bread crumbs

The mall is where Harold did his best thinking. He would sit in the food court and try to put the pieces together. Follow the bread crumbs wherever they went.

Only a few years ago the food court would have been the last place in the world that he would have pursued such inquiries, but now only two vendors remained; an Asian buffet and a place that sold smoothies. And it was Harold’s experience that nobody ever ordered a smoothie with their Asian food.

So the food court was quiet. Beyond just not being noisy.

The premise he wrestled with was the following; either the world is what it appears or it is not. And the bread crumbs? Everything is made of matter and matter is defined as ‘something import, having significance.’

When he was younger he was convinced that the act of dying was just figuring it out and leaving the game. A mother who died in childbirth suddenly had an insight in the neighborhood of “Something doesn’t add up” and a particularly wise baby dying during childbirth simply arrived and thought “Well… obviously.” So off they went.

Nursing homes were filled with the oblivious.

But that theory didn’t hold up to scrutiny and Harold was forced to continue searching for answers.

His latest thoughts on the topic? That the world is not what it appears and there were clues all around him that he just needed to assemble to see the truth. These clues required a certain type of courage to spot. A courage that was typically associated with madness.

It was all for him. A sophisticated simulation, but to what end?

There had been an incident recently. Driving and listening to a song. As he shimmied along to the song like a hula danced in slow motion, first to the right and then to the left, he looked at one hand and then the other and then he began to feel queasy. His head swam and he felt close to passing out so he stopped. But it seemed somehow important so he recreated the experience later that same day, when he wasn’t at risk of driving into a tree at 60 mph, and the same thing happened. He turned up the music and continue to stare at his hands, back and forth, and his head swam and he was transported somewhere else.

To date he has not had the intestinal fortitude to figure out where we went.

But it was clearly all for him.

Days roll on and then there are elements of hope or cruelty introduced to see how they would change his behavior. That’s why he’s never bought a lottery ticket, watched the news or ordered a smoothie with his Asian food. Better safe than sorry, control being at the heart of any decent control group.

Maybe he was in it with someone else. The idea had a certain appeal. A partner in crime. A pair of butterflies beating their wings and waiting for the fallout. Two particles intimately linked to each other even if separated by billions of light-years of space. Despite that vast separation, a change induced in one will affect the other. A counterintuitive source of courage and madness for both?

But is the goal for these two people to find each other in all the chaos or act as a catalyst to leave the game? Leave the game together?

Perhaps it was time to ask the cute Asian girl working at the smoothie place.

     Time isn’t holding up, time isn’t after us.

          Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.

               Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.