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The manta ray is back. I was walking home from work in the cold evening air, about seven in the evening, and I saw him swimming across the sky. I hadn't seen him for years, but there he was, propelling himself through the air, indigo body set against a firmament of fading persian blue. His silver underbelly flashed as he made his way, majestic, mysterious, in serene display. Still, nobody seems to notice him. I don't understand why.
Back to the dust and the debris of life. Back to the two squeezed-empty toothpaste-tubes mating on the bathroom sink. To the individual coins loitering at skirting boards, hiding behind bed-leg-wheels. Escapees from the midnight break from up-turned jeans, an eager jingle before they flee. Split up, we'll be harder to find. Back to the dust and normality.
Some of Saturday's noodles are stuck to the kitchen counter top. Who'd have thought they could turn so hard? I'll need a chisel to get them off it. They missed the boat and are left to dry out in the air, until they're virtually immovable. Stuck in the same place, spoiled and old.
The hospital stays in my nostrils for hours. It lingers. Disinfectant, to try and keep down the killer bugs. Try and keep down the smell of piss and shit, of deathly sweat and vomit. It stays with me even in sleep. Dreams wash over like bactericidal balm to the festering drudgery of waking life. Just like the smell, I can't escape the manta ray, even in dreams he comes. In one I ask him through a turquoise haze, where he's from and where he's going.
"Places you have never been," he replies, his voice a garbled, bubbling sound.
And then away drifts away, until his dark shape has faded into the soupy, blue cocoon.
*
Normality.
I saw her on break this morning, she sat with us. Quiet. They say she's quiet and quiet is not normal. Who doesn't talk? Who doesn't fill up the air around them with chatter? It's not normal, they say. Normal is to contain Britney's fall from grace and the weeping sores on eighty-three year old Mrs Burrows' arms and legs in the same world. Normal is to speak of the top-ten worst celebrity fake tans and the parasitic worms in the stool of malnourished Joe in almost the same breath. Normal contains the seemingly uncompatible. To accommodate both is a survival trait of the mind. I doubt very much if I'm normal either.
*
Normality.
Back to the dust and the debris of life. Back to the two squeezed-empty toothpaste-tubes mating on the bathroom sink. To the individual coins loitering at skirting boards, hiding behind bed-leg-wheels. Escapees from the midnight break from up-turned jeans, an eager jingle before they flee. Split up, we'll be harder to find. Back to the dust and normality.
Some of Saturday's noodles are stuck to the kitchen counter top. Who'd have thought they could turn so hard? I'll need a chisel to get them off it. They missed the boat and are left to dry out in the air, until they're virtually immovable. Stuck in the same place, spoiled and old.
The hospital stays in my nostrils for hours. It lingers. Disinfectant, to try and keep down the killer bugs. Try and keep down the smell of piss and shit, of deathly sweat and vomit. It stays with me even in sleep. Dreams wash over like bactericidal balm to the festering drudgery of waking life. Just like the smell, I can't escape the manta ray, even in dreams he comes. In one I ask him through a turquoise haze, where he's from and where he's going.
"Places you have never been," he replies, his voice a garbled, bubbling sound.
And then away drifts away, until his dark shape has faded into the soupy, blue cocoon.
*
Normality.
I saw her on break this morning, she sat with us. Quiet. They say she's quiet and quiet is not normal. Who doesn't talk? Who doesn't fill up the air around them with chatter? It's not normal, they say. Normal is to contain Britney's fall from grace and the weeping sores on eighty-three year old Mrs Burrows' arms and legs in the same world. Normal is to speak of the top-ten worst celebrity fake tans and the parasitic worms in the stool of malnourished Joe in almost the same breath. Normal contains the seemingly uncompatible. To accommodate both is a survival trait of the mind. I doubt very much if I'm normal either.
*
Normality.
The pub on payday, and a dutiful after-work bender. She is not here, never is. I'm glad to avoid the walk home. I don't want to see my manta ray today. A familiar fog develops amid the clinking of glasses and laughter, amid the wiped froth moustaches and bumped tables. It's the fog that keeps a person suspended above the snake pit for a little while. To keep them from the writhing doom of serpents (or is it noodles?) for a little while longer.
