Annamiri’s musings

That’s why the title is going to be written in it. I like font = use font as title – or? I like this one (Goudy Old Style) too, but it’s not my title. Cannot compute.

When I’m done with my little Data/Spock impersonation, I might be able to continue in a little more (…) normal style. ‘Normal’ is an annoying word because there’s no way this is gonna sound anything like it. ‘Normal’ implies ‘like everything else’. But if everything else is abnormal, then abnormal = normal, and then this is normal.

I might be wrong though. It’s easier to say everyone’s special, because that automatically makes me and everyone else special, so it’s a win/win situation: when someone’s ‘special’, they can’t complain enough about being normal, and when they’re ‘normal’, they want to be ‘special’. So now, they’re just going to all be special. And then those who want to be normal can also conclude that, since everyone else is special too, they’re normal. That keeps everyone happy

(Clears throat very discreetly).

So (let’s forget the rule about what words to start sentences with, shall we?) last – no actually, the year before the last – I wrote a ‘First year of living in London’-thing, right? (I don’t expect an answer, by the way). And this is an extension, I think. Though I’m not going to do it in the same style as last time. My life just isn’t interesting enough to write pages and pages about on a daily basis – like, ‘today I had a piano lesson’ and ‘today I had maths in school’. The legendary maths lesson, huh? I really want to read five pages on that. (Actually, it’d do me good to read quite a few pages on maths, to be honest. More than five, even.)

But first, I’ll sum up our holiday in Hawaii in one word: amazing. I remember when we were there, looking down on the clouds and ground from Haleakala, examining the silver sword plant, and in the car down from the Keck observatory on Mauna Kea (where I was feeling really nauseated), I was creating all these mental sentences and descriptions of what I saw that would’ve turned into a book if I’d printed ’em all. I liked toying with them and putting the sentences together and making anyone who wasn’t on Hawaii really jealous in my mind (and if I was on the web now, I’d say ‘lolz’, just one of many URL slang words I’ve learnt. See, I’m getting educated. Plus in the whole speaking-slang world, I now, like, speak, like, you know kind of like, a like totally extra teenager.)

I still haven’t figured out the exact meaning of ‘extra’, though. I don’t think it even has one. It might mean ‘too much’ – when I write an essay or answer to some question in school that’s longer than or as long as a paragraph, apparently I’m extra.

That makes me sound so sad.

Let me just reassure you, I’m not (maybe I am, in the sense that I still have to learn what ‘extra’ means when it’s used as slang). Do I have reason to? After asking myself that question, I’ve concluded that I’m happy, and d’you know, I have every reason to be. That’s nice to know.

Not really reflected in my new-ish black-hair thing, though.

That’s why it’ll head my second, home-related paragraph. The first one was more of a ‘my random philosophy’-thing. The whole thing will inevitably be my-random-philosophy-related, but this one will focus mostly on changes in the home and my relationship with the Mertners. And, inevitably, me.

There isn’t a huge amount to say on this subject. Mostly, it’s finally stopped feeling like a constant holiday being here with you and Far and Iain, and now I instinctively think of this home (Lynton Rd) at the word ‘home’. It took a while.

I still don’t have a lot of chores (cough, cough, that’s not about to change, is it?) which makes me feel a little guilty – but hey, um, maybe I shouldn’t be writing that…

I’ve been living here for two years now. We should celebrate a third-year anniversary (let’s go to India – yeah?). That’d be fun, depending on what it was like. A trip to India would be very nice (hint).

How else have I changed? Well, I’ve come out of my I-love-pink phase, which is nice, and my blonde hair is all of a sudden extremely popular. It’s too late, though. I like my black hair too much. Maybe some other day I’ll go back to being a blonde.

Not today.

