Medication

"You didn't take you meds, did you?"

He ignored my question, opened up the fridge, unwrapped a day old ham sandwich and took a bite.

"Hey, nephew, you're here on my dime. You're here for amusement and companionship and conversation. You're not my nurse," he said, mouth half-full with sandwich and belligerence. He opened up a cabinet and shoved his head in, ostensibly in search of something.

"Don't just stand there," I heard his doubly muffled voice. "Come help me find the Jaeger." He pulled out the bottle and took a long satisfying gulp before I could be of any assistance.

"Here, have some."

"Its a little too early for that, Uncle Vance."

"Its never too early, never too late, for..." he downed another voluminous swig, and extended the bottle as a wordless invitation. I accepted.

A few dueling swigs later, Vance held an empty bottle.

"You know, son," he looked penetratingly at his vanquished friend-foe. "We all need something to make life bearable. Some prefer expensive cars. Some enjoy cheap women adorned with pricey trinkets. Others prefer the company of a book to anything else. They name their boredom hobbies or interests or sex or a career. In the end, they grow tire of it and buy a better car and find a cheaper whore and go to a movie. More or less, the majority of humanity are intransigents desperately denying an inescapable desire: to be done with it all."

"Something keeps us going. You know what that is?" He asked me.

"Fear."

"Yeah. As much as we want to be waltzing with the Reaper under a starless sky, we are afraid of what follows."

"Nothing follows," I said rather confidently. His eyes turned from the bottle up to meet mine.

"Are you certain of this?"

"Well, no. There is no certainty either way. All there is is belief."

"Speculation. All there is is speculation - desperate attempts at making the ineffable coherent, the uncertain definite, and providing consolation for earthly misery," he took a final bite of his sandwich. He finished chewing and continued.

"Eventually, if you're around long enough, life becomes an extended bout of quiet exasperation." He finally tossed the empty bottle into an almost full bin - I would soon escort them to the nearest liquor store in exchange for another round.

"You're how old now?"

"I'm 25."

[incomplete]

Los Alamos

From Shiv Visvanathan's A Carnival of Science:

"At first sight, the appearance of these towns is deceptive. Their antiseptic affluence hides their totalitarian intent; their suburban comfort, the banalization of evil in modern society. 'Walking through its main street, with artificially watered lawns...in front of standardized houses pained in bright Easter egg colours,' Jungk notices children playing a new variant of hopscotch with squares marked radioactive and uncontaminated. Los Alamos is advertised as a virtuous, high IQ town with no one either idle or unemployed. Jungk remarks:

It would not need all these superlatives to show me that Los Alamos is a quite exceptional place. Actually this walled settlement on a plateau three thousand feet high should not be called a town at all. For any town must have some proportion of freedom in order to be able to develop and live, even to be able to die. But the collection of houses and workshops on the hill above the Rio Grande is an artificial and arbitrary product. It will never be acquired and the whole population is looked upon as transient. If a man gives up his job, if he is discharged or pensioned, he must give up his house which belongs to the government and leaves Los Alamos.

For this reason, one never sees old people here, except a few indispensable scientific pundits. The children will have to leave once they reach working age. They can only remain only if they find a job here after passing security department's personality and aptitude tests. 'There is no staying on in the town where they are born and reared.'

Los Alamos represents the final resolution of liberal science. For liberalism, the private was sacred and the public was open and accessible. In a bizzare inversion, vivisectionist science has opened up the privacy of the body and soul to the public scrutiny of the clinical gaze, while science as public knowledge has become increasingly secret and forced into the most monstrous of total institutions - the research cities of the twentieth century. One is left with a deep suspicion that the transition from the university to the company town was effected not on grounds of efficiency but for reasons of state. The company town facilitated external control of scientific research."

21 again

Pensive, concerned about impending death, he stared into the mirror. He saw the reaper, glistening off his bald spot, smiling back. Vanity elaborates upon that most ultimate of neurosis.

What will they say? How will they remember me? Will they make my corpse look presentable?

He could not help it. It eroded everyday. He began to pity himself.

Ah, pity was easy - and empty. Pity was for the weak. Pity was for those who wanted to be down, lower than down, rolling around in mud, shedding futile tears. Pity helped no one. Self-pity is bad, he thought, the desire for sympathy worse.

