She felt blessed. I knew that because she told me pretty much every day as I paid her for my lunchtime sandwich. It was like a call and response ritual. “How are you today?” I’d ask her. “Oh, I’m blessed, darling,” she would reply, her face a vision of pure joy. It always felt oddly intimate, even though I’d watched her have exactly the same conversation with everyone in front of me in the queue. I could hear the beginnings of the follow-up as I walked away with my carrier bag, receipt and change.
Many people gravitated towards her till. She was a one-off. She transcended her chain-store uniform, the potential invisibility of her position as checkout drone, the paradoxical “individuality” of her plastic name badge containing the prominent company logo. I didn’t know what drove her unbridled optimism, though I suspected it was probably some form of evangelical worship. I was a cynical twenty-something and wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. Here was a sheep that stood out from the flock.
The tiresome certainty of youth gradually mellows into the more comfortable knowledge that nothing can be stereotyped, everything might surprise. Square pegs nestle into round holes, their impossible mechanics both freely perceived and yet invisible to the eye. Tiny cogs grow, Alice-like, to become bigger than the machine itself. The world thrives on a singular equation: one to the power of infinity equals one, a never-ending calculation that wraps back on itself with ever-increasing consequences.
This is the fifteenth and final post in an online game of Consequences. To read the entire series from the beginning, start here and follow the links in each post.
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This is really lovely. Bravo!
Amen, brother.
Oh, wonderful!
Fantastic wrap-up. What a great series…
Absolutely perfect wrap-up. Ties the whole thing together into a sparkling package.
Huzzah! Bravo!
Oh, this is the best thing I’ve read in absolutely ages, perfectly formed, beautifully written and like the best things, somehow bigger and more than it at first seems. Thank you.
Marvelous. Thank you!
Bravo!!! Love the mobeus twist at the end.
Thanks everyone. I’m very pleased with this, it was totally spontaneous. I confess that I don’t fully understand the ending myself… it is what it says, whatever that might be. I had totally forgotten about The Blessed Woman. I worked in that area from 1990 to 1995. I wonder what she’s doing now… still feeling blessed, hopefully.
A perfect closing of the door. Thanks for the notion in the first place and thus the wonderfully discursive journey it inspired.
Enjoyed the series, smashing idea. Your last line here, to me the recursion parallels the exercise, deliberate ? You are very clever !