The Enlightenment

Michael Gardiner

Stale air in the lungs again: a voice says we're fine, we're brand new. Is that me, that voice. The sky is full of clocks: ‘08-15-2015: 15.08. 52, 53, 54'. Behind the digits, hailstones slant across Arthur's Seat through pale summer sun. This couch seems surrounded by laundry and bottles, and no-one seems to be tidying it. What I seem to be doing is lying here getting over the blast, slowly, the wall displays grey with clouds full of links.

Noticing this lack of action I get up, arms out to feel for the sideboard. The Dewar estate sharpens into view slowly, streets veined with logos and navigation strips. I'd come to the window to think of some other thing, some other matter of gravity, but now I'm here I can't mind what. A bottle of lager lies in the hand: I make my way back to the couch, head banging.

Through the side window we can see the docks, and pick out buildings on the Fife coast on clear days, but here there are no completely clear days. Down in front, cars pull each other around the hill in a docile electronic line, their drivers kicking back with their research, feet up on the dashboards. Christ I'm wandering here, wandering with the head pounding and the wall displays filthy. If you stand very still and press on the temples with both palms, spilling a drop of beer on the carpet. The carpet's covered in beer stains.

This diary thread will all get turned into text somewhere and go public, on some list: we all express ourselves now. Hailstones are battering off the pane so hard you wonder when it'll crack. Straining the eyes away from the shaking windows, I get the work files into folders and squeeze them closed. At least I've good clear-coloured jobs: some I used to know have barely adapted. And when do we ever see see them, the, but nostalgia will have to wait, as spots of wet fog swim together, then drift apart, close in, and the walls distending

*

A flash rips through the flat, leaving a world of after-image. The walls light up; memories stuck to the sides of the mind get flushed out. The asterisk blasts explodes into billions of characters. The enlightenment.

I shake my head at my lists, squint towards the room. Blinded again by the wealth of news, and what can you say about that. A half-empty lager bottle's adapted into a white stick, and he's off and running, feeling his way. Head up with awakened consciousness to the walls crawling with news that looks that bit like the real dry rot of the old flats.

The finance minister's on his way. At the last blast, 81% had doubts, and 55% always means resignation. As news spaces get taken, opinion turns into democracy curves. A sky of curves like rainbows through the drizzle: I'd come to the window to think of some thing, some thing of gravity, but now my attention's slipping and the brain's like dead leaves, rusted levers. The eyes being pulled about like a seventh division defence.

Claire breaks the display by opening the door. She tsks the state of my walls and passes through to the poky kitchenette. I notice I'm horizontal again, staring up at swirls on the ceiling, reclining in the pose of the twentieth-century drug addict. But you can't always be stopping mid-list to acknowledge persons coming in and going out, when you’re trying to get the news through you. The blood thumps; the eyes rest on plaster spirals and wish for perpetual peace.

Claire stands in my nook by the road window and muses on the cars and the shite-covered bank. White blouse and charcoal-grey wool, that northern chic. They should pay her properly. I follow her trace round the room and find myself mouthing the words to ‘Misty'. The lyrics are up on the front display, take a couple of meaty blinks to disappear. These days I rarely lay hands on that blouse with candidly sexual intent, I reflect, the passage from the non-sexual to the sexual being a long one.

The minister's performance figures stretch out in up the hill in their endless accountability, renewing themselves as you chase them. Diary, I'd go through that bedroom and bend her over the unwanted linen hamper, a face full of sky, the genes bundled up tight as clouds. These figures will take some undoing.

What you looking at.

Listen -- the voice trails off as pressure builds on the eyes.

The mess in here. It's true: the display's a disgrace. The diary splashed out all over the sky. The messy English. Claire leans over the back of her chair to pick through the debris as the news builds, her stockings lightening as they stretch. As she turns I feel like saying something. A word of thanks: the past or the future, some thing. But the packed information stutters in the rainclouds and

*

Light reaches into the brain. Hands smooth over the blouse front, as they often do in a blast. The vision so wide that it hurts, but now the pain's over, the pain lasted no time at all, for time in the bin counts zero.

Somewhere beyond the couch John was trying to speak. In front, out over the grey blocks the enlightenment separates into links into familiar as family. Each one gets arranged and personalized, as if by instinct. Maybe it is. I find the arm flailing about for the sleeve of John's V-neck.

Stop that. You'll bite your tongue. I still can't turn though, head forwards towards the rearranged news. Christ at least we get battered by nothing worse than choice, tongue in or tongue out. It could all get violent so easy: stop voting and see. Face out towards the streams, diary, answering polls, residual lists tugging the eyeballs to no avail, for I'm used to avoiding trash. John humphs as I walk across his vision, still struggling with folders, tosses his head back.

