Chapter Twenty-Seven: Heart in the Hand of the Matter

Here, in increasingly distant reflection, did things at some opportune time come clearer? Clearer and clearer… Look into the mirror (glass)—

About two-and-a-half months ago, Waluigi had been cornered at the dead-end of an alleyway by the Sarasan police. Yes, after all: they did manage to catch him… Gripping a bag of stolen groceries in one hand, horrified (horrifying) expression on his face: mouth open in a confused gape, lips curved, teeth showing, great nose enlarged and bent at some absurd angle (had he been in a fist-fight recently?), comical or at least aesthetically-reminiscent spotlight circling around so that his head (sans hat), face, even most of the lanky body was in portrait, cutting off near the bottom of the legs. (Understand that, this was in a paper in the newspaper, black-and-white and cartoon-noir-ish.) And then it was on the internet, everywhere on the Chai internet, for a little while. And imagine!: The laughter, the comedy, the disgust, the confusion, that THIS was the face of what haunted Chai…

The overwhelming unconscious energy of the anonymous internet, pouring forth sheer intense emotional reaction— !

Those months ago, Bowser had been one of the few, so he imagined, to not have commented on the revelation of the killer. He had known already— and it was just with silent dumbfoundedness that he beheld that it was Over. Whatever future confrontation he imagined with Waluigi was not going to come to pass, because the authorities had done their job.

But then again, Waluigi had never really had anything to do with him. Waluigi was the curse of Luigi. If he was the remnant of anyone's guilt (to diminish this man's existence & fate to the introverted symbolic perspective only affordable to the over-brooding thinker, the narcissist, or both one-in-the-same), it was Luigi's guilt.

So Bowser acknowledged the news, after initial silence, with a sigh. With a nod. And then he went out for a walk. And the air was light, and full of hope, and confirmation. The world wasn't on his shoulders. Not every capped and overall-ed mustached maniac was his problem.

Then, shortly after, Night came. And everyone was reminded that underneath our personal problems, chaotic, unpredictable Mother Nature was the greater determiner of fates. If not stark death, she could dole out at least the severing of relations, the near-collapse of the community. Our lovely "collective conscious", our collective culture! Was it, after all, just the developed response and counter-action to the surging waves of Nature?

Our battle to structure, to build a wall around a patch of dirt, until the earth shakes again and the walls come tumbling down— and Nature claims her earth again?

In the depths of his uncontrolled contemplations (when he didn't even notice he was lost in thought, when the spike of pain of his ugly ghostly companion didn't encourage him to stop thinking for the moment) he occasionally came across the textless vision of a woman in red. The form was almost completely indecipherable, but at least he knew it was feminine, and it was red. Was it—?

The bus was stopping. The bus was stopping— The existence of the present! Ever here, ever here… The ideal end…

"Live in the present. Live in the present. When you think of the past, you are depressed. When you think of the future, you are anxious. Therefore, live in the present— the only time that really exists! Have you heard that one before? I think Lao Tzu talked about it."

Yes, he had heard. And there was the old problem: Knowing many words and words in many combinations did not provide the feeling the words attempted to prescribe or describe.

"Yes, well… You have to put it all into practice. If you're lazy (like I think you are) then you'll never get anywhere."

Quiet…

(...) (...) (...) — — —

The bus stop!

But it's not the right one. Not at the train station yet.

From the station take a train… take a train out to the edge of the land, as far as it'll go, and then take a bus, and… Etc. Etc.