I’ve become interested in religion and, philosophically, a lot more mature. I write better, too. And I’ve accepted the fact that one day I’ll hate this piece just as much as I hate the one I wrote you before. I’m like that – if something I’ve written is old, it’s just not good. It’s very annoying, actually. It makes me unable to keep anything for more than a year. But within a year I’ll have written a lot of other things anyway, and I suppose it’s motivation too, beyond that of just liking to write.

I’m slipping out of the home-paragraph, but I don’t know how much I should write about home. Home is home (‘Here for the money or the love?’ as Ikea’s new extremely corny slogan says). Well, I’m here because you chose this house. Isn’t that the honest answer? I like it, but if you want a reason, I can’t really give you anything better.

And Iain has become a whole lot more annoying than he used to be. And I take Far and you for granted now – not in a ‘I don’t care’ way: more like a ‘they’re here and that’s a fact of life as it is right now’.

I’ve got a new taste for writing poetry, but I’m not very good at it, and right now the only type I can remember is a ballad. What’s a ballad again?

(I forgot. My memory needs a good kicking – like when I forgot to close the front door. How can you forget that? How? Really).

I also know your parents better now as well as Vaishali and Antara and the whole Indian-but-living-in-America side of the family. I have a lot of names to memorise there. And when someday I go to university in America with Sabine, I won’t forget I have a whole load of family spread out over the continent.

That was my disorganised account of home/relationship/inevitably, me-paragraph. A bit longer than a paragraph.

‘You’re so extra, Anna!’

So, logically enough, it’s going to head my third page: school. I’ve become the all-round good girl who gets away with being a few minutes late and wearing nail polish and thick eyeliner to school. I’m a really exasperating know-it-all there, who has no close friends: she wanders from one close-knit group to another on a daily basis, and she’s realised she won’t see half her class- and school-mates once she leaves high school, so why care what they think? It’s a very freeing view. I’m not sure how convincing it sounds, but you can always take me to a psychiatrist if you think I’m unhappy. All I know is, I won’t do anything to support that ‘notion’.

It’s really funny to flaunt the fact that I’m an atheist. I’m also trying to defy the invisible ‘taboo’ that’s been put on saying something bad about religion, but strangely enough, I’m afraid to. It’s somehow become natural to just accept that ‘that’s your faith, so you go ahead with whatever’. That’s one of my favourite chapters (‘Undeserved Respect’) of The God Delusion. I have to say, though, I can imagine what loopholes true ‘faith-heads’ (cool term) could find in the whole concept of the book.

I’ve tried to argue with some of my friends about religion, and have come to the conclusion that having a particular religion completely drilled into your head is like wearing a pair of sunglasses you can’t take off. Those sunglasses will make you see the world in one colour, and in that colour alone. I’m wearing atheist sunglasses (when I visualise it, they’re always red, and the religious ones are blue) and that makes me like a shield to faith-head arguments like ‘this is all a test, which is the answer to all suffering’. But similarly, the blue religious sunglasses make religious people prone to logic and reason. I can sling all my science and clever quotes in their head, but they won’t see because to them, in their all-encompassing blue outlook, every argument can be countered with traditional ‘the will of God is mysterious’ etc. arguments. I can’t say, ‘But what if God doesn’t exist?’ because from a blue outlook, that just doesn’t compute.

Moving back to the topic of my school, I’m happy enough being unbearable to some people, since I’m not about to befriend everyone. I’m not popular, but why would I want to be anyway? All the attention would make me exhausted. To be honest, I’m happier just sitting home alone with the computer and a Word-document in front of me, listening to my iPod and trying to come up with another short story to post on the Internet. I was like that in Denmark too.

I guess that’s just me. And it’s easy being that way, even though, of course, I like having friends and after-school contact. It’s just not so common here, plus I’m not the most popular person (not at all). I don’t think the term ‘popular’ is used very much at my school anyway. You have your friends, and some have more than others. That wasn’t really the system back in Denmark.

Well, I don’t like those little stars at all. They make the text very annoying to read. Other than that, it’s pretty cute, but not my style. And ‘chic’ is a lousy name for a font-style.

