His name was Murphy, even though she once made a list of names she wouldn't want to date, and his was one of them. Ione finished reading, frowned, and didn't know who the author was, at least not the person he became. When she smiled, sometimes there was the taste of metal. This time, she laughed, and thought about leaves and other things that fall. Inside she could hear her numbed heart throb and the wind blowing in her lungs and the blood pump through the veins. Her fist clenched, and the healing paper cuts on the back of her hand opened their mouths, showing their sour red gums. Intense moments of anger interrupted by flashing tears of pain.
What is your greatest fear?
Forgetting.
What else?
Being forgotten.
What else?
Nothing else.
What causes these fears?
Forgetting.
For comfort, she would sleep with her friend Matt, a ghost from the past. Only sleep--only sharing discombobulated unconsciousness. After all, Matt's synapses were already on full-speed. However, his mind was too cluttered. There was nothing chronological...or even really logical...in his interaction with others. He would be the type to senselessly exclaim "Derrida! Derrida!" in an expensive restaurant.
A restaurant in which to exclaim names of famous Western metaphysical theorists:
Watch for modernism manifested in Georges Perrier's $3 million bar/restaurant, from the tragic lighting to the casually chic crowd. Lounging over in the heart of the town, this trendy brasserie stands strong as little sister to its more expensive sibling. The cuisine is stylistically French, with Asian and Italian influences, resulting in a nouveau fusion reflected in the art deco atmosphere, from the bar's cracked glass backdrop to Duchamp's famous painting on the staircase. The service is impeccable; the seating is stream of consciousness, with barely any elbow-room space. The menu is divided into a first course and a second course; while one can never go wrong with any of their dishes, the sashimi yellowfin tuna served with wasabi spiced baby greens is a delicate aperitif, followed by the aesthetically pleasing entree of crispy black bass, served with Asian sticky rice and Chinese eggplant. The restaurant looks deceivingly small from the outside, but has the capacity for many patrons. Reservations recommended. Overall view: Good.
One morning in bed, upon his consciousness, Matt turned to her and said:
"You have to read Demian. It will literally blow your mind." He thought about it. "Yeah. My head actually exploded while I read it."
She frowned back in response, as though it made no difference whether he said Catcher in the Rye or Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man or Demian. He is young, she thought. Simple delineation for the young.
"What?" He said, his eyes opening wider, eyebrows raised. The expression of interest.
"Nothing, nothing."
"Mmm, ok."
"Binaries," she muttered, hoping he wouldn't hear.
"Binaries?" he asked. Then his thoughts raced on. "You know, in 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off', you think they purposely made his name to rhyme with Euler? You know, that whole binary logarithms deal. Then it would be related to how groups are perpetually divided into two, the one with a positive and the other with a negative character. Then, bam! You end up with individuals. The whole background story of the parents creating the main characters."
"I don't think you know what you're saying," she said, her mind echoing with the word 'oiler.'
"Yeah, maybe. Want some taboulli?"
"Sure."
"Did you know, a very brilliant academic man with a white beard formulated the equation for how humans work? I would write the equation out but I don't have a pen. It is...simply...the expected value of an individual's actions while he maximizes his utility over an average amount of time. Naturally, discounted for the present value, but that's superfluous at points." He paused, took a breath, and smiled. "Get it?"
"I caught the points double entendre."
"So anyway, this equation, it's perfect. Except!"
"Here we go."
"Except it is completely and utterly wrong. Ask me why."
"Why?"
"The equation necessitates that humans always make the optimal choice for themselves."
"Well, don't they?"
"Absolutely never!"
"Amazing."
"I would program it, for test, but I want it to disappear. It's noise. To quote my dear old decrepit professor: 'That which cannot be translated into a form recognizable by a computer will cease to be knowledge.'"
Ione nodded, the pillow fluffing up her hair.
"Did you hear about Katerina?"
Her Russian intellectual friend (everyone has a Russian intellectual friend, Katerina once told her) whom she hadn't seen for months now, not for any other reason except no reason. There was no other reason for them to get together except to merely get together, and for her and for Katerina, that was never enough. Her friend was fond of Mann, Hesse, Kafka. A class offered with the same title--that's where they met, Ione remembered. She never figured out which came first, Katerina or the words. The whole friendship with her was unreasonable.
"No, what?"
"Her arms, did you see her arms, they are bent, it's like she is sitting in an imaginary chair." His arms demonstrated, and he made some airplane sound effects which seemed irrelevant to the topic. "It's from the drugs, I think, she's taking lithium and Prozac and Paxil and a bunch of other selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. All at once!"
"Not Zoloft?"