*
New week but same old manta ray. Same old mantra. I have decided I am mental, at least in some regard, possibly psychosis. I am suffering from 'a loss of contact with reality'. But in only one regard, it seems, just this sea creature steadfastly moving across the sky. It's only one little thing, I tell myself. If any more show up, any great white sharks walking around with mobile phones or octopuses serving lunch at the cafeteria, then get yourself to the doctor. And I can't ignore him, he's so... captivating.
And he's relentless. Not quick, just determined. His slow flaps never end and I want to know where he's going. What places did he mean? How could such a creature become unstuck like this? Is he trying to get back to where he belongs or is he about to explore a whole new world?
*
Normality.
*
New week but same old manta ray. Same old mantra. I have decided I am mental, at least in some regard, possibly psychosis. I am suffering from 'a loss of contact with reality'. But in only one regard, it seems, just this sea creature steadfastly moving across the sky. It's only one little thing, I tell myself. If any more show up, any great white sharks walking around with mobile phones or octopuses serving lunch at the cafeteria, then get yourself to the doctor. And I can't ignore him, he's so... captivating.
And he's relentless. Not quick, just determined. His slow flaps never end and I want to know where he's going. What places did he mean? How could such a creature become unstuck like this? Is he trying to get back to where he belongs or is he about to explore a whole new world?
*
Normality.
The pub on payday. No, not normal today. She's come, and through the fog she comes closer still. She talked and I listened. And then they're were just two. It felt good, to provide reception. I felt her relief, in saying the words she said. It was clear in her nervous chuckle, the way her hands moved from lap to expressive performance and back to shy settlement again. The booze flowed and drained through like the hours, and some idiot was shouting about closing time already. And what she told me? That was said in confidence. I had an unusual hangover the next day, feeling good about feeling lousy.
*
I've started to hold extreme opinions on odd matters. The slight lines at her eyes, her heavy-hooded steel-blue eyes, the lightly freckled upper arm. Like when the poor become rich, it changes perspective. I'm abnormally silent for much of the day as my mind dwells on these odd matters. It's a nice distraction from that bloody squid, I think, knowing that he's not a squid but somehow thinking he might hear my thoughts and that the misnomer might annoy him.
Later I see the manta ray's path has deviated. He is higher, much higher, and rising.
*
I brought her with me on the walk home. Just to see. The moon is out I say, eyeing my pelagic friend, waiting for her to confirm or disconfirm my insanity.
"Weird, she says, I thought I saw something up there. Flying."
For a minute I look at her wildly like she's mental too. When I look up again he's gone, no longer patrolling the skies.
"I must be seeing things," she laughs. And suddenly I can't smell disinfectant, just the night air and her beside me.
"Oh yeah I get that too," I say, as normality merged all black and blue into the depths of the heavens. And I took her hand, my mind bubbling with the places we would go to, my heart racing to places we've never been.
*
I've started to hold extreme opinions on odd matters. The slight lines at her eyes, her heavy-hooded steel-blue eyes, the lightly freckled upper arm. Like when the poor become rich, it changes perspective. I'm abnormally silent for much of the day as my mind dwells on these odd matters. It's a nice distraction from that bloody squid, I think, knowing that he's not a squid but somehow thinking he might hear my thoughts and that the misnomer might annoy him.
Later I see the manta ray's path has deviated. He is higher, much higher, and rising.
*
I brought her with me on the walk home. Just to see. The moon is out I say, eyeing my pelagic friend, waiting for her to confirm or disconfirm my insanity.
"Weird, she says, I thought I saw something up there. Flying."
For a minute I look at her wildly like she's mental too. When I look up again he's gone, no longer patrolling the skies.
"I must be seeing things," she laughs. And suddenly I can't smell disinfectant, just the night air and her beside me.
"Oh yeah I get that too," I say, as normality merged all black and blue into the depths of the heavens. And I took her hand, my mind bubbling with the places we would go to, my heart racing to places we've never been.
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