Dear Denille,
I have a goldfish called Earth-Pig Fish. She lives in a bowl on my bedside cabinet. I say ‘She’, but to be honest, I can’t be certain about her gender. I think you need to have studied veterinary science for a number of years, since there are no outward indications, at least not that I can spot.
Earth-Pig Fish is an interesting fish. She doesn’t do anything that most people would categorise as interesting. In fact, she is fairly predictable and swims around her bowl, opening and closing her mouth. Sometimes she goes clockwise and sometimes she goes anti-clockwise. I do not think there is a pattern and I should know because I have spent a lot of time with her. What I think is interesting is how she MIGHT view her world. I stressed the word ‘might’ because obviously I can’t know for sure.
Bear with me on this.
Look at the world from Earth-Pig Fish’s perspective. As far as she knows, her universe is bounded by plastic. She cannot experience life outside it (because she would die). She probably thinks it’s an okay universe, if only because she doesn’t know any other. BUT (and this is my point) occasionally a human face (MY face) looms up outside her universe and interacts with her. I mouth things through the plastic. I talk to Earth-Pig Fish a lot, for reasons I don’t want to go into right now. What does she make of this? Does she think, maybe, that I am God trying to communicate with her? I balloon into view (on account of the refractive nature of certain types of plastic) and then I balloon out again. This could be a mystical experience for her. Does she think I am giving her a message about how she should live her life?
But what if the God so many people believe in is something like that? A presence ballooning into our consciousness from time to time – a presence we think is telling us something profound, but is actually only thinking it’s time to clean us out?
I have a friend. Douglas Benson From Another Dimension. I sometimes think he feels like he is swimming around in a bowl and wants to know what it is like on the other side of the plastic. Sometimes I think we all feel like that.
I would be interested in your views.
Your penpal,
Candice
About three weeks after I first met Douglas Benson From Another Dimension, he invited me round to his house. For afternoon tea. This was both amazingly exciting and deeply troubling. Exciting, because no one had ever invited me to afternoon tea before, and troubling because, as Rich Uncle Brian has often remarked, I can be somewhat socially challenged.
I say it was my first invitation, but that is not strictly true. I was once invited to a birthday party when I was six, but I remember nothing about it. According to Mum I refused to speak and spent the whole time sitting under a tree, mumbling to worms. I was NOT the life and soul of the party, though it’s possible the worms enjoyed my company. I cannot say with any certainty. What is clear, however, is that after that everybody human gave me up as a hopeless case.
So I was excited by Douglas’s invitation and scared I would ignore his parents and talk to invertebrates [unlikely, I admit, since invertebrates are rarely invited to afternoon teas].
‘Is it okay with your mum and dad?’ I asked.
‘They are NOT my mum and dad,’ snarled Douglas. His mouth twisted in a fashion reminiscent of a snarly creature – a vicious dog, for example – so I feel justified in describing him so. ‘They are facsimiles of my real mother and father who are in another dimension.’
‘Ah, yes,’ I said. It’s difficult to know what to say in these circumstances, so I hummed for a few seconds. ‘Do they know they are facsimiles?’ I added after I ran out of hums.
‘They think I am mad,’ said Douglas. ‘I tried to explain the situation to them logically. That I had arrived from another dimension and that, due to some law of the multiverse that conserves matter, their son is now in my universe, living with my parents. I told them my real mother was a quantum physicist and my real father a famous experimental musician. They refused to believe me.’
‘Fancy that,’ I said.
‘They took me to the hospital. Some idiot in a white coat, hearing that I had fallen from a tree, pronounced that I was suffering from loss of memory caused by a blow to the head. It is unscientific and, frankly, insufferable.’
I hummed a bit more.
‘What do your facsimile parents do?’ I asked. This seemed safe ground.
‘The female is a postie and the male is a nurse,’ snarled Douglas.
I was impressed with his snarling. It was really very good.
I have never known a quantum physicist. I’m not sure what they do, but it doesn’t seem to have much impact on the world. A postie, however, is different. Useful. She delivers letters and parcels. This is definitely a good thing. Without posties, penpal Denille couldn’t read my letters. Without posties we would constantly check our letter boxes and be constantly disappointed. The world would be a sadder place. I was tempted to point this out to Douglas Benson From Another Dimension, but felt it wasn’t the right time. I believed that we would certainly disagree on the respective merits of posties as compared to quantum physicists.
I am not qualified to talk about experimental musicians, so I kept quiet on that subject as well.
‘So is it okay with your facsimile parents?’ I asked.
‘Is what okay?’
‘Me coming to afternoon tea.’
‘Oh, they love the idea,’ said Douglas in a bitter tone of voice. He was an unhappy boy. Bitter tones of voice and excessive snarling are, to my mind, clear evidence of this. ‘They think it’s a sign my mental health is improving. You know, having friends.’
I felt their optimism might be dashed once they met me, but again I kept my own counsel.
‘I will talk to my mother,’ I said. ‘She’s not a facsimile. At least, not as far as I am aware.’
I talked to my mother.
First, I had to tap gently on her bedroom door. When I come home from school, the house is generally quiet and Mum’s bedroom door is generally closed. Sometimes I don’t see her until the morning when she makes me breakfast. Sometimes I think she might be an endangered species. Conservationists could get very excited and talk in hushed tones when they spot her.
I rarely intrude when she is in her room, but this was an emergency and she had told me I could knock if there was an emergency. There was no immediate response. I was thinking about knocking again when I heard a faint, ‘Come in.’ I opened the door gingerly, since even the squeak of a rusty hinge can cause Mum pain. The bedroom was dark and smelled of something that had spent a long time out of the sunshine. I waited a few moments to allow my eyes to adjust. Mum was sitting up in bed, a lumpy shadow among other lumpy shadows. I tiptoed over.
‘Mum?’ I whispered.
‘Yes, Pumpkin?’ she replied in a voice soaked in weariness.
‘I have been invited round to afternoon tea tomorrow by a friend from school. Can I go, please?’
The lumpy shadow sat up straighter. A shadow that was probably a hand rubbed at a shadow that was probably her eyes.
‘A friend, Pumpkin? That’s brilliant. Who is she?’
Her voice was tired, but tinged with excitement. Mum has spent considerable time hoping I would find a friend who would invite me to afternoon tea. As the years passed I think she gave up all hope. I believe this has contributed to the weight of sadness she carries, and naturally I have felt guilty.
‘The she is a he, Mum,’ I replied. ‘Douglas Benson From Another Dimension. He is incredibly strange as well.’
‘You are NOT strange, Pumpkin.’
I didn’t say anything. We have had these conversations many times. Mum insists I am not strange. I know I am. There is little point in arguing about this. Especially if it makes Mum unhappy, which it does for reasons I haven’t yet worked out.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Can I go?’
‘I will need to ring his mother,’ she said.
I had the phone in my hand already. I also had the number that Douglas had given me on a sheet of paper. I pride myself on being well organised. I held out both the phone and the sheet of paper.
‘Make me a cup of tea, Pumpkin,’ she said as she took them. ‘I’ll ring and then come out to the kitchen.’
‘You should be aware that she is his facsimile mother,’ I said. ‘I leave it to you to decide on the correct form of address under these circumstances.’
I left to make the tea, which is something I enjoy doing.