A Lake In Singularity

 A LAKE IN SINGULARITY

The path along the small lake, even though it is just under half a kilometre in circumference, seems almost endless that night. My body slowly adjusts to the darkness, I rely less on my eyes, my other senses sharpen. I smell the sweet scent of hot summer and the sharpness of weed out from the first in a seemingly endless row of benches - each with a few metres of space between them. On the first bench, as on every other, a couple sits and laughs dreamily. From the second I hear rather than see kissing, on the third sit two couples apparently on a double date, the teenage girls giving the appearance of competing to see which one can snuggle closer to their lover, while the boys barely notice them, too busy loudly bantering in their accented Ljubljana accents. A few metres away, a little lower down by the calm surface of the lake, a younger gentleman is playing music on a loudspeaker for his chosen one. I take a deep breath and think plaintively: "but not Cigarettes After Sex ... please". I quicken my pace to avoid the chorus echoing in my head for a long time afterwards, it's already hard not to think about him, and my attention is drawn to the muffled laughter, the clapping into the void as the elderly couple try to get rid of the mosquitoes, and the pungent smell of repellent that makes my eyes water. Although I have only been walking for a few minutes, I feel like I am trapped in a nightmare, or maybe I really am walking on a treadmill and that is why I am not moving. I feel small and insignificant to myself, lost like a small child whose mother's hand has slipped away in a big shopping centre, but equally huge in my singularity.

JEZERO V EDNINI

Pot ob majhnem jezeru, čeprav meri le-to le slabega pol kilometra po obsegu, se mi tisto noč zdi skorajda neskončna. Moje telo se počasi privaja na temo, manj se zanašam na oči, druga čutila se izostrijo. Vonjam sladek vonj po vročem poletju in od prve v na videz brezkončni vrsti klopi - med vsako je nekaj metrov prostora - veje ostrina trave. Na prvi klopi, tako kot na vsaki naslednji, sedi par in se zasanjano smeji. Od druge prej zaslišim kot vidim poljubljanje, na tretji sedita dva para očitno na dvojnem zmenku, najstnici dajeta videz, da tekmujeta, katera se lahko privije bližje k svojemu izbrancu, medtem ko ju fanta komaj opazita, saj sta prezaposlena z glasnim šopirjenjem s poudarjenim ljubljanskim naglasom. Nekaj metrov naprej malo nižje ob spokojni gladini jezera mlajši gospod izbranki na zvočniku predvaja glasbo. Globoko vdihnem in žalobno pomislim: "pa ne Cigarettes After Sex ... prosim". Pospešim korak, da mi ne bi refren še dolgo po tem odmeval v glavi, že tako je težko ne misliti nanj, in mojo pozornost pritegnejo pridušen smeh, ploskanje v prazno, s katerim se skuša starejši par znebiti komarjev, in oster vonj po repelentu, od katerega se mi zarosijo oči. Čeprav hodim šele nekaj minut, se mi zdi, da sem ujeta v nočno moro, morda pa res hodim na tekaški stezi in se zato nikamor ne premaknem. Sama sebi se zdim majhna in nepomembna, izgubljena kot majhen otrok, ki se mu je v velikem nakupovalnem centru izmuznila materina roka, hkrati pa v svoji ednini enako ogromna in žalobna kot tresoča se milina jezera.