersed in the darkness. It is long and narrow, there’s no wall seen in the end of it, and I’m pretty sure the ceiling gets lower and lower as you walk in it. There are doors on both sides of it, dark-brown and heavy, looking as if they are locked solidly and would never budge. The carpet is thin with wear and hundreds of shoe soles. I don’t walk it – I escape quickly to be plunged into an enormous room that has a giant staircase cone, the wood matching the doors, looking as if it was poured from the top in a neat streak of molten lava and then becoming a wide puddle on the ground floor. I don’t take it – for the same reasons I didn’t try the doors. Instead I run into a small door under it and I’m tangled in the labyrinths of halls until I wake up.
Sometimes I find myself walking with my collar raised in a cold and windy place. The grass underneath my shoes is intensely green, however here and there are patches of white snow – brilliant white. So white, it hurts my eyes to look at it. I come across a big western house and step over a small cosmetic fence, walking toward the porch. I run up the stairs and realize that all other houses on the background are burning – I see open flames and smoke around. This one is perfectly still and I open the door, causing a small commotion to my right. A young man runs out to me, smiling toothily and winding his arms around my neck. His voice is soft and threaded with happiness – warm yellow happiness – he whispers in my ear and runs his fingers through my hair, smiling, pressing his cheek against mine, his black hair tickling my skin.
“Fish,” he says through a smile, “We are cooking fish. Do you want some? Oh sorry,” he kisses my neck, then presses his forehead against my cheek, “How could I’ve forgotten that you don’t eat fish?”
Dreaming can be a hobby, I s’ppose.
I realized that there is a black hole in my mind that opens up and lets me in only when I’m sleeping, or when I reach the condition of total prostration, which is quite hard to achieve, at least now. So I dream eagerly – with a pillow on my head in the summer heat, or with a blanket wrapped around me during winters – all I do, it seams, is dream. Surely I go to work and talk and listen to music, but to me – those almost painful experiences of sleep, when I wake up with my head thudding and a strange aftertaste in my mouth, those are most important.
I sleep with my headphones on and the cord wraps around my neck as I toss and turn.
I sleep when I know I’ll wake up with a headache and I sleep when I don’t really feel like it.
On a subway, when the train dives into the tunnel and the opposite window gets dark, I move a little or fix my eyes on the floor so that my reflection would not stare back at me. Then I slip into the recollection of something that might lead me to the black hole, but the more I fumble around, the farther it gets.
I ought to try the doors someday. Maybe one of them leads to the young man with black hair. As I think about it, I’m warm, and his fingertips go through my hair while his cheek is pressed against mine.
I’m walking about – well, traveling to be exact, with my friend Stan right on my back. We have our breakfasts in stuffy little cafes with large windows, and each time Stan says that the coffee is over-roasted – honestly, I don’t think he can feel it, honestly I think that only 10% of the population can determine if the coffee is over-roasted, and so I point it out for him.
“True,” Stan says, poking at his food with a fork, “But if you don’t know shite about coffee, and you can’t distinguish a decent brew from the worst one, would it matter for you which one to drink?”
“Well, no, but I’d probably choose the decent one.”
“Same here. I don’t care if this one is the cheapest on the market, all I need is the caffeine after all, but I go for the best and say it’s over-roasted.”
I look at him with a laugh in my eyes and he squints at me.
“Alright,” he says, “I just had nothing to say and I said that. No context behind.”
After breakfast I lose him and wander into the fields, hands in my pockets, a tight sweater around me, and in a while it all becomes just a world of grass and gloomy sky. My head is blank – every thought is hiding in the dark corner while I try to entice it to come out. I rub my eyes and walk aimlessly until I find myself climbing a hill and then facing a small funky-looking observatory.
