Short Story: A Bell Jar

Short Story: A Bell Jar

“I want to be as spontaneous as you are,” she said to me. She said it with a slight smile, but it was an insult. It meant no more than: you’re a child. You’re insane.

We were sitting in a café with a view of the mountains. I’d suggested going to a meadow that night and sleeping under the stars instead of being stuck in the hostel room.

“Your feet are planted so firmly in reality, you can’t walk,” I responded, lighting a cigarette. “Do it with me, get a taste of life for once!”

“Bart, you have to realize that your independence and self are not separate from cultural and social norms,” she told me, putting the cup on the table between us. “You can’t just walk around thinking you don’t belong within the social and cultural norms that, unfortunately, do exist. You think you are above that, but you’re not. No one is.”

That seemed to be our last real conversation. We finished our coffees in silence. Next, we strolled back to the hostel, without saying anything. I started to pack my bag.

“I do love you, but I hate the way you are,” she said as I fixed my backpack clasps. Listening to the dimmed sounds of Penderecki’s Dimensions of Time and Silence she put on a music player I was quite sure we wouldn’t see each other again.

That night, I left Zakopane and Monica behind. But I didn’t leave full of the conviction that I preferred to be alone rather than entangled in someone who didn’t embrace the choices of life. I didn’t leave happy in the knowledge that we have the freedom to sleep in a warm bed or in a cold meadow. I left crippled with the weight of having said too much and having wanted too much.

I have walked through many train stations, I have been on many trains, and on my journeys I have watched people around me, pressing themselves into carriages like a flock of sheep marked for slaughter. No one ever stared or even looked at anything for too long, or – heaven forbid – struck up conversations. No one invaded anyone’s space or time. In the elite line, we were all seasoned travellers. We all knew the rules: how to buy a ticket, how to stand in the never-ending queues, how to complain that the trains are always late (after the years, when the train delays appeared to be a normal thing, people should have learnt that; instead, they seemed to just love the complaining), how to find the most strategic place on a platform so as to, in a sudden rush to the train doors, be the first one to open them and get on, paying no attention to the passengers getting off, not to mention the train conductors, who seem to be treated as the necessary evil. In the compartments we sit still, deep in concentration: our books, magazines, mp3 players, newspapers, windows, hands, ladies' tits. We knew the rules and remained firmly within their boundaries. Sometimes, a person not being familiar with the trip rules, a rookie perhaps, would chatter endlessly with their fellow traveller, embarrassing and, at the same time, arousing curiosity amongst the rest of the passengers. The most, however, knew the rules and stuck to them throughout the whole of their trip. It seems that political correctness is expected in most, if not all, public transportation.

The biggest challenge I find is, when on longer trips, I feel the urge to leave the compartment for a cigarette or to go to the toilet. It’s not a problem for those who have strategically sat themselves in the seats nearest the doors – all they have to do is stand up, open the door and exit the compartment without the worry of annoying their fellow passengers. If like me, however, you like to spend your journey with your nose pressed up against the window, leaving the compartment can be a bit like an obstacle course or what I like to call the mysterious dance amongst legs, because he sleeps, she straightens her legs and he has crossed his legs and hasn’t the slightest intention of uncrossing them for me to pass. Oh yes, one can take a lot of trouble and burn a mountain of calories just to go to the toilet.

In Cracow, during a longer stopover, because of an engine swap, I decided to go to the Wars restaurant carriage for a dishwater-like coffee. I sat at a very uncomfortable table and started reading a book. A few minutes later I was put off my reflection by a feeling of being watched. A little girl, seven, maybe eight years old, standing in the carriage door, was eyeing me up and down. I closed the book and smiled at her.

She came up to me. She had ruffled hair, big green eyes and an enormous cuddly dog, which she clutched in her arms.

“What are you reading?” she asked.

“The Bell Jar,” I replied.

“What’s it about?”

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is about a young woman stifled by convention who slowly goes mad – how to explain that to a child!

“It’s about... it’s about the journey of a young girl who had problems with defining herself,” I answered.

“Which chapter are you on?”

“Six.”

“What’s the girl doing?”

“Esther - that’s her name - is a model in New York and even though she has become friends with the girls around her, she feels all alone.”

“That’s sad,” said the little girl, “I’m not lonely; I’m with my mommy.”

With those words her mother seemed to materialize, carrying a clear blue bag, probably with a picnic inside.

“Lilly,” she called, visibly worried by the sight of her daughter talking to a stranger.

Lilly rose and ran to her, but in the middle of the walkway, she paused and turned back to me.

“Lilly!”

The girl walked back to me slowly and handed me her stuffed animal.

“Don’t get lonely, okay?” she said to me. “Talk to the doggy.”

In a sea of people who know where they’ve been and where they’re going, who have every aspect of their trips planned to the nanosecond, people who get in nobody’s way and expect everyone to extend the same courtesy, a little girl handed a stranger her stuffed animal.

I have never believed children are born pure in the Christian sense of the word, but I do believe they’re born free of the boundaries we impose on ourselves later as a society – and perhaps this does make children pure.

Or maybe a better term is free.

A child would not hesitate to pack up a sleeping bag and sleep on a meadow under the stars with you.

Since that train trip, whenever people asked me what I wanted to do with my life, I replied, “I want to be a child.”

So, if you ever wonder why I share so much of myself with the world, from the sacred to the profane, the answer is that I think everyone could use this license to be who they are and enjoy what that means. We do live in a society with norms that state what we can and cannot share, what we can and cannot do, but as Einstein once said: “if the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts.” That’s what I want to do – I want to change the facts.

Your wants are beautiful, your truths are powerful. Maybe you dream of climbing K2 or quitting your job and starting your own company. Maybe you want to sleep on a meadow or share a fairytale kiss under every triumphal arch in the world.

They’ll say you’re crazy. They’ll say, “I wish I could be as spontaneous as you are,” and that you should grow up. Life isn’t like that – there are norms, you know. There are ways to do things. You don’t talk to people queuing on a platform. You get through the journey as fast as possible, go to your compartment, sit down and be quiet. You go to your job, bust your ass, go home, change, or not, go to some social thing, entertain the same questions, go home, watch bad television and do it all over and over again. Polite, proper, efficient. That’s life, right? Then you get old and maybe play some golf, next, you die.

Fuck no.

The only way to remember who you are is to refuse to let anyone or anything dictate what you want. Think for yourself. Question authority, as once said by a wise man. Remember, that wanting something other than herd-like, soul-crushing monotony is not only natural, but necessary. Being packed like sardines in a tin is not enough to live a life. Get out of the tin. Be a child.

And I’ll tell you something: for every word from people that I’m out of my fucking mind, I have two more from people sharing their deepest desires. People much closer to remembering who they are.

And all the time, I think, “you don’t have to be lonely – I’ll be your dog.”