Ataxia Support Group is a short story about the final days of a man who lost his lover due to his past.
Now suffering from insomnia and split personality, his mind oscillates back and forth between reality and simulacras of his own making. In search of closure, he ventures on a journey.
I also made a game in Bitsy which follows the same story (with slight differences). Feel free to try it out.
***
Passport - check. Visa – check. Ticket – check. Wake up Beijing, wake up. Chinese cuisine is quite the experience. Just don’t put on that high class act. After all, the two pounds fifty of anti-freeze and a non-stop vendor sandwich on the side suits you best.
After a fine, reasonably priced dinner I made my way to a local café. I caught myself staring at one of the baristas. She was rather pretty I reckon. For her age anyway.
On her left hand a tattoo was showing from under the beige sweater she had on. “Probably a souvenir from her late teen years.” I thought. It complimented her sunny brown eyes.
However, I found it highly distracting and decided to change my setting. I went to my apartment. Nothing out of the ordinary happened on my way there as it was only four blocks away.
My mind-absent body plummeted into an old spring bed with hope of getting over the jetlag. Unsuccessfully. On the next morning I hired a cab and asked for a ride to the main station.
As the cab rushed though the city I got to behold the spectacular scenery from inside the vast smog blanket which covers Beijing. “The architecture sure could go with a little less brutalism.”
I thought to myself only to be interrupted by the driver. “我们来了.” He said with a soothing voice of a man in late forties. I paid the man, gave him extra 10RMB, for I enjoyed his quiet persona.
At the office I purchased a one-way ticket. With a broken English she asked: “Where to?” “Anywhere.” I responded harshly, just trying to get away.
A coincidence, or maybe a mutual understanding got me the correct ticket. Due to time shortage I missed my late morning caffeine intake.
And by time shortage I mean that I woke up 10 minutes too late. All I could squeeze into those 10 minutes was a mouthwash and – fashionably – yesterday’s clothes.
So there I am, wearing the same white shirt with a couple of wine drops on in hidden beneath my black slim tie, holding a ticket to Nanjing. I would have never guessed that. Many wouldn’t have.
Platform 4B, departure time: 13:20. Coffee from a vending machine had to do. Plowing through Chinese masses had me thinking if I should be more worried about spilling my coffee or actually savoring it.
I could swear it had three colors. “I’m guessing motor oil from the vending machine.” I had the luck of finding a place to sit in the unbelievably packed train.
As I sat I realized that the coffee had cooled down. I was not going to give it any chances. I chugged it, but it did more damage than good. I decided to try again and finally sleep off the jetlag.
Four hours and five hundred something miles later I was woken up by a stewardess. They were preparing to clean the train. I felt broken even more. And so I collected myself and got out.
Puffy eyes, poisonous coffee and sleep deprivation. That’s the dream… An aura was surrounding me. Not the bullshit Buddhism-type aura. The proper Sunday afternoon European (youth) trash kind of aura.
The one you get when you look in the mirror at a gas station in the middle of nowhere and all you can see is a dead looking, torn shirt wearing, 4 days old 5’o clock shadow rocking fellow whose shirt smells of cologne he put on the day before yesterday,
mixed with cigarette smell made right by Listerine. That kind of aura. My self-reflection was interrupted by a bunch of kids on their phones. All have given up on speech and movement.
Only communicating through a well thought out hyperlinked secret system only accessible to those with the correct haircut and shoes. They should go by the name “Ataxia support group”. Already taken though.
An infinite circle of adjustments of what is right or wrong has begun since the dawn of technology. The laziness we all possess made us unruly towards unhealthy lifestyle.
Dysfunction made us functional again. At least some of us. Dysfunctional aura did stick to me. Among some I too walk true.
I'm fading. Never mind that.
The time is acting like a waterfall again. As a blanket preserving bread, the night has come, keeping me fresh. A brief lie helps. That’s why all of us devote one or two minutes a day to living healthy.
I try to avoid that filthy mind-obscuring lifestyle. Health. Yeah right. One raw, egg-yolky, avocado-infested greasy shake sprinkled with sunflower seeds grown at a used-to-be-coal-plant-but-now-transformed-to-an-all-natural-tibetian-panda-operated-Teocalli gets you.
First the mind, then your friends, family comes next… A nice glass of 50% piss from illegal Indian “pet store” usually does the trick. It gets you going.
Thoughts, hateful thoughts towards those who sold you that, that… I am losing myself again. All I wanted to say is that I bought this Aloe Vera non-carbonated, non-alcoholic thing and it resembled the people who drink it.
Inside - chunks floating still. No movement, no action, no resistance. You are what you drink. Take beer for instance. Rattle it and it hits you back with all it got, just like the people who drink it. Wine is the ideal middle ground. At least for me it is.
I haven’t spoken to anyone in almost a day. How dreadful. How beautiful. How soothing and yet maddening. I am where I am supposed to be, the problem is that no one speaks to you because this kind of work developed a kind of its own language.
Nonverbal language. Ataxia Support Group language. A nod here a nod there, leather trench coat, small notebook, Aloe Vera in a flask… Everybody is depressed and poetic at the same time.
And so I got there, and it was there, he was there, she was not there yet but that’s to be expected. The usual setup. “The fuck is he doing here?”
I thought to myself, but deep inside I already knew. Always an inconvenience to think out loud. I took what I needed and left.
“Was I being followed? What an idiotic question. I follow myself.”
Rushing through the city. Out of the city. To the port. Ship. Island. Flight. Safe for a moment. Only a moment.
They are always on my tail. The end is pretty clear, vivid. I know it, he wants it, and she is waiting for it. In the past couple of days I found it funny that fear is what keeps me going. Grief. Fear. Grief.
A desire to feel, and a desire not to feel. Fear – a small fence made huge by my mind. Maybe not a fence, but a heavenly gap. What if I fall? Will she catch me?
She might.
***