I dream. I am young and this is a time sometime in my past, but I can not place where this happening. While I might be young, and it may feel like the end of the 20th century, I can not escape the feeling that is happening somewhere in the future. I sit on a balcony and a city stretches out below me like a glittering sea of stars across the ground; or perhaps there is no ground and Space stares up at me from below.
Wherever this is, it's seems of little importance. Six people are with me as well, all of them peers from youth. We chatter away like children, with very little substance to our words. In fact, I can't understanding our conversation at all. It's like the echoes of voices in a long school hall. All at once, we stop talking and play a game of rock, paper, scissors. When the loser is decided he has to leave.
Then we continue. For the life of me our conversation still has no meaning to me. I sit speaking and understanding, but the language is absent. It's like I sit in a silent movie, while an audio track of something strangely similar but different plays slightly out of synch. I need a drink of water, something to set my head back on straight. There's a fountain in the back corner, a big porcelain unit surrounded by cork board.
The water is refreshing. This balcony is so much more comfortable then one would expect. When I stand and wipe my mouth, I realize I'm not alone. A girl stands at the fountain with me. I recognize her immediately by the mistrust in my heart. Yet for all the fact that she is my enemy, she smiles and looks benign. She opens her mouth to say something, but then stops.
We must play the game. Scissors. I win. She scowls at me cruelly and departs. I return to my friends.
There are only three of us left now. I adjust my clothes before I sit down, the t-shirts and jeans never feeling quite right. Even back then I feel conscious about my looks. When I sit down we begin to talk again. Now I can understand our words. We are talking about age and time. Suddenly I feel as if I'm part of something very venerated. This is not the topic of children's conversation.
"Time is meant to move in one direction only. It is unseemly to step backwards when you should only go ahead."
"Everyone lives and dies. The purpose of life is too abstract. Stepping backwards in the mind's eye is consolation."
"Memory is not stepping backwards, it has no substance. It lacks the taste touch, smell and sense of reality. It is more fallible then anything." My one friend objects indignantly to the comments of the other.
Both of them suddenly look at me as if I were to have some grandiloquence to shed upon the subject. I ponder the topic for a moment with little success. Slowly, I come to a realization. I realize that I do not belong here. I am not the child that I outwardly appear. Inside I feel as if I am a fully grown man; I have earned wisdom beyond the boyish frame I inhabit. I finally shrug. "We live and we die."My pair seem sated with my opinion.
A third time we play rock, paper, scissors. I smile at my friends and give an little wave as Space swallows me, and I fall endlessly away.
