collisions (4)

He came down the stairs, carrying his two black and brown leather travelling bags and bumped his head on the ceiling as he stepped forward. This gentle collision set the day off and eventually led him to board a plane. He sat down for breakfast and banged his right knee on the table leg. The breakfast was fairly typical for the island. consisting of two courses, a bowl of rice and greens, followed by a simple petit déjeuner (often referred to as a Continental breakfast) made up of coffee with French-style baguette bread, with strange dark. jam, made from some local fruits with walnuts suspended in it… Afterwards. he bought some bottles of water and his luggage on the back seat, drove off to the north, towards the last few coastal villages he needed to survey. He never made it. Colliding with things and others can result in a wide range of consequences. Sometimes it was as little as a dull thud, or at the other extreme the collision can result in a flash of inspiration, furious explosion, sometimes even. much rarer, enlightenment. Perhaps we are observing a gradual existential and biological incline. But here on this island off the coast the extreme heat had been causing his balance go off and he thought it was because he didn’t belong on this island. So here he was driving along a nearly empty road a few days before going to the airport to fly north, and he narrowly missed colliding with a bus and as he braked and then standing on the side of the dusty road, it. produced a moment of inspiration. which felt as if it would last for years to come. Enough, he said, enough, I’ve had enough of this place. The implausibility of making himself understood had become so all consuming and constraining that he felt it relieved him of any duties to the world, leaving him in a state of folly. A place of ignorance. In praise of folly. An ontology of folly, I must go home. He unfolded the paper map and decided to drive back towards the airport rather than continue driving to the coast road […] A near collision that took him away from the sea. He turned his phone into standby, and dropped it into the roadside ditch. He missed the turning, and. stopped, reversed back past the turning, scraping the side of the old landrover on a large boulder as he turned in the general direction of the airport. Perhaps though, he was in the place of the impossibility of making himself understood on this island. One collision too many, one bruise too many, one misunderstood communication too many, so he never went to the small port where the woman he was looking for was staying. An hour or so later he stopped in a village in the hills. Leaving the vehicle. outside the convenience store and cafe, bought some food and cans of water. He collided with the door and counter of the shop, the shop assistant exhorting him to be careful, insisting that we can put ourselves back together. I am a mass of bruises from colliding with things. He told him. After sitting beneath the fan, the cooler air colliding with his head and body, freshly boiled water and a strange fruit tea bag, the assistant. gave him a clap on the back so intense he thought it might harm him; like the kind of blow an enemy who is intent on reminding us that some collisions are needed to bring us back to the surface. in an instant. And that was it, he remained on island for a day or two, for now he was back in the landrover driving towards the airport and a hotel. Still even here he was thinking he should be back in London again, whilst looking forward to a night in the luxury tourist hotel. He crashed the landrover into a concrete pillar in the carpark, colliding because the brakes failed. Shit he said kicking the tyres in despair. Then making calls, reporting that she wasn’t here. He ignored their mundane instructions. Later when asked he would say, what instructions I didn’t hear any. He lay in the hot bath luxuriating in the scented water easing his aching muscles. He reads “As a result of serious trauma, or sometimes for no reason at all, the path splits and a new, unprecedented persona comes to live with the former person, and eventually takes up all the room.” Is that me? he thinks, are these collisions. which. made me lie here in this nice bath really a catastrophe, causing a breakdown, needing repairs or promises? He reads some more sentences, a few pages, thinks of the maps diagrams left in the landrover. He put on some clean clothes and went down to eat, feeling like a new being. The next morning he booked the. first available flight back to the north. What was I thinking taking this job? All I ever did was collide into things. He stayed around the hotel until the next morning and caught a flight to Frankfurt…