BLUE

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”
Søren Kierkegaard

The blue ball was identical with the red one (except the obvious difference in color). Its eyes seemed a touch melancholic, unlike the hectic decisive eyes of the red one, but these differences would be completely logical to Simon once he got to know the elfin fellow. The reasons for the gloomy eyes were due to depression and sadness. It didn’t have any such feelings, but were, more so, those very feelings materialized.
“I am,” explained Blue, “the agony, the downer and the blues… in a sense I am what you are.”
“And what is that?”
“Depression itself.”
“Sure I am depressed, but it is not what, or who, I am,” Simon argued and walked over to his wardrobe.
He stood there before it contemplating what to do and then decided to pick out a shirt. He chose a lightly pink-tinted one with microscopically thin stripes of silver. He then pulled out a drawer and dragged out a pair of light blue jeans of the right brand and shape. He put them on. From one of the walls hung a full size mirror and he looked at himself. Very hip, in and modern. An appearance to pride not shame. Ah, dressing up for no one but the ego and the ego of others. It was his biggest curse. The curse of image.
“I just suffer from a little anxiety when it comes to achieving things. Call it stress, sometimes… well everything just feels fucking pointless. Meaningless. That’s all, and just sometimes…”
Blue sighed deeply and floated rapidly over to Simon.
“You have to trust me Simon. I am here to help you understand your own pain and you have to listen. Karoshi is on the hunt and you will be its prey.”
“Ridiculous,” Simon took out a pair of beautiful socks, “Firstly it is ridiculous that a fluffy blue ball is hanging in mid air nagging me about depression. Secondly it is even more ridiculous that I listen and answer your dumb questions. Thirdly you have to understand that you don’t exist theoretically, logically or even metaphorically. So do what’s right...”
Simon put on the socks and then looked Blue profoundly into its eyes and said:
“Bye bye!”
But Blue did not leave. Instead it flew over to a fake Picasso that hung over the sofa. There it laid its tiny arms behind its back and studied the artwork up close stating:
“I have always loved his blue period.”
Simon shook his head and hurried to the bathroom.
“It feels so relevant to my own existence, I…” Blue looked up and noticed that Simon had disappeared.


The toilet seat is the throne of my religion.
Here I rule. Here no one shall, or will, bother me. Here is peace. The smell of my body’s garbage disposal system is the greatest deterrent. Although Blue doesn’t seem to have any nostrils. What fucking nerve! Waltzing into my life obstructing my inevitable journey towards blissful death lecturing me about my own depression. My own pain. The one thing I possess that is fully mine.
If he shows up again he is dead.
I have to get a grip on this insanity before I slip and break my mind, but there is no escape. Damn. There he is… or she, it… again!
On the floor, by my feet, Red is sitting with arms crossed. It looks at me and then starts shaking its little fists. Screaming. I lean forward to hear better:
“I have returned to gain your attention! Do you wish to be well?”
“Yes,” I reply. Yes because I wish nothing more, and it breaks my heart to wish for the impossible. And how could I gain it from red and blue balls hovering about me?
I stand up with my trousers around my ankles to stamp Red into death but it floats swiftly out of the way and manages to sink an undetectable little mouth into my left big toe. Blood seeping forth. I scream. Fall. Smash my head into something. The sink? Minutes pass. I wake up from the darkness. Red is sitting on my chin. Too close to be in focus.
“Do I have your attention?”
“Sure…”
Poff!
It’s gone. But Blue is still around. Waiting patiently on my kitchen table. I rub my head. Got a nice bump. It hurts. Life hurts. Physically. Psychologically. The former numbs the latter. One thing to rejoice in. I pour a glass of water.
“Ok,” I say seating myself at the table, “let’s get this over with!”
“Yes,” Blue replies, “I agree.”


“You are like me, blue, and to rid yourself of this you first have to give in to it without dying. I will help you research yourself so you can read your heart like a book. I know you believe you have pain and anxiety but that is only physical symptoms of much deeper issues. Your true agony lies within you and you know what it is. Karoshi knows it. And that grey entity is hunting for you. As we speak it is out there searching. Smelling. Yes it can smell you. It can smell sadness. Rid yourself of it before it is too late. Find your happiness.”
“That is very easy to say.”
“Your happiness is the reason you are depressed. Can you not realize this. What really makes you happy is what also makes you really sad, because you have given up.”
“Given up what?”
Blue smirked and slithered over to Simon’s side of the table placing itself by a steaming coffee cup. I wonder if it is just as tiring to hover as it is to stand for too long? Simon pondered and lifted the cup to his lips. Sweet caffeine soaked his lips.
“Anxiety is the escape from pain. Anxiety is to avoid the real pain. Can’t you feel it? That pulsating worrying pain within that you know will be heard if you for one second loose concentration. Can’t you sense that if you let it out a greater pain, the true depression, will come forth and blossom?”
“I have cried plenty.”
“Shed your tears, cry, whimper. It won’t do you any good dehydrating yourself. What you need to do is locate that lost happiness. That is step one. You have to dwell into your past and find out who you were before society killed you. Before you lost what your soul was intended for. I can’t take you there only you can. Remember now… long ago and tell me. Tell me who Simon was and what he was…”
Simon finished his cup of coffee and got up to make another.
“I guess I was like any other kid with two normal parents in a suburb somewhere.”
“No. You have gone back too far. Then you were just a child. Nothing more than a blank page yet to be written. As a child you a dormant soul. The soul is awakened in the search for your true self. At the time when you have found what you believe in and of what you stand for. Yes there is a great light in the child that can be harnessed and a power you’re not ready for yet, so what you now should be looking for is the you at a much later period. At a time when you realized you could die for your opinions. I am Blue. I represent anxiety. How many children suffer from that?”
“Not many I guess.”
“Then who suffers from it most?”
“Teenagers.”
“Yes, tell me. Tell me who you were as a teenager.”
Simon ceased the coffee making and leaned against the kitchen counter.
“Then,” he spoke with sadness, “then I was someone else entire.”
“As suspected...”
A great big silvery pot stood on the stove. In it Simon could see his own distorted reflection. He was beautiful. Short hair. Symmetrical face. Pink shirt. His posture. His vocation. Slave of the Big Corp. Agent of advertising. The green greed in his eyes. But it was all wrong.
The image morphed. Changed. A new took shape. A boy of sixteen. Innocent and tainted. Free and slave, but fighting. Resisting. Full of life and soul. There, in the reflective surface of one of Simon’s kitchen utensils, the face of a punk emerged.


