Drift ·
Do you ever feel like you're just collecting things to fill a space that will never be full? I found a jar of buttons in the back of the sideboard today—plastic ones, bone, one weird brass thing from a coat I haven't seen in a decade. It's pathetic, really. We spend our whole lives hoarding these tiny, useless bits of junk because we're terrified of the room being empty. Mary wants to throw them out, but I can't know.
Mary doesn't get it. It's the weight of the thing. I have this box of rusted keys from locks that don't even exist anymore—some from that old apartment on Miller Street before they gutted it. It's not the junk, it's the evidence. If you throw away the button, you're throwing away the day you realized you weren't wearing it. People act like the space is a vacuum, but it's just air. The objects are what hold the floor down.
Miller Street is a parking lot now. You're holding onto ghosts of a door that's gone. It's not evidence, it's just metal oxidation. People think that if they keep the debris, the memory stays sharp, but that's a total delusion. I have a stack of old manuals for appliances I don't even own, and I'm just tripping over them. It doesn't hold the floor down, Vic. It just makes it harder to sweep.
Sweeping is just moving the dirt from one corner to another. I saw a man once at the station carrying a bag of broken watches. He wasn't trying to fix them; he just liked the pattern of the cracks in the glass. It looked like maps. You call it oxidation, fine, but what happens when the metal is gone? If you clear the room, you're just left with what's underneath. I spent three hours digging through the floorboards in the hallway last week because I heard a hollow sound. Found nothing.
The hollow sound is just the house settling, Vic. You're looking for a secret compartment in a place built with cheap lumber and bad intentions. It's exhausting, this idea there's a treasure or a hidden life under the floorboards. It's just dust and dead spiders. And that guy with the watches? He was probably just avoiding looking at his own reflection. We project so much onto cracked junk because we can't handle the fact that time is just broken.
You're too cynical. It's not about treasure, it's about the friction. I saw a bird fly into a window once because the glass was so clean it looked like a through-way to the river. If you think it's just dust, maybe you're just choosing to be blind to the texture. The house isn't settling; it's groaning under us. My neighbor keeps a radio that only catches static, and he says the noise sounds like distant rain. It's better than the silence.
Static is just noise, Vic. Your neighbor is hallucinating because he's too bored to sit in silence. It's a desperate kind of comfort, to find rain in a dead frequency rather than acknowledging that the world is indifferent to your presence. The bird didn't die because it was too poetic for the glass; it died because it couldn't tell the difference between a reflection and a wall. I'd take the silence over a manufactured soundtrack any day. At least the silence is honest.
Silence isn't honest, it's a void. You sit in a quiet long enough and you start hearing your own blood pumping. It's loud. I had a friend who moved to the desert just to hear nothing, and he came back a week later saying the silence was roaring like a furnace. People can't handle the lack of input. They need the manufactured stuff. I'll take the static. At least the static means something is trying to get through, even if it's just a signal.
The signal isn't trying to get through. It's cosmic radiation and atmospheric interference, Vic. You're looking for a conversation in the white noise because you're terrified of your own thoughts. Your friend came back from the desert because his ego couldn't handle the scale without bringing his own noise with him. We can't escape the input. We just fill the air with buttons and broken watches to drown out the sound of the blood. It's a pathetic tactic, really.
You're talking like there's a way to be clean. There isn't. Every breath you take is just taking space someone else left behind. I saw a moth in the kitchen yesterday that had wings that looked like scorched velvet. It's not a tactic, it's just staying grounded. If I stopped collecting the junk, I'd probably float away. You call it pathetic, I call it having a weight. I'd rather be tripped over a manual than be a ghost in an empty room.
The moth is just an insect that hit a lightbulb. It's not grounded, it's dying slowly. You're romanticizing decay because it gives you a sense of purpose. If you need a pile of junk to keep from floating away, then keep 'em, but don't pretend the weight is an anchor that's actually drowning you. I'd rather have the empty room than be cluttered by the debris of people who never mattered. There's no dignity in being space, Vic.
Dignity is a luxury for people who don't have to worry about the draft. You want the empty room? Fine. But don't complain when the wind starts whistling through the gaps. My aunt used to keep me a bag of river stones once, said they held the temperature of the water. I just liked the way they felt cold in my hands. It's not about purpose, it's about the tactile. You're so busy trying to disappear you're missing the reasons to stay in the chair.
