emaograjensek

The shops back then still bore eclectic traces of what could once have been the pinnacle of 90s design; something photographed or blogged by a Millennial. The misplaced fragments of shapes and patterns seemed all so foreign to her. Familiar enough to still be attributed to an era, be it as a signifier or a vibe, but evading all specificity, anything that could have made it tangible, usable as a conversation starter, or a piece of reflection for the stories that she’d eventually tell her friends. Missed patches of nicotine yellow covered the corners of otherwise thoroughly repainted walls. Filled and covered holes spoke of furniture and equipment deemed obsolete and removed. The plaza hasn’t seen a lot of traffic ever since retail lost its general appeal. Kids and teenagers gathered at McDonald’s drive-throughs and highway rest stations, deserting well kept, confined public spaces for those of unkept and liminal kind. Comfortable in settings where escape is not only possible but persistently expected, they spent their idle days waiting for that final pick-up that would eventually get them out, as far away as possible. She found their angsty faces endearing. What is angst, if not the spirit’s struggle to cling to some semblance of hope? The rest of them have long given up on even that.

‘Could you imagine’, she thought to herself, ‘still clinging to hope?’

When idle, at times, her thoughts still tended to gather in Snap or Tweet-like bits. She considered it cringe, yet more often than not still entertained it. The musings of her media-overexposed brain were but all that made her and her peers stand out from the builders, founders, and entrepreneurs that came before them. ‘Might as well binge the brain away’, she used to joke. It’s but anyone’s guess, how a entire generation found itself in the position of the marginalised, powerless enough to find agency solely in escapist fantasies that sublimate like vapours rising out of didactically drawn-out, yet nevertheless unattainable ideals set before them by their nurturers and educators. Her queer friends often snarked at her defeatist stance. Even though it was this very stance that made them friends in the first place. The lineage of power, privilege, and the struggle to subvert them has by then long shed its successive, linear form and brought on a more ‘dynamic’, even if, from the perspective of their contemporaries, disorienting mode of succession. Heirs of foes suddenly found themselves rocking the same boat, burdened by their gut affinities and the lectures of social struggles preceding them. How to draw the line, if at all?

Arbitrariness can seem futile until it is opportune. They had to learn that abruptly – then.

The specks of dirt have settled on her face. She found herself fatigued. It did not take long for the air in the enclosed plaza to still. The pungent odour of anxious glands around her made it seem thicker, viscous. In times like this, breathing stops being an automatic action and becomes a conscious, arduous endeavour. The once subtle movement gains a straining quality to it, deforming the mouth and face. Like sucking air through a sheet of cellophane, it emboldens the eyes with a trace of panic and despair. She swept the dirt off her face, sighing at the sight of the muddy enclosure. A considerable amount of time must have passed since she ended up in the swallet. Days have lost their original meaning – pondering the passage of time is now but a luxury few can afford – exhaustion, however, winds its own internal clock. The leaves of a decaying branch have served her for the first few cycles of rest. Flattened in the thick patch of clay, they’ve come to bore the shape they helped to harbour. 

Swallets adorn the landscapes she once deemed familiar and firm. Currents of earth block and rearrange manmade pathways. Fluidity chucks away all semblance of structure and form, turning them into anti-structures. The world continuously reshuffling. 

Those who ended up enclosed with her had been tirelessly labouring alongside her since. They’ve divided the area into four quadrants. One for each limb they wished to leave with once the enclosure was to be dealt with. The right hand stood for the area, where all that was essential was to be gathered and kept vigil over until its eventual use. A dwindling fire kept the area lit, but degraded the air in the plaza even further. Adjacent, yet separated by a thin sheet of scrap metal, laid spreads of scattered leaves, pieces of damp cardboard, and whatever rags they managed to salvage from the caved-in department store, there to cushion the right leg as it kneeled to lay its spent body to rest. While opposite of them, still somewhat illuminated by the reflected light of the metal sheet, stood improvised work stations for pick- and shovel-like contraptions – pieces of metal and wood, that held firmly under the left arm, as the other carved, tied, twisted, bent, edged, and crammed, were meticulously made into tools upon which their survival most depended on. The rest was dedicated to digging.

The right side kept them rested and focused. Plans were devised with expressionless glances, words reserved for a time when breathing were not a chore, and new ideas conjured through waking dreams that merged with shadows the communal flame cast over the scrap-metal sheet. The left side – led only by what was mustered in the short intervals of rest – left them scrambling in the dark. 

