The Mind Sweeper

Another day, another night. I am bored of this. I am bored of my joyful albeit brief interactions with my oh so lovely neighbours, of my shallow and oh so entertaining work colleagues, of my oh so fabulous self. Be gone! Change! Do different!

On one of those nights, I was walking back from the “Tapping The Admiral” pub in North London. Always good to have a safe route going back home. You know the drill finding the way to your flat after a boozy night out independent from your bodily state. Homing device, they call it.

I go and walk and stagger. Good old me, we will be home soon.

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The streets of Kentish Town are my back pocket. We know each other so well. We have cycled, we have walked, we have been disgusted, we have been in love, we have marvelled at new developments, we have been bored with each other so often, it is obscene. The streets of Kentish Town don’t want me walking on them anymore, they are annoyed with me after all of this overusage. But there we are. I give a shit and just continue overusing. Deal with it, Kentish Town roads!

Now, this particular night was particular. To my surprise, I actually got home. While trying to unlock the front door (it is no issue regarding illumination as we have a very sensitive front door light), someone approached me from behind.

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What the hell!! I was jumping around screaming that my flatmate is home (not) and I have a weapon (not). After the first outburst of emotions, I turn around to see my neighbour. She looks at me with this neighbourly glance and I blush. What an inappropriate behaviour. Never drink again, shouldn’t I?

Gwyneth looks at me with this awful reproach of soberness and practicality. You might think that Gwyneth is Irish (I thought so) as the house next to us is full of Irish people but no, her name is actually of Welsh origin. She is from Llangwnnadl, a town located on the western tip of the Llŷn Peninsula in Gwynedd, North Wales. And also, did you know that Gwyneth derives from the Welsh word gwyn, which means white, fair or blessed? Astonishing, isn’t it?

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Interrupting my unsober train of thought, Gwyneth pulls my arm briskly and whispers: “Stop making those insane noises, would you please!”. Turns out I’ve been standing outside my door, fumbling for the keyhole for over half an hour, swearing and waking up all the neighbours. She yanks me back, clutching my keys, and hisses: “Give me that”. Oh ok, no worries, I can do that. Following Gwyneth to the third floor and oh, that’s my flat indeed, she opens up the door and goes into the kitchen. I follow her. She draws a pint of water from the tap. Handing it to me, she commands: “Drink it.” Fine, I will. We sit down on the kitchen table. It’s a breakfast bar actually. You sit higher than on a normal table. I am swivelling my chair randomly. Those are swivel bar stools by Ligne Roset, did cost quite a bit but that was twenty years ago, maybe not that valuable any more, I think.

Gwyneth stops my aimless swivelling movement by grabbing the chair and says: “So, what are we going to do?”. Beg your pardon, I think.

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“What do you mean?” I ask Gwyneth.

“Well, as I said, what are we going to do? Keep the memory or not?” Gwyneth replies.

“Haha,” I laugh “I guess the matter will solve itself as I will not remember a tiny morsel of tonight once I have woken up tomorrow, eventually that is.”

“That is not what I am talking about.” Gwyneth is intensely staring at me.

I am confused wishing I’d have had more of the good stuff right now. Is this a lesbian love attempt on a drunken sailoress? A religious movement brought upon an inebriated member of the atheistic public? Un unhinged idea of a good time suggesting classified drugs?

I blankly stare back at Gwyneth.

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She moves towards me. I sit on my Ligne Roset swivel bar stool. She grabs my hand. She looks into my eyes. Hey, her eye colours are different, I notice. She has a brown and a green eye. Wow, why didn’t I see that beforehand when we were chatting while carrying out the bins the other day? She takes a deep breath and says: “So, how much do you want to have removed?”

I, only my head actually, slightly moves back from her intense stare and I say: “Removed?”

She says: “Yes. Removed. How much of your memories do you want to get rid of?”

I am too drunk to be flustered, so I just slur my question as in “whaaatch are you trayinn to seiii?” 

“This is ridiculous, I am just trying to help you because you were so nice the other day helping me carrying out the bins.” Gwyneth answers, standing up and moving to the door.

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I feel so bad. Oh dear, this is bad. I apologise. Gwyneth turns back and says: “Ok, if you are serious about your apology, tell me: Which are the memories you want to have erased?”

I sober up. No, not really. I am in the drunkard’s haze of inconvenient urgency.

I concentrate. This is important. A neighbour requests I tell her all about my losable memories. Right, we need to focus here. Just let me think! After some deliberation time, with Gwyneth incredulously inspecting my sparsely populated kitchen and acknowledging the lack of any respectable cooking equipment, I energetically swivel around and proudly offer a selection of deletable memories.

Namely:

Falling on the floor while dancing with a guy in a bar due to my misguided style ideas of how women should look like (I chose heels too high and too unmanageable); throwing up during a conference onto a five star hotel’s carpet while my colleagues arriving from the airport were watching; shitting my white trousers due to a diarrhoea infection before going on stage for a presentation in front of five hundred people; talking indefensible nonsense in a job interview because I was so hangover I didn’t even remember the company I was interviewing for; dating a guy who was an unbearable human being only because of his emerald-green eyes, bright and sparkling; pretending to be ten years younger when trying to pull off a date with another emerald-green-eyed guy later on; being unaware of the benefits of a salad spinner and vowing to buy one just to appease a boyfriend; admitting to my bestie that I am afraid of my Lady Dracula cassette tape and paying her to destroy it so I’d be safe, when I was seven years old (I hope); bleaching my hair to super blonde white; and

Gwyneth stops me abruptly: “No, no, those are too many. We can only mind sweep three thoughts at a time,” and adds in a low voice (or I think she did): “And I am surprised you don’t even consider losing the embarrassment of tonight,” and then she adds in an even lower, almost inaudible voice: ”Well, one has bigger fish to fry, I understand.”

