Mix: Raefon Overloads

Driving around the countryside is definitely not like taking a walk in it; at no point did I stop to zoom in on an oblivious squirrel or admire any unusually-shaped trees; nor did I smile simply from the joy of detouring along a beaten path of sunlight, filtering through arches of leaves down into the shade. I wasn’t inspired to write up my appreciation of anything – although I considered penning a cynical essay, objecting to the presence of golf courses destroying the essence of tranquil isolation.

I saw him as I turned the corner: a lone hitchhiker on an empty road, thumb stuck out in a cynically resigned fashion…a nod to our caring society, who can rarely be bothered with pressing the pause button on their own lives in order to help out another person.
Yes, I stopped. Yes, I’ve read the headlines and watched the films. But I’m tired of the fear that we’re supposed to be indoctrinated with at birth. If you can’t ever, EVER speak to strangers, how the hell can kids make friends at school, or awkward bus stop silences be broken?
The hitchhiker himself even seemed to disapprove a little, or at least be surprised.
I guess that being more afraid of werewolves lurking in dark alleyways than rapists or muggers must be one of the benefits to being un-sexy and strange. If he murdered me, maybe I’d receive less sympathy due to my idiocy (like hit-and-run victims wearing headphones) but it’s a chance you sometimes have to take, in the name of salvaging humanity.
It was nice to have a conversation that featured literature instead of TV, writing instead of bitching. There’s only one person at work who genuinely cares for books, and I don’t have many academic friends, so I generally have to keep my mouth shut, but it was different and easier with Grisfleur – apart from the challenge of both talking and keeping my eyes on the road. It feels ignorant to not look at the person you’re talking to now and again, but each time I glanced his way, the car started to head off the road at a slanted angle, so my contributions were pretty stunted. He seemed ok with that though.

We ended up in a deserted bar. I hadn’t had a pre-noon drink for some months, but accepted the pint.
So this is spontaneity, I was thinking while he was at the bar. Two lines popped into my head:
“Great friendships have been forged from less,
and who are we to judge greatness?” but I didn’t pursue it, since my notebook was in the car and they weren’t particularly profound words anyway; I’d been spouting mediocrity for weeks, not coming up with a single source of poetic pride.

The bar was ok. You could tell it wouldn’t get much fuller even towards peak drinking time, because it had the dingy look of a place accustomed to its clientele and their approach to drink: not too much light, nothing too cheery. I liked that; better than when pubs go out of their way to create an ‘atmosphere’, suffocating the walls with brass hangings or arbitrary paintings – you end up not knowing where you are when you walk in because everywhere looks the same. My view is that there should either be interesting things to look at and talk about, or bare, nicotine-stained walls that don’t intrude upon your thoughts. I once went to a pub/restaurant in Norfolk that had a seal-clubbing theme. It was covered in black and white photos of dead seals being dragged across beaches towards a fishing boat, with encased harpoon-like tools and clubs on display.
Strangely disquieting, to be eating steak and chips – meat killed by someone else, prepared by a different someone else and then cooked for me by yet another someone else – surrounded by all that bloodshed. Maybe that’s why writing is so popular as a form of expression: it gives recent generations a chance to actually conceive of, craft and perfect something for themselves. Otherwise, we’re kept distant from everything around us because we’ve played no part in the process of creation.

Grisfleur was heading back towards the table with our drinks, and an internal panic button started to wail. Why were we doing this? I should have dropped him off and driven on, feeling content for having participated in successful human interaction with a stranger, as opposed to elongated the encounter, which gave me plenty of opportunity to fuck up by proving myself boring and unoriginal. Sometimes people treat me like a novelty…a new species; kindness and weirdness in one, batteries not included.
“Have you ever owned one of those paintings, you know with the dogs playing pool?” I blurted out, as he placed the drinks on the table.
“What?” He looked a bit startled, like maybe I’d broken into some heavy thinking.
“You know, where there’s a Bulldog smoking a cigar and a Great Dane or whatever wearing a flat cap? D’you know the paintings I’m on about?”
“Yeah, that C. M. Coolidge shit. I don’t know why you’re asking though.”
“Well, I was just thinking that when they first came out, people probably thought it was really original. And now everyone says the same as you – that they’re shit – because they’ve been around for ages and every kid’s Nan had one in her house. But maybe we should look at them and appreciate the fact that the artist accessed their imagination. I mean, fairytales are really old but you don’t hear people saying ‘oh yeah, wolves eating sleeping in beds and talking…that old shit again’. Instead, that gets called ‘classic’. So what’s with the prejudice? How does overuse taint one thing, but immortalise another?”
He sat down, but I noticed the chair shifted a little further away from my side of the table.
“It’s not a big deal, forget it. My brain and mouth aren’t wired up properly; sometimes there’s a breakdown in miscommunication.” I’d done it already: become the kind of person I don’t like; someone who deliberately courts controversy at the slightest opportunity, views all company as a captive audience, and runs their mouth until someone silences them with a well-timed punch.
Fuck.
“Seriously, forget it. I went a bit hyperactive there. We can drink in silence, it’s cool. And I’ll pretend to admire that broken ceiling fan while you do a runner, ok?”
Nothing. He downed one of his drinks.
“Sorry,” I said.
He took a deep breath, like maybe he’d been trained to do when dealing with crazy people in pubs, then said, “Don’t be. As a conversational topic, it has potential.”
Maybe he just felt sorry for anybody as socially inadequate as I’d proved myself to be.