Goodbye to Cara

Busy old day yesterday. Up at 2am to finalise the fishing reports, then went for a walk by the river and spied a weird looking bottle floating therein. Pulled it out hoping for messages or treasure maps, but was just a few wee dregs of cider in the bottom. Figured as a longstanding teetotaller it might be fun to drink it and - phew! - it were only a sip but it took me bloody head off! Apparently I got quite annoying after that - not that I remember much - but seemed like fun to me.

Anyway, after a little snooze and a very amazing session with a gypsy fortune teller I had to run my friend Cara to the airport 'cos she was catching a plane to Syria. Totally bonkers, right? But she had it all worked out: tired of living but unable to commit suicide because of strange reincarnation/karma beliefs, she figured if she was out there doing good and just happened to take a bullet, no afterlife spiritual jury could really blame her. A few steps up from 'suicide by cop/sanhedrin', she reckons.

On the way I had a chance to grill her about all those mad things she was saying about kids the other day. Told her I was a bit troubled by it. That it seemed kind of dark and defeatist.

She said not to take any notice. That maybe she was just going through an existential phase. And, anyway, she couldn't help it, what with her "time displacement issues."

"Your what?" I says.

"Time," she says, "ever since I had that accident when I was a kid, time's been weird for me. It's like I see everything at once. So a question like, 'do you want babies?' doesn't mean much to me - I don't see babies, I see angsty teenagers, struggling adults, decrepit old people - hundreds of generations of 'em, stretching on and on until the day the Earth dissolves into the dying sun and everything that ever was is gone - and I just don't want to play a part in that. You know, save some beings some suffering."

"But what about all the joy?"

"I know," she said, "and who knows? I may be wrong in all this, but that's the way I see it." And then she changed the subject and asked me about something she knew I couldn't help but wax lyrical on - some half-baked theory about hereditary emotional tendencies - and next thing I knew we were there.

She gave me a big hug. Leapt out. Leaned saucily through the window.

"I don't do goodbyes," she said, "so I'll just walk away and not look back."

"Okay," I said.

"But, listen," she said, "can you do one last thing for me? Can you record a piece of music so hideous, so annoying, and so ultimately boring that no one in their right mind could possibly make it through the whole thing without switching off? It sure would make me chuckle, knowing that was out there."

I nodded. She smiled. And then she was gone.

I went home, got out my guitar, fulfilled a good friend's dying wish, and drank some tea for Cara.