Loading ...Today is Sunday. I woke up and it was already night. I woke with a storm warning. Sound waves announcing a thunderstorm coming in. Seen afar. What actually happens is that Sunday never goes away. It is the same again and again. Yesterday had already been Sunday. Maybe for three days we’re having this on the menu and I can’t remember anything. Yes. I have absolutely no recollection of anything whatsoever, and if I’m thinking about it right now is just for lack of any better stuff to do.
I woke up on a bed. In someone’s bedroom, apparently, and I’m alone, it seems. But something in the air tells me there is, or there was, a presence here. I haven’t figured out that part yet. Being with someone is not the issue because we must feel we are somebody to begin with. That is the part I cannot figure out just yet. I looked into the mirror for half an hour waiting for an answer. Looked at a stranger. Turned myself inside out. Searching for the tag. The label. The instructions. At what temperature I should wash myself, for instance. At what swiftness? I’m void of information. Zero. Full flat vacancy, just inside. Who is this person? Whose body is this? I‘ve never seen anyone alike in my whole life. And my life is no more than three Sundays. Today, yesterday, the day before.
Which country is this? Where am I? Can you tell me?
In this room, where I woke up, there are two books by the side of the bed. Two books, a school notebook and a few newspapers. One of the books, in a cream coloured cover, says “Virginia Woolf”, and the line bellow reads “Mrs. Dalloway”. The cover is a little torn. Is it someone I know? Wooooolf? Someone that was in this house yesterday. Someone I’ve replaced? Yesterday, Sunday? That left this flower scent on the floor? A perfume I do not know. Of flowers I’ve never seen. That I can sense, however. That penetrates me. The other book intrigues me further and I don’t even look at it. I open the school notebook. It shows a scribbled handwriting of someone who is not very good at it. It contains a small story of a paragraph only. I read it again for the hundredth time. It’s about a party that takes place in another universe. In a planet called Thwok. In it, people and monsters drink and dance together. That is it. I enjoy reading it repeatedly because that is simply it. It contains something full of sound. In its words. In the handwriting. In the color of the paper. And the monsters. And the other universe. I always feel like dancing. Outside, one hears nothing, sees nothing. It’s Sunday. And I always wake up at night. At the same time. With the warn of the storm. Seen afar.
As I went on about this, the phone rang. The same which had warned me of the storm, by a beep. It’s a man. “So, what’s up with your article, bud?”, he asks. “Article? What do you mean? Who are you? – I reply. “I’m the editor, today’s Thursday. I’m waiting for your piece to close the edition.” I stare at the phone, looking for the label. There’s no label. No tag. No body. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Editor of what?” – silence on the other side. “Editor of the newspaper where you publish every Friday” – silence on this side of the line. Abundant. Deep. I ask: “And tell me something, who am I?” – “You? You gotta be joking. You must have newspapers there. Take a look at them, Mr. Joid,” – that’s the name he says – “and send me the text. Quick!” – yes, I do have papers here, but this isn’t amusing at all. The phone is dead. I go through the papers. Yes, on the first page of some of them I find that that surname is there. I read “Opinion. OK darling!” Don’t fuck with me. I go to the page and read. One by one. Each and every article.
“Mrs. Dalloway said she’d buy the flowers herself” and I woke up with a warning that said “Thunderstorm”. Wow, I thought. This is just what the doctor ordered. A storm. Deluge rain. Thunder and lightning. Electrical discharges. Water up to the neck. Animals floating. Cars instead of boats. Boats instead of airplanes. At the wrong places. At the wrong minute. Containers full of mammals swimming around with them. Filled with cold and fright. Mammals like me. Without a label. Tag. Body. Waving goodbye and getting sea sick inside ships. Without a sail. I needed this. If only to calm down. In exchange I can provide a hundred thousand watts of good will. Would that be enough?
The other book. On the cover there is someone starring continuously into a mirror. Into the mirror of another mirror. And of yet another mirror. Apparently it is by a Korean called C.G. Jung. Surely it must have been in the house before Mrs. Dalloway. It’s me who can’t remember. Me who can’t recall of himself. Yes, there is a label on it, on the book, and a red circle saying “2$ off at Blackwell’s”. However, it doesn’t say at what temperature it should be washed. What speed. What draftiness. “What will the future bring?” – that’s the opening sentence of the book. A fine question for someone who knows nothing of the past. Great question for someone who can’t get through with today. Awaking constantly on a stormy sun day. Every day is an off day.
Where is work? Where is my job? Where is my life? Where is my real body?
