Cycles: The Enamel Decay

Chapter 8 Izle

You think too much, they would say. Izle, your theories sound insane, my parents would warn me. No. I didn't care what I sounded like to anyone. If something felt wrong to me, I would address it. I would ponder on every living detail of this world until I found what I was looking for and if my hypothesis was wrong then at least I gained information for an updated theory along the way. No. No more sitting back and just watching the world go by. No more wondering; Why? How? When? Where? How even? If no one would answer my questions then I would have to dig a six foot hole to find it myself if I had to. The limited knowledge the school provided was nauseating especially since I knew that there was more to life than just what I learnt in school.

Daniel and I walked in silence. It did not even feel awkward. It was as if we were talking to each other through the silence. If he felt awkward, I was sure I would be able to sense it but I picked up no signals. "Izle," he said breaking the silence after a minute. "Do you ever feel limited? Like you're in a tiny box of some sort?"

"All the time," I responded. He nodded. I waited to see if he would expound on that but it seemed like that was the end of the conversation so I asked, "What makes you feel that way?"

"We do the same thing every day," he said. "I have this set routine and when I go off routing sometimes, I freak out and so do many people I speak to. Everything seems to be on this constant loop without any break."

"The world is a cycle," I said meditatively quoting Bob Marley hoping it would spark some recognition but it did not. If it did, he probably did not care to react towards it so I continued as if I were resisting poetry, "The seasons come and go at the same time. Our clocks come back to 12 o'clock 12 hours after 12 o'clock every day but the sun is the only thing that stays up in the sky all day. It doesn't mean that the sun isn't a constant. It's always there. Nothing changes." It was sunny all day and night here- as if time were still.

"People change."

"People change like a fixed portrait," I told him quoting a bit of the poem 'Forgive My Guilt,' by a writer's who's name I have forgotten. He thought about it for a second then smiled. He recognized the origin. I went on. "You know what's interesting? When we don't mess with nature, you can actually see it's changes." We were walking over a bridge now near the mouth of the river. The water was crystal clear and shimmered when the sun rays that weren't concealed by the trees pounced off it. The grass grew wild and high but stopped near the mouth of the river were the waves threatened to steal the river's exposed silt.

"What's that pile of sand called, at the mouth of the river," he said pointing to river residue.

"It's called a spit. Because the river is calm around this area, load from the river such as silt settles there to form that." I was getting better at the explaining thing but his smile told me that he already knew what it was and that I had fallen prey for one of his mind games.

"It wasn't like that last week hence things do change." Point taken but I had a backup.

"But it has not been altered. It's a natural thing."

"Time is nature's work. Are you saying Time has been altered?"

"We follow the time loop because it works. It makes us progress forward. However, all of this repetition can drive a human insane when they think about it too much. It's something we have to accept." I guess I was saying that cycles are natural and schedules should be followed but all his questions made me forget my main point. He stopped walking and looked at me. He looked like he was having a sudden existential crisis.

"Why though? Why can't we just be free to do whatever we please! Why do we have to follow these things? It's as if we're just pieces in a game," he was talking to himself now. "Geezz! Did you know back then people used to sleep and dream and eat? We don't do that anymore because it is a waste of time! Instead we have these pills that give us nutrition and take away our need to sleep."