Sketching the sky

What are you doing?

Sketching.

What are you sketching?

The sky.

Rondo rolled onto her side. The spell was broken. 

Rondo had been in Frankfurt for five months, and in all that time, she had not been on one successful date. She really did want to find someone. She wanted to feel close to someone. There had been a numbness for the past year, and she was only able to concentrate on her daydreams. Her mind knew how to fly above the houses and nestle down by the river, where there was no water but it was too wet to sit. She knew how to go there, and she went often. Her real life offered little that felt real anyway, and she could see no reason why she oughtn’t spend time ambling through a world fabricated from her memories and fancies.

But Rondo thought she might find something truer than that in love. She could lose herself in books, and her fictional heroes so often found meaning in human connection. She suspected that the whole thing was blown well out of proportion, and that love was like a sweet cocktail that tasted nice on the front of your mouth and made you feel blurry and giddy, but ultimately you were just drunk and didn’t realise how stupid you looked. The advent of Tinder and Hinge only reconfirmed her view; billions of unhappy people madly sought the intoxicating power of love to take the edge off the misery of their lives. But she couldn’t justify not having tried it. She believed, above all, in the power of experiment.

Why are you drawing the sky?

So that I can remember what it looked like.

What do you mean? It’s not going anywhere.

I don’t think we’re looking at the same sky.

Rondo was aware that she could be difficult to be with.

Well I think it’s really good.

Why did this comment make her feel sick to her stomach? It was a nice thing to say. She was trying to be supportive, to show an interest. Why could Rondo not accept it for what it was, a gesture? It didn’t matter whether it was hollow or not. In fact, for Rondo it was worse if she’d really meant it. So much worse. Because she didn’t know what the sketch was. She didn’t know what Rondo was drawing. It was embarrassing.

Rondo forced a smile. Why wouldn’t she give love a chance? Here she was, faced with someone who wanted to give love a chance, and she found herself unable to respect her by virtue of that very fact. She was a product of a world that believed there could be good and bad sketches of the sky. What do you mean, she wanted to scream. Why are you happy with this thing that you are? Is there a person in there somewhere? Is there a drum playing somewhere within you? Will you ever hear it, or will you insist upon listening only to rhythms blared through sirens to millions and believing they’re just for you?

This was a person who had denied themselves for so long that it was possible they no longer existed. This, to Rondo’s mind, was not a person. And this was a person who would find love. Not with Rondo. But with someone. So who’s the real loser?

Could two worlds exist simultaneously? She felt unable to relinquish the world in which she could draw the sky every day and discover something new. But she wanted to love.

How can you draw the sky when it’s all just empty space?

Rondo sighed. What do you mean, empty? What difference could it possibly make to me if it’s empty? What would it be full of? I’m drawing it as it looks to me. You’re missing it, because you’re not looking.

Hear this story read aloud in Episode 6 of the Simple Joys Podcast.