Simon woke up, his head on his keyboard, a fine stream of saliva just touching the space bar. He jerked his head up immediately, suddenly suspicious, because he couldn't remember what he had been doing, or what day it was.
He checked his clock. 8:42. A quick glace at his sheet-cum-drapes told him no sunlight was hitting them, and so he was less worried, he couldn't have been out that long.
Now that he thought about it, he had gotten off work earlier, and vaguely remembered getting on his computer. Of course, when he was home his computer was always on, nearly always doing something, occupying some corner of his mind, if not all his attention.
He opened his webcam to look at his face, as he had no mirror in his apartment. The unique checkered pattern of a keyboard was easily recognizable, and he laughed at himself at took a picture.
It was the least he could do to share his humility with his friends, who, like most Americans raised in the Ego Generation, were struggling daily between their need to feel successful and to feel decent.
That's not how they put it to him, of course, Bronwynn and Percival would both swear they were seeking the big time, but they would be the first to admit the the compromises were never-ending. So there would always be a generous portion of denigration with the enjoyment. To Simon, this could only be called decent, but then they called him an unreasonable idealist, with no place in the world.
And yet here he was.
But something was definitely off. The marks on his face weren't that bad, if he had really been sleeping on the keyboard for 4 hours he would have had deep red grooves all over his face.
Then he remembered the bouncing IM icon. He looked at his dock, but the program was closed. He opened it, but their was nothing in his history. He couldn't remember anything, and he had the distinct feeling that he had lost something. He looked down into his hands but there was nothing there, and he didn't really expect to find it, but still, he couldn't shake the feeling.
What had happened?
Simon pored over his memory. Something about Perci. It was harder to remember his dreams these days. They had become increasingly filled with obnoxious levels of whimsy and paranoia. It used to be Simon would read into his dreams, intuition, synchronicty.
ReplyDeleteIt was becoming harder and harder to hold on to that feeling. The world seemed to be filled with poem chasers, symbol seekers. Simon saw them too but always external, they never seemed to pull him into the story.
Simon walked up and went across the room of his studio apartment and poured himself a glass of water from the tap. He drank the whole thing down in a single gulp and gasped for air at the end.
He looked up over at the wall above his computer. A earth toned samurai sword hung in its scabbard. On the other side of the country, the man who gave it to him surely had its red/black counterpart on his own wall.
Simon paused a brief moment before heading back to his computer. Synchronicity may have mostly faded from his life these days, but that also meant when it came to him, he felt the call to respond all the more strongly.
Simon composed a new email to Perci entitled "Mix Tape"