Papa Shanghai´s Takeout

All-organic weirdness

Page 21 of 40

Coin.

My name is Colin and I am a coin. No one introduces themselves on this vast space that our host P.S. calls a takeout stall. Well, I am taken, out and in. I am being exchanged, traded, even used as a judge.

Throw me in the air, I will show you which path to follow in a universe of endless possibilities. Just by landing on one side, you will have your answer within seconds. How do I do it? You wouldn’t understand.

I have excited for centuries. I have seen all forms life can take. Yet, what I am most curious about is the arrogance of the individual handling me.

I laugh at your egoistic attitude that your throw could alter my complex inner workings, deciding your next step. I laugh at you calling me a medium to transfer goods from one person to another. I smile, together with my colleagues, at your mere understanding of the potential that we bear.

I enable, I conquer. I am your genie, if you just rub me enough.

I am so much more than the materials I am made from, can you say the same about yourself? I take pride in the fact that I can be measured, I know my strength and my limit. I am in the present…. Can you hear me?

He looks closer at the coin.

“Can I help you with anything?”, the store clerk asks.

“I am not sure yet….

….the options are endless.”, he answers, “I’ll have one of the usual and one of the new!”

– “What’s the new?”, the clerk asks.

“Just a moment.”

He takes the coin, looks at it, the coin winks back. He throws it up and both he and the clerk watch it spin in the air.

Weekly state: moving.

Hello, it’s me. Your favorite cloud.

What a fine time it has been, me, writing into the void. You, seeing what has happened to your dear Papa Shanghai.

I see us, floating towards new dimensions. For some, it is a new job. For others, it is defining themselves by embedding into a new culture.

What did we learn by moving forward? Did we learn anything? The wheel keeps on anyway.

I seek comfort, I seek perseverance. I am an entity not bound by physical contraindications and constraints. I should be free but I seek a frame.

Drawings are momentary, they capture a moment in time. Photographs aim to portray emotions. Still, I am here, floating above all, trying to evade those chains.

So what’s left for me? How can we escape capture?

Keep on,

Keep on …

Moving.

Weekly state: regaining.

I consume energy, I spend it, it comes back.

Nothing gets lost in this universe, as much as we might want something to vanish forever.

Consolation in grief, threat in relief.

I am walking, my cultural background tells me to do it. One foot after another, I decide where to put them. No one drives me, I am neither pushed nor pulled. With every inch moved, I get further away from the last moment, closer to what is about to happen to me.

Everything seems linear, creation ahead of me, dissolution in my back. But what if I regain something? Regain an ability, a thought, maybe even something material?

Nothing is lost in this universe.

Does a hamster realise that it runs the same ground over and over in the wheel?

Sometimes I am returning to the same ground in this humongous wheel only to find that the ground looks different because someone else has been treading it as well. I am wondering who has managed to form the path ahead of me and why it is different now.

I escape the linear function of life, I am regaining the same ground, same same, but different.

Weekly state: preserved.

Pressure is what makes diamonds, so I have heard.

Lavish lifestyle, there to decay. Fading brilliance of new things. Look beyond, what leaves a scar that makes you smile slyly?

I have been back, in full force. I was welcomed, by bright sunshine and an eternally blue sky. I breathed in, once the city’s odour, then the one inside one of the dark underground pivo places that once was a ground floor.

This whole city has been elevated, now it is built on top of its own history. Preserved in the darkness, the moist earth. We keep on living in these caverns of forgotten times. Sometimes, we begin to become forgotten ourselves.

I am back, keeping with the pulse of this magnificent Loch of a city, the history is my Nessie and I am here to hunt forever, like Captain Ahab.

So here I sit, with my harpoon leaning against the damp stones. I am having my beer, hoping to become just like these underground caverns.

Historical, untouched, preserved.

Weekly state: brrrrr.

Heavens have opened their gates and sunshine is filling the vast fields of snow. Romantic atmosphere, love all around.

Yet, my teeth rattle.

How I wish I could hibernate. But I need to go through the cold times.

I have found out that all the best activities in life are either exclusively practiced during summer or accelerated in pleasure but this season. So here I am, trying to find something that wastes my time.

« Older posts Newer posts »