This will be a general conclusion to my little grammatically incorrect ‘essay’ because I think I missed out on some things. I missed out on the fact I’ve developed a little personal trigger that says, ‘Switch off the lights, they’re unnecessary!’ whenever I see too many electric lights on at once or when the lights are on with no one around. It also goes, ‘The TV really shouldn’t be on, you’re not watching it’ and ‘Using the computer so much is going to ruin your bloody future! Switch it off now!’

(Needless to say, that voice gets pretty irritating after a while).

I also think I might include that I’m not lying when I agree with you that Iain is really cute. I just add on another point: ‘And unbearably irritating’ (which, under some circumstances, you might actually agree with too. But not all the time. My whole sister-relationship with him is much more up for that kind of 24-7 you’re-just-annoying-feeling. Still, I’m glad I have to put him to bed once a week. I get to see him that way.)

I know this is a pretty disorganised account of me, contrary to what I did last time which was nicely done but was focused almost only on school. That’s something I didn’t want for this one. If there’s anything you’d like me to deepen a bit, you can just say so and I’ll manage to put something you can just classify as a ‘piece of writing’ together, maybe even in a nice, organised way.

Another thing is that I’m glad you like Evanescence. Something I like about metal bands (most of them, anyway) is that the lead singer actually has to be able to sing. Sometimes that’s not a requirement, what with all the computer voice-enhancement fiddle-with-that-button-and-hey-presto-you-sound-good (let me just get you an influential pop-manager and a front page on iTunes, then you’re all set) thing we have going most of the time (especially in R&B, which is something I’ve accepted I just can’t listen to, despite it being by far the most popular music genre – along with mainstream pop – at my school).

Was this really what I had in mind when I started this section?

I hope I’m not too unbearable or lazy or anything, because I don’t know what I’d do if I was (get my butt up and work? Did I tell you that’s not an option?)

Do you know what pet I’d like?

A snake. Imagine one of those small ones? A friend of mine once had a snake, in Denmark, and I held it (thinking it wasn’t at all slimy, like I’d expected. It felt creepily like bone or somehow too alive. Somehow too much like a human body and too much unlike one.). On second thoughts, if I can’t remember to water a cactus once a month, how would I ever manage to feed a pet every single day? And, knowing me, I’d probably get fed up of it anyway. If I add another line to this, it’ll automatically put a new page which is numbered and which will waste, so this is when I say… well, not goodbye. I don’t expect to say goodbye anytime soon.

Ominous grey clouds hovered on the verge of heavy downpour as I gathered the laundry in my arms, heaving the pile over to rest on my hip. I look out of the window, seeing a light drizzle steadily turning to something close to hail. It was mid-June, and still it was all early nights, chilly breezes and evidently, even hail. But, sadly, we all knew the reason for it. It was too late to change it now.

I stuffed the clothes into the tub vigorously, thinking of my husband - or what was left of the word “husband” - lying idly in his bed, maybe reading, but doing nothing else at all.

The more I thought about it, the clearer it became. He was just plain lazy. These were bad times, but he might as well helpme soak up the clothes in the tub of ill-smelling soapy water and open the cans of food we could only cook over the gas stove.

The thought of him made me think of my family, suddenly. My parents still lived back in England, as did my siblings. Only I had moved away from England - and how far it was from America. Why did I move in the first place? I didn’t know things would turn out this way, but I could, couldn’t I? I have considered my choice more carefully. Now I couldn’t even go back to visit them.

The hail was subsiding as the sky cleared. I squinted up at the sky. Was that actually sunlight?

I held my breath, hope almost swallowing me alive. Then, gathering my wits, I sprinted outside to the neighbours, almost crying. I knocked on the door and waited tensely for it to be opened.

The familiar figure of Dan, Helen right at his heels, swung open the door.

