Rips

I honestly believe that I can sometimes feel small rips in space-time.

Walking down the hallway, back to being chained behind the office desk, or up three flights of stairs to meet The Mistake in his Indian-inspired condo (the polished sitar on the wall, threadbare Persian (cats) on the floor), wasting away hours that should have been spent writing new stories, or at least the dozens of articles I owe my supremely patient editors, I blink. As most humans are wont to do (damn synapses!), after I blink, I shift my gaze elsewhere - away from the step, or the door, or the dark lobe of his ear - then I notice something different. Profoundly different. It's as if I had jumped outside the frame of the scene, and jumped back in again, but I've knocked the world five degrees off its axis in the process. Is that knob shinier than I imagined it to be a few seconds ago? Wasn't I just across the room from you, why are we this close now? And why am I telling you I love you, when all I'm really looking for is a warm body, to fill the void, to assure me I exist? It's nothing that dramatic, of course, but the shared air between us is more than enough proof that space has ripped, that time has moved eons forward in the space of one blink.

It's quite common for everyone to feel like this every now and then - this self-conscious separation from the moment, the enormous gap of your Present Self from your Future Self, trying to reconcile three halves of a very fucked-up whole. In the other room, someone coughs and history changes course again. If I could manipulate the rips to my liking, I would have my 14-year-old self come and meet me as I am Now. I'll need for her to slap me. Knowing what I was like then, she probably will. Sometimes we knew better when we didn't have to. You should be married by now, she'll shriek, what the hell are you doing with him?!

In another rip, my Lola Dora would sit up in her rocking chair, her hip un-broken, now 100 years old, and tell me I am nagpintas. In the next, my brother could have been a tennis player, and my two unborn sisters, actresses. Because of so many successive rips, the fabric of my life would disintegrate. I would cease to exist. Would another Ginny take my place? What would she be like? Would I like her, if ever I was introduced to her at a party? Will we hit it off instantly, or bored with the crowd and the watered-down vodka tonics, will she leave early, never to be seen again?

Thankfully, tonight, that is not my concern. The universe and all its questions will have to wait till morning.

*Film still from Guillermo del Toro's The Devil's Backbone.