To ask for sympathy, to lay prone in wait of compassion or salvation, rarely amounts to much. One is more likely to be kicked while down. One is exposed to ridicule, insults, exploitation, and contrived charity. Nothing hurts like being patronized by a grinning self-satisfied bastard with red-tinted sunglasses trying to sell you on a bonehead idea or product, in the name of a Cause. Reverend Quincy tells him to shove his cologne bottle up his arse. Reverend Quincy turns around and pitches you a book about his misadventures with consumerism, cocaine, coconuts, and cream pies. He's selling it, ya know, for a price, cause ol' Reverend Quincy ain't no charity either. Neither was old JC, Temple tantrum notwithstanding.

He turned on the television. An inventor guy was selling toupee-in-a-can. He sprayed it on a balding old woman. She screeched with joy.

"Oh, thank you, thank you," she began. "I look 21 again!"

If that's what she looked like at 21, he contemplated, she should've stayed in her cave. Although unimpressed by the old woman's contrived reaction, the product itself impressed him nonetheless. He scanned the television screen for more information. Nope, there was no price. Nope, not a phone number in sight. Nope, nothing but the image of an old woman preening in the mirror like a teen queen before prom.

"Want to know more?" the inventor pointed to the folks out in TV land. "Stay tuned for our special celebrity client!"

The clock struck 1:30AM. He stayed tuned, barely riveted, insomnia's reluctant captive.

No guidance. I have no guidance, he thought. I need no guidance; it would only make things worse. Guidance makes you dependent, renders you a child. I have no guidance, will give no guidance. The best advice to provide is silence. Those who ask for advice desire sympathy and pity. Pitiful, absolutely pitiful. O, woe, woe, woe is me. What should I do? What would ol' JC do? He would tell you to shut up and JUST DO IT! Imagine that endorsement deal? What would you pay a supposed messiah to hawk your shit? Six? seven? eight? maybe ten figures? Or your first born? Even better question: what would you pay for divine guidance? Your immortal soul? Damnation, thats steep!

He waited, with less than bated breath, for the special celebrity endorser.

"We're back!" Commercial breaks during an infomercial, brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

'Twas me and Sunday melancholy

'Twas me and Sunday melancholy sitting on the porch, gazing at grazing rabble. They had questions, lots of them.

"Should I hold it or sell it?"

"Grade me, recognize me, am I worthy?"

"Why do I see nothing when I look up?"

"Contestant one is cute, but contestant two can sing - who should I vote for?"

'Twas me and Sunday melancholy sitting on the porch, unmoved, watching them sink.

"Should I hold or sell?"

"What's the best way to ensure financial security in the afterlife?"

"Can I take it with me? All of it?"

"Where can I get my virgins?"

'Twas me and Sunday melancholy, wondering when the plumber will arrive.

Monday, perhaps? Maybe Tuesday?

With water up to the waist, time dissipates. All may be at an end.

"Fiduciary, ya douche!" A majestic voice bellows then sinks into oblivion. Ah, salvation, how bittersweet.

F-I-D-U-C-I-A-R-Y

“Fiduciary, you douche. F-I-D-U-C-I-A-R-Y, you knuckle dragging Neanderthal.” He continued his sanctimonious tirade with his Moleskines tucked majestically under his left arm.

“You must really be a cretin not to understand what fiduciary is.”

Jeffrey, unphased by the torrent of condescension, posed the question again.

“What does fiduciary mean?”

Mr. Moleskine regurgitated his abuse, unable to understand Jeffrey’s intention.

It was time for me to intervene.

“What my associate here means is: money, what is it good for? What is it’s intrinsic value? The question isn’t inquiring about a definition – it desires meaning. What does fiduciary mean beneath the surface?”

He laughed derisively.

“Everything. Money means everything. What stands between us and death is money.”

[being]

[oblivion]

Bestand took my hand

“Werewolf?”

“Yeah, a werewolf.”

“You mean to tell me a werewolf took your hand?”

“Sure looks that way.” His bedraggled face betrayed nary a trace of irony.

“Well, did it or he or she gnaw it off?”

“No, don’t be silly, nephew. He used the machete.” I had suspected the machete was the culprit – never thought a supposed werewolf was the one wielding it. Noticing that the moon had only recently appeared in the night sky, I asked an obvious question.

