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r e p l i c a n t
- Nov 14, 2018
- 222
Once, long long ago, I was seven years old. There I sat, staring at the rain, from the back of my mother's. [adoptive mother's] pale silver sports car, parked close to the central intersection of the highways in the miserably cold and bleak northern e(E)uropean city that I suppose I am required to identify with solely predicated upon an accident of birth in a universe as big and diverse and interesting as this one.
Yes, well; so it goes.
So I recall stopping watching the rain falling into streams and collecting together as they flow without meaning or purpose down the back passenger window of a very cheap and ridiculous car that conspired, like all my 'family' to appear far more powerful and impressive than it actually was. It was, though, and still remains, one of my favourite pastimes, watching the rain fall and collect upon glass. It reminds me of determinism, in that although I cannot hope to predict the arrival and movements of individual droplets of water, nevertheless the influences of the constants that we have as yet discovered and quantified, the 'rain' will act in the way that it was always going to behave, given these specific circumstances.
So it goes.
Anyway.
Anyway, I turned to the other occupant of the driving machine, my cousin Michaela, who had just turned eight. She was studiously looking out of the other window in that awful silence that children can build for one another when there is no way to start to begin to describe just how horrible life can be and you hope that at least this other person might understand but at the same time you hope that they just laugh at you and tell you that they don't understand what you're talking about because then, well, that's all good - they don't know - yes - they are still a child just like you were a few days ago. That would have been okay I guess. I don't know, maybe I am projecting. That has a very high probability of possibility.
Anyway.
What definitely happened was I looked at Michaela, and I felt like we really saw each other, and in that one moment I asked her the most important question I have ever asked anyone, ever.
I'd like to say she asked me something, but actually she just looked at me with that look, with those eyes.
So I had no choice but to ask the question.
"Does it get any better when you're eight?" (She'd had her birthday a few days earlier)
"It's..."
""
"...just the same."
And she turned away to look at the rain pouring down her window; as did I, from mine.
I think something died inside me at that moment. My first attempt occurred just after turning 12.
* * *
Yes, well; so it goes.
So I recall stopping watching the rain falling into streams and collecting together as they flow without meaning or purpose down the back passenger window of a very cheap and ridiculous car that conspired, like all my 'family' to appear far more powerful and impressive than it actually was. It was, though, and still remains, one of my favourite pastimes, watching the rain fall and collect upon glass. It reminds me of determinism, in that although I cannot hope to predict the arrival and movements of individual droplets of water, nevertheless the influences of the constants that we have as yet discovered and quantified, the 'rain' will act in the way that it was always going to behave, given these specific circumstances.
So it goes.
Anyway.
Anyway, I turned to the other occupant of the driving machine, my cousin Michaela, who had just turned eight. She was studiously looking out of the other window in that awful silence that children can build for one another when there is no way to start to begin to describe just how horrible life can be and you hope that at least this other person might understand but at the same time you hope that they just laugh at you and tell you that they don't understand what you're talking about because then, well, that's all good - they don't know - yes - they are still a child just like you were a few days ago. That would have been okay I guess. I don't know, maybe I am projecting. That has a very high probability of possibility.
Anyway.
What definitely happened was I looked at Michaela, and I felt like we really saw each other, and in that one moment I asked her the most important question I have ever asked anyone, ever.
I'd like to say she asked me something, but actually she just looked at me with that look, with those eyes.
So I had no choice but to ask the question.
"Does it get any better when you're eight?" (She'd had her birthday a few days earlier)
"It's..."
""
"...just the same."
And she turned away to look at the rain pouring down her window; as did I, from mine.
I think something died inside me at that moment. My first attempt occurred just after turning 12.
* * *
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