Really? Damn it. Now I have to select. After all this painful effort strolling down memory lane and revisiting those unfortunate details. What a surprise that mind sweeping is so selective and so limited! Even memory erasing has its rules, we learn. God damn rules. Regulations everywhere.

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The next day, I wake up on the sofa of my living room. A nice sofa. Terracotta in colour and an agreeable and fashionably rough texture. I just had it re-done by one of those amazing IKEA sofa cover recycling companies. Looks and feels so lovely and it is like new! But hey, not a sustainable thought now as a blazing furnace is burning parts of my brain and my tongue is glued to (and potentially forever intertwined with) my lower jaw. I am hurting. I do not know why I am always succumbing to this social pressure of drinking. Maybe it is not the others? Maybe it is me? Most probably so! Oh, there we are. Feeling bored? Drink! Feeling unhappy? Drink! Feeling out of place? Drink! Feeling happy? Drink! Every emotion, it seems, needs be satisfied with a suitable drink to match the feeling. I am deplorable. I am feeling very sorry for myself on my terracotta-coloured sofa.

My profound musings are interrupted by the video-linked bell of my flat. It usually never works. I am sure the contractor wasn’t quite sure how to connect those wires but today, ta-da, it works. Gwyneth. I see her pressing the bell button on my flat’s video screen, she is on the other side, aka my front door. Oh no, should I admit her? Well, she might have seen me pressing the video link, will she? What a stressful situation. I am exposed. I am this bad neighbour not answering a call of another neighbour. I press the “communication” button. “Helllloooo?”.“Hello”, Gwyneth answers, “I’d like to talk to you.” Ouch, yes, that is me, she wants to speak to me. I press the release button. Gwyneth is in the building. My building. And we will speak.

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After some long minutes awaiting Gwyneth to climb up the stairs, albeit only two flights, I will face her and her accusations. I am sure of that. I have no recollection of whatever happened last night, in detail that is. I just know we were speaking nonsense about losing memories and I confided a lot of embarrassing experiences. Now. Here we are. She is facing me.

“And?” she says. I am confused and manage to get an “eeeh?” out. She is shaking her head and asks: “Well, did it work?” And I am like: “What, exactly, should have worked?”, thinking “help me out here, I am not well and not in the state of having any philosophical discussions”. And she lowers her head like letting me into a secret and says: “Well, all of the stuff you needed to be gone? Is it?”

I am now looking straight at her. My head is a sour and unbearable mass on the very top of my assumingly human body and I am not amused. Whatever stuff needed to be gone, I respond to her, how should I know, I say. How can I know what I apparently have supposed to let go of? I feel very intellectual here and now. Of course, it is the old and wise conundrum I am articulating in this very moment so loudly and simply and clearly, though I wasn’t thinking clearly: You just don’t know what you don’t know!

Gwyneth stares back at me and shouts: “Oh wow, yes, you don’t know any more! That is good! It worked!”.

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I am highly annoyed and say: Dah!

Nothing else I could think of.

Gwyneth says: “Why don’t you call your sister and ask her about the incident where bnclwk jbnöwvn öwvnw vwlknv (words are masked to avoid offending readers).”

AAAAAHHGGG. Okay, I think, that is a fair request.

I call my sister. She is laughing for 30 seconds. That is actually a long time.

I am going back to consult with Gwyneth.

Gwyneth: If your mind was swept of a certain memory, that doesn’t mean that others won’t remember.

I am terrified by this answer. So, everyone else apart from me, will remember my transgressions?

Gwyneth: Yes.

So, I say, we need to mind sweep everyone else, too, then! Logic commands!

Gwyneth contemplates my sensible request. And she says: OK, I can do that.

Oh, I say, how?

Gwyneth: If you can get them on the phone, I can speak to them and erase their memory of events, too.

I am like, haha, really? Over the phone? Those are internet times, baby. How would I get an ex-boss and 500 random audience people to get back into a conf call?

Gwyneth didn’t care. She said just figure it out and then I can erase their memory.

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It took a while to get hold of all their email addresses and arrange a post-conference situation of five hundred people who were once present to “the” talk. It actually cost me quite a bit as I promised everyone $50 if they were to join as like a blast from the past thing. It worked though. People really go for monetary incentives.

They all listened in to my nonsense post-conference speech exposing heartfelt shortcomings of marketing attribution software (I thought AI had resolved all that by now actually) and before I finished, Gwyneth took the video call stage and did her thing.

Now, no one can remember me. It is glorious. I am a sole nobody and no-one ever wants to pursue a link on the ever-knowing internet to see me speaking in an embarrassing interview and with me talking nonsense about attribution software. Or was it video-on-demand stuff? Ha, I forgot.

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Life since then has been easy. I have regular sessions with Gwyneth. It is not cheap. She charges for literally every minute. I am sometimes miffed about her taking my money but she always reminds me it was me in the first place who suggested to make a business out of mind sweeping.

Remember, she always says, it was you telling me on our first night I should make a business out of it. I apparently had talked her through a simple but efficient business plan. Charge everyone, no exceptions, I had told her.

And people are queueing. There is always a line of patient seekers in front of her house next door. So many people. Sometimes, I even have difficulties getting through to my own front door. Business is booming. I should have asked for a cut. If I did, I forgot. I sleep so much better now. Anyway, it’s just business, nothing personal.