So anyway ("What excellent narration! Jumping here and there like a drunken grasshopper! What are you, a wannabe postmodernist?") Waluigi was gone, behind bars. Right in time for Night to come down and send everyone else behind more metaphorical bars. It was (Postmodernist? Before we even knew the word, many years before we even knew what such a thing might mean, it had soaked deep into the culture, it was the language of the modern art [of the various realms of creative expression], it was coded into our cultural DNA, the paintbrushes we were provided, the sometimes difficult, sometimes pretentious, yet somehow in our rushing chaos of reality the more honest expression, the context-warbling melting and re-solidifying camera lens that described the modern world and time where we were born—) excellent timing, the timing of one symbolic problem after another, or at least to the symbol-riddled (trying to find meaning) mind, it was so. Perhaps only, in the whole world, or at least all of Chai, or at least all of his apartment room, only Bowser at all was thinking this way.

"And it is the sign of a psychotic, or someone with a hideous neurosis. Just have sex. Sex! Sex sex sex sex! So easy!"

That hadn't really changed the conversation. It had pushed the questioning in general away for a week, but then the words had just bubbled up again.

(What! Did something(s?) happen? How can you be so coy, you jerk!? Did everything interesting happen during the Intermission? For god's sake!)

Bowser would hope that was not the most interesting… (Cough, blush [Oh, grow up])... That the events of Intermission (assuming he was privy to this dialogue) were not the most important or most interesting in the narrative.

— (CALLING THE GREAT NARRATIVE CAREENING JACKASS: COME BACK TO EARTH! REPEAT; RETURN TO EARTH!) —

Chai's train station was not as deserted as the rest of the city. Business people still needed to go from place to place, and there was still the occasional panicked individual who intended to "escape" Chai, or was coming to Chai to "escape" somewhere else, convinced that Night was less prevalent in one place or another. Everyone wore masks… And now, Bowser put on his.

He didn't like wearing the masks. The heat of trapped breath reminded him of hiding underneath his bed covers as a little child, breathing in the hot darkness, knees huddled up to head.

The sheet… the sheet is a shield against the monsters of the dark. Wielding it like a cape, holding it up like the matador before the bull, he could imagine its magical power. To combat evil and the powers of darkness—

"Do you think…?"

(...) (...) (...) — — —

The sheet is the power of transformation. It is the curtain. It is the veil.

(...) (...) (...) — — —

Was this really it? A single bag… and a train ticket. And he was leaving Chai. But it had been even simpler to leave the Mushroom Kingdom originally, hadn't it? Wandering away from the hospital, mind dulled, spirit dulled, senses mostly gone. He may as well have been carried by an angel. Moved from place to place like a game piece. Was he guided by an angel… or a devil? It wasn't even possible to recognize this question alone, except at the very rare moment—

And the train, so empty. Maybe: Fifty seats per compartment, and five seats in each compartment occupied. Easy to get a window seat, if you're curious. Easy to get an aisle seat, if you've got a weak bladder. Easy to get a middle seat, if you're a masochist.

Bowser takes a window seat. The rush of the landscape outside is therapeutic. The constant revelry of sights, of buildings and hills and trees, provides continual input for the eyes, and the buzz of thought quiets.

Outside—

—

(Refreshment.)

It will be some time before the train reaches its destination. Bowser is tired of reading. So, he'll sleep for now...

Sleep well, Bowser. Rest…

His dreams are immensely confused. Tumbles of people, all sorts of characters, clashing, interacting. Here! By God, here! —Are all the stories he was looking for. Situation after situation, interesting fantasy, one after another, light and darkness. Behold the spontaneous! Enough stories in a single dream to fill several books over! Where are you, where are you? Why do you stay here, why won't you come to reality? —So Bowser wonders, in-between the theater show. This is when more ordinary conscious thought, observing the parade, slips in like a stream between the valleys, pondering it all, pondering the spontaneous show…

The shining narrative— If it only exists here, in the dreams, then maybe Bowser will just sleep forever… No, not in the sense of death, but simply to spend a life of slumber… If waking life is mostly disappointment, then…

But some part still hopes, still believes, that the dream can become reality. Somehow… somehow… The world can be saved. It seems so impossible, the night has lasted so long, that the light is impossible to remember. But something says: It Exists.

Rest well, Bowser. Rest well...