FICTION
A Fleeting Lifetime on A Spinning Rock
I’d been running into the fog, believing I would reach a destination. Little did I know the fog was a plain track that went on forever
It was a square room that had been keeping me inside. I turned twenty and wanted to try the world beyond my parents’ house. When I got here, the first thought creeping into my mind was ‘It’s only for a month or two.’ How foolish, the landlord offered rooms in his sorrowful building to people who wouldn’t leave. The room I was in barely managed anything I needed in life. The ceiling was too low, and it only had a small window facing a factory. Oxygen was rare, my lungs had to modify themselves to function by consuming smoke. The thin walls separating me from my neighbors delivered news every night. They were similar to me, a subspecies of humans who kept running around in circles. A bed was included in the accommodation, it was made of steel, a kind of bed that broke your back, but the landlord was right, once you slept on it enough, you’d get used to it.
There was this friend, a cockroach, that came into my room once in several days. It ran around for food but only found a pack of expired bread. Then, it stopped before my face, pressed on a pillow, as if protesting. I told it about the sewing machine I used to make clothes, how it could always connect those fabrics and create various products out of them, and how my hands were capable of doing so. I wished engineers would invent a machine that could put my life together, for it had fallen apart. With a needle and some threads, I’d tried to sew the scattering pieces, but it didn’t turn into something I could fit. Sometimes, I listened to the cockroach talking about the gutter its family lived in and the newborns wondering whether they would be able to touch the stars. “They’re burning,” I warned the cockroach before it left empty-handed.
The next week, I took a long shower and wore my best outfits. I had an appointment to visit my grandparents. My parents were supposed to go, but they were busy fellows. They couldn’t afford to take a break, or the fortune they hadn’t got a grip on would dash away further from them. That’s why they forgot they had four kids when they heard that their eldest sewed for a living. I was afraid they would get dementia about their children altogether anytime soon because expectations were a thing the universe loved to betray.
I used to be an angry kid and blamed everyone but myself. One morning, I woke up and realized I was dumb. Afterward, I’d been running into the fog, believing I would eventually reach a destination if I kept going. Little did I know the fog was a plain track that went on forever. I often contemplated if I deserved to be here when all I ever did was inflict pain on myself and the people who had sacrificed so much for me.
We were on a walk at a park when I felt like stopping. Grandpa turned around, “What’s wrong?” He asked curiously.
“I’m tired.” I hope he didn’t hear me. I hated how my voice sounded so desperate.
We sat on a field, under a huge tree sheltering us from the heat. For long minutes, we were left with silence and random sounds coming from other visitors. I was made aware of how prepared they were. They’d brought blankets, baskets full of food and drinks, some of them brought cameras or books. Then, I looked at myself solely to find inadequacy. I glanced at Grandpa who was also staring at the people. “If you could start over your life, would you change anything?”
“I’d change many things.”
I frowned. Typical grandpa would answer this question with a mixture of realism, growth, and gratitude, “You would?”
“Of course! Let’s see… First and foremost, I wouldn’t go out on July 23rd, 1970. That would change lots of things. Maybe, I would’ve won an Olympic medal for our country,” he chuckled, making fun of the alternative possibility. Otherwise, his tongue lied, I knew, for there was longing in the depth of those eyes.
“I’ve never thought you also have regrets.”
“Who said I regretted anything? Much less the incident. It simply happened. What’s the use of regret?”
“Huh?! You said you’d change things.”
“Silly.” Grandpa hit my head playfully. “If I were given a chance, I would. But if not, I’m completely content with this life. It’s not that I’ve never done anything wrong or made a stupid decision — look at your dad — but I love many things about it. For example,” he laid down on the ground, relaxing his body, and then closed his eyes, “This. Oh… how nice.”
Looking at Grandpa peacefully lying among the grass with a smile on his lips, I rested beside him. The damp grass tickled my skin, the sunlight peeked through the leaves dancing gracefully with the wind, and I shivered as the breeze brushed my cheeks with such softness. Suddenly, my mind went blank, losing all its capacity to think. My room, the sewing machine, Mom, Dad, the cockroach, and the people around felt so distant like fever dreams. At that moment, in that space, nothing was real, but me and Grandpa and the tree and the sun and the grass and the wind. My eyes began to burn, “Grandpa, will I be okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“At least lie to me.” I grimaced
“The present, child, don’t forget about the present. Do what you can every day sincerely and believe. On earth, fairytales are possible.”
Typical grandpa, I thought. I closed my eyes and wondered how the world was ignorant of its inhabitants’ suffering. It kept spinning to move the clock and orbiting a ball of fire to give a stronger reminder of our limited time in its long history. In its silence, as if it challenged us, it sent echoes through the unheard whispers of the wind and the unbeknown vibrations of the ground: ‘What would you make of me?’
In the sky, birds were soaring over the clouds. “Aren’t doing and believing a little contradictory?” I asked Grandpa.
“They are,” he answered. “Oftentimes, the most fundamental things in life are paradoxical like how we can find a flower so beautiful amid the misery we’re living in.”
