[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Artwork: (Oak Day Eve) Three Steps to Becoming Real by Will Jacques
To Be Frank with You: Recycling
Gina Wisker
To be frank with you, I had tried so many times to find the right woman – too small, too tall, too fat, too skinny, too self-absorbed, too busy taking selfies – until I saw her in the shop window modelling those new gowns. The curvature, the slinkiness, the eyes focused on the middle distance, waiting for someone just like me – an old fashioned lover, one devoted to pampering, protection, adoration, taking care of all the loved one’s needs. I passed her every day. I could see her eyes gazing at me, seeking me out. And so I took control. Sneaking round the back of the store one night was just too easy, as if she’d left the service door open for me, waiting for me to rescue her. And there she was, inviting me. I took her down from her pedestal, all dressed in furs and lingerie, and packed her up, and took her home, so finally she could fully appreciate my company and I hers. A little privacy. A forever love. I gave her everything – my full attention, my house and home, my heart, my new internet learned skills as a plastic surgeon, a surgeon in plastic, to mould and remould the loved one a little closer to one’s heart’s desire. I improved her. I altered her hair, her face; I changed her clothes. Shave a little bit off here; stick a little bit on there. She was just a little too fat, after all.
I devoted time, energy, imagination, devotion, money, to her perfection. I knew she appreciated this care. Her eyes reflected back that total devotion, that recognition, that mutual adoration that we had, that understanding that each was for the other the perfect being, the perfect construct, the one and only.
But still she wasn’t quite as perfect as she’d seemed behind the glass of the store, waiting for me, waiting to be what I wanted her to be. However much I brought her things to wear, and told her of my love, my needs, my fears, my irritations and the infuriating small annoyances, the imperfections of my workplace, and my master works, she seemed in the end less interested than I’d hoped.
It crept up on me. She was not so different from those selfie-taking, posing young women after all. For long hours she stared at herself in the mirror across from the leather sofa which I’d designated hers. For long hours, later in the day, she’d gaze longingly out of the window from behind the half closed curtains, not just waiting for me to return home, but perhaps hoping for another rescue, for someone else to catch her eye as they went about their business in the outside world, seeing her suddenly perhaps, half hidden, beckoning, behind my glass. For long hours when I was away earning the money to keep us both, I suspected she was but locked in a reverie of escape: escape from me, I who had been her rescuer. With dismay it crept up on me after such a short while that she had begun to disdain me. She wouldn’t speak at all. She was now, it seemed, oblivious to my complex desires and devotions. She was totally self-absorbed, unresponsive to my special situation, my special fixations.
I realised then, with some perturbation, and I must admit, a heavy heart, that this just wasn’t such a good idea. Her love was definitely to be doubted. I like them silent, passive and permanently approving, but this was just a little too static, plastic, artificial, somehow only a remnant of the real. Saddened though I was, horribly dismayed, disillusioned, drained, I realised I must act, dismiss these few weeks of idyll from my mind, my memory, and get on with my life.
When you have liberated something it’s very hard to pack it up and send it back. However, there are so many good sides to our ecological, ergonomic lifestyles nowadays. One of these is waste disposal. There are so many confusingly differently coloured bins for organic waste, for plastic, bottles, cans. For carefully dismembering something all too imperfect, deconstructing the once perfect construct, differentiating between the waste items to place them in the right bins, selecting the bits to go in the plastic, glass and paper bins. No recriminations, no come back. I think next time I will buy my dream lover online. If it’s a bad choice, a bad fit, you can always return it in its cardboard wrapper. Everything is recyclable.
**************************************************************************
Frankly Speaking
Gina Wisker
Frankly speaking, I’m wedded to my work, my lab bench, my collections, and my dedication to the very science of life, too dedicated to waste time socialising. I have my dreams; I have my plans; I have my gifts.
As a little boy, while others were collecting toy cars and bits of flotsam and jetsam from the beach, if they lived by the beach, I was out there looking for road kill. Bringing the wings of birds mostly hit by cars, not always, because sometimes you can’t get the rare species unless you intervene yourself. Bringing them into school to show and tell when others brought shells, or collections of spaceships or something only ever lifeless and static.
It was more difficult in my scientific practice through graduation, doctoral study and beyond to replicate this fascinating hobby of mine with people, but essential, you understand, for the perfection of science. Not just collection, not just dissection, but reconnection, some form of reconstruction. It’s an imperfect world, but with the eye of a scientist and the desire to unite piece to piece, feather to feather, flesh to flesh, I was forever seeking a solution, a perfect combination, a perfect match.
All those late nights in the lab.
It is so difficult to meet people, to make those essential connections. Who would want a nerdy scientist who spends their entire time talking about trying to link up bits and pieces, put this into that, and solder that against the other? No woman would take a second look at me as I boil my eggs and sausages at night, stirring on the cooker in the rented house in my rented room. But in my lab I am king – connections, dissections, selections and now this new project. It’s always good to remember one’s roots; it’s always good to remember what you were good at, at school, see how reflection aids development and continuity.
There are some bits that are easy to find: road kill; the local mortuary, housed helpfully in the same research hospital. But for other parts and the essential bits to make the perfect whole, I will have to go and do it myself.
It’s late, not a problem; we scientists are known for long hours in the lab. I have my trusty backpack, essential implements and storage, and my bike, my bike lights and my perfectly positioned headlight in case I spot my own piece of road kill. I might just be pedalling along the bike lane, merely going home after a long night with those ongoing trials of new wonders, those interesting mixtures we concoct in the lab to cure everything, eventually, sort everything out neatly, eventually. You will hardly notice me as I pedal past, head down, self-contained and efficient. You would certainly never find me in any of the noisy raucous clubs in the city! Though I might have to pedal past them to get on the right route to my destination – a dedicated ‘lab rat’ on a bike, focused on my projects. You might accidentally catch a distant glimpse of me taking my usual short cuts through the lesser known lanes, somewhere down the back alleys, or coasting supportively towards, slowing down and offering help to the odd waif and stray on a Saturday night – sobbing, a broken heel in one hand, a dead mobile phone in the other, looking for a knight on a shining bike with a shining scalpel, helping them put themselves back together. It will all be so much better for all of us in the end – a perfect combination, a perfect match.