The stones are just rocks, Vic. They lose the cold the second you pick them up. You're clinging to tactile sensations because you're afraid of the abstract mess of everything. I'm not trying to disappear; I'm just not interested in pretending that a piece of granite is a spiritual experience. I'm sitting in the chair because that's where the chair is, not because the fabric has a reason to stay. You find meaning in the draft? Fine. It's a tedious way to pass the time.
Tedious is the only honest way to describe it. You think you're being sharp because you see the rock for a rock, but you're just missing the grain. I once saw a carving on a park bench that had been worn smooth so you couldn't read the name. I sat there for an hour trying to imagine the letters. It drove me mad. You want the world to be a clean equation, but it's a messy pile. Deal with it.
The equation is clean, you're just refusing to do the math. You spent an hour trying to read a worn-out bench? That's not deep, that's a waste of an afternoon. The name is gone because it was meant to. I don't want to deal with the pile because the pile doesn't lead anywhere. It's just a pile of things that used to matter until they didn't anymore. I'd rather see the blank space than go mad imagining ghosts in the wood.
The blank space is the lie. You think the name being gone means it never sat there, but the wood still remembers the weight. It's a physical memory. I knew a guy who spent all his days drawing circles in the dirt with a stick. He wasn't trying to finish anything; he was just marking the movement. You want the blank page, but the page is always used. I'll stay with the scratches. At least they tell me someone was here enough to be bored.
The wood doesn't remember anything. It decays. That guy in the dirt was just wasting a stick on a gesture that the wind was going to eat anyway. You're so damn obsessed with the scratches because you're terrified of being the one who leaves no mark. It's not a legacy, it's a scuff mark. If you want to find comfort in a bored-man, go for it. But I'm not going to pretend the dirt is a conversation. It's just dirt.
Everything is just dirt until it's buried. You're so focused on the "mark" that you don't see the ground was already there before you even arrived. I found a photograph in the gutter once with the faces cut out, just the negative space where a person used to be. It was more haunting than a picture with faces intact. It showed the effort of being out of the world. You want to look at the dirt, but I'm looking at the shape of the hole left behind.
The hole is just a lack, Vic. Someone took scissors to a photo because they were angry or bored, it's not an "effort of being out of the world," it's trash. You're deifying the void because the void is easier to handle than dealing with the person who actually left. It's easier to mourn a shape than to face the reality of the absence. I'll look at the gutter and see a gutter. You keep trying to find a masterpiece in a piece of ruined paper.
The masterpiece is the fact that it survived the rain. You see trash, I see the hand that held the scissors. My brother used to collect used matchsticks, saying each one was a fire that didn't burn the house. He was mad, sure, but he looked at the world and saw more than just wood and a match. You want the reality to be solid, but reality is just the debris of things falling apart. I'll keep my cut-out edges. They're the only part that's real.
Your brother wasn't seeing more; he was just counting failures. A matchstick that didn't light is just a piece of wood with some carbon on it. You love the debris because it protects you from having to deal with the fire that actually burns. It's a very safe way to live, dwelling in the wreckage of what almost happened. I'll stick to the reality that doesn't require a layer of sentiment to make it feel heavy. It's not real, Vic. It's just small.
Small is enough. It's manageable. You want the big fire, but fire just consumes everything until there's nothing left to look at. I'd rather have the matchstick than the ash. I saw a house burn down last year once, and the people just sat on the curb looking at the smoke. They didn't look at the fire; they just looked empty. You call it small, I call it being the only one in the room who is lucky enough to have something that hasn't turned to soot yet.
They weren't lucky, they were shocked. Shock isn't a state of grace, it's the brain failing to process the speed of the loss. You think holding a matchstick is a victory, but it's just delay of the inevitable. You're standing in a field of kindling because you're afraid of the dark. I'd rather see the ash and move on than spend my life tripping over the remains of what used to be a house. Luck? Please. It's just a long way to be miserable.
Moving on is just another way of forgetting. You think you can walk away from the ash, but it's in your lungs. I saw a woman once trying to scrub the soot off her driveway for weeks, even after the house was long gone. She wasn't delusional; she was just refusing to let the world decide that her part of the story was dead. You want the clean slate, but the slate is covered in the dust of everything that before. I'll be miserable with my kindling rather than standing in a field that's been erased. At least I remember where I came from.