Bloody Calendar

"A drop of blood dripped on my ring, as scarlet as the color of the fruit springing from a dogwood tree. In an instant moment, I forgot that it was just a delusional scene, it was so real. So clear as my feelings I try to come across in the reflection of my face's blurriest legation". Mr. Studia was writing these sentences of initiative when one of the flying muse-like robots came near him and told him to continue working. "Working, working, working", said he, "what about getting inspired to pour my soul into a sheet of paper?". Then, he started to wonder if there was something that he could still call "soul" those days. "Pfff, there is nothing in my mind, what am I going to do when there is nothing in my mind?", said Mr. Studia, and then the robot came again and asked, "Is there anything I can help you with? You seem a little bit out-of-duty, maybe you need a reminder, right?". "Right?", the robot repeated the same word to make him confirm when Mr. Studia lifted his head and said that he could not find anything in order to get back at work—it was just an excuse, actually he did not want to work but going against the so-called Muse seemed even more tiring than looking at a tiny and dull screen. "Cool", replied the other, "cool your brain, look at it, and write". Then, the robot walked out, leaving Mr. Studia in a confused state. He was longing for the times when people were writing with their hearts, at those times the texts were filled with emotions, not with some statistics or objective kind of stuff. The only thing that he could do was to yearn because he knew that there was nothing else than obeying unless he wanted to be an outcast as he saw in numerous examples that came before him. When the work was over, he didn't even realize he was humming the song Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Finally, he would float for a few hours which would enable him to be himself again. When he returned home—the so-called house where the need for sleep was tried to be eliminated before returning to work again was a continuation of other places that lack warmth—he looked at the books under his bedstead. He wished to be in that picture where a kid, frozen in time, was lying down on the sunbed but he thought that he would watch the sea to get inspiration—the sea that he has drawn into even when reading the book. He wanted to change places with that boy on the shore, and who knows, maybe everything would have been different that way. Just then, one of the alarms started going off, which was a sign that he should have been asleep by now. His brain, without doubt, was in need of some rest. When he went to work again the following day, he ran into Mrs. All-Knowing, also called Narcia, and as soon as she had seen him, she asked her if the presentation about the probable sales in the following years was ready. She would not feel concerned most of the time because she was accustomed to doing all her duties on time and she never liked postponing the things that should be done as soon as possible. She did not like negative answers either and when he said that it was not ready, a quarrel between them was likely to start if she didn’t remember that such things were banned during office hours—because it would be such a loss of time, didn’t it? Then, he moved his legs to his desk to prepare himself for another day based on the “be happy because you work for a better future of the community” idea but he could not stop thinking about how it would make sense to proceed working so hard for the future when the climate crisis had advanced so much. Maybe they wouldn’t even have oxygen to breathe, but what was this commitment to productivity? He could not fathom. The temperature changes were happening suddenly, and this caused him to come to the following conclusion: “Even the weather behaves mercilessly and rigidly against me, there is no soft, affectionate, or time-friendly kind of thing that I could find here”. The same conversation with the robot was repeated because of some “unfruitful” moments. But this time, the robot came to realize that Mr. Studia would not need such inspiration to do his work because he was just supposed to enter the data into the file. Supposedly, this task was not something that would require a call for the ancient Muses. Mr. Studia was writing poems in secret and he was publishing them anonymously just like some people did hundreds of years ago—maybe a bridge between past and present could be built through this perspective. But there was something that Mr. Studia would not expect, the robot also entertained itself with art from time to time when no eyes were around. It had to behave according to the rules, though, at other times. Both of them felt thrilled to find someone who was not like others because they, in a way, wanted to be found out, and they were reckless about leaving some kind of clues behind them. A few days later, Mr. Studia was still amazed at how things had worked out, and before he was going to meet his “classical-music-lover, mechanic friend”, the following lines were going through his mind:

 

 

The days followed each other

on, and on, and on.

But the calendar had to be renewed

with the stamp of a ring

covered in blood

on its own.