The Circle Game

Unfinished, I'm afraid!

---

When I heard her say something about people entering without knowing what event they were supposed to be attending, I was scared! That's actually quite funny, that I should be scared, rather than, say, just chagrined, but I think I was fearing that she would turn those fearful eyes onto me. They were small eyes, you see, almost like a hawk's. I would tell you what colour they were if I knew, but I certainly knew I knew I didn't want them to drift anywhere near where I was seated. So, this was the game to play for today, it seemed, for me to be stuck in my seat, trying to avoid medusa's gaze.

Never mind that I would later find that she was not talking about me, but some other event she had attended in the last week. In fact, I doubt that she even noticed me enter, or sit down, or not touch any of the food or drink, but instead blankly stare at the others there, thinking that maybe I was right about some things. Things like, I guess, the fact that there was something not quite right with them, that they were not my kind of people. But why? Affable if approached, mostly funny, and yet...there were these old thoughts that never seemed to go away, that said that there were better people out there. It is a fairly awful thing for me to think, I know; believe me, I can't comprehend sometimes why I write down such things, whether they are true or not. The reader must be spared some amount of the writer's idiosyncracy, or else I think he becomes as mad as the writer himself!

I started to think that maybe I was a bit odd, sitting there in what was, after all, supposed to be a party of sorts. Was I supposed to be eating? Drinking? But I'd already eaten, and I didn't much feel like a drink, although it did make me wonder what I was expecting to do there. Had I any sense, I would have arrived much later, when my abstinence was less conspicuous. Or was I just imagining things? After all, who was really dull enough to pay attention to whether I was eating or not? Ah, the mental anguish! Bleedin' brilliant, this was. I wondered whether I looked out of place, but at this point, the mere activation of the thought was enough to drive me into a fit.

Of course, she would have been wrong, were she talking about me - I knew what I was there for, even if I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing! The centre seat was occupied with someone who was now synonymous with the ancient name, which is self-evident to those who were there, and irrelevant to anyone else. "Now", I thought, "should be the time for celebration".

I wondered how long I could last sitting there with no plate, no drink, watching the other people, but then I realized that the only decent thing to do, even if it meant a temporary cessation of shyness, was to work up the nerve to say something. So, deep breath and all, I did what was right.

I wouldn't say much changed after that, but I did stop noticing medusa's presence. It was probably for the better, because the whole thing ended up like it started, with a complete sense of neutrality of thought on my part. The problem, at least as I see it, is simply that it is not too difficult to foresee a time when I am the one who must sit there in the centre; for sure, I will that time know what event I am attending, but I wonder whether it will make it any easier. I do not think there are any easy answers with the circle game.

---

Incidentally, don't take them titles too seriously. I haven't listened to a Joni Mitchell song in a long time, and I certainly have not listened to the song in question. But it somehow inspired some parts of this, in some mysterious way that is nowadays the only reason I keep writing.