Uses for paper

We have been selling tickets to each other. Make of that what you will.

I think it was Marcel who began this situation. This is the same Marcel who always touches the area just above the top of his head, very carefully, as though he has a burn there. If you listen closely while he does this, you can hear him breathing a little harder, a little tighter through his mouth. Adding to the impression he is running his hand over something painful, or just above, just above a very tender wound.

It was Marcel who began with the tickets. He started to cut pages of blank paper into strips. He’d write on them ADMIT ONE, and then when he had a hundred or so of these tickets, he took them out into the central area of the community.

Here, he said to anyone who would listen, here do you want to buy a ticket?

A lot of people just ignored him. Smiled and waved him away. A couple asked how much. Marcel would bow his head in response and without giving a price, simply say, take one take one. Have a ticket. People laughed and drew a ticket. They’d look at their neighbour and shrug, put it away in their pocket and move on.

Maybe later, in a gathering or just visiting someone for a drink, they would say, how about Marcel then?

Oh what is he even up to?

How about these tickets!

How does it even work?

Nobody knew. When he ran out, Marcel made more tickets. It became his main activity. We’ve seen this a lot. I do it myself, of course. You get an idea, some urge comes over you, and you have to see it through for some reason. Marcel was excited to be out in the community with his tickets. There was a bigger and bigger audience now, he said. More and more people.

He said people but we understood him to mean, customers.

It was not always easy for Marcel to offload his tickets. Those who had only recently arrived were especially nervous of him. A lot of the new group especially have a kind of question on their faces regarding almost everything they can see here.  

They were clearly in the middle of something else when the urge to come to this place took over them. It can be difficult, emotionally, to see them.

I cannot remember how that felt, the need to leave your home and come here. I only know that I had been sure of myself. Sure of my decision to come to the village. I felt keen to be accepted.

A lot of these new ones could have been in the middle of the washing up! They did not have any choice. And now, before even having made a home of their new dwelling, or got used to things like their new sky, or the instructions for controlling the halopeter infestation, here comes Marcel handing out tickets. It’s inexcusable of him, even if he does also offer to help them carry blankets or show them to the shop or the field.

But of course, I cannot judge Marcel too harshly. I too have started in on this strange industry of making and selling tickets to vague and unprepared events. Mine are not the same as Marcel’s. Each says ADMIT ONE, of course, or how can you even call it a ticket? But, in addition, I have also given a date and time for each of my tickets. And a location. Different times and dates for different batches, and different locations within those times and dates.

I have not prepared any performances, or exhibits. I do not go to the places at all.

I don’t know if anyone goes to the place designated to them at the time and on the date I have written on their ticket, but people have certainly started telling me they enjoyed the show.

I simply loved it, they have said.

And, You’re so right!

And, We must do more. We must do much much more.

I have done the same thing, naturally. I have said to Marcel, and to Judy, and to Yanis, and to Anthony, and to Hannah, all of them who are producing tickets now, how much I loved their show. How thrilling it was to experience the performance. Magical, I say, just purely magical.

They smile without showing their teeth and nod and then we silently move on to other things. I might return the bag of halopeter drugs I had borrowed from Yanis. I might tell Hannah that I will definitely help her with the fungus in her dwelling if it gets any worse and she has no luck with the brush and scraper.

In some of my darker moments, of course, the feeling of shame and disappointment I have been noticing lately continues to grow. I make more and more tickets.

The people continue to arrive, and I continue to try to show them a good time.