I want to work in a mine, or in a shipyard, or in a petrol station. Spending the day filling up cars and smoking cigarettes. Pumping into them until they spill out. And at the same time lighting up cigarettes one after the other. As the ignition gives off a spark. Sparks of me. Until there is such a cloud of smoke that it hides everything. This is my ideal life. I just need to make it through to Monday, that’s the hardest task of my existence. The only I can recall. Now. Later. It doesn’t matter, it’s always the same day. But as soon as I’ll be able to say next, I’ll be on my way. To my oil drill.
Yes. I read all the newspapers. I found out they are from a place called Meccow. Maybe on the planet Thwok. The name of the planet is not on the label. And the papers are always from today. Where may this country be? To the left or to the right? Of what? Of whom? From what I see through the window it seems to be to the south of no north. There is a small stream downstairs. Without whirlpools. Where vans and buses don’t go tumbling by. Where there’s no water. Just a riverbed of coffee. Weak coffee. I await the thunder’s trepidation. It doesn’t come. What have I done today? Nothing. What did I do yesterday? The same. Tomorrow, Sunday?
Hear this: It’s dark and I wake up with thundery inside the telephone, somewhere in the room, somewhere next to the bed, which suddenly jumps up and down. The device, Parkinson brand, gets so mad it boils and throws off sparks. Right then I hit it with whatever is at hand. Usually it gets a punch and shuts up. In anguish. That’s the most exciting part of the day. Of the night, or whatever it is. In non-stop repetition and with no stage for subtitles.
Escorted closely by Mrs. Woolf’s day. Also the same. Yes. She left the flowers in this house. I’m sure. I can’t see them, but know they where here. I can almost taste them. Can almost guess their name. Maybe Jung took them away afterwards. Jealous. Always seeking for someone.
I. I want to find myself. Now. The mirror of the other mirror hasn’t got the answer. It has no caption. No translation. Where is it? “2$ off at Blackwell’s”. In planet Thwok, I’m sure. Or on its way to this thing called Meccow. At the bars. Where the monsters happily chat with people. And have fun all night long. They throw parties without inviting me. Threw parties for each other. And Sunday is always after the parties.
I grab the phone. Dial call back. I’m nice, I say good night, smile, even make a funny face. “I’d like to speak to the editor of the Daily!’ – “Daily” – says a voice. “Yes, I’d like to speak to the editor of that paper, if possible still today.” – no more time must be wasted. “It’s me…” – someone snapped back. “OK, I don’t know your name, if I ever did I forgot it. I can’t remember anything. I woke up with amnesia the size of a hurricane.” – no further explanations required, if I don’t know myself it follows I can’t know anybody else. “My name is written on the masthead” – he tells me. I ask the voice to wait, say that I’ll go take a look. “Seen it, Carl, a pleasure to meet you.” – my smile widens, that is the way I was taught to be nice. “The text? Is it ready?” – he asks. I think he‘s smoking, I can smell the smoke. And feel the fumes of the gasoline. Ready to spark.
“I suppose you don’t mind I call you Carl, do you?” – maybe Carl, as in the book, the C from C.G., I think – “Good. Listen…” – my battery is low, the phone battery – “…you’re mistaking me for someone else. I don’t even know how you managed to call here. Yes, I read the texts, the opinion pieces or whatever you want to dub them. They’re awesomely terrible. All of them. Friday? What I want to tell you is that I am not at all who you think I am. You are completely wrong. I do not write, I’m not an author, not even close to it. I am just a guy who woke up suddenly. That’s all. Who woke up in a hurry. A hurricane.” – both sides of the line go silent. “Everything else is already laid out, we’re just waiting for your piece! Come on!”
Mrs. Dalloway bought the flowers herself, I’m sure, at a bar called Thunderstorm Warning, and while she waited for the White Lilies she had a drink with two monsters who were eyeballing her all over. Measuring her out, from north to south. “Believe me that I don’t have such a name. I don’t have a clue to where Meccow is.” – thunder claps in the background. “Of course I don’t have any article to send in. Of course I didn’t write anything. Of course I won’t do it. Sorry anyway. Call the public enquiry hotline, maybe they can help. They’re so good on those warnings.” – lightning, rain against the window pane. Real pain it’s what’s real. Drenching me. Two tornados on a collision course. A buffalo drinking the river’s coffee dry. Boats turned upside down. Begging.
“I have got a mirror in this house that doesn’t work. I am not identical to myself. When you dial the enquiry hotline ask them to send someone over.” – the water reached up here, the connection is starving, the Parkinson device is boiling. “And do you know what? Today is Sunday, anyway, not a working day!”
And that’s how Carl got off the hook.
