White-Budelia Ikebana was back again at having once handled Eero, he who made the  brightly coloured furnishings flow namesakingly from a factory just outside Helsinki, and  who had consulted with Alessi and influenced the rounded edges of 90’s Samsung. She was  single; the bus was cold and carried her along on rotating wheels. She hadn’t seen him since  2007. Staring fixedly in front of her, hands placed one over the other in her lap, she was on to  remembering his gifts now anyway. Not jewellery, never jewellery, but rubber offcuts from  the prototype studio, carefully rounded, orange to red, made perfect to hold. She remembered  how he used to talk about the future like it was his own creation, and how this annoyed her.  Everything he made was cocoon envelope shell then and all so catalogue-fillingly ridiculous  that in the bold Summer nights of 2006 he could pull out her chair for her at restaurants  before discussing how its prongs hit the floor and the feel of their drag – 

‘It should be like four eyelashes, I should be able to slide it across an icerink and it go on its  own for 1000 metres – like that sport they play, the Canadians…’ 

The 163 bus she was sitting upright in didn’t seem ridiculous. In fact, it was a rejoinder, an  easy victory already present to everyone else – a bus-ride. It pulled up to a curb and she  peered out at the shop fronts and the people on the pavement and felt she could just as well  get off the bus and run their errands with them. Eero had done his fair share of cash-grabs, he  had tapped certain luxury markets after saying he never would. ‘But we all have our ways’  Budelia considered as she considered the other people on the bus and felt their presences  rising in her like dawn – as well as the belief, also rising, strengthening in her as she looked at  their faces, that ‘yes, they were right.’ The world was not a combination of her fixations and  his designs. And she liked her job. 

When she had applied for it she had written that she was looking for something more ‘people facing.’ 

Peter at the wheel, barely a metre between his face and the glass, the whole street surrounding  him. And then following him, as he panned, on his pivot into the depot – those same 

shopfronts always wiping across in front of him and then slipping off sideways into the  rounded corners of the windscreen. 

So much of the ride hadn’t occurred to him, had passed him by, featureless. An easy victory  in the form of uncontested normality. 

And so, despite the light, fond and then too-much surprise of seeing an item from Eero’s 2005  ‘Me Too’ collection in a shop window earlier that day she must remember that it had also  been a Natwest. That to everyone else it was just a Natwest with one of those colourful  round-tipped dogs in the window. She had wanted a job working with people, she thought to  herself dozily. 

She looked to the right, at Samdir a few rows in front of her across the aisle – a man napping.  She was staring on her own now, without controls. Once Eero had told her that while she was  sleeping he had invented a pen specifically for giving her outlines like the lines of heat  coming off the ground in very hot climates. He had imagined drawing around her with this  pen that just thickens, ranks and secludes, creating for her something intimate and unwanted – an airflow napkin – which (she was stunned when she heard him suggest this) she could then  use like a shopping bag to put her thoughts inside, and to carry them home at the end of the  night. Budelia, a fastidious and particular dozer, had rarely napped in his presence. 

Samdir’s palm dug into his cheek. He felt like his elbow was only being held in place on the  window sill by the weight of his head. His elbow which felt like it might skid. Like he might  have to change positions soon, and if soon then maybe better to do it now and that way get it  over with. He was thinking a number of things that weren’t the nap he was supposedly  

having. 3 or 4 minutes into the allotted 12 and his eyes might just as well have remained  open, he thought, even though it would have made him look funny being hunched up so  oddly and just staring. The thoughts he was having all seemed uniquely intent on not making  the most of the 12 minutes that he had set on his timer for them to do their thing in. Of which  (he did the calculation) there were only 9 or so left to go. 

Budelia watched him change position.

She refused to wrap Eero’s future around him (or borrow his pen) – only her present, which  was an uneasy optic, being unsure as it was of her belief. As she looked over at Samdir’s  hunched-up frame she felt herself wishing she could see the faint outlines of the as-yet uninvented apple vision pro that he was wearing. 

