Argon Girl
A girl navigating shadows between reality and dream
The day unfolded so chaotically that I couldn’t stop its disintegration by the end. I thought to myself that time and space were bending beneath my feet, that I was falling into some cosmic hole where Alice was waiting for me at a mad tea party. No — Alice wasn’t waiting for me. A tow truck was taking my car away right in front of my eyes. I approached the man working for the parking service to argue with him. In hysteria and my own madness, through the fog, I remember telling him that my ancestors used to chase people like him out of villages with pitchforks and tie them up in the forest to be eaten by beasts. I don’t know where that came from — my ancestors didn’t do that… or maybe they did, if they belonged to some secret Slavic cult of Veles. Still, that won’t change the fact that I’m out a hundred euros. Today is somewhere around the twenty-something of the month, my salary comes in on the fifth of the next one. I have about thirty thousand dinars left in my account. I’ll pay for the parking when I can — the storage fee for cars isn’t that expensive. Today, I’m walking through the city.
Marathon
I popped half a diazepam (bromazepam) to calm my nerves. Put on my most comfortable sneakers, a dress, a coat over it. Today I’m going into informal self-destruction to spend all my money.
The streets still looked curved beneath my feet. That wasn’t from half a diazepam, but from everything accumulated over the years. My perception had either advanced or regressed. If it advanced, that means my spiritual sight is awakened — I’m spiritual, just a bit emotionally unstable. Oh yes, yes… I know everything in nature is spherical — droplets, viruses, bacteria, the egg cell, the gravitational field… so this sidewalk too must be spherical under the influence of something, I don’t know what. The Earth’s magnetic field probably arises from the movement of liquid metal through the core and isn’t spherical in itself, but it is spherical because the Earth is a sphere. Ugh… people, I don’t know how to suppress these thoughts and that man who rudely took my car. They know it’s a problem all over the city, that people have nowhere to park and are improvising… sure, my hundred euros will explain that — only to me, not to anyone else, because nobody cares. Anyway, I’m close to forty, and I’m realizing more and more one painful truth — that nobody really cares about you, maybe not at this moment, maybe not in the long run either. I love my friends and they love me, as much as one inner life can bear another inner life, so that some kind of union can be found, a point of intersection where we cross into a single field maintained through conversation, respect, tolerance, compromise. Maybe that field is spherical too — the field of friendships and partnerships.
And if I’ve spiritually regressed and my perception is distorted because of a fried amygdala — never mind, I feel good right now. A woman just passed by me. There’s something about her I like. I notice an ease of existence. Maybe she took diazepam too? I don’t think so. There are people who are hyper-adapted to reality — that’s a term my friend once coined while we were having coffee. A man next to us in the café was watching TikTok reels, sipping coffee, laughing loudly — but rudely, not joyfully. That’s how cynical people laugh. He doesn’t care who’s watching him; he has the right to express his urge loudly and clearly. That’s hyper-adaptation. It doesn’t care about the collateral damage it causes. That woman must have been quite cynical — she passed me so close I felt the wind. Hyper-adapted like a rock.
Benjamin (what we usually call diazepam) was working on me. Something happened when I looked up at the sky. Damn — even the sky is spherical. I see it bending toward the horizon; I don’t see it as a flat mass of blue.
Big City Nights
So many billboards in the city, so many ads… Man. Wait — I see a neon arrow pointing to the best pizza in town, to the right, so it must be on the next street. Fine, I’ll go taste the best pizza in the city: Pomodoro di Giorgio.
I paid for a family-size pizza and ate all of it — everything Giorgio’s tomatoes had to offer. The pizza was really good; it stopped my spherical thoughts. It melted in my mouth like Benjamin. My next stop was a pastry shop in the mall, and who knows what else. You know — after salty comes sweet. It’s about five kilometers to get there, just enough to burn off the pizza, although I should really walk three times that much. A certain beauty surrounded me from within. People no longer seemed hyper-adapted, cynical. They seemed joyful, like during New Year’s holidays, even though I was imagining their smiles and the sparkle in their eyes, because there were none. Their mortal seriousness and puffy looks felt even more dear to me. It’s all because of the love they fail to express during the day, during life, I thought. Yes, that’s it.
