Once Stu decides to leave, that’s it (except not really, no, not at all).
He moves into action at once (or, at least, he tells himself that’s what he’s doing. Stu lies to himself a lot). Packing things – random things like coat hangers and tea cups and knitted gloves and bits of dried flowers – into a big cardboard box. He throws everything in and then stares down at the jumble of items. His life, bits and pieces, that make no sense, strewn about. He closes the box up slowly, sealing the cardboard box up with sticky-tape he stole from the LCA’s stationary cupboard. He picks up the box, ready to take it out to his car (a Kia Sportage, run down, a grunting mess of a thing), before remembering that he sold his car. His car is gone, the money given to the LCA – for all the right reasons, of course. Penny McKenzie had told him that morning that it was important to give – and keep giving – as much as he could. That was the way to freedom, or something like that anyway. But sometimes – and he knows he’s not meant to say this, let alone think it, he doesn’t feel very free at all.
He feels trapped. And tired. His fingers are sore from scrubbing constantly and his muscles ache. Penny says you have to do the work to make it work, and Stu knows she’s right, but why does the work have to be so exhausting?
That’s an O G thought though.
O G means obstructive grievance.
Stu has a lot of O G thoughts. Once in class, they told him he was an O G. Which he understood but he didn’t like. It made his skin bristle.
Still, no matter because the LCA – the League for Cultural Advancement – is his home. It’s a funny kind of home. A home where he is never allowed to relax. He just wants to go out for a while. He just wants to take his box of little bits and pieces – dried lavender that his mother gave him, a fantasy novel he’s never had the chance to read, a pair of folded socks he’s never worn because the LCA say they are the wrong colour – and find some sun somewhere and sit in it. To feel the glow on his skin.
Penny says sun comes from within. That light shines from your insides and sure, that might be true, he doesn’t deny it, but he also wants the other sun. Please, can’t he have the other sun?
He remembers the sun, you know. The way it glided over his body. He remembers wearing sunscreen, slapping it on his nose, his cheeks, his arms, the back of his neck. How it made him feel alive, like something was uncoiling inside of him. Warm, all over. When was the last time he went out in it, felt it settle on his skin? Months ago, surely. Maybe even years ago. Egg and pickle sandwiches, cheese and onion crisps on the grass in front of the library. He’d watched people walk by with books loaded in their arms, students with merry smiles, couples holding hands, mothers pushing strollers. It had been nice (so nice, so much nicer than he even wants to admit), seeing the hustle and bustle of movement. It was a world away from the LCA. Not, of course, that that’s what he wants. He loves (can he really say that, truly, deep down?) the LCA. Of course he does. Still, there’s something inside him, something that pulls and pulls and doesn’t let go, that wants what everyone else has. A wife, kids, a house in the country – blue peachy skies, golden sun, a garden to potter around in. He wants long lazy weekends. He wants to take his car and drive to a diner somewhere, eat butter-milk pancakes with honey, drink coffee from a large mug, his hands wrapped around the sides. He wants to forget about the future of mankind, forget about processes and rules and systems and healing the planet (he’s only one man anyway – he’s limited in what he can do…) but but but but – there are so many buts inside of him.
He’s not going to do any of that. He’s going to ignore the longing in his heart. He’s going to pull the bits and pieces out of his cardboard box again. Cancel those plans inside his head. He’s going to put everything away again, back into their rightful places, and then he’s going to carefully fold the box down again, untape the sticky tape he so carefully taped, and get back to work. He’s going to remember his place.
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