Saturday 19 November 2011

Chapter 10

Note to the uninitiated reader: See the number above? It says 10 (ten). This means two things: a) it is not chapter no 1(one). See the difference? It has an extra oval shape like this: 0. b) if there is a chapter no 10 there must also be nine more chapters.  Now scroll down and locate chapter no 1 like a good scholar.

Chapter @) (10): the fridge

Mr BooHoo was given a brand new fridge as a present from the parents of his partner. He gave away the old fridge, that he had since he was a student, that was somehow dysfunctional, mercilessly dirty and possibly infested by cockroaches and now he had one that was almost twice as high. He had to admit the new icebox was a beauty. It had two separate doors for the frizzer and the fridge compartments and multiple selves and drawers. It was fabricated so as to consume less energy and oh, so clean. It was so big Mr BooHoo never managed to fill it. As it has already been mentioned, a beauty for a fridge.

Yet, Mr BooHoo could not help feeling melancholic when he thought about it. The thing is that by having so big an object, and expensive and all, it became a symbol of stability. Now, Mr BooHoo liked the idea of stability. After moving around for almost ten years and changing houses almost every year he fondled with the idea of settling down. But he wanted it to be his own choice. He seriously disliked the idea of being chained by a fridge. And it was not only that! He new that soon the fridge would be followed by a nice library and a couch and even a new mattress was on its way (he was not happy about this because it felt evasive and further-on the previous mattress was just fine and he would have to find a place to store it).

 At this point a subject should be clarified: Mr BooHoo was clearly a "homo-collector". He hesitated a great deal to throw away stuff. He accumulated objects and materials for future use. His family, flatmates and partners found this to be a reason of distress from time to time. He was working on it, by forcing himself to leave things on the pavement when they were in a really bad shape, or to find "foster-homes" if he thought that they might get love from someone else, and by not acquiring new ones unless it was absolutely necessary. By transforming them frantically into new charming, and useful when possible, objects was his way of getting scolded less and gain the acceptance (not be considered mentally unstable or even worse an idiot  of the previously mentioned people.

It was not the same with living organisms. Someone could think that he would experience the dog as a more serious burden, and occasionally it was. It made moving around and travelling much more complicated. Yet he did not have that strong a psychologic reaction to it. Perhaps it was because stuff that breath have an apparent autonomy. Anyway, this subject will not be analysed neither here nor now.

Returning to the fridge, he hated the fact that he felt it as a ball and chain. He was not that fond of his apartment, he had become terribly bored of his neighbourhood, the city in which he lived made him unhappy and the country, well, he was never very glad of having been born and raised there. He had left it once but returned after a year with the perspective, though, of leaving again after a period of rest. The acquisition of the fridge made things seam oddly permanent.  And the word permanent was associated directly with the word stale in his mind, on the occasions that he felt low. How would he take the decision to move if he could not take the fridge with him? Generally, he hesitated to have things he could not carry on his own, or with a little bit of help. He had lots of things but they could all be put in small boxes he could handle by himself. The large, beautiful, expensive, new fridge was plainly over-whelming.

How jolly nice, another bloody issue he would have to solve.          

Tuesday 15 November 2011

the bath

Mr BooHoo got out of the bathroom in his heavy brown bathrobe and walked, barefoot on the ice-cold floor, to the living room, where he found his silk, green slippers. On his way to the bedroom he saw the mist flowing slowly into the corridor and dissolving into the air. The light was still on. He walked through the steam. It smelled nice. He felt animated as he took a couple of steps in the bathroom this second time. The warmth and the cute smell of shampoo made him feel dreamy, as if walking into another persons private life, from a safe spot. He grinned.