It’s past midnight now. After hours of online research with the commercial tunes of the latest Albanian hits playing from YouTube for inspiration, another good portion of my brain is officially numbed to render me calm and useless for work. I am sitting on the edge of the low windowsill with the window open, looking out of the fifth floor of Einstein hotel, feeling… well, I feel aware – aware of the self that curiously found empowerment in her degradation. The bitterness that has been taking over every living cell in my body, the invasive feeling that seems to settle with me here in Rock Bottom from the moment I hit it, is now becoming a delightful ecstasy.
It’s hard to explain… it’s something like delectably eating rich Indian curry swimming with whole seeded hot chilies knowing it will cause me an ulcer from the burn of the spice. Or like the wired frantic impatience to feel high on caffeine by taking a sip from a boiling cup of coffee a minute too soon, not only expecting but also anticipating the blister on the tip of my tongue. The anticipation of the familiar damage is what makes it an ecstatic ordeal. It’s hard to explain.
In front of me the dormer attic windows on the brown mansard roof of the white old-structured Swiss building I have been looking at everyday, and only now noticing, are unlit. I saw before that the attic of this building has been turned into two or perhaps three studio flats since my last visit to St. Gallen years ago, but only now do I notice that they are rarely occupied, if at all.
On that top rain-stained roof floor and on the couple below it, all residents are asleep or out. But on all the lower floors, there are several lit rooms in different apartments, and those make the status of the occupiers more captivating to my interest. But in order not to unnecessarily bewilder my now finally steady thoughts, I simply deduce that those residents are either doing nothing interesting or fell asleep with their lights on. All the windows of the building are shut, save for two. I stare into those two.
On the left side of the building of the second floor, a dim bedroom light is on. I can see the edge of a bed through the muggy window; it has Victorian-pink bed sheets pouring like musty rosé on the dark carpeted floor. The window of that room is only tilted open, perhaps for cold fresh air to help console the toddler weeping hysterically through the static sound of the rain shower outside. The dimness of the bedroom light tells the story of a woman who just wants to sleep. But she can’t, her child is inconsolable and probably her maternal willpower is too.
Just now, the dimness of the woman’s alleged tiredness lights up, for suddenly, two windows away from the tilted one the fluorescent bluish-white light of what looks to be her kitchen flickers on.
She reaches for the counter by the window with one available hand rummaging for means to comfort everyone around her as mothers are naturally tuned to fumble. The frenzy of her searching hand is visible to only the observers who look outside in from above, but not to observers parallel to the window. If there would be anyone parallel to the window looking in, which there isn’t at this hour in this charmingly lifeless old library quarter of Berneggstrasse, they would be able to see the mother’s probably well-composed get-it-together face, and not her panicky groping hand.
Perception is quiet literally all about the angle from which one views that which they are seeing. I am smiling at the accurate timeliness of that thought’s visit right now.
On the far opposite right of the building, a brighter yellowish light is on. It is also on the second floor, and this window is all the way open rather than just tilted. But this light doesn’t tell the story of the person bathing in it, even though I am certain that fumbling hands are also involved, and even though the light is softer and more suitable for a story setting than that of the tired mother’s fluorescent kitchen. These fumbling hands are strumming a sad slow tune on a guitar. Somewhere within the concealed deeper confines of the lit space, I resolve that those hands are currently narrating the theme song of another story. The pleasant tune makes it definite that the fumbling of that someone in the cold apartment with its’ window open all the way, is a relaxed kind of fumbling. And ‘relaxed’ is one of the qualities of an objective narrator.
The melodious slow tings of strings dissipating out of the window, through the rain, and into my mind, here in this place of my life called Rock Bottom, are ecstatic. And I am pretty sure that it is more ecstatic than it ever would be if circumstances haven’t situated me all the way down here at the bottom of things.
The more I focus on the blissful narration of the music, the more I am spellbound by this insignificant moment and the thoughts I invent in it, and the less the baby cries. In fact, the baby has stopped crying altogether and right now, all I hear is the guitar strums weaving through slivers of rain. The mother’s kitchen light is no longer lit and her bedroom light is even dimmer. I hope that they will now be able to sleep, those two inconsolable children – mother and child – one validated because of its size, age and indecipherable cries of exasperation, and the other disguised by the exact same things.
I like to think that I am the medium between these two residents with fumbling hands on the East and West wings of the same floor of this historic building. Since everything perceptibly moves ever so slow in Rock Bottom, cognizance to beautiful things around me, which are otherwise ordinary and unremarkable, builds bridges of ethereal soothing love between East and West. I see and hear what these two residents don’t, but they would comprehend what I saw and resolved from what I heard if I met them and told them how I saw and heard what I did through their windows; for it is them that I am looking at and listening to from the outside.
What I am ridiculously but passionately implying is that I like to think that one resident stayed awake to unknowingly soothe the other awoken resident by playing the guitar at this odd hour, and that my observation alone is what bridged the unaccountable intent of one set of fumbling musical fingers to soothe another sort of frantic fumbling hand on the opposite end of the same floor. Laugh at me, if you will. I am laughing at myself too! Nevertheless humor is a way of coping, so why not humor myself down here, perched up on the edge of the windowsill on the fifth floor of this unnecessarily expensive hotel?
And now this humble yet righteously entitled ridiculousness has further led me to rhetorically question: Don’t all bridges need to be secure at their foundations? Filled with concrete where the soil is weak, with metal piers built on opposite ends, and shielded twisted cable wires hung like suspenders to erect the bridge on those anchoring piers? Bridges have to be constructed from the very rock bottom. I smile, again, as I give regard to the appropriate timeliness of this second speculation. I smile even wider that I shamelessly and proudly withstand that Rock Bottom is exactly where I am right now.
I had put my pen down for a while, but now a quarter of an hour later, I pick it up again to further write that I now see all the lights of the apartments have been switched off by their occupiers.
But after that, the bridge won’t be there anymore. Only my memory of this lonely night will remain along with the ecstatic novel certainty that I can only erect great bridges for myself and others from where I am, here in this very Rock Bottom. I am only all the way down here, pouring the concrete where the soil is weakest, so that I can solidly anchor the piers for my creation of a bridge that can only be mastered from this far down below, looking from the outside in. With all the softness of my heart and the concrete of my dreams, I am for the first time truly grateful for where I am.
The imaginary bridge I built between two points in the East and West wings will stay put for just a little while longer, maybe until after I brush my teeth and inefficiently pull out the unnecessarily tightly tucked and starched hotel bed sheets choking the mattress so that I can go under them with minimal discomfort.
by Beisan AlShafei
A burble written in St. Gallen, CH, on August 9th, 2017
Beisan's Burble 