| The Chair The families were kind or selfish. The weather was beautiful or oppressive. There were opportunities to work for the good of mankind or plunge oneself into the depths of a fiery hell. Real life, awakened every morning with the cockcrow, wasn’t black or white. It was black and white, photographed with a chiaroscuro eye, the devices of some great artist apparent during even the most mundane moments. Language divided the traveler not only from his hosts, but from himself too. The frustration was of a child trying to grasp a big and slippery ball only to have it fly from his hands. Like a child, the traveler became elated, then despairing, in the space of a few minutes. The land, even where it was covered in rubbish, was fertile beyond the wildest dreams of the traveler’s native country. Strange fruits, sweet and sour, some even smelling so powerfully that signs warned diners not to eat it inside, overflowed from every street corner. The government of the land had given up trying to impose order on chaos. Only during a month every few years would they roar through the streets, blaring pop songs from their loudspeakers and letting money flow through their fingers. Otherwise, no stop signs or red lights stopped the people from going where they wanted, either full speed ahead or just as likely halted in the midst of the unregulated filth pouring from rear of their vehicles. Yet the residents of the country advertised love and its prophets from every space. Their gods had hearts that bled. Judgments were pronounced from the skies during epic rainy seasons, from volcanoes, typhoons, earthquakes, corrupt and violent tyrants. Why not turn towards compassionate ones for relief during never-ending troubles? The traveler was naturally confused. The gods and goddesses of his native country were sword carriers, explosive and vengeful, Achilles and his heels. Now they seemed far away and powerless, but what to replace them with? Was the world always in constant battle between cruel killers and their hopeless victims, and how could a god who preached love change the reality? The traveler’s brother had once told him, “a chair is a chair is a chair. It’s a material fact, substantial and made for assholes to sit on.” Now the traveler stared hard at the chair sitting next to the bed, and willed himself to reach it without screaming. The bicycle he rode into town leaned up against it, once his freedom machine—turned into just another anchor holding him inside the hot and stale room. The sickness that was assailing him was invisible and not a chair, yet the traveler was sitting right in the middle of it. The buses and gaudily decorated jeepneys, rusty motorcycles with welded-on sidecars, squashed-looking trucks and the large SUV’s driven by the politicians, had spewed their poisonous lead into his bellowing lungs as he bicycled from the provinces into the city. He had laughed as the people covered their noses with handkerchiefs to filter the air. He wasn’t laughing anymore—instead coughs wracked his frame, shaking him like a leaf in a fall breeze. The smiling and happy people of yesterday looked at him differently as he hacked and phlegmed and sputtered his way down the street, so he locked himself in the hotel room, surrounded by “Friends,” without friends. Sweating, tired, sick and sicker, too weak to look for help from anybody. The books were wrong about the people’s fluency in the traveler’s language. Nobody in the small town he had met spoke more than a few words of it. Sweating, fasting, drinking no water, the traveler waited for rescue. It came, spawned from his dirty lungs, turning his body hot enough to match the tropical temperatures outside, moved down into his bowels and began turning his solid self into a watery mess. Finally, the rescuer moved his ambulance to the farthest outposts of the body, swelling the big toe on his right foot into a bigger toe, a huge, painful monster that swallowed any remaining rationality. Walking or even standing became impossible. “Help me,” he groaned to nobody. The looks from the laughing, smiling people when he pulled himself out of bed to get some food and water were frightened. What had the foreigner done to himself, what rescuer would do any better than the one who rampaged through his body now? The law of karma was a beautiful and terrible thing, not to be interfered with. The traveler gave up trying to walk, and retreated back to the room. He collapsed onto the chair, whimpering. Since every one of his moves was off-center, he sat too close to the edge of the seat and the whole rickety structure came tumbling down. The traveler kicked the chair across the room before realizing he was using the diseased big toe, the wrong foot. The pain was the most awful he had ever felt, worse than broken bones, root canals and being betrayed by the love of your life wrapped up together. It was magnificent. The exploding world rescued him from his previous and greatly flawed life, cutting him away from it cleanly with a sharp, hot knife. If he couldn’t walk, he could still try and ride the bike. As long as he kept the bicycle moving, without shifting the toe off of the pedals, the pain was almost ok. He had to tie the horrible foot to the pedals with a rope. At least he knew where he was going. |
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