Duality_e2

We had a turquoise van as a family. Six seater. Eight if you tried. The plastic detailing had that ash scratch-in, whether from the sun or endless sets of sneakers departing.

The fabric was surely some soft polyester. Some fur imitation of a grey cat stretched and yawning. Stacked thin lines designed, drawn and fading. Probably indicative of a trend dying in the 90s.

Kick together some light ups under the seat, blinks of explosive blasts and guarded from the persistent Floridian heat. If you’re rebellious enough the windows fanned out at the back, perhaps a few inches, simple air flow and well you could get your fingers stuck if they’re closed on you. It happens to everyone.

Peering through the middle headrests peaked the classic cathode digital homage. Quite a thin frame, like some squished alarm clock. Blinking the hour and the radio station displayed by a tealish green. The same as Metal Gear Solid.

With a large enough backpack shuffling out proved a mild difficulty, but you shimmy and the chalk along the sidewalk lets you know without looking up: a school day commenced.

Forward twenty years and the corporation’s campus held strange wire statues bombed about, stone slabs for railing. With the cafeteria and the foods that feel so strangely generic that they seem more made out of playdoh rather than ingredients: the same way the plastic barrier and masks gave a plushy impression of the employees.

Step out to view the towering pines threaded between foliage of rainbow smear indicative of an evershort summer. Following a shadow. If you swivel enough at your desk you could get the heartbeat up a bit. They say the chocolate is famous around here.

Here’s a trace, an impromptu lesson on the Korean alphabet a year and a half prior: we followed each other on Spotify, please ignore the other accounts I’m following by the way. But if we keep stacking definitions, naming a vague anxiety to pull at the veil, maybe that would’ve been enough of a bridge away from language. Soft bread empanadas were the only thing that didn’t upset my stomach too much each luncheon.

Roaming a nearby university campus but for whatever reason I couldn’t hear the chatter. Usually a campus has this preservation bubble around it, where it could hold something more innocent. Oddly barren with a metal seat pair for a pizza joint squished between two three-lane highways and shapes and, coincidentally enough, triangular. No entrance, window only, with a lone streetlight splicing the dark. An occasional splinter of highlights.

If I crouch enough I can see the cubby in front of me translucent enough, holding an alien pendant, rubber coat peeling. If you lay next to the glassen door you can say hi to all your friends from the other class during their 20 minute recess: sectioned off and when it’s your turn you can kick the sand near the tireswing, spin to slam your head against its structures and get admonished by the teacher and school nurse. But you could show your dried up mud drawn back of the hand warpaint.

Some clever standalone programs let you change your audio capture to play compressed mp3s. Before crucial teamfights if you tab out quickly enough and hit the keybinding right you’d transform the moment with a DJ battle cry and everyone would go nuts in the voice chat, and you could swear it bumped the victory rate by at least 10%.

I take my finger and draw the sunset with the watery pastels, mimicking what I’d learn to fan out the flower. This time I’ll choose some teal and yellow notes, as tribute toward the school bus against the bar’s mascot colors. With enough doodling one could guard from the complete academic eviction, that all your brainpower must assume toward our singularity of hands typing complex systems. Why do you always get the icecream on your nose?

In a final rebellion I’ll download all my music and get a shitty mp3 player that looked cool enough in its turquoise glow. File structures and detailed reviews even though after the final enter you can only feel you didn’t capture anything. But we can share each an earbud for this evening birthday party. Our empty aquarium.

What are the functions of these long forgotten moments? They can be used to manipulate others; that is, to feign a tenderness others would hope to find. Fill in a persona. Others would emphatically argue such moments make you human, so essential!

Sometimes one forgets the other half the zen master’s say: it meant everything too. Nothing and everything merge into null. A fourth wall.

I spent a lot of hours scrubbing off these residuals and the docks where we’d fish. Pelicans perched in the distance.

But I guess it’s okay if they meant something too. And it’s okay to leave it still.