Free Fall

Free fall is something that does not suit me particularly, being a land mammal. Back first I am falling, falling, fallen. I have hit rock bottom. Rock bottom is not a lonely place; it has all kinds. Him, her, and myself. There doesn’t seem to be an apparent way out, so here is not necessarily a better place than there, but there’s a catch. I’ve got an empty tank of petrol, empty pockets and a heart bursting with anxiety. Go-go-go, it shouts and screams, but where to is my brain asking. But where? Take a step forward, take a step to the left and I’ve found a deeper hole than I myself have found before, giving rock bottom a relative aspect, leaving everyone with the possibility that they’ve done alright with themselves, it’s all relative, in fact who the fuck am I? A sane voice told me to take all my problems and tear them apart, but I do not have a visible problem. I’m in trouble and trouble is in me, and been around for as long as my memory or anyone else can remember. People told me to hold on- hold on buddy they say. Do I want to hold on? An interesting question is, to what I should hold on to. Rock bottom has that freedom that it means that you have just about lost everything you ever gained or lost the chance to have what you always wanted. I am the irrelevant elephant.

Something is dead, I'm dead, you're dead, he's dead and it's dead... we're all fucking dead. I didn't do it. Did you do it? He says he didn't do it and it certainly didn't come anywhere near it. So who the fuck dunn'it? Hope got up... left, got her old suitcase and hit the road. Leaving us all in a hopeless situation! I met a girl on a bus; she told me she was twice as happy as she'd been a year ago. She had brought her smiles up to four times a day. She politely threw me one. She now had two more to go, and that would fill her quota of the day. She told me she had even heard of people that had broken the record and smiled fifteen times a day, all genuine smiles. I asked her if she'd heard of any people laughing. I ask ‘Have you heard of any people laughing?’ She asks ‘What's loffing?’ I ask ‘You foreign or stupid?’ She answers ‘I'm stupid’ then roars with hysterical laughter. She laughs like all bondage has broken and wets herself doing so, she laughs like she has gone completely insane. 'What's so funny about being stupid' I ask, not getting any answers from the drivelling fool. She continues laughing and people start to look at me, like I've molested her in some strange funny manner. A tall man sitting in the front of the bus stands up, wearing a red suit, a white hat, carrying a blue envelope, the pimp of nations. He walks towards me and hands my companion, the barrier breaker, the blue envelope. She reads it, stops laughing and with a gradual moodswing, starts crying. 'What the fuck did you do that for' I ask him. 'I am your brother' he says with a tone of death. 'Of course you are' I say to him. Not knowing all my ancestors achievements I felt I was in no position to argue; 'what’s with the envelope' I ask and he looks at me like he's lost the plot a few pages earlier, before this story ever began and says: would you like to see one? 'Hell! No!' I shout out 'just get away you overbearing son of a bitch'. He goes back to his seat. We travel into the night the sun goes down and soon enough it will rise again, but whom for, I wonder.

By my calculations, the sun comes up again and I get off the bus and advise the still crying girl to keep working on those smiles of hers, soon she might be able to bring them up to four smiles and a grin. She had no real hope of that, I guess. So there I was, looking for a way out! I was as free as they come, but looking for a way out, out of this, all of this and not knowing what was 'this' and what was 'that', and did it really matter anyway? People pretending to be persons and have specific personalities walked past me looking my way and thinking the same about me as I thought of them. How extremely unique we all were! A symbol of individuality comes in the form of hundreds if not thousands of people. All has been invented and all has been written or told. All one can do to be special is go down a lesser-travelled road, but it's still a road. People just don't come in ones anymore they travel in packs and come across as bundles rather than individuals and there I was the biggest hypocrite of the lot, seeing hearing and keeping silent, for I am no warrior of humanity.

To get closer to God I chose to find a booth in a bar and mouth of in a drunken state. I noticed that there were people in the bar whom I had seen for many years, almost daily, but never spoken to, I heard a man call them the familiar strangers and people there treated each other as a piece of the environment rather than as individuals. 'Funny that' I thought and shouted at them all to go to hell, made a big fucking ruckus and was thrown out. Lying in the street I thought it best to get up and did, a bit wobbly I went past the window of the bar and all the familiar strangers were speaking to each other, for I had united them. They now, had a mutual enemy that made it possible for them to break the barrier of communication and soon were all to be good friends, start a whisky club without having more in common but the drunk they had thrown out of the bar for being rowdy. I sat down on a bench, kept quiet, for I had lost all my friends, maybe I never had any, either way they were nowhere to be seen. 'Hell-oo' person of the female gender says. 'I know where 'hell' is, don't know what the 'o' stands for' I think to myself. 'Are you lonely' she asks me. 'Nah' I tell her, 'just very bored' 'You a happy bunny' I ask her. 'I'm alright, I guess' she answers. So confident I thought, say: If happy bunny was a six would you say you were about zero or point three?

point three out of ten?

point three out of clay!

She asks: out of clay?

Yes, out of clay... or something else.

She asks: What then?

Whatever suits you, babe!

What kind of scale is that, then?

It's a scale made up by society.

Sometimes I am three and it's beautiful, but sometimes 78 is hell!

I continue: To give you an example, at fifteen you commit suicide 'cause the burden is too heavy or at nine, you're as happy as you're ever going to get' 'So it can get worse than it can ever be good' she asks a bit confused. 'Look, darling, I didn't make the rules, it's just the way life is handed out' I say setting her straight, then: can I come back to yours and have a bath, please? 'I hardly know you' she says 'but you look harmless enough... come on then'. She stands up and starts walking towards what I believe to be back to her house 'but I still think you're wrong,' she says, 'I think life can be as miserable or as brilliant as one likes, it depends on how you look at it!' she says with a smile. And all I'm thinking is how many smiles she's got on her quota and if that's the last one of the night.