40 or 1

[Jack of Blades]

"He was standing there for a good ten minutes. Just staring ahead, down to the ground. It wasn’t particularly a cold afternoon, but from what I could see, he was rubbing his arms to retain some body heat. Eventually, he swung his right leg over the first floor balcony. Quickly after, his other leg followed. He then sat there on the edge of the balcony looking down. Looking down at the pavement about ten feet below. After a large breath, he fell the full ten feet. It turned out to be about seven and a half feet but either way; he fell from the balcony to the pavement. He lay, shocked by the force of the cement against his frame, for a few moments before pulling and elevating himself by pushing against the ground with his arms. Like he was doing a press-up. Disorientated, he continued pressing his arms up before swivelling his legs around so that they pointed in front of him. Picking himself up, he did not even dust himself off when finally reaching his feet again. He takes a quick swig of the air around him, possibly for clarification, possibly for a kind of detox-Dutch courage, and re-entered the building. Around forty seconds later, he was back on the balcony. He didn’t bother to look down this time. His legs swung over the side again. And like the instance before this, he fell to the pavement either ten or seven and a half feet away from him. He landed on his chin. It was probably grazed but from my vantage point I couldn’t see. However, the small pool of blood that stained the pavement was noticeable despite my distanced visualisation. Once again, he carefully got to his feet only a little more staggered from this repeated process. He didn’t dust himself off. Returning inside, I waited for his reappearance on the first floor balcony. He was there again, his legs swung over again, and he hit the pavement again. Rinse and repeat. As he fell for the fourth time and lifted his head from where it was planted in the pavement, he noticed that a single man was watching him. He drew his could-have-been grazed chin to meet his briefcase before returning inside. Rinse and repeat. At the seventh drop, the briefcase watcher had been joined by two females. Despite bouncing his head off the ground on the eighth fall, the watchers did not move from their positions. It seems like a very personal set of circumstances. A method of introspection. He reached the teenage drops and became more and more crippled with each meeting of his falling person with the unprotected ground below him. On about the fifteenth drop, there was about nine people standing around watching him drive himself repeatedly into the ground. He continued to get up, the dust amounting on his body gone unnoticed. Rinse and repeat. On the twentieth drop, that is not to say that he made his audience aware of it being the twentieth attempt, the fall just seemed like a milestone. It could have been 18. It could have been 24. It just seemed like the twentieth drop to the floor. Either way, on the twentieth drop, there was about fifteen passers-by stood in perfect silence and inertia just watching a man repeatedly launch himself from a first-floor balcony. People with briefcases. People with walking sticks. People with strollers. People with grocery bags. People with gym bags. Maybe they were looking for some sort of cryptic philosophy in the jumping. An act of momentum brought on by a saviour flying ten, or seven and a half, feet through the air to the ungiving gravel below. A messiah showing us, the consumers and consumed, the way to enlightenment by propelling himself to the ground below from a considerably shallow height. In the late twenties, he began to struggle, each attempt at pulling himself back up was slowed and without elegant rhythm. Rinse and Repeat. As he lifted himself, people begun to involve themselves in taking him back to the balcony. His body stiff from brokenness, two watchers, each time, put his arms around them and helped haul him through the place and back out to the balcony. Some message, they hoped from it, please. Rinse and Repeat. Around the forty mark, he put himself into the ground and didn’t pull his arms back up. He lay there, grazed chin and small patches of plasma. Not moving by both the man and his watchers. They all just lay or stood, depending on whom we are discussing, watching the ground. Later, I asked someone what he was doing. Apparently, when they helped him back to the first floor, they asked him why he was doing this. He said that instead of throwing himself of a fortieth floor balcony once, he would throw himself off the first floor balcony forty times, in case he changed his mind. Rinse and Repeat…”

This is me. I don’t make a grandiose jump to the bottom in one swift motion. I don’t reach the impact point immediately like others I know. I repeatedly jump below. One at a time. I earn my slow fate. I don’t challenge the impact immediately. I jump numerous times making myself to my destiny. I jumped against her. I jumped against the literal figure of death. I jumped against my counterpart. And, again, I will jump to the ground, without haste, to protect the rights I earned. I’ll continue to jump until I reach the fate. Tortured and all.