Radioactive Half Life
Stability prevails.
Here is a story in pieces, because I want to tell everyone but I do not want anyone to know. It begins with nothing. It begins with the absence of something.
Do you ever look back on something and think; how did I miss that?
1. Vanishing Act
I said I wanted something aloud. I closed my eyes and it disappeared. Everything gone except two bodies in a portaloo. As if a storm had ripped through and carried everyone else away. Then he left, and nothing became something doubled.
When he thinks of me, he probably thinks, she left. Beth left. She was an egotist, she never let me go. I am, and I never did.
There is no such thing as time, but there are things which need to be chased across the plane of things happened.
I said I wanted something aloud. I closed my eyes and it disappeared.
2. Laneway Return Precluded by Severe Tropical Cyclone Gabrielle
Cyclone Gabrielle has said “shove it up yours” to music lovers eager for the return of Laneway Festival, which was scheduled for Monday 30th January, 2023. The indie-focussed festival has not taken place since early 2020, with Covid-19 restrictions having made the gathering illegal in subsequent years.
Bitterness passed the evening with a quiet toast to what so nearly could never have been again.
Severe Tropical Cyclone Gabrielle was a powerful and destructive tropical cyclone that devastated parts of the North Island of New Zealand and affected parts of Vanuatu and Norfolk Island in February 2023.
The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research reported that an entire summer’s worth of rain fell within one day in what it described as a 1-in-200-year event.
It was as if she knew how this would end.
3. The Man Who Never Dreams Dreamt
“I had the craziest dream last night, me and you were trying to escape rising flood water”
By then I could only listen to soft pseudo inspirational american-idol-esque pop from the early 2000s.
I did ask him if we got away, but he didn’t know - something had woken him up.
It was as if he knew how this would end.
4. Secrets Discovered Under Breath of Piccadilly Line Screech
The exhale stands for exhaustion, for not quite knowing why you are so exhausted, gripping the back of the train with weakening fingers, until the grip slips and you are on the tracks.
5. A Common Enemy
She is “bitch” or “stupid bitch” on a bad day. He is always “cunt”. And they hide in the solidified shadow of affection which the other felt toward them - like a child behind a large coat. Enemy fought by army of one; will never go anywhere. Soon they have existed longer and more animatedly in the shadow of disdain than they did in any real relationship - burdensome only to the one anguished. But these are short lived radioactive half-lives; the others from whose perspective our relationship was the dark, corner-dwelling form (and not the first time it was imagined this way).
A new fugitive provides a common enemy, like Brits vs the weather, or Brits vs traffic, or any middle aged woman and her glass of wine vs Slimming World. It is these shared points of contention, the black holes mutually agreed into existence, which mean that we can all get along. We must direct our negative thoughts to the same place or we will get nowhere. The new fugitive provides an answer to a lingering allegation, proof of innocence, strength of character, betterness.
6. The Future
In radioactivity, half-life is the time it takes for half of the unstable nuclei in a sample to decay. (Britannica (2018)). The initiation of the decay is random and spontaneous. In the half life the source becomes and doubles, then four become two, against the backing of a billion years. And we end with the absence of something else.
I did think: I’ve never been this far before, and I did ask: what happens now? The answer, glaringly obvious - it continues.
