Mapping The Territory (9)

MAPPING THE TERRITORY (9)

'Now, listen my dear, you are so damned austere,' she said as she rose from her bed (alas, not another woodshed).

We'd secured lowly shelter from cold winter weather beneath a peculiar rock. 'A good chance,' she had said, 'to take stock.'

'Of what?' I had asked. 'You know we can't last if that planet is heading for earth. We will shatter and burn, unless it soon turns.' 

I was filled with a dubious mirth.

'How strange is your reason; pray, think of the season. (My goodness, how gloomy you are.) Our new 'sun' brings nothing but hope and good cheer. (I wish I'd remembered to pack some strong beer.) 

'My dear, as I say, that it's coming our way fills my soul with excitement; I'm thrilled. (There's no way that it signifies ill.) Burning bright in the night; what a sight to behold. Now, lift up your eyes, be courageous, be bold.

'You may think that the end of the world is soon nigh but I challenge your view, and I'll testify why:

'This 'planet' you see is God's message to us (don't look like that, child and, please, don't make a fuss); yes, God's promise to us (and, we know who we are). Be proud, and bear witness: his new Christmas star.'

The Sub-Editor - At Home

AT HOME

Make yourself at home; that's what people often say. So, this Christmas, I decided to give it a go. Of course people ask you to make yourself at home precisely when you're not; when you're away from your home and in somebody else's. But, before I can make myself at home somewhere else, I need to make myself at home where I live. I need to make myself again, because it seems sometime ago - a time I don't seem able to remember - the self I'd created (the self-made me) melted into air. 

So, this Christmas, I decided to give it a go. To make myself while staying at home. 

I found an old, synthetic Christmas tree in the attic. It was cold as death up there. Breath escaped my lips to form an ectoplasm in the black-iced air. My teeth ached and my fingers felt like bone. But I knew if I continued to search I'd find some Christmas baubles too; in two shoe-boxes, and each glass-ball wrapped in a thin skin of white tissue paper that crackled with age when touched.  

The coloured lights worked once I'd tightened each bulb in its socket. I switched them on in the dark. Icicles of pink blue orange purple and green piercing the gloom and, for a terrible moment, I was blissfully melancholy: achingly so. I wonder, is this what people call 'happy'?  Christmas past present and future converged suddenly. It was then that I properly devised my plan.

An old woman once said to me, 'perhaps if you could be yourself with other people you wouldn't be so weary in company'. I thought her both rude and mad.  The teeth in her mouth were like tombstones:  large blocks of weathered granite inscribed with a life already exhausted. I could see the blood in her veins pulsating through her liver-spot hands, but her cavernous mouth made me think of a corpse.

That was a long time ago, and I am truly weary now. So, this is the plan I've devised. 

I plan to make myself at home; away from the company of any kind of society. I will live my life within the confines of this house - which, as far as I can see, merely amounts to my property. I will live my life within the confines of this house until I've made myself again. I will exist in isolation: solitarily confined. The internet makes it possible: to work and to shop and to maintain the relationships one's obliged to sustain. 

I give myself a year: a new year's resolution.  Starting today.