09 September 2007
An Impromptu State of Iris Address
)Published on September 9th, 2007 @ 01:04:10 am, using 510 words, 93 views
My little refuge…
…where I’m surrounded by multiplicity. Multiple movie posters, a claustrophobic moving about behind a counter; a strange sort of being… a mindless going back and forth… in multiple black aprons that manage to never once graze one another; multiple overlapping voices I can never distinguish. Untraceable sounds like people devoid of accents; multiple chairs in their black and white starkness; multiple cups I’ve gone through in multiple afternoons; multiple little clear spoons I use to stir and then rest on multiple saucers; multiple words I count myself lucky to know; multiple pages I insist on filling with gibberish for I gibber in writing. I’m trying my feet at multiplicity, at going against my usual choices and my usual self, at trying to be what I haven’t been thus far, before a complete switch is effected, at being both the one I’ve always been and this new person I’d like to become at the same time. The noises in this place, the electronic spewing of paper by the cash register, the dragging of chairs, those voices I merely deduce to be voices… they’re all a beautiful quietness to me. I don’t know what ‘Águas de Março’ is about but it is playing and it contributes to that quietness. Everything I don’t know adds its 2¢ because it fuses easily with everything else… no questions asked. It adds layers to the silence. It mingles effortlessly. It disappears in the crowd. It has no power of individuality. It’s the extra who’s just glad to be there. My eyes find the poster for Babel and I wonder about the extras of my life. How many people I haven’t met and will never meet. I wonder what their stories are like. What chapters they’re in. How many characters they’re juggling. Multiplicity. That couple twenty feet away. That’s a whole other story, a whole other galaxy. Those two people whose voices are muffled by the time they reach me. Twenty feet… Twenty paces I know I won’t bother to take in favor of being an ant. I also wonder how many people I have defied fate in meeting. Sadly a smaller but still significant number, a number to take pride in… The black and white starkness of the chairs gives me a raised eyebrow look and leads me to wonder… rubs its truth in. Couldn’t everything be black and white? Simpler? Am I actively choosing here? If I’m not, how would I rate as a chooser? And if I am, how are my choices stacking up?
(July 30, 2007)
That’s what you want, Gussie. Not what Henry wants. You chose it. Henry chose something else a long time ago.
He didn’t choose it. It just happened.
That’s the way we choose, Gussie. We let it happen.
(Violets are blue)
This post is the creative work of Iris Watts Hirideyo and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Multiplicity, people, black and white, voices, noises, sounds, choice
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