Offshoots

Prologue

It’s all utterly simple.  Everything is so incredibly perfect, so terrifyingly simple, so awfully elegant. Infuriatingly elegant. All immensity reduced to a glimpse of thought. The Great Infinite to a very unit. Immeasurability, to a most primitive fantasy. You and I, nothing but an image. A whole world, a backward projection on the retina.

In my travels, I have understood this much: simplicity complicates it all. Because you have to be a madman to accept it. You need a fluid mind to embrace simplicity. If you ask pretentious questions, you destroy the answers in that very instant. Pursuit complicated, you sabotage the search. The best solution by far is to trust simplicity. Embrace simplicity. Rejoice in it. Fall in love with it.

I’m not sure if I’m making my point.

“Occam’s razor” states that, in our reasoning, we should go with the more straightforward assumptions. Now, let me ask you something. Isn’t it much easier to believe that everything is possible than that everything has a logical explanation? Haven’t you ever felt there was something far greater than trying to understand the world through math, for example? I don’t believe in math. I don’t believe in God either, so you have no reason at all to think that I speak from a spiritual or religious perspective. It’s just that all those formulae, they could never carry the meaning of life.

 Life… 

 Life is so simple, actually. The Universe itself… so exasperatingly simple. 

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The lighting pole ramifies into three arms. Three bulbs, from behind the little windows of their glass prison, light the narrow sidewalk I’m resting on, docile, expectant. My name is Ulian Matrona. Of course, that’s not my real name. On second thought, it might just be. It’s not the name I was given by my parents, and definitely it isn’t the name a languid notary put in writing on my birth certificate, but this IS my real name. I know that, as if an independent, unrelated consciousness sheltered in the wrinkled surface of my brain.

This isn’t the only thing I seem to know for sure, without actually remember where I know it from. My life has been full of patterns.  Sometimes I feel like patterns have taken over all of my experiences. Déjà vu. That can describe the feeling, yes. Déjà vu. But, surprisingly, not at all boring. You might assume that when the world seems to endlessly repeat itself, it would eventually get dull. (Although, isn’t history doing so anyway?) No, it’s the connections, the correlations, the synchronicities in my life that actually get me extremely excited. Also, because of that, I started taking everything as a correlation or a synchronicity. I’ve gotten a bit foolish, to be honest. When I have a dream, for example, I immediately think it might be a warning, a sort of sign. That’s why I’m here right now. That is why I’m standing under the streetlight.

No one on the alley.  11:40 p.m.  21st of September, 2014. Dark, chilly.

There are a few lighted windows so some people living in these blocks are still awake.  From where I’m standing, I can see inside an apartment on the third floor. A rather soft light spreads all over, giving the surrounding air a pink shade. In a fashion magazine, they would probably call it “coral pink”. On the wall opposing the window I can barely distinguish a large piece of furniture, most likely a bookcase made of dark wood. I can’t see the other walls at all. In the middle of the room, right under an obsolete chandelier, a couple sits at a table. His back is facing the window, so I cannot say much about the man, but the woman seems to be in her 30s, she has straight bangs and the rest of the hair in a tight ponytail. I can’t tell if she is beautiful, they’re too far. They seem quite busy. At intervals, she stops and wipes her forehead with the back of her hand.  I’m not absolutely sure, but I think they are exchanging some kind of cards. Not playing cards, but pieces of paper resembling greeting cards. I squinted. He’s handed her a red card. She flips it over, writes something down, and then she passes it back to him. Wait a second, the card she just gave him (is he her husband?) isn’t red, it’s white, so it’s not the one he handed her. Hm.

I can’t say why, but I am drawn closer with fascination. I’m trying so hard to figure out what they’re doing, my eyes hurt like hell. I wouldn’t be surprised if they popped out of my face. I stop staring for a moment to rub my aching temples with my fingers.

I resume my attentive watch, and I observe that she reaches for something on the table. A white piece of paper? And then, just like before, writes something down, and hands over to her possible husband a white card. Actually, the handing over takes place simultaneously: while he’s passing a red card to her, she’s giving him a white, smaller one.

What the…? So what happens to the red ones?

I can’t step any further…The wall will cover the table if I do.

He takes the white card, places it on his lap and folds it or sticks something on it, I can’t tell. After that, he puts it on a shelf (probably) that I can’t see either.

It resumes. He hands her a red card, she takes a white, smaller one from the table, she writes something down, she gives it to him, then it’s his turn to write something on it and afterwards, he puts it aside.

But the red ones, the red… Oh!

He hands her a red card, she takes a white, smaller one …that’s an envelope! She must have folded them with very subtle, imperceptible movements… That’s why the red ones disappeared! They were inserted in the envelope. A smaller envelope, half the red one’s size. That’s it.

I must admit: I feel a weird, childish pleasure. I feel like I just solved a very complicated puzzle, or won an exhausting board game. Hah, that’s funny.

I look away to rest my eyes. I’m still wondering what those cards are. What is written on them? They’re most probably wedding invitations.  God, curiosity will kill me someday. Alright, just one more look.

Oh, no.

God, no.

Golden cards?! Where did they come from?

He’s handing her a golden card. Not red.

He’s handing her a golden card. She takes a white, smaller envelope, she writes something down…again and again the same process, but with a golden card.

I’m starting to feel kind of sick. Maybe it will go away if I close my eyes for a second. I should go home… I should just… What’s that?

There’s a leaf falling… No, wait.

The light of the bulbs fall onto the falling object and it made it look like it was on fire. A sparkle and I knew: it is a golden card. A golden card has fallen out the window while I wasn’t paying attention. But how? There isn’t any wind…

I lift my eyes. The man is standing with his head coming out the window, smiling at me.

‘Hi,’ he says. ‘Could you…um…’

He wants me to bring it to him.

‘Sure,’ I say smiling back. ‘No problem. I’ll be right up.’

With every step closer to that golden piece of paper, I feel my anxiety increasing. I know it’s stupid, it’s just a wedding invitation. I’ll just pick it up.

Oh, it’s not a wedding invitation. It’s a sort of fancy birthday party invitation. 29th of September. A week from now. 7 p.m.  “All guests are expected at 24, Carol Street, to celebrate the 34th birthday of Adam Dwelling, the distinguished owner of Dwelling Industries.” Wow.  And I never heard of this guy. If I did, I would have said something awfully polite and nice about him that may have gotten those two up there to give me one of these golden special guest invitations. This makes me laugh. It’s all so stupid. What am I doing here, anyway? Just because of a meaningless dream I stand here in the street, spying on two people that had no idea what I was doing. God, I hope they don’t invite me in. Oh, here he is, standing in front of the apartment’s door. He has blue eyes. I couldn’t see this from down there.  I hand him the card, like he was earlier, to his wife.

‘Thank you,’ he says with a broad smile. ‘And sorry for the trouble.’

‘No problem, really.’

He turns, opens the door and closes it behind him.

An odd thought crosses my mind.

‘This world isn’t so fun anymore’