The clonk-mysteries

There are certain times when you feel… oh, how shall I put it… perhaps a little more vulnerable than others.

Now, I’m a fairly paranoid person, but in a healthy “don’t take candy from strangers” kind of way. That is to say, I’m not a “nut living in the wilderness with a 110 pound Rottweiler named Butch and a knife collection” kind of paranoid. Uh… okay, so maybe a small knife collection, but it’s really very reasonable and it’s not like I collect them on purpose, they just tend to accumulate.

Anyway…

So there are times when you feel slightly more vulnerable than others, is what I’m trying to convey here in my very “not a loner in the woods” way.

I take my baths seriously. Yeah, I’m one of those people. I like the temperature just about one degree below my-god-I’m-cooking-alive and I bring a pitcher of water to drink and occasionally a book. You have to be specific about the book too, just in case there’s unintentional slippage hence leading to the reading material becoming slightly more soggy than nature intended.

So there I am in my bath with my book. The inevitable relaxation that the near cooking temperature induces has just started setting in and knotted muscles are unraveling at the solid pace of about one layer ever tree pages, if you measure your time at reading pace. I’m getting good and mellow.

Suddenly there’s a clonk.

Let me define this clonk a little more clearly. I live alone, I haven’t given away any spare keys and there should be no appliances, devices or living entities capable of producing a clonk anywhere near my vicinity. Especially not while I’m wet and naked.

We’ve all seen this movie, haven’t we?

If I ignore the sound the crazed ax murderer will wait until I lean my head back and close my eyes and then ax-murder me in the tub, blood spatter reaching the ceiling and splashing decoratively over some white towels by my side.

If I get up to investigate, wearing only a towel, the crazy ax murderer will hide behind the door and then wait until I’ve done a walk through and then ax-murder me just as I turn my back to the door to get back in the tub.

If I go for my phone the only sound it will produce is the tired bleep-bleep of a dead line and then the ax murderer will be standing behind me to ax-murder me when I turn around.

Still, there was a clonk. The clonk will not be ignored.

I ponder it for about a second and a half and then I figure – fuckit.
I go back to my book.

When I do get out of the bath, a well cooked piece of relaxed paranoia, I do the walk through anyway. You know, just in case the clonk did originate somewhere that might actually require some kind of attention from me.

Things are eerily undisturbed.
I guess I’ll never know the nature of the clonk. The origin of the clonk. Its very clonk-ness eludes me.

And the quote of the day comes from the excellent movie Strange Days in which Philo says “Paranoia is just reality on a finer scale”.

Down, Butch!

ROL

Sinners, every last one of us

I have told you about that whole Asking-thing, yeah?

People ask me the darndest things randomly in the street – one of my favourties is still “what date is it?” but we’ve got a strong contender now.

I was accosted as per the usual arrangement, not as randomly as it might seem by a pair of gentlemen of an early Sunday morning.

And I guess that’s just how it takes you sometimes. You wake up in a foreign city early a Sunday morning with an unpleasant taste in your mouth and a dire need to attend mass and quite possibly confess your sins. Excess or guilt or maybe just good habits – or really, really bad ones are going to dictate your behaviour anyway and well…  We all need direction at times, I guess.

I’m well beyond pondering what makes people chose me to ask. I either look like someone who has their shit together or I look like a sinner, and that’s fine with me. Both and neither are equally true.

The scary part is I could actually point the gentlemen in the direction if the nearest Catholic church.

I am a lamb.

ROL