How do I know whether some cold-blooded killer was full of love but couldn’t express it because of anger, circumstances, psychopathy? Sure — life didn’t give him the opportunity to love, even though he probably possessed love in microdoses in the depths of his subconscious. I imagine what killers would be like if they were placed in a field of dandelions and white daisies, surrounded by bunnies running joyfully and fleeing from the shadow of eagles. They would surely change. Then a thought bent sharply in my head and cut me in two — keep this up and you’ll end up either on the gallows or as a life coach. I jolted. Okay, I’ll bypass this topic for now. I’m thinking of that film where Willem Dafoe gave placebo pills to a psychopath, who gradually changed character, even fell in love and started working. His amygdala hit reset mode. But in Antichrist, Willem Dafoe couldn’t handle his wife’s amygdala, scissors, and desire to cut off his genitals. I’d put his wife in a field of dandelions and white daisies with bunnies too.
Maybe I should go somewhere like that myself, but in this city I have nowhere to go. Everything is killed by asphalt, and it smells like shit while I walk. I believe urbicide is unfair to young people. First crushes, falling in love… couples walking down the street and inhaling shit. The word shit simply has to be spoken to avoid sensual discomfort and break the shyness. Young couples are shy; they shouldn’t deal with shit, nor should anything flood their nostrils and ruin their chemistry.
I can light a cigarette. I watched on a YouTube channel how a woman in five years of solitude experienced spontaneous gnosis. She said it beautifully: “A sphere builds a sphere.” While listing revelations, she smoked a lot. I want to smoke too. She stroked cats — I want to stroke cats too. I turn my head — no cats in the street. Another thought flies by about killers, psychopaths, and fields of dandelions and white daisies with bouncing bunnies. I look at how big the city is — grey, dangerous with advertisements. Previous thoughts blended with present ones, and I started singing out loud while walking:
“Last night I dreamed of a strawberry field,
Big city, big city nights,
You keep me burning,
And crowds of people passing through the field,
Big city, big city nights.”
The field of dandelions and white daisies blended with urban scenes of fury, rush, chaos. Dara Bubamara (‘Ladybug’), a Balkan turbo-folk singer, and Scorpions were a perfect match. A woman grabbed my arm at the crosswalk because a bus was passing. I hadn’t seen that the red light was still on. I compared my dandelion field with Dara’s song “Strawberry Field.” Strawberry field and my dandelion field — what biodiversity before my eyes! I sang and smoked. When the green light came on, I started yelling in my own rhythm:
“That’s whyyyyy I doooon’t loooove
When rosemary smells,
That’s why I neeeever wear whiteee…
Big city nights!”
Damn, some energy pulled me when I nasalized Big City Nights like the Scorpions singer. My own folk song hit me out of nowhere; I sang and laughed:
“I feel like singing rock and roll all day and night,
Come on baby, come on baby, take off your pants tonight.”
I hopped along the pavement, lighting another cigarette. I noticed people’s looks, comments. I knew they were watching me with love. How I love you, world! I have to tell you — I feel like drinking a beer.
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The Pub
I entered some pub — I don’t even know its name. A neon sign led me there. Craft, local beers. Inside, some blues were playing. I sat down and ordered a pint. People around me were relaxed, laughing. I wanted to laugh too. The bartender was kind, flirting on the edge:
“For such a beautiful lady — the house treats!”
In his honor, I toasted him and downed the beer in one breath. I ordered two more. I asked him to play my song, “Big City Nights.” He did, and I sat in a booth, singing alone. I don’t know why, but here too I looked strange to people. Whoever looked at me, I just tossed back: “We’re not at a funeral!” That was my alibi for my behavior — and I had a right to it. Why always this stiff politeness? You lure me here with ads to drink, so let’s go crazy now. Fine — I’ll be crazy.
I drank two more pints, half a liter each, and yes — I noticed I was drunk. That gave me an even stronger sense of defiance. I went behind the bar and played whatever came to my mind. I danced alone until a guy approached me, also tipsy:
“Why is the lady dancing alone?”
I wasn’t immune — I danced and drank with him, and I hadn’t done that in a long time. We danced and talked. Occasionally he lifted me, spun me around. He was strong, a real rocker — tattooed, bearded, a soft-hearted brute, I’d say a womanizer.
“What do you think,” I asked him, “would a field of dandelions and white daisies with white rabbits running through it heal psychopaths — Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, that whole crew?”
He stopped, stunned, holding my hand.
