The Fudge Packer

Hundred years of solitude was my favorite book. It spoke to me, its rhythm and its lyrical proses elevated the characters vitality to an impossible level, so I thought. And through this story my story came to be; many years of solitude lived in isolation away from anyone that could harm me. Strange to think that words on a page could signal the revival of a spirit cast away for its sheer existence. A true post-structural existence: The binaries of assimilation and subjugation colluded to create an atmosphere of tolerance and affection. In other words, the self was forced to exile itself to the detriment of its true self, for the sake of the other. The words of Marquez, in his brilliant story of the search for self awoke a sentiment of agency. Fuck the structurlists and their assimilatory ideas, the self needed to be liberated and emancipated like the shackled wolf left to die, in an attempt to placate the world filled with bunnies. Hapless and motionless twits and their inability to think for themselves: a true Orwellian reverie.

Accidental logic is the only way that I can explain my ways and even my thinking. The term itself is contradictory and means nothing for the reasonable man. Its meaning as conceived in my mind however is the quintessential raison d’etre of yours truly. So it all began at the age of nine; I used to dream of floods and murder, of mutiny and sex; in my isolated world filled with imaginary wars and epic battles between the gods.

I guess to understand, I need to take you through my years of solitude and therefore it did truly begin at the age of three. I have vague recollections of this. Crawling towards my father on the veranda, the jasmine blossoms intoxicating aroma pulling me to reach for his big toe. My father however was too engrossed in the Sunday Times, which he had had delivered from the Capital, which in turn was brought in from London I presume. My mother was busy in the kitchen or she was probably looking for one of them. I had no other choice, he was it, there was no one else that I could play with. So I crawled as fast as I could towards him and pulled on his big toe. He did not notice and after many attempts, I was distracted by the golden cat my sister was so fond off. Its claws had already left a few marks on my face but I was not to be defeated. So I started to crawl after it, its tail awkwardly teasing me. As I went after it, through the living room and the dinning room, then through the back veranda, he did not notice that the last addition to the household whose birth signaled a shift in the aligned stars, was about to leave his care and enter a world that was unprotected, filled with land mines. He was too caught up in the real life drama of the six Americans posing as Canadians to escape the Ayatollah to realize that his toddler was no longer with him on that Sunday afternoon. He had completely failed his wife and this story would haunt him to his deathbed.

There I was, in search of that bloody golden cat whose presence I could intuitively sense. Once I had managed to get myself from the back veranda steps to the garden, I was sure that I would be able to be with my prized pet. So I followed it to the jack fruit tree, from there to the lime tree, past the chicken coop. From that point on, once I saw the silver flashes emanating past the Palmyra groves, I could not resist. It was haunting me even more than the cat, it was beckoning me to enter its realm to live its reality. So like true solider, I made my way to the edge of the garden just by the patty fields. From that point on it all happened so fast, but rest assured, it was the beginning of the 100 years. As I reached the edge of the small namesake fence, it was no obstacle. I easily moved past it and within three seconds, I was in the water. Before I knew it, the sliver flashes were from the large body of water situated just behind my room that I saw everyone night as my mother lulled me to sleep. Its history is as old as the house; its where the sand that was used to build the house came from or some of it. The pit was quite large and for a toddler, it was an ocean. During the hot Jaffna summers, it was empty but during the monsoon season, the continuous downpour filled its belly full. For me, it was an experience that I could not pass up or so I must have thought and the idea to jump in did not seem so unreal. But little did I know that I could not swim and in 5 minutes, probably after a few attempts at keeping afloat my body weight must have given in. I started to sink and finally my tiny little arm pointing up to the heavens, slowly returned to the years of the known solitude.

Before I knew it, I was being prodded and poked, my mother’s hysterical sobs falling on my face as she pushed at my chest to breathe life back into my motionless body. I could feel the water coming out of my lungs and along with the water, the tadpoles, hundreds of them that I must have swallowed. As I began to cough up the liquid left in my stomach, I could hear the fear and love in my mother’s breaths. But I could not sense him he was just standing there with his paper folded neatly, so as not to crumple it. He just stood there, not saying a word and I knew then that this was the beginning of my many years of solitude. I was the precarious and boisterous offspring that came to them ten years too late. And now it became even more evident that he could not physically be there and it became evident to both, the father and me the son that he was not there mentally either.

From this moment on, I built my castles in my mind and played with my imaginary knights and dragons. The foundations of walls were being instituted, in preparation for the big opening, the true one hundred years of solitude that I imposed on myself, so that he would not feel sad and bitter about his abnormal seed.