Art: Waiting by Alex Duensing
A NUMBER ON REALITY
My wife is behind me with her chemistry book open, her head buried in another world. Every once in a while she breaks the silence.
“Light travels 3 million meters per second.”
I stand up and stride across the room in three-foot paces that I count out loud in one-second intervals.
“Now if I could do that 3 million times faster, I could go the speed of light too.”
We refill our coffee mugs, share a smile or two and return to our work.
Our apartment is a tiny, 488 square foot box; nothing fits and everything is crammed into a spot including our Labrador. We pay almost two dollars a square foot and the rent will go up if we stay. We hate this apartment.
“One inch is 2.54 centimeters,” she says.
I look around the apartment and visually pick out inches from the white walls that smother us and turn them into centimeters; the walls are no larger in centimeters. I see the mismatched furniture angled into tight positions. We bought none of this furniture, every piece just a donation from friends moving or leaving. In April we will have to move, but there is nowhere for a family of two and a dog to go. We don’t make enough money to rent a house or anything bigger than this and dogs aren’t welcomed in the places we can afford. For those places we can afford, I wouldn’t occupy without a dog’s protection anyway.
In our lives Healthcare is a philosophy. We could sell dope to make ends meet, but that is my only hope if things go sour. These are our realities. Only one of us can afford school, she is the lucky one.
“This chemistry class is going to kill me. All I hope to get out of it is that we blow something up.”
I laugh. Outside our window the geese and ducks are lying on the ice that covers the phony lake this complex dug with our money. The ducks have their heads buried too, but under feathers. The sky is crimson; the clouds are like sheets of cold steel. The Rocky Mountain air is dry and cold, very cold. I try to put numbers to how cold it might be, but fail. I can put numbers on the envelopes that come through the mail: telephone, fifty-five dollars; electricity, thirty-five dollars; rent… well, we’ve already gone over that. I can’t put numbers on the quality of love. I can’t put numbers on the hope we share that things will, nay, must get better.
Thousands of miles away my parents are struggling in Italy; they too must move. It’s not looking good for them either, but then, Italy just doesn’t have anything available. There are 6 billion people in the world, many don’t have homes, but it seems to me the rest of us are just on the verge of joining them.
“Are you writing about me and chemistry? They’re going to think your wife’s a freak.”
That’s not what I’m thinking, I’m thinking they too are turning numbers into reality and finding things don’t look so good. But then, what do I know; I work in words, not numbers.
While most in my immediate family were visual artists, writing drew me in. Ink is in my blood. My father was a wood sculptor, my sister graduated from the Venice Art School as a painter. My great-grandmother on my mother’s side was from the famous De Medici family while my great-grandfather on my grandfather’s side was a famous dancer who even taught the Princes Savoy to dance.
After the Navy I started a Flash Fiction writers group that included some of today’s flash fiction pioneers: Nancy Stohlman, Kona Morris, Sally Reno, Leah Roper to name a few. Tom Kazuka entitled me, “The Godfather of the Denver Flash Fiction scene.”
Bryan Jansing works include, “Like Clumps of Dried Dirt,” “Bridge Party,” and “A Number on Reality,” in Fast Forward Vol. 3, The Mix Tape (2010), which was the finalist for the Colorado Book Awards. He has also written for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. His book Italy: Beer Country is the first and only book available about the Italian craft beer movement. Learn more at www.italybeertours.com.