That was what Murphy took, with immediate, drastic and extremely scary turnaround. All of a sudden, Murphy became normal. They met again at a party, and he left a note on her shoe: Email me. She didn't.
"No, no Zoloft. She went on a trip with her mother, and right in the middle, she broke down, finally. She was always on the edge."
"Yeah, but I thought that was inherent nature. As a Russian."
"And then she went to a mental hospital." He walked off to the kitchen. Words resembling Jimi Hendrix and Timothy Leary wafted out.
Katerina was the fourth person Ione knew to end up in a mental hospital.
Her brother had gone mad a few years back, which made her think that all musicians were mad, because of those damned binary measures. Something of a Prokofievian inflicted nature-a suggestion diabolique-mixed with a Helfgott absinthe that touched her brother. How could any one so passionate about his work end up categorized as amateur, her brother asked about these artists. That is why they went mad, because they could only look at genius, but couldn't be a part of it. After performing a Schumann piano concerto during his recent performance with the Augusta Symphony Orchestra, her brother crawled under the piano and laughed incessantly. Ione was dismayed, having flown down for the weekend only to see her previously focused, validated brother curdled.
Her brother, upon explaining his reason for doing so, said this speech during dinner:
"Chis mis #1: Who's my favorito? Tita Lita said that when Tita Linda bisited her in London (because sometimes they go there to see them), she told them a biggie secreto. She said that their favorito (and when I say "their" I mean all of their) is not Lata K. but instead Leonora B. Tita Lita did not say this out ob the blue. This occured when she was in our home to bisit us wid her kidz. She said dat she noticed someting about Tita Linda when she came to bisit us (you remembered dat time, don't chu? You know, when she came and you know, bisited). One time, Tita Lita said that the steak that Lata had grilled and grilled earlier was sooo tender. But, but, Tita Linda obtruded and said, and I don't quote, 'Well, in our place, it is better.' Also, Tita Lita told Tita Linda that Lata made a good investment in getting a Wedgewood plato from London, and it would be good to get one. But, but, Tita Linda said, and I don't quote, 'It's just like our plates. It's the same thing.' There was odder stupp but I don't know all about it. Lata says that they chose Leonora ober her because she is not like Leonora; she does not agree like some imferior sycophant. Lata has her own opinions and believes in them and den she is treated bad. Leonora, on the otherhand, would rather have her on her side instead of her own opinions. Like Helfgott, don't you think? So eben doh Lata did her whole life and had no life, it was all to Leonora."
He applauded himself and sat down.
Half of the people he mentioned were actual people. She found out that the rest, Lata and Leonora, were people only he knew existed. The accent was not his. The cacophony of his monologues at dinner, like a fine wine, easily complemented his 2 a.m. practices, running bloody glissandos and iniquitous chord jumps through everyone's nightmares. It was magnificent and comic, magnificently comic and comically magnificent. The next day, Ione left. Presence and absence. Presently absent and absently present.
Each day, Ione appeared to diminish. Luckily (perhaps luckily), it was all mere appearances, no truth, no reality. The repressed memories stayed within, burning inside, therefore resulting in no fear of forgetting. If they were told orally, to someone who didn't know how to listen--that would be the end of her. She would be no one. If she were to write them down? Hypothesis: decrease stress and fear by spending one therapeutic hour a day writing down the terrible, terrible events in one's life. It was in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association. This practice would thereby increase tenfold the amount of literary nuclear waste. Yet another reason, she concluded, why she decided not to do anything at all. Nothing is original, just a variation of yet another variation. Which, when analyzed properly, goes all the way back to the end. A perfect, wretched circle.
The dissonance continued.
An email from her brother:
Elizabeth and Victor
Eve and the Serpent
Mozart and Saliere
Beowulf and Grendel
Murphy, Matt, Katerina-they were the lucky ones. Ione, she too was a lucky one, maybe, one day, perhaps. Or not; she could survive in the army of mediocrity, intelligent enough to thank her lucky stars that she was not more intelligent. The idea was that she was to decide between the two. Unfortunately, there was the chance that regardless of any decision she made, the same result would occur. She explored the edges of the circle--the smooth, shiny edges--through maddening conversations with others.
Outside the window, two boys on quads, the chaotic cadences slowly fading out.
She realized.
It wasn't as simple as a circle.
Question: Why were Murphy, Matt, Katerina bouncing around, more than bipolar--infinitely polar?
Answer: bouncing around inside the sphere, speed of nearing infinity, that it seemed like they were outside the sphere--or at least, not a part of it. Their average location was precise center of the sphere.
Her brother: pounding hard at the walls of the sphere...trying, she thought bitterly, to reach the center.
The explosion called her life began to die down.
--jmfe