“Wait, it must have been bright out when the ‘werewolf’ chopped your hand off. How can a werewolf possibly skulk around in broad daylight?”

“That moon and the werewolf is pure superstitious hooey,” once again, no irony to be found. “This fucking son of a bitch is a permanent wolf.”

“Then it was a wolf, who knew how to use a machete that cut off your hand. Not a werewolf.”

“Boy,” Vance would call me boy when he was royally annoyed, “get your head out of your ass. A werewolf differs from a wolf insofar as he possesses marginally human traits, such as the ability to use a fucking machete.” His emphasised expletive made me abandon the fruitless inquiry regarding nomenclature.

“So was there something odd about this werewolf?” I asked. Vance paused, placing his bandage stub to his chin, as if he was about to enter a deep place of meditation.

“Bestand,” he added. “He said ‘Bestand’ over and over again.”

“So it was a German werewolf. This is one screwy werewolf.”

“Bestand…bestand…bestand…it said it three times,” he was an it now apparently. “Then the rat bastard sliced my hand off.”

“Sounds like the werewolf went mad from reading too much Heidegger,” I said rather matter-of-factly.

“Sure could be the case,” Vance replied, slowing exhibiting the effects of blood loss. “She had these oddly rodent features. It kind of looked like Heidegger.”

“Was it wearing a swastika armband?” I asked with utter seriousness.

“Not sure, the blinding pain of losing an appendage kind of muddied that up.”

I thought it appropriate to sum up the details as they stood. “So it was an incomprehensible, proto-Nazi werewolf who knows how to use a machete,” I paused for dramatic effect. “That’s something else, Uncle Vance. You sure it wasn’t bigfoot on a bender?”

“Hey nephew.” His voice started to fade.

“Yeah.”

“Could I interrupt your little anthropological cabinet of wondrous speculations and ask if you can get me to a hospital?”

“Why sure you can, unkie Vance.”

I sat in the helicopter as it ferried Vance to Foothills Hospital. Gazing at the dark landscape below, it struck me: there was some mad wonderfully murderous creature, possibly an anti-Semitic machete-wielding werewolf, somewhere out there. And I was going to find it or him or her.

"Welcome to your hell..."

Free falling from an incredible height, his life flashed by and a realization dawned on him: what a banal normal existence it was.

“Pull the cord,” a distant desperate voice shouted. He pulled, but to no avail. Spiraling towards unforgiving earth below, his thoughts turned to death and the possibility of living beyond the final splatter.

A wading pool flanked by palm trees, a gentle gust run its fingers through the leaves. Soothing surrender – “it’s time to give it up”, the breeze whispers with ominous gentility.

Fruit bowls – filled with grapes, nectarines, bananas, and strawberries – await in an misty acropolis. “How odd,” he thought. “Here I am plummeting, but paradise is supposedly up above.” He did not dare to look up.

Beauties, draped in white silk, feed him grapes - defilement follows decadence. There were no warriors to be found on the downward spiral. Thoughts of defilement pleased the falling man nonetheless.

A sudden vision interrupted. Eternal fires stoked by agony – a logical end for a plummeting buffoon. Barking dogs – woof, woof, woof – greet welcomed newcomers. The master of ceremonies emerges from his molten resting place.

“Welcome to your hell…”

The interminable descent frustrated him. Doom or salvation, but the wait he could not bear. He ran out of fanciful visions and earth came into dreadful focus. He thought about his loves. He contemplated a legacy, wondering whether immortality could be manufactured. He thought about Orpheus, dear Orpheus – his tormented kindred spirit. He dared not to look up. He thought about this final incomplete journey. He closed his eyes and looked up. The inevitable never came.

Shitdisturber

"Why must you be such a shitdisturber?" an acquaintance asked my uncle Vance.

"Because the whole lot of you bore the shit out of me." Vance proceeded to mount the bull and rode him down Centre Street. The cops eventually caught up with the bull, but not after it rampaged through an antiques store and pizzeria. Vance, on the other hand, wasn't seen for a week after being bucked off unceremoniously mere seconds into the ride. Yeah, he made a habit of disappearing on us as well as the cops.

