Of the Spheres

Galatea of the Spheres by Salvador Dali

Johnson imagined himself disintegrating  - into swirling atoms, into tiny invisible spheres that bounced about in chaotic motions.

There were forces pulling him in different directions. To be, to not be. To do, to refrain from doing. To act upon this first, or that.

In nature, there are two forces - entropy and extropy. The former suggests that everything tends toward disorder and chaos and anarchy. The latter suggests that everything become increasingly ordered, from atoms to molecules to cells to tissues to organs to organisms. These forces are antithetical; they are opposites that define each other. They can co-exist.

At times, he wondered if these two forces - both pushing and pulling in opposite directions - were existing in him.

He imagined himself being turned into a cascade of atoms, mindlessly tumbling in the atmosphere.

Impossible flights

"Still life with flowers (cut), fruits (rotting) and a dove (mangled, still and not alive)"

"Grey on grey"

Grey on grey,

he breathes,

a whisper,

an answer lost in the winds.

She puffs,

why?

"Why"?

This word tastes strange,

like the colour of white gone bad

or the touch of solid clouds.

Why "why"?

What "why"?

The Hollow Victory

The little boy clamoured. His hands reached out and flailed helplessly in the air while his legs kicked about impotently. The boy wanted to throw a fuss but the clear silicone pacifier was in his mouth. All he could do was to let out a bristling garble.

He wanted to be off his pram, to clutch his latest toy - a battery-powered train which, with its packaging, is about it's new owner's size.

There was a certain irony, one he couldn't really place. A boy clamouring for a toy train on a real, underground train. A potent lyricism.

And there was something painfully banal about this scene. The parents who sat apart from each other. The noisy, self-absorbed boy. The bright riots of green-yellow-blue mass-manufactured toy.

It was a scene that should be poignant. That should raise eyebrows and draw curious looks. But it didn't. For such scenes are far too common.