‘The most intuitive, which, I would hope, includes me, realise that it is time to talk of No  Design.’¹ 

The bus stopped. A ping went off behind Budelia’s head and the word ‘Albeit’ appeared in  her mind, misunderstood itself and left. Solicited by what, she thought looking around as if  for someone culpable. Two teens scrambled down the stairs, tracksuit pants low and skidded  out. The bus started again. ‘Albeit.’ Not needing it for anything she had already let it go. 

Last Christmas, Peter had spent hours sat down on the sofa watching his grandchildren play  with their new VR headset. Surrounded by cajolling loved ones, he was the only one there  who didn’t have a go, saying things like ‘I’m perfectly happy sat here watching’ and making  little excusing jokes at his own expense. But overall refusing flatly. He couldn’t tell if he  actually wasn’t curious or whether he felt just more comfortable conforming to type. Later  that same evening he’d knocked over a glass placed on a side-table. He remembered it now,  the little shock. 

Everyone’s somewhere else – making reality with other people. 

The pair, Ava and Hunter both, were tired and mudstruck on the back seats of that very same  bus. Struck dumb by end of holiday feeling: sensorily used up and short of entertainment  anyway. Nothing was going on with Hunter except being slightly interested in his own  caught-up and bunched trouser ends, partially tucked into his socks at the back – remnants of  the last decision taken with regard to them. In a different place and time. His eyes kept  looking at the design scheme of his blighted boots and the scheme looked back up at him,  enigmatic with sediment. 

¹ Phillipe Starck ‘The Myth of Progress’, excerpt from a conversation with Sophia Tasma Anagyros, March  1996

They were returning by bus from Inverness where only the previous night they had sat in the  dark watching the film ‘Antoinette’ on Ava’s phone. Their car had broken down on the way  back, it was somewhere else now, getting fixed. Hunter looked up from his shoes at the  napping man a few rows in front of him and pictured to himself what it was like on the flip side of that man’s nap. 

Time passed. 

‘And that’s it for you and I’, Budelia thought about no-one in particular as the bus moved  steadily onwards. 

‘Shortly arriving at… Peary Street.’ 

It was a 163. 

Hunter reached out with his hand to the yellow post, pulled himself up by it, Ava getting up  behind him – and they were off. Budelia watched them through the window as the bus got  itself ready to move again. They were looking at something farther back down the street,  looking beautifully alert as Budelia’s face went forward and passed them by, quite close,  sliding by unnoticed behind a pane of glass. And to be fair to Budelia: at some point in the  journey they had probably all thought about their partners. But also about some other of the  same things as well. For example they may have thought about ‘pioneering their way from  sex and interior decor to cooking and contraception’ like the characters in Mary McCarthy’s  novel ‘The Group’ are advertised as doing on the cover of the Penguin 1959 edition. At the  very least they must all have wondered something fleeting to themselves about the looks that  they were so obviously sharing. 

Samdir’s alarm went off.

According to a recently published piece by Tao Lin²they will all one day revisit this period  of time spent on the bus and experience it from each-other’s perspectives. In this  reconstruction will the bus they’re travelling in still have posters for the Amazon Prime  exclusive series ‘The Assassin’ pasted to each of its sides? And will their intersurfing  thoughts still include references to and visions of by then likely defunct technologies and  unfashionable designs? 

The cleverest thing Hunter remembered saying about the film was that it had taken him back  to a time ‘when furniture and conversations were the internet.’ Eero in 1995, paging through  a catalogue of Danish lamp designs, remarked that instead of bulbs they seemed to have fins.  He wanted to make something counter to that. Looking up from the catalogue he said he’d  

prefer something more ‘bonkers dumb perfect.’ 

² Tao Lin, My Spiritual Evolution, Granta 2024 My Spiritual Evolution | Tao Lin | Granta

By Simeon Edwards 

simeon edwards

processed-words.co.uk

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