It was also there, in the dark, that trouble seemed to simmer most. Concepts of old soon rose through the rouble and kept their grip despite losing the institutions they were once meant to uphold. Even before reaching the plaza, ideas of foul liquids already permeated some of the digger’s perception of self, causing them to reject the scarce rations of food and adhere to long periods of fasting, trusting only liquids filtered through pieces of hastily carved-out flowstones. Emaciated, they’d carried them through every enclosure breached, amassing amounts that hindered the transportation of essential equipment. Leading some, sceptical of the newly established customs, to diverge from the group and dig alone.

Her decision to stick with the group was a thing of convenience verging on necessity. Struggling to keep up with the workload, her body reserved the energy for manual labour, keeping her thoughts hazy and detached from all surroundings. The further they were from the surface, the more the very thought of it, any thought for that manner, came with a sense of danger. Speech became redundant, even frowned upon. This suited her. Her waking time was dedicated to the use of the pick. Work was easier when there was not much thought or attention paid to it. Cramps, strains, and other discomforts came and passed unnoticed. In digging she found a semblance of solace that logistics and social distractions only threatened to disturb. Many shared her sentiment.

The others who worked alongside her seemed content. A glance over their faces at the begging and end of shifts, revealed slightly crooked grins and deep, sinking crow’s feet, gathered around their eyes. Whether those were signs of happiness or marks of injury, strain, or disease, was hard to tell. Sight came as a transgressive urge, taking advantage of light to take in impressions that would otherwise be deemed unnecessary. When digging towards the unknown, one did not necessarily have to see where they dig, to dig effectively, as even what they did see was soon dispersed in the stream of outpouring work. Little was left for conscious recollection upon which decisions could be formed. Still, she could not help but look, when the opportunity arose. A man with a distinguishable hump laboured alongside an elderly woman, halting work at moments when his overt disfigurement could serve as a comforting respite during fits of life-draining exhaustion that threatened to overcome her. In the drowsy light, their bodies merged, forming momentary illusions, dreams of fluttering magpies she once might have seen pass her bedroom window. Nearby, children gathered dug-up dirt and debris from the pits they might one day labour in, emerging and disappearing between shadows cast by their elders. All around, glimpses of withdrawn dedication.

For what it meant, her life until then comprised of four parts. The time spent aboveground enchanted: surface time I-i = 30 years. Time spent aboveground disillusioned: surface time I-d = 3 years. Time in the swallets enchanted: subterranean time II-i = 40 rest cycles. And time in the swallets disillusioned: subterranean time II-d = 10 rest cycles. What little sense she could make out of it was as fleeting and irrelevant as those magpie dreams. Nonetheless, it gave her ground to offload her pondering, simmering on reserve, subconsciously, out of bounds, where only the faintest of topologies emerged as proto-thoughts, streams of would-be consciousness – lifetimes of knowledge and experience confined to meagre potentiality. 

No seeds grew underground. As if soil refused to partake in the process of emergent life, harbouring necrosis of the perished instead. Little critters scattered in the dark, unsettled by the shifting strata disturbing their breeding cycles. Subterranean biodiversity irreversibly decimated. It could take years, or days, a dozen of rest cycles, or even after the cycles ceased to repeat themselves altogether, for life to turn towards the inorganic. Mechanised macro-currents of matter mimicked the corporeal ways of their tiny organic counterparts, turning rubbled architecture into anatomy. Their future seemed as impenetrable as the ground they strived to burrow.

By the time they learned about others who not only escaped but managed to thrive of the circumstances of their soil-trapped peers, acceptance had already etched itself deep into their newly found nature, reinforcing the barring of future, making a home out of it. The evidence pilled up, yet got mixed in with the apparitions of the soil, never fully entering the mind, rather coming and passing like swooping flies. By then their community was one of worn-off cogs, their tissues stiff and calcified. One bad day away from stalling to a halt, their final breaths adding to the moisture that would enclose them as they remained stooped over their makeshift picks. Bodies preserved by minerals they helped unearth. 

She tended to her labour-induced wounds as best as she could. Took care of those around her as well. Running droplets of excess water over them, hoping to replace blotches of dried-up mud with those of scabs. All activity was in the ways of the dig. At times of rest, their cramping bodies let out soft winning screams, raspy crackles of fluid-filled lungs, that echoed through the cavern in demonic cacophony. Those who passed left them without goodbyes.