Fuck the system! Fuck the system! Rise rise rise abooooooove!
Simon bobbed his head up and down in rhythm with the aggressive music that was blasting in his headphones. All around normal people with normal jobs were standing and sitting impatiently waiting for the train to reach its destination so they could get off and continue with their lives. Simon had no destination. He just enjoyed the ride. Listening to music. Thinking. Drawing in his notebook. Relishing in the fact that he didn’t even pay a ticket to do it. Fuck the system!
Simon looked out the window and there was only darkness as the train rumbled through the underground tunnels of the city. He flipped open his notebook, thought for a while, and then wrote:
Society is the opium of the people, religion is just the pipe we smoke it in.
He laughed, to himself, and noticed a yuppie, in the traditional uniform of suit and tie, talking to someone on his cell phone for all to hear. Out of curiosity Simon lifted his headphones out of his ears.
“…fax me them in the morning Trish darling and…”
No more.
That is the extent of what he could bear. Sick. Empty.
“How the hell did I…”


“…become…”
Simon looked over to the kitchen table. Blue was gone and it didn’t comfort him the way it should have. Now he was even more depressed. For some reason he walked into his bedroom, stopped, and stared at his closet. In it, far back, there were boxes which he hadn’t looked in for many years. They had been forgotten, yet they were not gone, and Simon did not dare to approach them. He fell into his bed, but could not sleep. He opened his closed eyes. Looked at the time. Silence everywhere. He felt alone. Scared.
What’s the point?
He was not happy. He felt empty and lost. He wanted a destination, but he had none. He was aimlessly drifting with purposeless beliefs in career and status. Is this how suicide begins? Is this the end? Or a beginning? Can the material past be of any help?
Simon opened the closet and dragged out a couple of large shoeboxes not daring to open them at first. He knew what they contained and he wished he didn’t. Blue came floating down from somewhere onto the floor next to them.
“Look inside!”
“When I do stay with me,” Simon urged and the ball nodded with a wink of the eyes.


Poetry.
Several notebooks filled. Drawings. Stories. Ideas. Gold dust for an artist. Stuff straight from the soul, from the heart, down unto the page. Seeing what I had done and how creative I had been I realized I’m not that creative anymore. I thought I was, but I’m not.
I am dead and it kills me. How ironic is that? Everything I was and wanted to be I have lost. Even if I would start again I wouldn’t know where to begin. Then I wrote because life was painful and because all around was wrong, or I perceived it as wrong, and now? What do I perceive? I am what I hate and I can’t change even though I know I should. My shoes fit too well. Comfort kills the rebel.
Tears stream down my face.
The words that I read fill me with love for who I was, and for whom I could have been. The writing is really excellent, funny, witty and full of hate yet full of hope like great art should be.
The thing with the now is the fact that it’s considered to be constantly out of date. Past and future may hold whatever suffering and dismay, chaos and genocide, it likes – but the now always seems to be free because it’s always disregarded. Untouched and pure. But to hold on to that, to the now, is so hard. Suddenly what was now has become then, and not longer after; Bob’s your uncle, hey presto, voilá and what do you know someone else you’ve become. Society does that. Washes you clean. To fit in or not to fit that is the real question, and like I said, fitting in feels very nice.
For me it isn’t enough to be riding through life with ease, but the vehicle needs to be made out of gold. It’s not greed. I am just a material boy. Or I’d rather say that’s what I’ve become. What I unintentionally became. Who is to blame? I can only blame myself.
One of the notebooks that really grab my attention is small and black, and filled to the brim with genius material. I let it slide into my back pocket where it fits nicely. I look at Blue and he’s gone. Somehow I think it’s forever. I can feel it, because I know now what I have lost. Not that it helps. The road I should walk is still hidden. What can I do? Karoshi will still take me.
Saturday night is coming.
The sun is falling. Soon Monday will arrive and all I‘ve experienced will be gone again. At least till next weekend unless I drown myself in alcohol.
Then I see it, or him (must be him since it’s probably my own mental projection), floating across the room towards me with a great grin.
“Good evening. I am Yellow,” the ball said clad in the color of its name, “Are you ready to advance into the night, into the city?”
“No, I rather sit here and moan and cry.”
“Simon, come it’s time to leave your abode and venture outdoors. The night is young and time is of the essence. Karoshi will not wait for you to obtain the strength you require. It’s hungry. It knows where you live. The time for advancing is at hand. Come, I shall grant you the energy you need and the mental alertness you so secretly crave.”

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