Metafiction-Window Paine

Window Glasses

"Window glasses cry every night it rains. Trickling water-drops soak the windowsill while the glass melts down. The transparent being covers itself by moist; it's always cold when window glasses cry. The window keeps me safe and isolated at the same time in my house from the outside world. Window is the lens I see through, it is a part of my doorless home. Part of my home. Although I'm cringing in the blankets on my bed, I can still feel my limbs hardening from low temperature. The thoughts of her keep pulling under. I wish the bed can sink my body into the mattress.

The clock strikes three. I’m still in pain as blunt as blue bruises. My brain is pounding like others’ heart, when mine stays still. I got out of bed. I faced myself outside the window. Although transparent, it was wet with rain trickling down the glass."

Definitely unsatisfied, I put down my pen and stared blankly out the window. The sky was cloudless, filled with dust-scent nostalgia. Children were running through the dirty, dry  asphalt trail, stuffed with garbage. The children were shouting incomprehensible words. I did not understand their shoutings.

I frequently smell memories, and the scent drifts me away to a specific point of time of perceiving a similar scent. Today, what I was smelling until now was dusty playground and a lonely child, so it was impossible for me in the first place to write about melting window glasses.

“Have you ever experienced an icy yet sunny day? It is a winter day when cold wind blows but sun blazes right behind your head. I was the only black-haired in my class, instead of whitish-yellow. The color black absorbs more sunlight than whitish yellow…How cold it is within the hearts! While it scorches on the head, the body shivers! And the scent of sand and dust blundering unwashed clothes and skin…disgustingly beautiful.”

I never expect others to understand my affection on scent. Any and all smell is fragrant to me. They have stories within. My stories. Each and every one of them is unique. I stop think of the day when I had to cross the dusty, empty playground in unwashed school uniforms, while nose runny and grains of sand dancing in my mouth. It was a sad day. I expected no one in home and no one beside to walk home with. The sunset was irritating as well. The smell of sunset with a pinch of sand from an empty playground is the most depressing smell one can imagine. Yet I love the strong impulse it gives to my stomach. Sad scents pulls me under.

Thinking of those, I got nostalgic. The scent of sadness may be the color of sunset, dark yellow, while the scent of nostalgia that comes right after sadness is……sky blue. But this sky blue is different from what we congregate usually with that color. It’s darker with a shade of blue, and it makes me feel the scent will go on endlessly. Despite the feeling, I already know that this will go off right after the moment I swallow the apple juice right beside my hand.

The artificial sweetener scratches my throat while it feels my nasal skin with the scent of powdered cherries. They are fiery and juvenile, somewhat green-handed in satisfaction. Although I do not go along with his sexual preferences, I believe my affectation towards all scents is similar to what Humbert felt towards his nymphs. "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins…” They are what I exactly think of my memories associated with fragrances.

Apple juice made the playground distant, far far away. I felt more of writing about window glasses. The monsoon period makes sunny weather cloudy. Clouds are harbingers of cappuccino and melting glasses. Children stopped running. They seemed to look up at the ominous clouds swarming over their heads. Worried shouts. Although I cannot distinguish what words they use, I can sense their tone of voices. This time, it is apprehensiveness. Maybe words aren’t important. Maybe the primary messages signified by the words aren’t important as well. Maybe, maybe there might be a secondary process behind the words. A social yet nonverbal, poetic and lyrical transaction that makes communication truly possible. Words tell nothing. The context does. The smell of words, maybe the words are unimportant, nothing but flesh, while the smell or the social message conveyed is the true essence of communication.

“I read from somewhere about communicating between two individuals. It said language is like a cup yet filled with water. Whenever I knew you were thirsty, I poured my water into a cup. I gave the cup of water to you. You should have drunk the water, but not the cup. But should that have meant that the cup is unimportant? I knew not the answer before. But I know now. They are equivalent. I tried to deliver the water, the warmest of all, through a disfigured, porous cup. Whenever I filled the ugly cup with warm water, what you held in your hands was an ugly cup without the water. My messages were meant for you every time, but they weren’t signified. I hope you’re able to drink this water now.”

Now it’s raining. Somehow children’s intuitions are always accurate. Window glasses melt even now. But these days it rains less. The glasses melt less. Someday when my window glass fully melts down, I will take a walk outside. Along the non-arid, quenched asphalt road, I shall gaze upon the garbage flowing downtown, absent from the trail that I walk on. Only if, only if it rains enough to melt down my window glasses.

“Why do I sink even into the shallowest wounds? It’s always dizzy when I step over the threshold. The line that I feel comfortable. It is to protect myself from others. Let the mails and newspaper from them pile up untouched before my door. I prefer the usual depression than unfamiliar happiness. Let me breathe. This is my home. Leave me alone.”

Fragrance recalls memories. Memories recall emotions. Emotions convey the context of those incidents. The context relates those impressions to my present state. Memories vary, but my emotion doesn’t. They have been consistent throughout my life. The meaning of our words stay unfixed if let alone; but the context of saying it, the memories, makes them lively, making the communication and sympathizing possible.

Window, part of my home, starts to melt down again. When will it disappear? On a rainy day, I might be able to walk freely down the moist trail.... Only if...

"you visit my loneliness of blue walls and dusty floor along with your apple hair"