The Museum of Useless Efforts by Cristina Peri Rossi

Author:Cristina Peri Rossi [Rossi, Cristina Peri]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780803287648
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
Published: 2001-04-28T00:00:00+00:00

Instructions for Getting out of Bed

If I make up my mind to get out of bed, I have to be very careful. No dogs or children can be loose, and the furniture has to be arranged. Because getting out of bed is a dangerous proposition. The area has to be clear - the lamps, wardrobes, tables, and all those handy things people put in houses to avoid emptiness need to be removed. That’s why I give a lot of warning. I’ll say something like, ‘Tomorrow I’m going to get out of bed at five past nine. Check your watches, secure the furniture, fasten your seatbelts.’ I always add five minutes to the hour because no one is punctual without a five-minute grace period.

Before leaving bed, I get myself ready. The day before I take care of all of those little details that are vital to a successful descent. The first thing I do is have a sign hung on the door so people won’t disturb me. The sign states the precise date and time I plan to get out of bed and requests that no one disturb me because my plans can’t be upset. Getting out of bed requires concentration. But to avoid accidents, I also have to be relaxed.

Before getting up, I study the whole room carefully, trying to memorize the location of everything I’ll encounter. For example, on one of the walls, there’s a window. I tried to cover it up several times, but I wasn’t allowed to because, as I discovered, that would have been against local code. I’m very respectful when it comes to rules concerning peaceful coexistence; otherwise, there would be a lot more dangers out there than the ones that already exist. So in getting out of bed I have to take the window into account. It’s not just any window: it’s a window located near the top of the wall, in the part that slopes toward the ceiling. It lets in precisely the amount of light I can tolerate, not too much, not too little. People are very careless with light (and with everything else): they either use too much of it (maybe because they fear the ambiguity of shadows) or else (terrified that light makes it easy to see all those contours they hate) they live in semidarkness. Then in the summer they lie down anywhere (on dirty sand, in scraggly parks, next to polluted oceans) and let the sun burn their bodies, blistering and dehydrating the exposed skin (from a distance, they look like a company of crabs, a bunch of contorted limbs moving pell-mell). The window has to be closed when I get out of bed because a draft would pose a serious danger to my health. I use a map to study the location of different objects in the room. That way, I can plan my movements down to the last detail and avoid unpleasant surprises. For example, there’s a wardrobe - the usefulness of which I won’t comment on now - with a mirror on the door.

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