Martin Aitken

STATEMENT 097
You want to know what I think about this arrangement? I think you look down on me. The way I see it, you’re a family that’s built a house. And from the warm rooms of that house you now look out at the pouring rain. Safe from menace, you delight at the rain. You’re dry and snug. You’re reaping the rewards of a long process of refinement. When the storm gets up, it only heightens your enjoyment. I’m standing in the rain you think can never fall on you. I become one with that rain. I’m the storm you shelter from. This entire house is something you built just to avoid me. So don’t come to me and say I play no part in human lives.

It was boiling hot.
The air was nearly glowing.
I liked it better when it was windy and raining. I could lie in my room then and watch films or read and sleep without feeling guilty about it. The sun was so unsparing. You were meant to be out in it, meant to be out with friends, meant to be having a good time. If I lay in my room then, there’d be something the matter with me, I’d be letting myself down, even though I’d be doing exactly the same thing, and even though my life was my own.

It was all their own doing, and yet they acted like it was something that just happened to them, like it was the same for everyone.

It was impossible to be in that house without it leaving a mark in some way, as if when I left bits of their chaos would be stuck to me and I always had to struggle to get rid of them again. They were a family in need, only they didn’t realize it.

We didn’t kill ourselves in our family.
We just didn’t.
We put our troubles aside.

What do we do about what we can sense, but cannot know?
We close our eyes to it.

You’d probably say it was a small world, but not if you have to clean it.

I’d rather be anywhere than wherever I am

That may be crude, but I’ve already said I don’t necessarily share your way of seeing things here. Maybe that’s why you think of me as an offender. Half human. Flesh and technology. Too living.

know the smell of oakmoss, because you’ve planted it inside me, just as you’ve planted the idea that I should love one man only, be loyal to one man only, and that I should allow myself to be courted.