DIS/ORDER
“There is an uneasy silence in the pod racing toward sector 22. Onyx and I sit silently next to each other while the southern and eastern peripheries rush past us. Every now and then I notice his eyes on me. Suddenly, I am a glass house and he can see right through me, into the hollows and the attic of my presence, reaching beyond my map of myself.…
I see flashes of her face in front of me, big, dazing green eyes and skin covered in debris of pain. “I see only darkness, displaced in me instead of the night.” She’s my God. She knows of our beginnings and our aberration. She killed herself so I could live. I might as well try.
“This is exactly the point in the conversation where I have to make a choice.”
“But the rain.” She looks at me, suddenly reliving the flames.
“Diese Zeiten machen mir Angst. Weil sie unerreichbar scheinen. Weil meine Zeiten in alle Richtungen zerfließen. Ich versuche mich wieder einzuordnen ins System. Ins Leben.”
Wir sehen, was wir sehen sollen. Seitdem das Original eines Kunstwerks beliebig reproduzierbar ist, wissen wir nicht mehr, was wir sehen. Manchmal sehen wir eine Frau. Und meistens sehen wir eine Frau, die gesehen wird. Und das ist nicht dasselbe.
“Now, the fire can come back at any time, and it will not be as traumatizing as it was before; flames will be nothing but old lovers welcomed back into a house haunted by their absence. His therapist herself said it: meaning can be found in chaos. It is, after all, nicer to see the glass half-empty than to admit that there is no glass anymore.”
I had spent my life wondering whether broken love could be mended when I saw my parents drift apart, from secret dances in the moonlit kitchen to becoming strangers, violently and abruptly fighting for divorce. Like a glued-up vase. I refused to see it then, but a fractured vase still exposes its porcelain fragility even after it has been reassembled. Even with the finest glue and the hands…
“Part of me knew it was impossible to come close. Just this one time I wish I didn’t need the fire because the sky is dark around me already.”
“Meine Welt besteht aus Ein- und Ausbuchtungen. Mit gekrümmtem Rücken und brennenden Augen sitze ich auf dem Boden inmitten von Chaos. Alles wirkt willkürlich zusammengewürfelt. Als hätte jemand mein Zimmer einmal kräftig durchgeschüttelt.”
