Kaleidscope: Slices Of Life - First Train and Kafka

Written by: Chen Jiulin (20-E1)

Designed by: Leow Jia Wen, Jolene (20-E1)

The ceiling and I are at a staring impasse as the day draws to a close. Despite the mundanity of the afternoon that just passed, I still feel sad that the day has ended.

And I’m sure that you are sad, because you’re going to have to leave the college for the term break, so wallow in your parting with social interaction today, I’ll just be resting in my room. My phone vibrates as ferociously as my stomach growled. I answer it.

“Kor, you’re really not coming today ah? It’s literally the last day of school, then we’re going back to Malaysia. You sure you don’t want say goodbye to your friends meh?

My response is slurred by total silence.

“Kor, you have a cold ah?”

“...Di, I don’t have friends.” 

I hang up. 

Again, I don’t hate you. I just don’t want to talk to you. I can’t talk to anyone. I have not been able to. How could I? When everybody is a friend of a friend and going somewhere, and suddenly I was friends with none and left alone. 

A mosquito flies onto my nose and I try to recall if I had bathed in the morning. Even the wide-eyed critter would make a better prospective friend than my classmates in college. With no outside baggage, it seems more likely that I am able to interact with it than with anyone else.

Needing some sort of break from the unnerving stare of the ceiling, I roll my head to my side. Beside the bed I am on is an unimpressive wooden table and a similarly modest chair. Looking at them, I can already tell that they could be good friends, or at least have a connection with one another. If I am a chair I’m sure I could make good acquaintances with the table, and if I am lucky, the bed I am lying on.

Or perhaps it is just an excuse to sit there all day, unmovable and unmoving. Maybe I just do not want to progress in the world. With nothing to look forward to and nothing to frown back upon, maybe I wouldn’t feel displaced at all. Maybe I would be happier like that. I probably would. The chair could take over my body for all I care. I do not want to go anywhere today, or tomorrow, or any other day. As I think about this, my ceiling-friend shatters like broken glass in my vision.

A bright light flashes across my window. I wonder if it is headed straight for me. The mosquito flies away because it has something better to do and I wonder if the shooting star is able to grant me my happiness. My phone slips away from my grip and I fall asleep.

When I awaken I do not know how to start my day. Yesterday had been a terrible one, so I don’t feel like getting up and about my day today, but all my problems are solved when I realise that I cannot move my entire body.

In the morning after waking up from a strange dream, I find myself turned into a chair. The month has just blossomed with the start of the term break.

My entire torso has vanished. The feeling of my abdominals has completely disappeared, and my hands and feet are glued to the ground, and my eyes sheath from the world by a mahogany veil. I am now a chair, I gathered. So it was not as if yesterday was all bad.

What immediately comes to mind after settling myself into this state was that I have a train to catch, but I don’t think I will be able to board the train, or even go to the station, in this state. It then became apparent that my body has been taken over by a chair’s consciousness. Firstly, I’m not even sure that a chair could have consciousness, but if it did, I doubt that it will be able to act like me. You should come promptly to pick me up. We have to go back to Mummy and Daddy. To their house back in Ayer Keroh, where it was big enough for both of us so we can do what we want to as long as we give our all. Where they glare at me for pulling passable grades and- turning into a chair really does have its silver linings.

Knowing you, you might get mad at me, saying that I would be better off dead being a chair, sitting around doing nothing all day, but then I really would be. So it’s fine. I am satisfied.

I hope you’re happy with your dimwit chair-for-brains brother from now on. As a chair, my one and only purpose is to stand still. No one can judge me and no one expects anything from me. I don’t think I would want to go anywhere else. 

The wind blows per usual, and the sounds of an airplane passing still reverberates through the air. The afternoon or morning drift by without a second thought, and so do you.

I’m sure you’ll find your purpose someday, or maybe you have found it, because you are my smart genius little brother. I’m sure you won’t find anything wrong with me, or will Mummy and Daddy, because everybody goes about their separate ways in the end, so no one would stop to think for a chair-brained person or someone who turned into a chair. 

As the day progresses I’m certain the first train leaving for Malaysia has departed, and you are happily talking about some achievement or other that you have had, while I would sit there, smiling like a mute idiot.

I can’t say I’m not happy for you, because I am. 

As the train pulls out of the station, lean comfortably back into the seat that you deserve and be content that your future prospects are brighter than they look on closer inspection, because you are bright. Then tell Mummy and Daddy what PhD you want to take on so they would praise you and take you out to eat your favourite chicken rice.