Tiles
Ricky Ginsburg © 2006
I'm sitting on the toilet.
The race has already passed my seat, and I stare at the square, powder blue tiles on the floor. I know there are friends just on the other side of the wall, the door, but their voices can't penetrate the powerful sound barrier surrounding my chamber. I'm wondering if they have noticed I've left.
There is this question of how long I've been in here; it could be minutes, hours, or days; my timing is out of sync. Three hundred micrograms may have been just a bit much; my thoughts are racing too fast for me to catch them. I glimpse an image of looking out the tiny windshield of a Formula One racer. I'm strapped to the seat with my hands pinned to my sides and no way to grab the wheel. The engine is well oiled, there is no scrunch of metal on metal, only the smooth feeling you get from a highly tuned machine running at peak efficiency. The sound of its gears whining, tires stripping themselves of rubber on the hot asphalt track and the constant stench of sweat mixed with high-octane fuel overpowers everything. I'm on the last straightaway roaring toward a constantly forward moving finish line I will never reach.
The track melts away to reveal a bathroom floor where the tiles vibrate at the same high frequency of the racer's engine. By focusing on a single tile, I can barely discern the minutest degrees of motion. Even totally calm water on a crystalline lake contains the motion of its smallest molecules and atoms reacting with the pressure of sunlight striking the surface; nothing is ever at rest. I can sense the atomic motion in the tiles; I can see the motion down to a molecular level. The grout stays perfectly still, the over-washed and constantly scrubbed white mortar is not able to move of its own accord. It tries to bind the tiles and keep them in order but they have far too much power. The adhesive, once in control of their destiny, has gone slack and allowed itself to crumble.
Something is wrong with this picture. I study it with the intensity of an art student's first visit to the Louvre and try to reconcile the odd feeling. The color is bothering me. An institutional pale blue, it was once a fresh, reflective cerulean sending fluorescent beams to all corners of the room. Now it's been washed, baked, and weathered to a point where the luster is gone and only the memory of blue remains, a royal blue which has fallen to the level of serfdom. For a moment in time, less than then a single vibration of the tiles, I am saddened by its fall from grace. No self-respecting tile should have its color stripped in such a manner. It's demeaning and degrading and… it's a tile.
I pity inanimate objects… they can't enjoy.
I'd much prefer the tiles to be a luscious green. The emerald glow of a damp, ancient rain forest where a single drop of water takes hours to gently leap down from leaf to leaf until finally reaching a small patch of moist earth one hundred feet below. Bright midday sun flashes through branches glinting off leaves as large as pickup trucks; their green color stands and shouts its power in every direction. The weaker, paler colors beneath it and the mix of angry black clouds and brilliant blue patches of sky above absorb its brilliance.
The gears spin up even faster deep in my mind as the engine roars closer to the rotations' red line. My entire body begins to concentrate on the tile color, muscles tense at the base of my skull. Wordlessly, I command the tiles to change to green…
…and they do.
I am, for a long wondrous moment, shaken, puzzled and more than slightly in awe. I shift my position on the porcelain throne and wrap my legs a bit tighter around the base to get a better grip on the alternate reality below and before me. As lord of this manor, I am pleased with the new look. The entire bathroom has taken on a new appearance; it glows and pulsates with a renewed life; I can feel its pleasure. Even the old fluorescent fixtures beam with brilliant morning sunlight.
I reach over, open the door, and scream with a child's glee, "Holy shit! Holy shit! Alan… Jeffery come in here!"
My two roommates peer around the corner with faces distorted by the beams of artificial sunlight and the glow from the suddenly verdant tilescape I've created. They have the puzzled look you get when you realize you are on the wrong train and the station is slipping away at dozens of feet per minute. They're not quite sure what to look at or why.
I smile at them and share the perceptions. "Look at the color! I've turned the bathroom green."
"You've done what?" asks Alan, the scientist in the group.
"The tiles! Look at the tiles, they're green," I shout at him over the noise of his echoing voice and the deafening roar of the waterfall deep in the rainforest.
"He's right," pipes in Jeffery, "they are green, a perfect forest green, not so much a Kelly or an emerald. I'd have to check a box of Crayolas to be certain. How did you do it?"
"I'm not sure; I've been in here for a while. Wait a minute, I'll make them red." I close my eyes and take several deep breaths. "Red… now." I open my eyes to the most ruby-red landscape I have ever seen. Ripened cherries would rot in shame at never having achieved such a color.
"Candy Apple Red, like some hybrid funny car," agrees Jeffery.
Alan is shocked worse than the time he licked the doorbell wires; it's a disease of the scientific mind always to expand the experiment. "Can you change the shape as well?" he ponders. I cock my head to the side and stare down at one single square tile. Everything else in my periphery goes vague as I squeeze my eyes down to slits. The waterfall pauses in midstream waiting for my command to continue.
"Round tiles… now!"
The tiles obey, having accepted my authority, and the squared corners give way to perfect circles. Alan and Jeffery have no choice but to applaud my performance. I offer them front row seats and they sit comfortably in a pair of plush theatre chairs by the door. Neither one has popcorn, which I find odd. There was a waiter here earlier but he must have gone for a swim in the lake at the base of the waterfall. The rounded tiles touch at a single point on their circumference forming a perfect four point star of molten white grout.
Alan says, "Blue dots… now," but the red tiles remain, unconvinced of his ability to possess power over them. He stands, waving his hands with the impatience of an agitated magician. "Blue dots… now!" The usher comes in and asks him to retake his seat; someone behind him had complained he was blocking the view. With a nod from the usher, I continue. I smile and command, "Blue dots… now!" The tiles comply with randomly placed and differently sized blue dots jostling for position. A waiter brings a gilded tray with icy cold vanilla egg creams in crystalline glasses. We feast on their exotic passion fruit and mint flavors as they glide down our parched throats. The tiles continue to vibrate as the blue dots migrate from tile to tile trying to achieve a balance they can't seem to master.
I notice the sink has ignored all of these transformations and has opted to retain the sad pale blue color it had at the start of this excursion. I wink at it and ask, almost kindly, "Yellow?" It vibrates for a moment and flashes to a brilliant yellow that would make a freshly painted New York taxi cab blush. I offer it an egg cream but it wants to wait until we are done. A well-mannered sink knows it only gets the leftovers.
Jeffery is uncomfortable with the blue dots and asks me to make them disappear. I bring the tiles back to my original choice of green, and I keep the rounded edges to appease Alan. I am now fully in control of the porcelain but I understand what a temporary victory it's going to be. In this magical condition, nothing is permanent and from the banging on the pipes, I get the feeling there's another audience waiting for a show. I flip the last card in the deck, one more trick before the stagehands arrive, one closing feat as the tide of reality begins to rush back in toward my hallucinogenic beach.
I stretch my neck to the right and release a loud crack, "Ok, tiles back… now!"
There are loud voices on the other side of the wall. Alan needs something to eat; constant munchies building upon the solid layers of fat he will spend years trying to relinquish. Jeffery has spilled his beer, again. I'm sitting on the toilet, my mission accomplished, and staring at the plain, square, powder blue tiles on the floor. I get up to wash my hands at the bright yellow sink and rejoin the party.