“Sunlight!”, Helen exclaimed excitedly. “We’ve got sunlight, sunlight, sunlight!”, she chanted, dancing around in a circle of triumph.

I grinned openly. “It really is sunlight”, I said in awe.

“Of course it is!”, said Helen. She just about disintegrated into tears of joy.

Daniel’s behaviour was more subdued. He looked with the mildly amused expression of a parent watching his child playing at her and me, rejoicing at the sight of sunlight at last.

We’d been so long without the sight of anything but a depressing murky grey to look at upon the sky. I did tell them, once, about the catastrophe that was going to take place. I did, but they wouldn’t listen. I was young, then; no wonder they didn’t listen. But I took it harder than I was supposed to. For some long-forgotten reason, I knew that many years of peoples’ lives would be spent under this cold, grey sky.

This is why I started writing this. I felt I should write the details down of our first day of sunlight, even if only a tiny ray showed. Later, it will spread to the rest of the Earth, nourishing it once more after years of subdued residence above the thick, dark clouds of ash.

“It’s lovely to have the sun back”, I mused, staring at the supernatural-seeming golden glow the sun cast upon us, lightening everybody’s mood.

I noticed several people casting cautious looks outside, their eyes filled with suspicion and hope. Some came outside, including a small child, seeming absolutely in awe of the light. I realised with a pang of sympathy that he probably had never seen sunlight before.

His mother was wiping her eyes as she watched him walk around in the light, and run; and then he was cheering and chanting and grabbing her hand, pulling her fully out in the light.

Helen was watching them all appraisingly, calling to some that the sunlight was real.

Sunlight is here; and this time, we will look after it.

 

The government is ablaze with confused joy. What had happened? Were the volcanoes no longer erupting? Were we no longer suffering the consequences of our human mistakes?

Since my outburst as teenager about this “catastrophe” to my parents and my dad’s work colleagues, they’d been increasingly wary of me. I have never gotten rid of the idea, though; the dreaded day when the ancient volcano in Pompeii erupted, its ashes settling on the clouds, hardening them, I knew “it” was here. The following months eruptions all over the world continued, devastating cities, connections, and the certainty that humans were indeed good creatures. The tides were in some places rising heavily while in others, namely in the south, all water seemed inclined to travel north. Scientists discovered that a severe changing in the gravitational force of the Earth, growing heavier every moment we loaded it with new polluting gases, had taken place, pulling at the dead magma inside the volcanoes and at the water on Earth. I didn’t understand it properly; not even the scientists, it seemed, believed that their own theory was thoroughly true.

My “husband” is ill. I don’t know what is wrong with him, and if he wasn’t so lazy, I might even have taken the trouble to try and find out. No, that’s not true; I’m doing my best now, but I like to think that I’m not.
The problem is, though, that the whole country seems to be in turmoil - or the whole planet, rather, but I can’t find out, since it has been impossible to connect to a phone or the Internet since the volcanoes’ early erupting.

I stared up at the clouds, now closer to white and almost dissolving, letting more sunlight in by the minute, hoping that my family at home in England could see the sight I was just now; this beautiful sight of sun we’d all once forgotten to appreciate.

The weather, too, had changed. It was no longer cold; that bitter chill, oblivious of any coats or jackets, striking into the body like myriads of minute icy needles.

A sudden idea struck me. If we had sunlight, if we had warmth, then might we not have connections to telephone lines?

I rushed to the attic, remembering that the phone was there. If I could just find it, I might be able to connect to England; to my family.

The attic was dusty and dark, with cobwebs in every corner of the room. I got an eerie feeling of being surveyed carefully by all the nocturnal insects I was disturbing; keeping my head down and my jacket clasped tightly around myself, I went in search of that particular abandoned cardboard box. I felt strangely sorry for all those old belongings we’d had to throw away.

“Here it is”, I muttered sombrely, pulling at the strong tape holding the box shut.