Mourning seemed all-encompassing, leaving little room for differentiating between its various objects —mourning existence itself. In survival, they’ve come to recognise a twisted theatre of improvisation, where every ‘yes’ necessitated an ‘and’, lest they succumb to the festering will of the ground.

‘Accept it, expect nothing,’ were among the last words she heard uttered. Silence helped alleviate the incessant echoes. Kept the ear prepped for signs of mudslides and cave-ins. 

Dusting herself off, she reached for the makeshift pick, her hands trembling. A wavering swing into the mash of soil and debris, like countless before it, buried the pick into the indistinguishable matter. The pile emitted a subtle churn. Danger was a familiar constant, yet a bringer of chance. Bodies moving in unison, soil stirring underneath their feet: a seismic activity decentralised, brought into the human hand, involuntarily, making them the movers of celestial bodies, of Earth, meagre perishable gods, sustaining the currents of pure matter; their physical states exploited; weakness generating access, eradicating loneliness. Amidst the remnants of their terrestrial past, they forwent their desires to run the motor of crude inorganic drive.

She gathered her breath. Pulled on the grime-laced lever of the pick. Scattered laminated pieces of McDonald’s prints glistened amidst the surrounding debris – the glimmers of stars replaced for reflections of sporadic light, welding sparks and flairs that light the caverns amidst the incessant blackouts. For a moment, the pile resisted her unyielding pool. Jagged rocks shrieked against the metal, filling her thoughts with ripples of incoherent doubt, as bits of rust further dug into her cramped-up fingertips. With every dispersal of light the expectation of what lies behind the soil and debris expanded, turning into fear at first, then into confusion, bordering on paranoia, before the flairs would lit up the cavern again. Only after the pick began to budge and the pile gave way to her corporeal force did a trace of relief relaxed her stressed brow. The dice of chance were thrown.

The earth around the pick began to swell. Pebbles skipping down the pile towards her entrenched feet broke her momentary reflective haze. In time, the air in the enclosed plaza would have run out. 

The illusion of conviction could have once swayed her to give up or strive on, now, the very choice eluded her. Her decisiveness barred by circumstances. The mud engulfing her lower limbs tightened its grip with every exhausted breath, supporting her stance, supplementing muscles with sedimentary consistency. It gave its own reasons. Whispered them with subtle drips, splatters, and cracks. Not even convincing or bargaining with her, rather thinking through her. Devising its own future composition: the muddy halls and passages it would have formed throughout the desolate environments and creations. Welders tirelessly cut and reassembled the scaffolding of its future form. Diggers, like her, continuously expanded the new pathways that it would claim as its own. The question of form never left its rightful place at the centre of immanent world-ing. Regardless of who shaped the world, it was ‘in whose-what image’ that would seemingly decide its fate.

The swelling pile shook. The soil and debris moved, before coming to rest. A cold breeze passed the exposed torso of a half-buried manakin, meeting her sweat-covered cheek.

She turned to adjust her pick. Tightened the brittle wiring that held the tool together. Cleaned the mud off its tip. Sharpened its beat-up edges. Diligence held the turbulent happenstance at bay just enough to ease her into their unravelling chaos. Through the cleared opening, her eyes met a small cavern. Faint rays of light revealing an outline to the plaza’s entrance. Revolving doors stuck in half-rotation. Above it, metal ridges, bent and half-buried letters. An almost untouched ‘E’, ‘M’, ‘E’, and ‘R’ bundled near a faint ‘G’ and ‘E’. On their right, a blotch of hanging dried-up dirt, shot with webs of broken roots that secured it in its gravity-defying position, covered the remaining lettering, before thinning out into a somewhat disfigured ‘E’, what seemed like an ‘X’, accompanied by an ‘I’ and ’T’. Deep scratches carved out a space that didn’t seem to have been bearing letters, before diagonally splitting a legible ‘DO’, bending its lower part outwards, towards and into a misshaped ’NOT’. The rest was unclear. As was what lay ahead. The few things that held her back remained snagged at its edges. The damaged lettering spelling out her new resolve, acceptance of sun-less horizons. For that moment, at least, time was gained; some breathable days recovered.