The person you are trying to reach is not available
Aidan Koch, Ieva Kraule
June 3–July 3, 2016
Memories of I.
Now time slips through I.’s fingers as a lamprey from the red washing bowl, as a nine-eyed eel who slides down the drain hoping to escape his certain death in stove enclosed by his own bitter juices. Slippery sucker. Look into his round sucking hole – this is where the time goes. This is between then and then – this is the real now. A fraction of second sucked into a dirty black hole, into the slippery lamprey. It’s sucking out the blood of the living as well as rotting corpses at the bottom of the sea. He will swallow present and past as one.
I. slides her hand over the long snake. Feels the temptation. Temptation of the first woman. Feels the urge to catch the time, to grab it, to slide down her throat. To be the master of past and future. But the lamprey slips through her fingers into the bathtub and down the drain.
Then time was slower. Then I. had enough time to have some say, enough time to braid opinion into her long blonde hair. Enough time to discover. But now there are only faded memories of different self. Memories brake I. into pieces, they confuse. A finger on the old leather, small feet on the dock dried by the white sun, smell of saltwater on sunburn skin. Fear of getting stuck in the wide gaps. Gaps of the dock, gaps of the train tracks, gaps leading to cold nothing- ness or sudden collision. Tongue tied child spitting out candy filled with vodka in the same tub where the time went. Same face in the mirror above it. Is it same or are there many?
I. cuts lemon in half. Puts it in the cup together with two teaspoons of sugar and some boiling water. German TV commercials and a slice of white bread with melting butter. Grandma is still in the kitchen. When I. didn’t know how to read she sat next to the window and turned pages pretending to be smart, all grown up. Now she is doing the same – bored of reading – so much reading in all these years – she now buys books to read only few pages, to put them in shelves, to pretend to be smart. But she doesn’t want to be grown up any more – she despises past on her skin, past on her body. I. on all fours. She is not really there. I. tangled by arms. She is not really there. Strangers arms. Pink Panther’s arms. Now she is there. Long and lean arms. Pink. Flesh pink turns into hot pink, hot pink turns red and I. stabs her cousin with the sharp pencil over the red fur coat. This is the first memory of pleasure by causing pain. Violent desire in broad daylight. Red blood for red fur. Red washing bowl. Pet crayfish in the red washing bowl. His name started with the letter A. I. still has his passport somewhere. I. made passports for all her pets so they could travel. Pets travel a lot when you are a child.
And they never return.
-Ieva Kraule