The first thing I noticed in the box was the flashlight. The batteries had stopped working after some time, and new ones had been impossible to find.

I noticed several other objects then; long-forgotten electronic devices, mostly, extension cords, DVDs and CDs.
I piled the things up, sorting them into groups of what was most important to me until finally I found the telephone and its cord. I took it downstairs, trembling with hope.

I connected it quickly, holding my breath all the while, and dialled my parents’ phone number. It surprised me how clearly I remembered it; all this information my subconscious mind had stored.

I held my breath. Nothing happened.

In frustration I threw the phone across the room. It hit the wall with a satisfying clash; and then I wished I hadn’t thrown it. I slumped on the old sofa, ignoring the sunlight streaming in from the dusty windows. All my happiness of seeing it seemed to seep out of me; it hadn’t succeeded in connecting to my parents’ phone. Unless they had discarded it when the connections first died down or taken it up to their attic, it meant that the connections still didn’t work.

Then, suddenly, I heard a strange sound. I looked around for the source of the sound, but found nothing inside. The sound had grown louder, I noticed, as I stepped out of the house and looked up at the sky.

I didn’t believe my eyes. This isn’t real, I told myself. It can’t be.

But it was. It was an aeroplane; a real one, flying over the top of my head. I squinted up at it in awe, and then rushed inside. Nothing seemed to be going fast enough.

This brings me to the present, now. I’m flying to England today; and packing now. I left a note on the bedside table of the bed. My idle husband is asleep.

I’m wondering if he’s really that bad. Maybe he’s been ill all along and I didn’t notice.

It’s too late to turn back now. But what if the planes don’t fly? And what about money? I’m worried.

“Dad,” I say stubbornly, “It’s not funny.”

He laughs even harder. I clench my teeth in frustration. Why now, of all moments, does he choose not to listen to me?

“It’s really going to happen. I just know it is.”

Dad smiles at me; an amused, knowing smile. The sort of smile a parent might give to a child deliberately being silly or stupid or causing an exaggerated drama about something.

“But not now. Why don’t we get going?”

I bite back my retort. I begin to see a way of spreading the knowledge of the terrible future. My own image of it is obscure, but I know it’s going to happen. And the papers proved it.

Dad lets me out of the car at his work. He’s promised that the visit will be quick, and I take his word for that; whatever place he’s planning to take me to afterwards, I also take his word for it being a “nice place” as he described it.

Each of Dad’s colleagues has a small, private space with a computer and in many cases, pictures of their family or friends and a paper shelf or holder.

Dad sits down in his chair, lounging comfortably. He introduces me to one of his colleagues, Anthony, sitting in the space next to him.

I move over to his colleague and say, without thinking, “Did you know that the future is a bad thing? You’d expect us to have sunlight and electricity, but it’s not going to be like that, we’re going to have a murky grey sky and hail and cold weather and volcanoes erupting because of the Earth getting heavier and heavier and then there’ll be floods in some places and in others droughts and …”

Anthony stares at me uncertainly and gestures vaguely at Dad. That gesture infuriates me. I storm right out of the office and sulk down in the reception, refusing to speak to anyone who passes me and ask if I am all right.

Dad goes down to me and sits beside me.

“Where did you get all these ideas from, Katie? They’re absurd.”

I don’t answer him.

“Please answer me. Katherine.”

“I don’t want to,” I say accusingly.

“Tough,” Dad says. He takes me out of the building and down into the car park.

“I think a trip to the doctor should be in order,” he says loftily.

I scowl.

I see my life in a flash as the television news report of the volcano eruption in Pompeii.

I know the situation will only get worse. I wish I could see my family.

 

Sunlight is here. It visited today, and the temperature is increasing steadily. I think of something and abruptly get some paper, my old inky pen, and start to write:

Ominous grey clouds hovered on the verge of heavy downpour as I gathered the laundry in my arms, heaving the pile over to rest on my hip…