A good twenty minutes’ walk out from home, going the opposite direction, is when it always strikes. The edges of your vision smooth over in an imperceivable way: you can only feel yourself drifting off on some uncanny track. Maybe you have some headphones in, cancelling all outside-world distractions. This is a full-fledged zone out, and zoning out is the key downfall to a day, or at least an evening. All thought is a spotlight on this now. You’re left questioning how long you were zoned out for. An hour? A day? Hell, even the whole week? How long have I been coasting through, pissing away time like a government official pissing away self-respect?
Zoning-out has dire consequences too. It’s possible that serial zoning-outers could put themselves at risk, vacantly wandering onto the road only to be run down by a disgruntled bus driver, who himself is very possibly in a deeper state of being zoned out than the victim. But I’m not talking about these kinds of consequences, despite their shocking relevance. The true consequences are those that happen without happening: the constant questioning of yourself (see paragraph one). Of course, I turned off all the hobs before leaving the house, I do that without even thinking about it. Oh, maybe the not-thinking about it meant that fantastically this time I had failed to turn them off? Well, they’re electric anyway so there’s no risk of burning anything down, and I definitely moved those pans away. But did I leave a rag strewn across the top? That could catch on fire. That will catch on fire. And the fire doors are all left open, that’s the safety measures moot. I can picture it now, fire spreading down the hallway, flames licking underneath the door like agitated orange snakes waiting to burst out and engulf the other poor tenants. The well has been poisoned; there’s no chance I will be able to relax until I get back. Ugh, and of course I’m out at the cinema all evening, that’s a good two hours where all my belongings will be burned black.
That’s another point. These nitrate-charge ideas always come when you are powerless against them. The wave of intense fear kicks you just as you get on the bus, just as you sit down at work, just as you get comfortable in bed. Typical that whatever cruel force made people this way would twist the knife at these times. It’s all probably very funny on a cosmic level. It’s here where you have convinced yourself with utter conviction that the stove IS on, you did leave it on and that’s final. You’ll just have to pick up the sorry pieces when you get back, there’s nothing to be done now other than wallow in it. That recognition of potential destruction, the mere acceptance of it, is death.
Fast forward: the film has finished, and the train home arrives in five minutes. At least then I’ll have some semblance of relief, a release from the tortures of my own design. The images of ten dozen fire engines piling up, spilling out of the driveway clouds my mind. The time for zoning out has come and gone, the brain is now too wired, too hyper focused, on just seeing the inevitable and obvious destruction. I’m ready to see crying mothers holding scorched babes, pointing accusatory fingers at me: “You bastard, if only you turned off your electric hob!” My bad, that one’s on me. Nothing more to do other than reap what I have already sewn in my negligence. Through the door, a warm blast of musty air hits me. Fuck. I bet I did leave it on. My feet are lead weights; my lungs are no more than sorry bags now. Oh, I did turn it off. Of course, I turned it off, I always turn it off. When have I ever not turned it off? What a colossal waste of time and energy that was.
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