Petit récits

By

George O. Obikoya

At eighteen she readies for life. She tells herself aloud she seeks the goals she knows for which nothing prepares hers. To bewail she often says meets her expectations she nonetheless rejects. Her life she says curls up in a draconian mix of atavism and now masquerading in a facade of promise.

She says she sees herself everywhere she goes in the continual stupor her mind floats. She often relishes the struggle that presents, the cacophony, heedless, an incandescent humour to fill an empty soul she says then ingratiates, rejected an otherwise furlong hope.

Between the given, hers, and the mash, she vacillates in the only clarity she says she craves to ensure something sticks in time and space enmeshed. At least she says she knows she wants to live even if the options are fluid.

Her friends tell her what to do, which often conflicts with what they say their values prescribe, for similar reasons she says she wanders in hues of a terrestrial abyss that claims it seems deference to not even the antecedent it admits fosters it, in decomposed perpetuity.

She wants to tell them what not to do given the angst she figures pervades not just hers but the wandering souls she sees all around aghast evidently even as the motion moulds them into countless dimensions still though bouncing all over pitiably trapped. 

A life of fullness she says she dreams of simply seems unattainable in an immovable contraption, the given helpless to propel as expected erstwhile her world truncated in a continuum of missives from even one yet attained.

So she watches and waits. Rather than jettison its origins, she endeavours she says to see coherence in different times bundled into one, in an amorphous complexity through which lenses she claims her confusion would emerge into the reality she seeks.

Yet, she admits to its flux, and to sometimes being even in awe contemplating the essence of its transition, why she should believe it now even transformed, and its elements she says still given in the point in time.  

That is precisely what she tells them not to do. They say it makes no sense to be in a vacuum, which they insist in fact is antithetical to what they aim to achieve, the fullness of life they all talk about.

She concedes, partially, she says, arguing that the reality now is so far removed from the given that nothing of its origins remains of note. They say that is not in fact general, even though she seems to be reaching them in bits.

The debate goes back and forth over where to start to view reality, someone pointing out the variegation even among them of the concept, relative not to mention, to their generation in other contraptions. She seems to see that as fodder and underlines thus the given as immutable.

The point she says is where to draw the line forging ahead. She says she likes the idea of a full life, but prefers to blend in the future. She insists that is what makes the given, as a relic, relevant being the substrate for miscellany, hence merely transformed and should not necessarily mystify.  

She acknowledges the confusion. But she embraces it, apparently. Unlike when she marvels, even celebrates it, she espouses it when she is in their company, not just to resist action she says stymies the goal that they all seek, but in fact negates it, besides, she argues, to stress that they often miss, but is actually crucial to the realization of the one they seek.  

That they need to be healthy in body and spirit she posits binds. They agree. What they do not agree on is how for example, they say neon everywhere that ballyhoos eclectic tastes attests to other than the esoteric, an appeal to buds hollering for work that delays whose retirement, with masters served meanwhile wallowing in misery harassed processing transformed missives.   

She says it is all part of the process, a computation of imagery we must bear, the price of motion we need to interpret reality transformed in miniscule time and space packets still given though and contingent upon those we concur no longer hold as real in a new reality.

So she waits for them to see what it all suggests, as opposed to what it means, she argues, insisting that this itself is real, which is why she celebrates rather than dread to float in mystery present that signifies nothing now in the fleeting reality she has come to accept.

Thus she says the neon is understandable, as is car surfing, which latter though she says perhaps horrifies her friends is why they query the essence of the continuum, even as they accept the propensity of the meaning of a term present even before they were born to change its reality.

She says confusion breeds cacophony that transformation does not necessarily change essence, risks involved in surfing for example simply redefined just as it is, which she says is justification for the debate, which exposes the shifting elements of transformed imagery. 

Not that she considers the achievement of health for example being inseparable from that of a full life impossible she insists even if not resplendent in surfing on a mobile vehicle, the necessity for an appreciation of the dyad between a full life and health is quintessential she says of the continuum.

That even the parts remind us of the given in subtle ways is instructive, she contends. Thus she insists that nothing really prepares her for life, not even the given, as lost in the cacophony she struggles to make sense of a world where reality fleets, as though on the run from her for reasons she dithers even to fathom.

She says she gropes amidst chaos but is ready to face life anew. She says she knows nothing makes sense in the original, new formulations creating virtual reality in an infinity with which she can only hope to catch up, to convince herself that she stays positive even so ever flustered.