I can tell you what happened to Fergus. And why I am here.
It’s like when your computer is not quite frozen. The hourglass icon tips and ticks, the memory crunching, but you press control-alternate-delete, anyway, because starting over is quicker than waiting for things to free up.
It’s like you’re a tourist in Chicago on a cloudy day. Wanting to see the city from the top of the tallest building in the world, but knowing that if you even bothered to ride the elevator up the 110 floors of the Sears Tower, ears popping up to the Skydeck, all you would see out the long, clear windows is 360 degrees of Gray.
And rain is forecast for each day you will be in town.
So you tell yourself, well, that building in Malaysia is taller, besides. If you count the antennas.
It’s like when you sit with your legs crossed on the train. One ankle balanced on the opposite knee, which cuts it’s blood. But you can’t tell, don’t notice your that reclining foot is crowding with icy pins. You eyes are too embossed in the winter sunset, the freezing rain as it stripes the train windows blurry over premature darkening blues and blacks of the sky.
When the train recording announces your stop, slows to the soggy platform like constipation and you have to get up, you step on your good foot, then on your prickly foot and realize that while you forced all your senses into your eyes to observe the outsides beyond your window, you neglected to feel the blood flee from your toes.
You step to the doors as they slide open. You step funny, flinging your ankle with no tactile gauge of how far you are flinging it. You walk like: step, limp, kick. Like a can-can crackhead. Your dead foot bouncing in front of you like a shoed frog.
You wish there were a special room by the train stop for the alleviation of sleeping limbs. A padded space in which you could bang the dozed limb on a soft wall until it fizzled back into feeling.
But there is none such room, so you do your crazy walk across the platform, your shoes tapping out a ka-dunk, ka-dunk rhythm and 50 thousand pairs of mocking eyes and leering camera lenses are watching, giggling at your absurdity and powerlessness. You and your useless foot.
It’s like when the sunless day is so dismal. The artificial glow of night is a whole lot brighter.
Do you get it, now?
