The Console

by
Peter Blegvad

The console takes up the whole width of wall at the far end of my black loft.
A chest, a chair, and a cot at the other end.
There’s a window with a view of a black wall close enough to hit if I could spit, but my salivary glands are withered, my mouth so parched that my tongue and gums crack like mica if I don’t spray regularly with an oral douche my doctor prescribes.
The console is my consolation.
No gloom on earth could withstand the onslaught of its myriad twinkling bulbs, its glowing clocks, dials and LEDs, its gas-plasma displays reflected in its polished chrome-plated buttons, faders, toggles, knobs and switches.
Yes, I suffer. But seated before the console, my arthritic fingers roaming its surface, tweaking, pushing, flicking, preoccupation with my plight dissolves and I’m happy as a sandboy.
I met a sandboy once, many summers ago.
On the beach.
He helped me build a console out of sand.
For the controls, we gathered the brightest most attractive samples from the variegated plethora of plastic flotsam which litters the coasts of the civilized world.
The sandboy and I decreed that the console could modulate and regulate the winds and tides. From it we choreographed the shifting of tectonic plates, the burial of towns by avalanches, the eruption of volcanoes, the periodicity of droughts and floods, the migrations of birds, beasts and fishes, the fluctuations of the weather and the stock market. We ‘played’ the console with the passion and precision of concert pianists. Our performances drew crowds!
We could speed up, slow down or reverse time.
Calm at her helm we were the planet’s captains, steering her through through space to cheers and applause!
Now I am old, all but spent, abandoned and friendless.
Most of my meager pension goes into the meter - the console sucks more charge out of the wall even than the voracious 8-bar electric fire which stands cold in the corner.
I can live without heat.
The glow of the console warms me like hot buttered rum would an alcoholic.

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