On Relief

On Relief

The road clung to the side of the sweeping curve that made up this part of the pass. I couldn’t really remember where the road had started, but it seemed a pressing reality that it was here now. Below, there lay a mismatch of villages, hamlets, towns and life carving out an existence in isolated areas. All kinds of vegetation seemed to be fighting a war against itself, with plants never seen before existing next to trees that wouldn’t look out of place in any English garden. There were cities dotted all over the landscape but at this point you could be forgiven for believing that humanity had developed in small bounded social groups, never having even been able to envisage large scale social cohabitation.

That was not to say that this land below was one of conflict, not anymore - there existed an easy calm; a kind of relaxed and unbothered acceptance of the world as it was, you could have been forgiven for thinking that life here had been a continuous uninterrupted path, with all of society existing a short distance from this road that cut through this land. That wasn’t the case, but that’s largely unimportant at this point. Timelessness, both past and future erased as easily as thousands of square miles of forest and farming lands…
As clarity returned a motorbike was swerving between two busses passing each other, with a rather unperturbed dog wedged between the bike handlebars and it’s owners knees. The horn blasts seemed superfluous, any course of action other than the one which was currently happening would have probably ended up with one less dog in the world… at least it would have had a soundtrack.

Another normal day I thought to myself. It’s funny how easily things become normal, it’s funny how rules seem to drift through life only really existing when we realise their absence, at once being transient and dependent on context, yet presenting themselves all at once as  part of whatever the road you are on. A few years ago I would have had to clear my mind after that…now all I could think about was that dog and its apparent ease with a near epic death – relaxed - what could it do? Not epic in the sense of history, or of meaning, but simply of aesthetics… it’s safe to say that any crash, bump or scrape on that path would have been a beautiful disaster.

How could it not be? Look around!

As I reacquainted myself with the ground, of the flatter variety, I couldn’t help but close my eyes – almost like some force that was intent on relaxation had just decided that I was to be its new host, with no announcement.  I struggled against it for a while thinking how rude it was to enter somewhere uninvited but in the end its charm had won me over and although I didn’t surrender fully to it, not in this land, It launched a counter offensive that forced me to slow down my advance towards whatever it was I was meant to be doing. My eyes perdiodically shot open, usually coinciding with the blast of a horn, a pothole in the road, forcing the bus to do its best impression of a skimming stone or because of the ringtone of whatever various electronic devices I shared this space with.
Blurred, in focus, shooting by, lingering at my window were places where people congregated for whatever social interaction they chose, policemen, farms, cars, bikes, factories, television aerials and dishes, men, more dogs, cows, children, trees, cafes and women. I was at home, I knew these things well, I had grown up with them after all. They say familiarity breeds contempt but for me it didn’t breed anything, it just kind of produced a slight if fleeting awareness.

“Mr.. Berk? Man?... Mr…” my awareness sharpened. “… Hello?”  I looked around but all I could see were people I didn’t recognise, dusty air conditioning units, and a couple of notepads, no doubt challenging and recording this reality; but who really cared, I for one didn’t. Imagine a life of recollections, a life of representations of past events, a timeless life.

“Mr Berkman?”

I suddenly remembered I had been looking for something specific, not generalised judgements on my fellow humans. I peered over the precipice of my reclined seat to see a rather plain man with a checklist. He was wearing a simple olive green button up shirt, with short sleeves. It was slightly too big for him, not enough that everyone would notice it, but for me there was a bit too much air between his body and the fabric. I couldn’t really see his trousers and shoes, nor did I really care that much, but if his shirt was anything to go by then I had already made up my mind.

“Yes, that’s me” I smiled – I don’t really know why I smiled, I wasn’t particularly happy to see him, in fact I didn’t really know how I felt, I was never one for snap judgements, and now seemed no time to change my life, but somehow a smile crept out.

“You go? Where you go?”

I tried to recall why he might be asking this, after all I was on a road, with no pull offs, inhabited by a society that looked like it rarely strayed more than a brief 10 minute detour. The answer should have been simple. Still my mind stayed blank.

“Err, I’m sorry…I don’t know” I answered, with slightly less of a smile this time, although I didn’t know if that was on purpose, or natural.
He smiled at me, shrugged and bounced back to the front of the passageway, with a certain ease. When the ground moved, he didn’t, when he moved the ground didn’t – it reminded me of an old surfing video I had seen before I left. I was struck by how simple it looked. “I could do that” I had thought, full in the knowledge that most surfers spend their whole lives simply riding that wave further and longer, never really “achieving” anything, never really going anywhere. He arrived at his destination, and took a seat at the front.

My mind wandered back to his question… “where are you going?”. I thought for a while, a few more dogs and cows, and then the answer suddenly seemed obvious, in fact it was obvious… I was going home. Not in any grand sense, I was simply on the way back to the place I lived. Why had that not come out of my mouth when the man was standing there? It was hardly a difficult question. I put it down to the drifting in and out of awareness that had made up the last however long of my time, and started to climb down from my seat. I could go and answer his question, and on the way back nip into the toilet for a piss. I really needed a piss.

Two birds, one stone; there probably couldn’t have been a better result. The next few minutes were going to be efficient if nothing else. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t answered him  - somewhere in my synapses and connections a complex algorithm had weighed up my bladder fullness the answer to the question and made a snap judgement – blackness. That is not to say that some esoteric conversation had been going on between my bladder, mind, mouth and the plain man…but more that I hadn’t had a piss for hours and as soon as I remembered this the whole situation made a bit more sense.  I’m not sure how long my body had been telling me I needed to piss, but it almost seemed normal now… maybe it was from the dog, maybe it was from before that… I don’t know. If there’s one thing about needing a piss it never seems to start, although it has a fairly obvious end point. Relief.