It’s 9:43 on a Tuesday night and I’m sitting in my car.
The engine is running and the heater is on, set to a temperature roughly 5 degrees past the point of comfort. Every now and then when I can’t bear it any longer, I open the car door and let the cool air rush in so that the sweat on my face, chest and back turns cold.
Then, I close the door and for a very short amount of time the cold sweat seems to stall on my body and resist its new climate.
This sensation induces of a feeling that is not a new or unique feeling, but rather a feeling otherwise concealed in its obscurity. It is the feeling of there being something foreign present, something amiss that feels like another’s awareness, something that threatens to reveal that you are not alone.
Such a feeling would usually deter me from facilitating its environment, but right before the foreign presence makes itself known the hot air cuts through and the feeling dissipates,
the goosebumps fade and the sensation of my body warming up and thawing out releases me not only from the feeling of there being something foreign in the car, but from the entire possibility that such a thing might exist.
Of course, this relief provided by warmth is quickly exhausted and replaced by the need to cool down, and so the cycle churns on.
The period between wanting to cool down and opening the car door is both the last and longest stage of the cycle. If I drew a pie chart of what I have just explained, this period would take up about 98%.
It is also the part that necessitates the backdrop. I don’t need to be physically hot, sweaty and flustered for any perverse reason. Instead, it is an engagement method… a way to stamp and record time, a way to puncture it and feel it and really be inside it. Otherwise, I am floating above, unmoored, invisible and intangible.
I have completed 7 full cycles whilst parked in this carpark.
I have watched 12 people walk in and out of the gold sliding doors, each person squinting into my obnoxious headlights for a second before looking away into the almost empty carpark.
Each time instead of theirs, my preoccupied gaze is met only with its own dimly lit reflection in the driver’s seat window.
And each time, although I expect nothing less, the absence of a glance back or God forbid, an inquisitive peer from afar into my passenger seat window, serves as crystal-clear proof. I watch them closely at the precise moment they look away, looking for signs of curiosity, looking for an expression that asks, ‘who is she?’
or ‘where has she been?’
or at least, ‘where is she going?’
Their denial of my existence leaves me wanting to scream and smirk and scoff at how utterly detached they are from reality. If only they could feel what I’m feeling, sitting here seething, smiling, scowling in a pool of sweat. Living in the real world.
The doors slide open to the 13th person and I pounce, locking my eyes onto the side of their face as they turn away from the light, willing
them to look back with my lips pursed and pouting for no reason other than the physical feeling of power it emits.
They do not see me, they only look down at their phone and laugh, and my gaze involuntarily refocuses back onto my reflection.
For a split second my position catches up with me and I feel the rare urge to cry. I welcome the estranged feeling and try to coax the lump up past my throat and into my prematurely wincing eyes, but my mind jumps ahead and sabotages the authenticity of the operation.
Red in the face and too hot to think, I simply stare back at the eyes in the reflection, testing my perseverance.
The piece de resistance is in the improbable yet possible chance of the sliding doors opening at the exact moment I open my car door, panting for air.
If then,
with my engine droning, my lights beaming, and my car door flung open like a giant mechanical fly with a broken leg, I look to you and our eyes still do not meet
Don’t worry
…I will simply turn the heater off, drive home and resume where I left off the following day (:
The engine is running and the heater is on, set to a temperature roughly 5 degrees past the point of comfort. Every now and then when I can’t bear it any longer, I open the car door and let the cool air rush in so that the sweat on my face, chest and back turns cold.
Then, I close the door and for a very short amount of time the cold sweat seems to stall on my body and resist its new climate.
This sensation induces of a feeling that is not a new or unique feeling, but rather a feeling otherwise concealed in its obscurity. It is the feeling of there being something foreign present, something amiss that feels like another’s awareness, something that threatens to reveal that you are not alone.
Such a feeling would usually deter me from facilitating its environment, but right before the foreign presence makes itself known the hot air cuts through and the feeling dissipates,
the goosebumps fade and the sensation of my body warming up and thawing out releases me not only from the feeling of there being something foreign in the car, but from the entire possibility that such a thing might exist.
Of course, this relief provided by warmth is quickly exhausted and replaced by the need to cool down, and so the cycle churns on.
The period between wanting to cool down and opening the car door is both the last and longest stage of the cycle. If I drew a pie chart of what I have just explained, this period would take up about 98%.
It is also the part that necessitates the backdrop. I don’t need to be physically hot, sweaty and flustered for any perverse reason. Instead, it is an engagement method… a way to stamp and record time, a way to puncture it and feel it and really be inside it. Otherwise, I am floating above, unmoored, invisible and intangible.
I have completed 7 full cycles whilst parked in this carpark.
I have watched 12 people walk in and out of the gold sliding doors, each person squinting into my obnoxious headlights for a second before looking away into the almost empty carpark.
Each time instead of theirs, my preoccupied gaze is met only with its own dimly lit reflection in the driver’s seat window.
And each time, although I expect nothing less, the absence of a glance back or God forbid, an inquisitive peer from afar into my passenger seat window, serves as crystal-clear proof. I watch them closely at the precise moment they look away, looking for signs of curiosity, looking for an expression that asks, ‘who is she?’
or ‘where has she been?’
or at least, ‘where is she going?’
Their denial of my existence leaves me wanting to scream and smirk and scoff at how utterly detached they are from reality. If only they could feel what I’m feeling, sitting here seething, smiling, scowling in a pool of sweat. Living in the real world.
The doors slide open to the 13th person and I pounce, locking my eyes onto the side of their face as they turn away from the light, willing
them to look back with my lips pursed and pouting for no reason other than the physical feeling of power it emits.
They do not see me, they only look down at their phone and laugh, and my gaze involuntarily refocuses back onto my reflection.
For a split second my position catches up with me and I feel the rare urge to cry. I welcome the estranged feeling and try to coax the lump up past my throat and into my prematurely wincing eyes, but my mind jumps ahead and sabotages the authenticity of the operation.
Red in the face and too hot to think, I simply stare back at the eyes in the reflection, testing my perseverance.
The piece de resistance is in the improbable yet possible chance of the sliding doors opening at the exact moment I open my car door, panting for air.
If then,
with my engine droning, my lights beaming, and my car door flung open like a giant mechanical fly with a broken leg, I look to you and our eyes still do not meet
Don’t worry
…I will simply turn the heater off, drive home and resume where I left off the following day (: