The Man Who is Starting Something

Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Rumination. It is a word that describes the act of “dwelling on the negative”. So the theory goes, there are many people who spend the large part of their days doing this, and so have a perpetually anxious state. It could even be called dwelling in the negative, because negative thoughts locate one’s entire world in these negative thoughts. The Rumination-sayers tell us that rumination is best allotted a time of thirty minutes of so, in which doom can run freely and unchecked.

The Man Who is Starting Something has come from another country. For one reason or another, in one way or another. Should you ask him about it, his thoughts will go there and stay there. Should he manage to wrest those thoughts away from there there is little sustenance for them in the new world. If beloved things are absent, they are absent. But this rumination is a bad habit, and so it must be fought. He must try to dwell on the positive. He is from another land, so the culture around him sits quietly and lightly, not fighting for his attention as his own would. He has few friends, few family, few ties to distract him. If he conquers his rumination he will find little satisfaction in anything but to be driven.

The Man Who is Starting Something will pick up the complete set of Roblocks and pack them neatly into his consciousness. No cries from the children will bother him if they are not written in the commands of his mechanical functions. If the blocks say eat he will eat, but eating will not become a pursuit of cultural connection. His creative functions will be entirely tied to the pursuit of something he wants to have or do. All else like a second language. In his head when he needs it, far away when he doesn’t. The Man Who is Starting Something is a migrant even if he is not, because he is sustained like all migrant-likes on an understanding of a life that is no longer there.