The authorities attempted to level criminal mischief charges on Vance but habeas corpus proved a mighty obstacle. That and they couldn't definitively confirm whether it was indeed Vance riding an ugly old bull down the street or some hobo looking for a good time. The cops, being cops, cleaned up the mess, fed the store owners reasssuring bullcrap - pun unintended, and went back to their two-hour long half an hour break at the Tim Horton's up on 4oth and Centre.

"Fucking Stampede," Vance told me, that is once he resurfaced. "It's full of fucking teenagers hoping to get laid, hoping their GHB works on the hot stacked blonde and not the blimpy brunette. It's full of overgrown adolescents with too much money and way too much time, cruising in their rented sportscars, hoping to pick up some primo Asian ass. They have been using it long enough. They know their GHB works, fo' shizzle - or whatever assinine shit phrase they mimmick these days. It's full of bored cardboard whores, hoping to score free drinks, and some, extremely delusional ones, hoping to be idolized and adored. It's an excuse to party for a city full of bored cliches. It gives them a chance to exploit and feel, to destroy and consume. It's their excuse to live banally - their sole chance to live at all. The manufactured and pre-packaged party, preordained by fluorescent gods waving silicone tits in their face, simulate, stimulate, titillate. But when the ride's coming down, it's just a matter of more dough. How about another whirl? the shot girl coos in their ear."

He paused to take a swig from his bottle of Jim Beam.

"Sometimes you have to let the bull roam free from its cage, just to see if the fuckers really want to live or whether they just want to buy an escape."

Standing at the corner of 16th and Centre, I stared at a dismantled Douglas Drugs sign, thinking about my nearly spectral uncle Vance. He was an episodic creature. When he appears, he's unstoppable - an irrepressible shitdisturbing agon. But - poof! - he's gone, leaving you wonder whether he was there to being with.

"Neal Cassady," he began a contrarian note, " was a colossal waste of human life. He lived simply for himself. He lived to be the centre, the holy fucking primative, a demonstrative messiah on a perpetual high, and a dirty lowdown sensualist dilettente to the bone. Of course, he was fucking brilliant - a bloody fucking genius really - and wasted it all sucking Ginsberg's or whoever's cock."

"He fell for the same bullshit geniuses have been falling for since Zarathustra: to the max, or not at all."

The first

Most often, the simplest and most difficult thing is to say to her, attached and betrothed to someone else, "We should be together." Save disjointing masculinity - "I'm a better man than he is" - and saccharine kitsch - "I need you." - for the unfortunate few who model life decisions after romantic comedies or melodrama. To be direct and concise and, most importantly, genuine is indeed most difficult. It requires of us a rather elusive, therefore precious, indefatigable sense of self. It's not sheer egotism or inflated self-worth. By sense of self, I mean a deep, terrifyingly honest understanding of ourselves - good, bad, and in between.

"We should be together." It can't be delivered like a pickup line or like a line of any sort. Heck, the words themselves become irrelevant upon being uttered. Standing before your beloved - or your supposed beloved - as she prepares for her wedding to another man, who by all incremental accounts - status, appearance, wealth, etc. - is leaps and bounds superior to yourself, it takes an unparalleled, almost otherworldly, courage to finally tell her the truth, consequences be damned. She may appreciate your honesty and let you down easy. She might freak out and call the authorities - cops or rent-a-cops. Or, your words and your deed may touch her profoundly. That even though she will be marrying a near perfect match, marrying into a wealthy respected family and, in the process, come precariously close to their immense fortune, she gives pause to look at your sad hopeful eyes - tearing with melancholic desire. She's touched. But she's conflicted.

"Why did you wait until now, until this day?" she asks through tears, her voice tightropes incredulity and elation.

"Because I almost forgot your birthday." You pull out a ring, a modest almost nondescript ring, and hand it to her. Not yet on bended knee, your eyes refuse to let go of hers.

"The first."

"The first."

You both smile. The organ begins the procession. But all is still, including ever ebullient eyes locked in timeless play. The organ stops, silence takes over, and the crowd clamours with anticipation for an unseen bride. The groom's nervous anticipation grows dark as a dreadful portent returns to mind.

A bridesmaid, searching for the bride, enters an empty room to find a veil laying stolidly on the floor.

"The first." Your lips touch in speechless conversation.