Thursday 5 January 2017

Important Conversations

  I’d spoken a hundred thousand times to the statue but since the moment I’d first met it, its responses were always stone cold. Not that they were lacking in content, but there’d always been an undercurrent of apathy and disinterest.
  “What would you like for lunch today?” I once asked, and the reply was stronger than silence could ever have been.
  “Cereal is not a lunch food, statue, but even if it was we can’t make any, seeing as how you forgot to buy the milk the other day.”
  Instead of apologising, the statue immediately discussed the current state of political affairs. However, it was filled with so many disingenuous assertions that I knew it didn’t believe in half the things it was saying. In fact, I knew nothing of politics and I could understand a little of what he was saying, which was already a big red flag.
  I interrupted it, “yes that’s all very interesting, but what about lunch?”
  It was a while later that I found myself eating cereal by the bedside, having taken the time to purchase milk for myself. Perhaps I should have done so from the beginning; the process would have been so much faster. I laid the bowl in front of the statue but it refused to touch it. “Don’t you know that cereal has lots of protein? How will you grow big and strong?” I questioned, but there was no answer. How could there be? I was completely reasonable; any response from it would have been the opposite, on account of my being right.
  Instead, the statue responded with a long monologue about the intricacies of the public transportation system. I countered with an equally unrelated quote from the journal of meteorology and climatology, stating that global warming would significantly change the landscape of housing. There was no rebuttal, for I had won simply on account of being more researched.
  “It feels as though I have won this argument,” I said smugly. The statue did not reply, and I knew it was sulking.

  In this manner we passed the day, bantering uselessly with baseless information neither of us knew or had ever sought out. It was a relationship founded on shaky ground, both poor in substance and in authenticity, but it was one I maintained for the sake of future times, when the statue might be more passionate and receptive about things that really mattered.

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