The Shape Of My Dead Friend
A man and a woman sitting next to my table in a Vietnamese pho restaurant are talking about their work. I get the sense that they are just colleagues in different departments. There aren't many complaints; she is simply expressing her doubts about how well she would have adapted to a new situation in a new city with new people, a place where she had thought she’d only be visiting for holidays and business trips, never planning to live there long-term.
Her tone of voice changes when she talks about her personal life. Now I know that her sister is staying with her the following week; they are as close as they were when they were children, still sharing experiences and feelings.
The warm light and casual conversations in the kitchen distanced me from their table. Words flow slowly and unfiltered; I’m untouched by my surroundings.
With only a few kind responses from her colleague across the tiny square table, he seems to enjoy her presence and stays engaged in their conversation.
I pour the veggies and raw beef slices into my soup, then squeeze the lime so hard that I’m trying to exploit every single drop of juice, knowing my fingers will smell like the peel when I pull out a cigarette after I step out of the restaurant, fulfilling my appetite. The raw meat tastes like iron; my jawbone cracked, still recovering from the ecstasy and drinking of the night before.
He asks the right questions about other interpersonal relationships that ground her and finishes by asking about her plans for this evening, mentioning dessert places in the area. But then he backs off, checking the train schedules because he lives in another city.
I once jokingly told my friend that every time I’m eating out alone, there’s always someone next to me talking about the stage where they’re introducing themselves, and at this point, I wish they would just skip over all of this storytelling and cut to the point. Well, what’s the point of this life, of myself, of us meeting?
My slow, enduring thought relapse pushes me into a bird's-eye view; the urge to empty out the silence consumes my psyche. My feet are cold.
A profound infatuation constricts the inhalation of oxygen: I lectured myself that I have to make things, I have to make things happen, that flourish in the craving for illustrious freedom, a void filled by suppressed anger and anguish. I can’t even think straight without sustaining the parallel between gaps of thoughts and voices in my head. I’m simply busy answering their questions when I stare blankly.
The coworker couple does not reach an agreement on their upcoming plans. I’ve fantasised about them having soft ice creams after warm soup, the flickering sensation on their tongues, and the slight repulsion on their faces when the last bit melted in the cup. It’s rather indecent to lick it in front of someone distant from you. The last customer walks into the restaurant, alone, just like me, enjoying his beer. I wonder if a decade or more later, as the astrological charts and fortune tellers say, when I have my career established and money in hand, will I seek shelter in places like this, alone? If this place still exists, regardless of gentrification and inflation.
A friend’s friend asked me a lot of questions when we were all high, just chilling on a bench in the middle of the party. The blank spaces between these conversations are tickling me down the throat; I can’t remember the middle part when he asked me about the most important part of my life. I said freedom for the first part and financial stability for the last part, but the puzzle is incomplete. What else would I say (especially when I can’t even think deductively or inductively)? It’s about fear and money after all, that’s certain, always.
I have been watching TV series, low-budget YouTube animations, and videos of dogs and horses on screens for three days straight, soaking my brain cells in electronic waves. I don’t even know what to remember. I guess they are somewhat elaborated, stream-of-consciousness, experimental narrative educational video essays with profound emotional input and niche research, conspiracy theories, and fan fiction.
Themes span from why we love art but hate artists to how information is the belief system of our time. Experts state that November this year, in astrological theory and scientific prophecy, brings more chaos and destruction to humanity than peace and harmony. Therefore, I’ve started practising writing down some scores in my head, simple, straightforward words, less poetic than Yoko Ono, more purposeful.
A group of teens walked in front of me, starting to do pull-ups on the children’s playground, a perfect moment of symmetry. Four Dutch boys wearing jeans, white Jordans, and black raincoats; their faces also look identical to mine.
Two of them grabbed the green, horizontal pull-up metal structure in sync, a fake grass sheet on the ground sketched out a perfect rectangle, the same colour as the Spar logo, suggesting exactly the youth and vitality of those teens. Forever green, unbothered and isolated from the surroundings, it’s as authentic as the fake grass. I know, on the top of my head, when they approached me, they were no doubt asking for cigarettes.
