an Art of Dying fragment
Looking back, I don’t know how on earth I even thought of this, whence I the notion surfaced, and how I then had the gall to actually do it, and how I then somehow, it appears, got away with it (without a compulsory 72-hour hold for observation).
It’s early winter now and I’m still living in the cold attic room in Gunilla’s big yellow house (see Homeless). She and I had been an item of sorts for a week or two late the previous summer (which is when she invited homeless me to move into this little cupboard of a room under the slanting roof timbers) and I should probably have moved out once we had gone our separate romantic ways, but I stayed on (having nowhere else to go, quite frankly) for several more months, and into this cold Swedish winter.
I think part of the reason I remained there is that I got along very well with the rest of the family, especially Gunilla’s mom, Gun. She was a great lady and for some reason very much on my side on many strange issues.
And, yes, I still had a crush on Gunilla.
The crushee, on the other hand, shared no such feeling and by rights I guess, kept ignoring me. Very thoroughly.
Well, someone as starved for attention as I was would find it very hard to be so very ignored and for so long, and I was no exception. And then there was the refusing-to-let-go-of-me crush. How on earth can I get this girl’s attention, and (more importantly) interest restored. This was my problem, pondered under the cold roof of my attic room.
And so I landed on this brilliant idea: I would put on a clever crazy act, pretending that I was having visions — specifically, the vision of Bob Dylan showing up in my room real as anything.
Why him? I don’t know. As good a specter as any, I guess. And, yes, I did admire him very much at the time.
“He’s up there. He’s up there in my room. I can see him so clearly.” That’s what I planned to say, after glazing my eyes and stumbling down the stairs and into their much warmer living room.
Farfetched? Yes, of course it was farfetched. Farfetched for any normal, rational human being. But I was neither of the above at the time so I did precisely that: I stumbled down the stairs and then walked about their living room like a zombie, bumping into things not quite yelling that he was up there, in my room, right now, clear as day, he was up there: Bob Dylan.
The trick in situations like this is to, while glazy-eyed and rambling about also to keep an eye on reactions and effects; especially, how did Gunilla react to all this? Did she realize what a special person I was, having such amazing special and interesting visions? Bob Dylan for crying out loud! In my room!
Looking back, I honestly do not remember what her reaction was. I believe her dad asked me who the hell Bob Dylan was, and I believe I didn’t answer him since anyone as possessed by curious and interesting visions as I was would not have heard the question.
Gun asked me to sit down, I believe, and may even have given me some tea or coffee to calm me down. Mia, the youngest of Gunilla’s sisters (only five or six at the time), was more than likely both confused and scared by my act of feigned insanity. Her other two sisters probably helped Gun calm me down and bring me back to reason.
Then I decided to reward their labors and come to. Looking around me, I asked Gun, “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I think she said. “You were seeing ghosts, I think.” Which, I think she did not find so impossible or even unusual since she grew up in a small village among Northern Sweden folks for whom ghosts were, if not a daily fare at least not unheard of.
Gunilla, likely seeing right through me and my act, had left by this time.
So much for restoring interest.
© Wolfstuff