I look around and I don’t notice anyone – strangely, there’s no road leading to it and there’re no signs of human presence, although it looks like a fairly new and neat building. After a little thought I try the small white door and find it locked stubbornly – so stubborn, in fact, that I let out a laugh and press my forehead against the metal. Then I sit on the grass and gaze at the sky, and before long I’m sleeping and staining my jeans and sweater with green streaks.
I’m waking slowly with my head strangely light. I check my memory for dreams and after I find none I sigh and stretch on the grass. It’s afternoon, probably, as gloomy as the morning, and the little observatory is still there, looking at me with its futuristic white head. I hear faint footsteps and rustle of the grass and before long I see a top of the black-haired head. I hear huffs and realize that someone is climbing the hill, so I close my eyes and deepen my breath, hoping that they will pass by. Before long there’s a stop and sudden silence. I open my eyes a little and see a young man looking at me – the same one – and all I can do is panic. My heart is pressed firmly against the earth and it pounds into it as the young man turns around and starts descending back carefully. I sit up rapidly and call after him, which makes him freeze.
“Sorry,” he says, turning around once again and fingering his hair, “Sorry, I was just taking a walk, I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
His voice is the same, too. I gaze at him with my mouth slightly open and think of the best way to ask him who he is and if he knows me without scaring him off.
“You didn’t, I was awake,” I say and stutter, my mouth dry. He nods and shuffles his feet, and I remember the way he moved gracefully toward me in my dream. “D’you know if that thing ever opens?” I point to the observatory and his eyes follow my finger.
“I’ve never been here before,” he says and stuffs his hands in his pockets, escaping my eyes, “I just saw it from far away and decided to see what it is.”
The sky gets gloomier and he looks at it briefly, and so do I. When I lower my face to look at him again he is studying me while the intensifying wind is messing up his hair.
“Looks like we are going to be shelled soon,” I say and he nods, “How about we retreat?”
There are no trees around and neither of us knows where to go. We take a good look around and realize that there’s no way for us to escape before the thunder starts and so as the first lightning strikes somewhere far away we tumble down the hill and press against the ground and each other. We see a flash of light and I hear him counting – “One, two” – and the roll of thunder starts, ringing in our ears.
“It was very close,” he yells into my ear, “Less than a mile away. It’s weird, there’s nothing it can hit ‘cept for that observatory.”
Then the cool drops hit our skin and he becomes pale – even paler than before and his hair sticks to his forehead. He takes off his coat and puts it over us, and I turn my head and look at him. There’s that flash again and I count myself now – 27 seconds before the thunder – and it’s a relief.
But nothing matters anymore, in this mess of dirt and grass I press my face against his cheek and his wet and cold hand comes to cradle my neck. We look at each other through our dripping locks and I tell him what I know where he lives and I know what he should smell like when the world is not full of wet ground. We lie there in the middle of the storm and collect the rainwater off each other when the third lightning strikes and this time neither of us gets to one.
I was waiting for him to put a hand on my shoulder and tell me to sit down so he could explain me everything, however now I’ve given up. I’m steel tangled in the labyrinths when I sleep, and it is very disturbing to wake up and find him next to me, as if it was just the continuation of my dreams. He knew nothing of me before we met, but he listens closely to my stories while stroking my face gently, and, like before, the more I talk about it – the more distant it becomes. I run my thumb over his cheekbones and feel the images fade away from me, as if I’m stuck.
Strangely, he – the one who was supposed to be the key, became the dead end.
The thing about the Zeno paradox is that you can never reach anything, because first you’d have to travel half of the way.
…But before that – half of the half.
…And even before – half of the half of the half.
And thus the distance is infinite, for there’s an infinite amount of halves you have to overcome.
That’s why I’m drowning in him. I explore him and explore him, the fraction becoming smaller and smaller, however never ending. I indulge in being here with him and not going all the way.
_________
Initially I wanted to make the text correspond to the fractions. For example, "1" would be longer than "1/2", which would be longer than "1/4" and so on. But the whole idea was crushed with the massive "1/2" part.
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