We Rose Up Slowly v10.0

From Tales of Boris a Novel in Progress
1997 to May 2003

Back to page one ... The phenomenon began with birds flying higher and things falling slower.

The phenomenon is everywhere and you are eating more liquorice ice cream than ever before. The phenomenon has become part of our lives. We can’t escape it. It is no longer extraordinary.

Scientists drop rats from above the clouds and record the rate of descent by measuring the circumference of the blood splattered on impact. Nobody approves but the tests continue because people want to find out more.

The media love it. There are cameras tied to balloons hanging in the air, shooting footage for a tacky TV program called ‘The Floating World Video Show.’ The show is presented by a bimbo and an old English sheepdog who waft and woof about the set showing video of strange objects in the sky. You scream with laughter and I say, “No wonder they call it light entertainment.” The government has published warnings in the Herald and on billboards. Government minivans drive around the suburbs with loudspeakers welded to their roof racks blaring slogans of bureaucratic concern for the health and safety of citizens in a floating world. Have they ever cared this much for us before?

You were eating a bowl of liquorice ice cream with blueberries and Milo sprinkled on top. You said, “The phenomenon is good. When Mum and Dad step onto their bathroom scales they look at the numbers and they think they weigh less. This makes them a happier.”
A thin brown powder line of Milo stretched across the top of your lips. You looked as if you’d borrowed Errol Flynn’s moustache. I said, “It may look like they weigh less but they don’t really. They haven’t changed, have they?”
“Yeah. But they’re happy. They’re happy. That’s all anybody wants, isn’t it?”
“But they haven’t changed? Surely, it’s an illusion?”
“All happiness is illusion,” you replied. “You name me one happiness lacking illusion.”
“Us.” I said.
You sighed, dug your spoon into your bowl and licked away your moustache.
“See. What did I tell you? You’ve proved my point perfectly.”

You were a right Kookaburra that day. I should have rebutted with your parent’s happiness. You’ve always believed in them.

Now the phenomenon is everywhere but as a species we’ve adapted wonderfully to it, almost learned to love it. People foumd they had to brush their hair a lot more in the mornings and so … your mother’s afro has become chic again. Of course there are drawbacks, nobody in their right mind ventures outside anymore without an anchor, without attachments. But we are no longer incapable of making love on the ceiling. Diving weights sell out quickly. Kids go to school wearing back packs loaded with bricks. Horseshoes hang from dog collars. Your mother ropes herself to the fence and double pegs the laundry on the washing line.

Teenagers in hot air balloons scavenge the skies, catch junk with boathooks and tuna nets and drag their flotsam and jetsam on thick, steel cables behind them. It is not unusual to gaze upwards and hear fighting between different balloon gangs. Kids going at each other with baseball bats and harpoons 300 metres above the ground. They abseil down long thick ropes, snaking to the earth wearing chain mail gloves and selling their junk at the entrance to shopping malls.

The silver locket floats in the air just below your nose. Sometimes it gets caught in a nostril but only when you turn your head to the side and back forth too fast.

Then over the radio we hear the beaches are disappearing. So we drive to your parent’s beach house by the sea. Your mother meets us there. Your father stays behind to tend the chickens. The three of us stand outside on the steps leading up to her house. We have a wonderful view of the beach. Your mother, in a large frock splattered with red roses, weeps uncontrollably. She sits on the steps beside me, as I stand, she tugs at my trousers, scrunching the cloth, leans her face, rubs her eyes against my leg. Her tears dampen my knees. I hold your hand. You stand beside me silent and thoughtful. We look below to the sea and the beach. We stand there mesmerised and lost, your mother weeping the whole time as if she was crying the sea.

We watch the sea and the beach. At first it begins slowly. Grain by grain. Then it happens faster and faster, more and more sand rises then pours upwards, as if it were raining the wrong way round. In a twinkling blur, specks fly up until there is no golden sand left. As the tide rolls in, the waves crash in on nothing. No white water just a brown, blue, black, swirling, sodden silt.

As we watch and your mother weep, you whisper in my ear, “Do you think I’ll ever be happy? Do you think I’ll ever be happy?” And I say, “No. No, why should you be happy if I’m not.”

Your mother told us that she’d heard on the radio that something had happened elsewhere in the universe. She said, after a period of uncertainty, several conclusions were beginning to emerge. In simple terms, she said, there wasn’t the same attraction between masses.

And I got the feeling, you didn’t really give a stuff. Your parents seemed happier and as long as you had your liquorice ice cream things were OK. It didn’t matter to you things were getting worse for everybody else. We weren’t happy together but we lived in a state of easy, mild contentment. We shared everything except the stupid, fucking secret hanging round your neck. Meanwhile, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, maybe not even in a decade from now … but one day: the planet would fall apart.

Once, we ran out of liquorice ice cream. You headed out into the city, dumbbells in your backpack, hoping the 24 hour convenience store would not disappoint you. You came back empty handed, blank, pale grey.

“They don’t fucking well make it anymore.” And then you laughed, “I saw a cow in the sky. The cow was freaking out and crapping all over the place. It was so funny. You should have seen the people run for cover.”

Also, that day too. You were a right kookaburra. For a week you were drooping and wrecked. Then, for a lot of money, your mother arranged some kind of dubious deal with a balloon kid; two chickens for one tub. From then on each week, a 5 kilogram tub of liquorice ice cream falls from the sky and spirals delicately onto the grass in our backyard.

I arrived home from work one day, to find you on the phone, tears streaming down your face. You were speaking to your mother. Your mother that hideous lovely lady with the bagpipe voice and aluminium alloy pelvis. You turned your back to me and wept into the wall with a finger in one ear and the telephone earpiece pressed hard against the other. The lobe of that ear looked so red and bright like a fat pink leech. You didn’t want to let me see you cry.

I left the room and found a window and watched a lawnmower floating in the sky.

Looking out above the city, I watched the crap in the air float upwards. Newspaper, bottles, black baseball caps, aluminium cans, broken umbrellas, dead cats, rolls of toilet paper unwinding long white tails, dirty underwear, cotton candy, a box of half eaten heart shaped chocolates, a pair of hand cuffs, somebody’s resume. Is it not wonderful to look out the window and see the loose things of the city escape?

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