“Oh, I know you! You watch those shows that loop endlessly — serial killers, pyramids, Nazis, hidden knowledge of the world, Sasquatches, chefs, origins of the first civilizations — everything they drip-feed us so we stay distracted while humanity no longer knows where it’s heading… hahaha… Better to drink beer and dance. Interesting theory about the healing meadow, but I think they’d cut the rabbits’ heads off — or maybe not, because they wouldn’t have an audience, and narcissists can’t live without one. Hmm… maybe I’ll give you a final verdict after a kiss.”
I was a bit delighted — I didn’t feel empty in that moment. We kissed like teenagers in the middle of the pub in the middle of a workday, while people usually just chat about the stupid day they burned through carelessly. I was drunk and burning it to the end — consciously. Living it. Neon signs guided me from place to place — best beer in town, eh.
I wander, I’ve cracked, I’m kissing a biker, and I feel good. What is it now, world? Am I sinful for wandering on a weekday the way you do on Saturdays? Why do you look at me like that — hyper-adapted, cynical? I imagine smiles on your faces all day, but inside you’re dead. You leave your souls at work, hand them over to superiors who praise you, pat you on the back, scold you. You don’t realize how dependent you are on them — on everything. You talk, but tap your foot and check the clock because you wake before the roosters. Yes, I’m like you — only today tow truck took my hundred euros and my car. I’m a nomad now in this city, wandering for a lost herd. Where did I lose myself? Where is my herd in this concrete madness? Neon signs will lead me to the goal — they are my soul’s signposts.
Argon Girl, Nice to Meet You
Now I want more kisses, I want play — because I’m a gnostic, because I know we’re all nailed to this planet with its spherical magnetic field, because it itself is a sphere. “A sphere builds a sphere!” I lit a cigarette proudly. I am a nomad in neon light and a gnostic who decomposes all these neon signs into meaning — neon, argon, xenon, krypton… all noble gases stuffed into dazzling electronic ads that I further ennoble. This pub has a blue neon sign — blue indicates argon under high voltage in the tube. I gave myself a name.
Argon girl, nice to meet you!
Women get so obsessed with being strong, independent, powerful — gym-going, defying men — only to fall for the first chubby guy with a nice gesture, with boobs and a belly. I’m not criticizing — such men probably emit more testosterone, are hairier, give off the impression of protectors, men of gentler temperament who won’t beat them at night when city lights dim… but only the streetlights, not the neon ones. Neon lights witness everything.
Such women experienced a fracture of reality and called themselves Amazons. I’m not an Amazon. I’m an Argon Girl kissing a biker and living neon reality. Beer foam splashes my nose. Many broke my heart; I broke some too. It’s equal. Honestly, I was tired of being an Amazon woman. Those revenge moments should be outgrown. Being an Amazon is fine — a phase that lasts until a woman puts her heart back in place, until cracks find their best seam.
But I solemnly propose today that we introduce a new term: Argon girl. I drink, I smoke, aware of the matrix, kissing a biker. I haven’t exited the matrix — Benjamin softens it in me. What should a woman do in a world where a neighbor reports her for illegal parking and she loses her mind? Let her be a superhero for one day when she isn’t conventional like a Saturday night.
The Argon girl is currently in the arms of her Superman, who escaped from planet Krypton. Superman comes here to save us from mad scientists and the entire guard of order who would reduce humanity to a billion or less. Then I realize that Earth’s atmosphere contains many gases — and where there are more noble gases, the greater the need to save humankind. Planet Krypton exploded due to an unstable core. The drunk biker doesn’t yet know whether this planet will explode like his — but he’s here to make me the hero of the day.
All nobility was born in nuclear reactions in stars. So — today is Tuesday, July. I feel noble and calm. Somewhere far away in the constellations, supernovae explode, creating new elements, planets, life, disappearing into themselves while illuminating entire galaxies. The strongest advertisement of God’s creation. Maybe my lost herd is there? But the Argon girl promises she will one day find it, following the burst of stars in her heart.
Today — today I am just a nomad, a gnostic, an Argoni girl with a family pizza in her stomach, washed down with three and a half liters of beer, and a few whimsical, silly, tender kisses on the lips of a tipsy, chubby biker.
Tomorrow I’ll wake up with a headache and no car. Yes — the Argon Girl didn’t pray to the god we humans created; she defied him, resisted him, gave herself a headache rather than be part of the order that worships him. She simply stepped into a sphere charged with glare and an invitation to taste her own urges. I’m aware of everything wandering through my head.
Do you know the song “The Sound of Silence”? I’ll use one line:
“And the people bowed and prayed
to the neon god they made.”
