Cruising the grid of his hometown in incomprehensible fashion, as now was his habit, self-embedding reporter Johnny Sole ran into Xaxa, Txatxa for friends. They had known each other a couple of years back and then lost sight. Strikingly slender and beautiful for her advanced age, Xaxa wore a long white dress set with a hundred colourful shiny stones, some almost precious and others just nice. Her face was powdered white, with purple lips and green eyes, and over her forehead hung a diadem of the most precious ones.
Xaxa invited him along to the party she was heading for. Must be some party if everybody’s dressed up like you, Johnny said, regretting he hadn’t chosen anything beyond a T-shirt and jeans, though luckily enough it carried a picture of a duck reading a letter, a Disney duck that is and a letter as in Vermeer’s painting. Xaxa unclipped two stones from her dress and hung them from Johnny’s ears. For good luck, she said.
Somewhere in San Antoni they entered an old building and had to climb all the way up to the seventh floor, a lift not available. Short of breath they knocked on a door and after Xaxa was recognised were admitted in a heap of light, another word Johnny could not think of. All around him there was light, colourful light without end in which shapes were vaguely shimmering. No walls, the self-embedding reporter meant, not even where they had come from. La Txatxa immediately ran off in some direction he felt he shouldn’t go to yet, so he began taking in the atmosphere by himself. He’d seen a face floating by, he believed, just a face with no body beneath it, and he wanted to know more about that.
Looking around him, Johnny noticed many more loose faces and soon enough it was clear to him how everybody was drifting like balloons through this electronic campfire where music was softening the silence. Their bodies must be the statue-like forms he started recognising in some thickening patches of red and green, standing and sitting about. What was going on in here? Were people perhaps trying to escape reality?
Carefully, the self-embedder began moving about, sure not to disrupt any of the dream shaped figures he stumbled upon. Most faces seemed free and inviting to him but a handful were confused to the extreme of going nasty, and he feared for the trouble looking into their eyes might bring. Finding shelter with the happy faces, Johnny ran into a Roman setting full of soft marble statues without head, and shiny coloured Dalí like paintings quietly explaining themselves, all the while drifting past on an electric current.
The self-embedding reporter started coming under the impression his thoughts were shaping the forms he saw around him, ever clearer while he made his way through this strange but beautiful world. He wanted to feel bad about it, out of habit I guess, but he couldn’t for long withstand the attraction of the happy pleasant version around him. The effortless pop up of stories the embedded one was sailing through began teaching him things he had wanted to know for a long time. With or without his thoughts’ control, Johnny Sole was becoming real to himself.
The self-embedder unexpectedly heard himself talking to two heads circling around him. By turning counter wise he could speed up the conversation and by following their lead he could slow it down, Johnny noted. It didn’t really matter though, since he was only able to mutter the same handful of words every time he opened his mouth.
All you no is love, Johnny Sole said out of the blue.
Love is all you no, answered the faces simultaneously.
And it mattered even less because the faces were smiling at everything they encountered, really not being offended by other people’s stupidity. So Johnny said it again to similar effect unto other faces, all you no is love, yes, love is all you no.
By no particular reason (reason long gone now) the embedded one felt the urge to find la Txatxa and tell her what luck I ran into you, or words of the kind. He believed he was totally in love with her. He was unable to locate her though as he was discovering all the faces had turned the same, all wide eyed and smiling their universal smile while transmitting remarkably little information. Love you no, Johnny tried. He thought he was in love with all of them.
He found strength in a colourful drink sailing by which he took a sip of and then sent on. Unnoticed at first but when it struck undeniable for the rest of times, Johnny became to believe his head was as big as the space he was allowing himself to be in. There really was no difference between inside and outside, the self-embedding reporter meant. Everything is always never the same, a saying from his youth went.
Then there was another strange thought popping: with everybody identical, was he perhaps also like the rest? Was a tiny part of him mixed into this harmless, happy mask that confronted him everywhere he looked? The thought was both ridiculous and attractive. He, Johnny Sole, like the rest of the lot, nobody had given him that impression before.
Johnny laughed away the whim of sadness, but he couldn’t suppress the subsequent flush of dizziness with need to lay down. Come here, a hand said and he found free company with a group of marbles hanging about a swimming pool steps. Was he now in the same manner without head? Was this what it was like to be dead? Just a head? Or just without head? And never sure which was true and which the dream? No crazy thinking, the self-embedding reporter told himself. All u no is love, remember? Love is all u no. The rest is obfuscation.
Johnny Sole had no idea for how long he went floating round through this wonderful place, telling what little he had on his mind. Time, it seemed, was of no consequence. Neither made it any difference. But there was this process of change going on and he did reach a point where he began to realise it was all about decay, about less colour, less light, about all getting - what was the word - opaque. The shapes that had come out of the light had turned into curtains and these now seemed to get thinner and thinner, showing holes behind which darkness loomed. I don’t want this opaque, Johnny thought, why can’t everything stay like it was, why can’t I go drifting about saying that beautiful phrase the faces have been responding so happily to? Something with love, or no love better, but what? How much he tried though, the self-embedder couldn’t get past the opaque word, opaque now the buzz in this evaporating eternity.
Things were disappearing at increasing speed. Veils were falling to the floor, revealing patches of naked cement wall, and many of the faces were no longer around. Most statues had returned to human bodies, lying about with exhausted expressions and clearly not able to do anything else. It’s all falling apart, the reporter complained, but the bodies did not want to answer him and the last floating faces just smiled that all of a sudden unbearably impenetrable smile of theirs.
It was all gone now, the incomprehensible happiness. Time to go, Johnny realised, not wait until it all would turn ugly. He said goodbye to no one in particular and stumbled down the seven flights, already missing the party but fighting the urge to back up the stairs. Outside, the streets were colour- and life-less, just grey stone and wind with a bleak sun announcing a perhaps attractive new morning. Yes, the self-embedding reporter thought, it really had been wonderful and he might try to keep that feeling with him for a while. Think back to the beauty his eyes had seen, back to the magical words in his brain. Something with love. And opaque. Opaque is love, a love opaque. That should do.
