Abracadabra

You would not believe that it was just like a John Dickson Carr mystery. We (my illustrious brother and I) embarked upon it quite accidentally (but of course you knew that). Among all the Japanese audio cds that my father brought home, there was one with four, or five Japanese girls in fancy brassieres on the cover. Now, I ripped the transparent binding on it, and in order to demonstrate the ingeniousness of recent cd marketing, took to unravelling all its paraphernalia – namely, the folded-in pseudo-brochure with more girls and lyrics on it. Then, after having laughed over it at leisure, I sought to restore it. Now, comes the puzzle. The front cover is identical to the back cover, and there is an extra cd jacket which is exactly like the front cover, in the tradition of paper jackets for hard-bound books. Now, once taken apart, I was sure that a certain nauseating photograph of lilac ponies with flowers went inside the front cover, so that once you open the case, it is on your left-hand side. The folded-in bulky brochure was hedged under the flap that held the discs. With this idea in mind, we (it was very much a concerted effort) fell to putting things in their places. But it proved to be an impossible task. We cursed Japanese technology, we praised it, we cursed Japanese technology and praised it. We cursed each other (mildly), and then we cursed our fortunes that set this demonic cd case in our paths. But we always met with a wall, literally. It was like the printed covers were magicked inside and once torn out, could not be restored to their former lodgings. Then my brother got hold of pincers, and tried tugging the edge of one through an apparently solid wall. And then it hit him (he claims it had hit him once before, but apparently not hard enough) that of course, the whole thing was in reverse, the front cover the back, the back, the front. Now this is a case of extreme instruction which cautions against the dangers of lilac ponies with flowers and pom poms and innocent Japanese girls in fancy brassieres. No, but the fact that it is easy to confuse that which one instinctively abhors, and trick our brains into remembering false facts which were in reality, inadequately observed.

But you might enquire why you were made to read this long paragraph. You might even remark (which I’m steadily realising with a sinking feeling) that you do not grasp the allusion to John Dickson Carr. Well, to put it fairly, John Dickson Carr was a man who excelled in writing mystery stories which tricked your brain into remembering false facts, and now, probably, you are drawing towards a dawning enlightenment. But if you haven’t read any of his stories, you probably haven’t experienced the feeling of having ontological facts, on which everyone has been banking the story, pulled away from right under your feet. Yes, it’s a dizzy, even nauseating feeling. That’s what we felt.

And, even then you might ask, what is my personal investment in this, or how does this story relate to me? Well, in answer to that, I’ll try to describe the terrible ill-at-ease feeling that gripped me when I had the baffling cd case in my hands, or more when my brother held it. It was a feeling which stemmed from the fact that it knew it would never be consummated. Or alternately, you could call it a feeling of the feeling of never being consummated. It was a gnawing, restless feeling, which could never reach an outlet. And that had plagued me for days now. Of tingling inactive hands and feet, which knew leisure but couldn’t work. Having the cd case restored in an illusion purged that in me, which writing this is bringing back.