I find myself ordering sweetcorn in the kitchen. I can’t shake the word lipoproteins. A bag of sweetcorn's stuck out on the windowsill already, blown about in the wind. The window squeaks when I pull it, designed not to shut flush in its frame. Things are never quite perfect. John knits his fingers to cradle the clouds, with a look of puzzlement, hair fuzzy. Drops of news fall through his hands all the same. His walls suggest an evening of aimless nostalgia.

Get out there into Human Understanding.

What.

You can find what you need. If you make the effort.

I sometimes think that's the problem.

The effort.

The finding what you need.

I don't know why I bother. Did I finish that tea. Did I make it. A tangle of reviews gathers, breaks up, gathers again, like clouds. Like crowds. Christ John you only live once. He sighs, looking tireder than I remember.

And there isn't much time. He turns, wide-eyed, tired, stares at my mouth. Look at the volume of research we have to do.

John we make our own time. We make all --

*

This searing pain in the memory. Eyes open: our wants come and seize us, yawning out like a three-minute scream. A carnival going on for years.

The streaming's better these days. Clearer. Have I been screaming really, diary, or was that a figure of speech.

Santander got a winner deep in injury time. Injury--time winners flood the sky: you have to remember to breathe.

I was by the window for some damn reason. Now we've a sky full of news and we're on the case and taking part. When I manage a glance, Claire's eyes are flickering, her head rolling on the chair cover. “Home” puckers up round her ears.

Will we take a walk up the hill. She doesn't look round. Will we go outside. I point up the hill through the window, beyond the minister’s stats and the travel news. She grips the chair as if about to fall off. The ancient blue carpet stretches between our chairs like sky as the blast goes on. We've got to sling that carpet, I think, then wonder how often I think that.

The lager makes the afternoon air that bit staler: that metallic feel on the palate during enlightenments. Human Understanding laps up round the nostrils: I do the swimming mime to Claire, who isn't looking. She's quicker than me, and ready to move onto Moral Sentiments, where there's always a story to keep the eyes supple. But first she clears a minute and gets her works out the sideboard, drawing neuro solution into the rainbow-coloured syringe, then scouring her forearm.

Watch yourself, I tell her. She's scratching away half-blind.

I'm rattling for this.

Not funny. I take the needle and do it for her anyway. Her eyes close, then flood, and she falls back onto a leaping salmon. I can't say I approve, but half the locals take neuro solution to sharpen them up for the blasts. She looks up through a faceful of hair.

The fine, the finance minister.

What do you have.

Some note his speeds in the venues.

Politicians are always quick.

Ah well.

He won't last the evening.

He will not, not last. She sighs and narrows her eyes. I watch solution work over her face, years of news and amnesia working into her skin. At times I imagine I can still see her as she was, beneath the layers of knowledge. She meshes her fingers in concentration, slopes off through the kitchen.

In the doorway she stands and rocks on her heels, playing with a nutri-meal. Its ingredients get stuck in the head after a blast like a melody you can't shift. I open my mouth to tell her, sweetcorn, then football drags me to Norwegian suburbs. Claire comes back through with something to say, then leans on the door lintel for too long. I cast round for a word.

EFL took the three points. Golden goal.

Christ John: money.

I know. I streamed in the futures. But fuck --

Fuck what.

Just, nothing. Just all these security scares. I notice my hand's shaking slightly. Claire does the deep breathing again and nods at my lager bottle, leaking over the carpet.

68% fancy us to beat the drop. 23 to finish in the top half of the table. She's gripping the door frame quite hard now, glancing at clouds with that rabbit look. The first blast after a jag is harsh.

On the way up at last, she whispers.

On the way up. And though I havan't been to the football for years, you do feel that bit more buoyant when the stats go your way. Your ears prick up when crowd noise changes somewhere in the world. Claire's blinking tiny amendments into the law.

Hell of a weather. I move towards her.

And the forecast. The first night of the festival. The weather that's news, the news that’s weather. The festival pushing down on the skull as you try to think of an easy way through its attractions. I fling down an empty bottle I find in the hand down the pet chute and open another one, knowing I'll have no chance when the

*

The world negative. Developed. The developed world sluicing through, and I'm not going to throw up.

Persian hills, cold war tours, Ukraine. For there are pictures to rest the gaze in. Behind them, a mist of lottery numbers. Democracy curves kiss the docks as I shake residuals off with a flick of the eyes that tries to look casual. The jag might let me clear a few minutes to touch my essay for the Northern British Review.

