1996 Melancholy Apathy

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Melancholy Apathy​

Melancholy sits in the centre of the room. The commander’s rocking chair, wooden, not new but middle aged. His features are old and rag-tagged. Grey hair. Balding and wrinkled. Clothes grey. Dog = grey. Silent room only interrupted by the carriage clock on the mantle-piece. Retirement present, kinda cheap imitation brass. There was no perhaps when they said goodbye to him.

Nothing ever happens. Melancholy just sits there thinking and winking. His dog has become much like him. The same old idiosyncrasies. The dog umm, I think it was a ‘he’, spoke to me once, telling me that it could just lie in front of the television for days on end. Mental codes from the images processed through its mind. Translations of words from the volume hitting on the right parts of its brain. The right stimuli. Never got anything out of it though. He lied about the volume part. Silent T.V is such complete bliss.

While we can see that there is quite an event going on in this room, Melancholy continues to sit there. Our subject rocking chair potato that never moves.

He has a self-cleaning oven, dishes, carpet, the whole bit. His invisible wife’s presence is only evident by the cerise seric curtains that she insisted be put in the main room to show off to all the neighbours to give them something to talk about.

Pity Melancholy murdered her some years ago for being an irritable bitch. At least the neighbours keep talking about her tasteful prerogatives as though she’s still alive. He never could get quite used to the moving of paintings, furniture and the constant changes of wallpaper for her pathetic self-unsatisfying juxtaposition and mindless aesthetics. Her whims that were about as constant as objects being thrown out of a twister. Until one day, he put his foot down – on her head.

Then, everything became black, white and grey. All goddamned paint drying. The silence was left to smile and everything became content in its stillness. Even the dust bloated to a state that it would not grow anymore and she that had made so much noise, activity and purpose in making nothing something – was no more.

They say that everything has a purpose. Well, for Melancholy it would seem is still waiting in line to buy his from the ticket vendor. He continues to just sit there and think. Ashtrays of nothing point to the ash on the floor along with the cigarette butts that point and gather towards the gaining of missed opportunity and time. Unmoving waste. Moreover, Melancholy has no curiosity to move either.
The endless, mindless TV, echo the hollow walls of a brain, once fuelled by alcoholic cocktails, too much Bourbon bring pulsating feelings of madness, joy and insanity. Memories that once did hurt and now just echo pangs of what could have once been perceived as pain. He no longer sees the screen and its bile imagery. He just sees dark images. Blades that haunt, blood that disturbs and hands that warp every vibrant cell of what is his ailing brain can think about as it cries out for the remaining moments of longevity.

He is perplexed, stunned even, into apoplexy. Yet it still amounts to the same uneventful movement the quiet meditation he and his dog keep. Even the bottle of Mickey Finns on the mantelpiece has drunk itself dry and sober with boredom that it complains of a need to go visit over-sobriety anonymous for too much consumption of silence and nothing – in other words, it is still full.

The rocking chair, relentless in what is to-and-fro. Warp factoring Melancholy’s head back and forth to another reality. Back and forth. Back and forth. Speed seven Mrs Joy! He just sits there with his best friend nothing and his pet dog. He just sits. Kinda annoying isn’t it?