Fantasy and fiction, something to rely on.

Tuesday March 31^st 2009: There was just this, I never really left Charlottesville, not in mind that is. And why should I. Good memories last a long time I would say and Charlottesville fulfilled all criteria needed for that. So chances that I will be back next year I rate as rather high, we’ll see. Anyway, I must not forget our little story ending, as story telling was one of the main reasons that made me go there. So, when fantasy and fiction take over the scene, what will happen next?

…The increasing light made people move around like in panic trying to force their way to the bar and the noise increased tremendously. Shelly seemed to look relatively calm, but I felt as if we had hit into rock and the end was near. Good lord it was bright, making it hard for me to see at first. The bar was changing in character and then there was this loud chatting noise making it hard for me to hear what people said. Through the light there was a person, one from the staff I believe, approaching us as in a hurry. She met our eyes as she came up to our table and while pointing over her shoulder towards the bar she said,

“If you want another beer you need to order it now before the bar closes.”

“What do you say Li, should we have another?” Shelly added in.

My eyes adjusted more and more to the light and I started to realize that they had lit all the big lights in the ceiling and all around just to announce that the bar was about to close for the night.

“Right! Okay Shelly, one more beer then.”

…

Shelly and I had a great time. We didn’t finish those last beers, but that didn’t matter and we left the bar in company with many others. In the rush after the lights went on, I totally forgot about Curly White, Face Wrinkle and Tophead Beard and I don’t know what happened to them after that. But now afterwards I have been thinking about it and I have some theories of what happened or at least could have happened if time had been different.

Apart from that, it wasn’t that chilly outside even if it was two a clock in the middle of the night. Shelly and I got company by a man leaving the bar at the same time as we did going in the same direction as us. He too was staying at the OMNI hotel not far away, just a few minutes walk. Shelly was in a jolly good mood and I was too. Shelly stopped up a bit after a few steps and stuck her hand deep down in her purse like searching for something and up she brought her little gizmo thing again.

“Oh no you don’t. We can actually see the hotel from here if you bother to look. I don’t want us to get lost again”, I said and snatched gizmo from her.

This was our last night in Charlottesville and we ended our visit in style. The next morning we slept till late and when in the car entering the streets, with Shelly driving holding one hand on the wheel and gizmo dude in the other mapping out directions for us, we got lost again.

I wonder; what is the likelihood that those gizmos we adopt so easily are right and the rest of the world “Reality” is wrong? Hmm… rather high I think, at least when you see people running around with these things in their ears like talking to themselves or holding on to a screens glued to one hand like a glove giving directions. Next new popular gizmo I guess will be an interactive full face helmet providing you with all the information you need and with various designs resembling film star faces with hair and all replacing our own bored looks. I also wonder about what people rely on the most, gizmos, street signs or the actual existing street. In the end I guess we will live in a fiction world reading reality stories as we read fantasy stories today and as curious as children are, they will ask us as we close the book: Does reality really exist?

So, the gizmo dude in this little story and in all its glory returned to frog mode when Shelly and I left the bar. Like in any enchanted story, these frog dudes lose their magic when it comes down to business and it’s time to pay the bill. The interior of the bar didn’t fall apart this time, but sometime in the future it will and who knows if this little story will come true after all telling what really happened. Isn’t that what fiction is all about, we get there eventually, reality isn’t always what it seems? In any case and as in all the stories that I write, there are fractions of truth here and there and maybe we will come back to that later on in another entry when the time is right. And of course, you can also comment and ask about this one.

And if you happen to wonder about the picture at the top of this entry; it for sure is authentic fuzzy and all and taken that very same evening, but another bar. A quite different story I would say.

Cheers,