But sometimes I wonder which I prefer more: the certainty of an empty city on the brink of disintegration, or the streets full of colorful people all twisted to the tune of insecurity. It feels like a clear choice. You wake up in the morning, take a shower, finish your daily duties and responsibilities, and then meet your friends to relax with any of a list of mindless activities. Granted enough money and love, one should feel happy, but happiness is fleeting, and besides, money and love do not come easily. A lot of blood and guts for something you are much more likely to lose than keep. Moreover, there is this nagging feeling that once that buzzing sound strengthens, things develop in a different direction where one becomes nothing more than a static figurine on someone else’s chessboard. And then, of course, there is this thing about people turning into rocks…
Paper chess figurines float through the air over some dry bushes, burnt coal matches, rusty hacksaws and torn circus posters. From the railings, the smiling face of a Cyclops declares that the random viewer, whoever he might be, is in fact, Melancholia itself. An olive-colored rock stares at the poster, a guilty blue orchid stretching into a smile from one of its cracks. The special tactics unit slowly approaches the orchid, blazing guns choking their hands, and with due diligence reaches for the tender flower. Then, the wind wavers, the orchid shakes and the special tactics unit goes pale, then drops dead to the ground. As the evening approaches, the orchid grows ever more beautiful.
Meteor showers spray through the eye of a stray dog, lighting up the sky with the fierceness of a chimera gone wild. For a wink, these showers could pass for the real thing, but it’s obvious as the crystal shards fall flat on the ground and we see them for the human remains they are. It’s s a new kind of warfare this, where no politician hides behind his people. In fact, the new fire guns use the people themselves as bullets and cannonballs. Just because they’re broken, it doesn’t mean they cannot be useful. So, we get these 2 AM pretend meteor showers made of screams, fired up in the air as warning shots from our neighbors. Well, the dull anchorman from the plasma screen says we only have one neighbor we need to be afraid of, but I know better, you know better, everyone knows better. We’re all each other neighbors and there’s no stopping us. The Big Hum is opening somewhere and we can already feel the rock tissue pushing in on us. Let the showers begin.
Arch of negativity stretches across the sky, like a rainbow made of steel gray colors. It sucks the whole city, heart and soul. The dailies don’t pay any attention and continue with the babble surrounding the near East and other irrelevant matters. It’s not like anyone will die – they will merely fall apart and disappear. There will be no new graves dug up, no new obituaries, and certainly no farewell dinners. And besides, who doesn’t fall apart is turned into a rock, at least for ten or so hours. “Rock is good,” graffiti says near the city’s center. A bronze cow seems to be sleeping, and doesn’t notice anything.
From time to time, they figure, they need to give hope to the masses, just to get them going towards their daily jobs, and move the economy a freakin’ inch or two closer to whatever it is they predicted. But their plans are all messed up and none of them seem motivational enough, so they scrap everything and start from nil. It is a frustrating job, this endless planning, but someone has to do it, and why not if it keeps you from becoming a rock every time the hum comes. A wall of boredom is known to hit them when the rest of the world dies for a few hours, but it is nothing a few gulps of home-made liquor won’t cure. Some of them pretend to read something, “for educational purposes” they say, but it is well-known that they are simply scared. Who knows what a mouth can blurt out when it is drunk? A few wrong words here, a few wrong words there, and you are out of the joint, and in the middle of the street, becoming a rock like everyone else. They have cameras everywhere, but they don’t really need them. There is always someone that doesn’t like you around, and they always have good ears for information like this. Some people are so well-informed of the others’ intentions they don’t have to hear anything. You lie down on the silk sofa in front of the monitors and you receive this strange message that you’re called by management for good. Those who have questioned the leadership are nowhere around to pass their experience to the younger ones. The most rebellious are marked even after they are thrown out, always in a different manner. If you ever see a big piece of rock set in the middle of a street with a thick coat of pink paint smudged across, you know this guy said something terribly bad in front of the monitors. “It’s for motivational purposes,” they say, before bursting in laughter the size of Saturn.