Standing still piece with eyes closed in search of the charm
Open the curtains
Stand straight with the back of your neck slightly tensed up
Do not yet put your glasses back on
Close your eyes
Searching for the light source
Imagine a taller version of yourself
One that is taller than the rooftop
Use your touch, smell, taste and listen to the wind that holds your presence
Read the following soft-spoken words
I want you to hold me
I trust you to hold me
I want you to let go of me
I trust you to let me go
I want you to change me
I trust you to change me
I want to hold you
I trust myself to hold you
I want to let go of you
I trust myself to let go of you
I want to change you
I trust myself to change you
You want me to hold myself
You trust me to hold myself
You want me to let go of myself
You trust me to let go of myself
You want me to change myself
You trust me to change myself
You want me to hold you
You trust me to hold you
You want me to let go of you
You trust me to let go of you
You want me to change you
You trust me to change you
Now open your eyes
Feel your body temperature
Make yourself a cup of coffee, light a cigarette
You have everything to fuck around and find out with
It’s almost 5 p.m., and it’s dark outside. Flashbacks of pseudo-paraschizoid symptoms from sleep deprivation, renderings of dream scenarios, and fragments from a TV show with an adaptation of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are mixing up while stimulating the inner wanderlust.
I enjoy elusive sober hallucinations; sometimes scenes replay right in front of my wide-open eyes, so prominently that they erase the silhouette of pedestrians outside a slightly vaporised window frame and stretch into a place alien to the present self. Places that once lived in a tangible and conceptual form between REM sleep and partial awakenings. This becomes slightly disturbing when I cannot forget the events of someone I met in ways that they appear in my dreams, not how they look, but what happened, where, and how.
On the furthest wall from my table, in a dark wooden frame, hangs an oxidised image of a forest in a tropical landscape with a thin and long river in a jade-like tone; I can almost hear the whispering rustle of bamboo leaves. The warm ambient illumination above my head casts a gradual shadow, diffusing the edge of the picture frame, confusing the senses.
A string of cold air from the open-and-closed door bites my long hair down the spinal cord. Soon, the cold air infects the skin and stiffens the joints, but adds more volume to the thinking.
My close friend lies motionless on the carpet; the shape of her body blends in with the ornamental reliefs on the Anna Sui-styled closet, emerald green, a touch of tranquillity and grace. Her arms rest against the curve of her torso, her faintly positioned palms facing up in the air, hesitating if they’re immortalised for receiving or giving. In reflection of my gaze, the shape of her presence personifies a sense of grieving serenity, dropping a hint on the ways of caring, a caring similar to the fascination with emptiness that ties us together.
The embroidered lampshade is tilted backwards from the neck I held in my hand, making it look off-centre. I think I had just committed a crime of passion.
The more time I spend looking inside the hanging photo, the eerier it becomes. Each time I reminisce about the actual singular event of continuum, I get a sense of progressive clarity; little by little, I feel I immerse deeper into a shudder of disquiet.
At this point, the colour green might be well suited for the colour of the temporal time I’ve experienced in today’s world. Its delicacy penetrates layers and layers of interpretation: the desire to live and the desire to die. The naturally wrinkled fabric wrapping around her arm registers in my eyes; I could almost see through the yarns, enchanted by the weight of her bones leaving an imprint on the cloth. Speculating on the motive and circumstances surrounding the timeless passing of my close friend, to the largest extent of approximation, the act itself is associated with the defence of temporary insanity and provocation.
Unaware of the elements that combine, combust, and rearrange such intense emotion, they then further submerge and slip through my conscious mind. I’m touched by the exquisiteness of her death, a sort of subliminal sensation that I have to sculpt her existence in my head, keeping a well-preserved taxidermy. Sometimes, the graphics are so overstimulating that I could lose my verbal communication skills and become illiterate for a period of recovery.
The soup down my throat now tastes disillusioned. I am slightly conflicted by the fact that one marble sculpture from the Neoclassical era resembled the formal qualities of my dead friend. I slightly regretted searching in the real world, as that kills my fantasies. I felt exposed: naked mind vs. nude body. I rolled up the scent of lime, exhaling the smoke through my nasal passages.
I'm meeting my dead friend tonight.
Antonio Canova. Maddalene Giacente (Recumbent Magdalene). 1819–22. Marble, 75 x 176 x 84.5 cm. Photo: London, Christie's.