God knows we need the immortality.

Ah Claire, but -- you pay too much heed to all that. He doesn’t look like he means it, gestures down at the car park, where his essays have landed in puddles. Everyone else we know has more public presence than this.

You have to screw the eyes tight to get through a volume of votes like mine. Looking at puddles of failures it seems too much like a sign. I submit a draft to the Northern British and John lurches towards Moral Sentiments, spilling information as he goes. He's a kid for the dramas: I've come home at lunchtime to find him open-mouthed at Conduct of the Passions. He closes his eyes tightly, holds his stomach.
We'll get it under control. But my own after-image is so strong I have to feel my way round the hallway walls to get to the bathroom. As long as he doesn't leave me to deal with Wealth of Nations on my own.

The bathroom's hell of a quiet except for the echoes of news in your head. The face pressed against a shoal of paper fish we stuck above the bath when we moved in, getting waylaid mid-shoal. The ceramic echo of things clapping, the right cheek forced to the wall and covered in dye. Pornographic thoughts come and recede, and I slide back round the plaster piping. He's fixed to a domino toppling display by first-years from the art school.

I was remembering the time we moved in. He looks up.

We need to make time to remember. You've got to rest the head.

There's more on the way.

Looks like it. I reach out the hand: we do need to find time.

We'll take an hour off, I promise, not sure what to say to make the promise true, as the clouds fill with news, and

*

The mind reshuffles itself in pure, pure light. Noticing your own desires late, you end up watching yourself in a blast, or watching yourself watching. Between the gesture and the act. Where was I.

This sticking of the tongue to the palate. Skin slides down through my clouds. What age are the models this time: I hardly dare ask. Their nakedness shows their lack of muscle. If you can't control freedom you don't deserve it -- I can almost hear Claire saying. Jerking the head sharp left to get past the pictures, I realise that's how I often pull that muscle behind the ear. It always hurt there: the pornography muscle we'll call it, to save anatomies flooding in. The eyes open to skirting boards, done in municipal blue, football tables begging the prone eyes sideways.

Get a grip will you. Claire had been speaking: I make a mental note to remember what she was saying, as soon as I break the back of the blast.

The moderator's curve has landed in the drink, his stats spilled out all over the hill. You have to keep blinking the stats away to get to the kitchen, and even then can't see that great.

Bastard.

What have I told you about the kitchen after a blast. Claire's voice. Sharp things and hot things. Her lids are battering: she's getting pulled about in the lower house.

This pizza, looks, burnt. She tried to bite at it absently while she votes, missing the crust completely at times. I push the pizza towards her mouth, and notice a nutri-meal unopened on the carpet. Folders of folders, rows of rows. The throb in the head that bit out of synch with the hailstones that have started again. I bung a couple of paracetemol in a lager I find in the hand. It fizzes up and over the rim and leaves a drop on the carpet. A carnival right enough.

As I get that bit nauseous facing straight into the streaming lists, it strikes me she might not stick about forever to watch me flap through my venues that half-second slow. The personals full of guys her own speed. The dirty puddles down there filled with creativity wasted. But music can drown these kinds of thoughts out. What you need is something classical: Eno, the Aphex Twin. Manitoba. Lists of options rollercoast past: you clutch at the sideboard to balance, noticing those tiny callouses on the fingers. And then the tune that starts up is James Last, to great hilarity.But you have to stop this solo laughing, especially at things that aren't funny, like listening to James Last.

And yet you get drawn in. All music's like this at the end of the day: you can't get bored by music any more. I realise I've been shouting to stop Jim to stop, and here I am stood at the window, where each car headlight just fails to rhyme with the last. And rest the poor eyes. Over the strings and the shouting, a memory begs at the cortex. What was it. A hand in my hand.

I mean you don't look well JB.

Tired. But I can feel that hand. She lets out a strangled sigh, turns away, starts looking up advice on enlightenment fatigue, starts flickering again. We need to talk.

We'll talk. The dominoes spiral inwards to reach their centre just at the blast, for maximum immortality. They seem to fall almost too clearly, one by one by one, like opening doors. This image of needing stronger brake pads on the eyeballs. Are we getting over the toughest at last, do you reckon, she asks.

It's all a big, circle.

Try and walk to the sofa. She leads me across. You can't take the blast from the angle. You'll --

And we will make time. She looks at me oddly, and we exchange a glance. A pulse in the hand: we move towards one another, the pressure builds in the ears then she loses her grip and we

*