She gave him an ambiguous expression before leaving.
"I love you and I have to go."
That was it. She was off to Prague and he, as always, held still at home. She took flight because she could not stand the idea of home, that dull process of sedimentation that befalls etiolated and miserable things; staying still was not an option. But he chose to stick it out. As much as it was no longer home, as much as all things he remembered and romanticized had disintegrated, he chose to endure and to continue on. He would refer to the thoughts of Rilke, Kafka, and Neizvestny on the subject of human endurance and artistic creation.
"Be poet enough to deal with it. Only dilettantes and philistines cry foul about the human condition. Lennon said give me a tin can and a stick and I'll make something beautiful from it, because that's what artists do." Despite the rhetoric, her departure hurt him.
When she left, his old enthusiasms waned and novel ones were slow to emerge. He worked and returned home to read, then slumber, awakening, off to work, home, and so on. From his youngest years, he read avidly. Greek philosophy, Roman history, medieval theology, penny novels, mysteries, Shakespeare, Rimbaud, Kant, legal theory, Camus, Penthouse: his palette grew more and more extensive as the years passed. Upon her departure, he read everything, some of it for the second time, with one notable exception. Her letters were left unopened, unread, and without reply. Words passed through him without register and were of little comfort. Not much else filled his time apart from the dead tomes and the hours at a job he loathed. He was stuck. He needed to take flight.
"Prague, man. You gotta go to Prague." He stood there emotionless per usual, eyes gazing at some distant ghost, and gave no response. Was he deep in thought? Was he zoning out? Was he bored and on the verge of going comatose? This was the annoying ambiguity of his emotionless visage. After some time, he turned to me and gently shook his head. No. Of course.
"How about Edmonton?" This disturbed him for a second. A look of puzzlement escaped before posturing melancholy could detain it. The thought so perturbed him, he left his desk for the break room. My words, well the thought of going to Edmonton, inspired something in him. It may have been disgust and revulsion, but it roused him nonetheless. That was at least a first step.
He returned from his brief sojourn with a coffee cup with an image of a killer whale leaping out of blue waters, the letter beneath read: Victoria, British Columbia. Okay. That was not as subtle of hint as he liked to believe. Then again, hints should never be too subtle. I made a similar trip to the break room and fetched my rendition of the mug - killer whale and so on with one difference, beneath it read: Vancouver, BC. I filled it halfway with coffee, returned to the desk, and touched it with his. We were heading for the West Coast.
----
The Big One was this mythical earthquake. It was to be the final violent orgasmic encounter Juan de Fuca tectonic plate with the North American Plate. The beauty of the Pacific Coast would be left in ruins. The sprawling metropolis of Vancouver would become a wistful memory, buried under so much rubble. The vibrant and majestic sea to sky landscape would be left forever grey and lifeless. It was going to be the end of everything.
"If you live there, if you choose to live there, you can't possibly talk about it. It's like that apocryphal story about Muhammad Ali in Zaire. He would never, ever, under any circumstances watch George Foreman punch the heavy bag. Foreman was this ungodly puncher, so much so that heavy bags, weighing about 75 lbs would wear out beyond repair in a single training session. Ali, who had to cross through a courtyard in front of the Foreman camp in order to get to his own, never laid an eye on the apocalypse awaiting him. If he was going to fight the man, he couldn't internalize the possibility of being the heavy bag. It was to remain a myth, an unfulfilled reality. That's how people in the West Coast treat the Big One."
The Big One. Yes, the barriers between us and death are tantalizingly flimsy. Imagine if the ground, terra firma, lost its fixity and swayed to the whims of chance. "All that is solid melts into air," so on, so forth. Modern man was constructed to believe in a singular paradoxical truth: he has sovereignty over all things, but remains hopelessly exposed to the whims of tumult and fortune. He may be king. But he'll be dead soon enough. Long live the king, reaper.
Straight down Highway Number One, through the Rockies, down into the Okanagan, and straight out of the Fraser Valley, and nine hours later, there stands the metropolis known so affectionately as Vansterdam. Vancouver. The Big One's estranged love. When will fortune bring the two together in a twisted romantic comedy crescendo? "I love you and I must destroy you." I should tell him there are much worse endings than Prague.
As we sped down Hastings Street, a fading sun slowly descending the western horizon hit us dead on.
"I hate sunsets."
"Why?"
"They've been fucking reified, romanticized beyond the point of nausea."
"So, you don't really hate this sunset, just its representation in our -- how did you put it, again? -- vacuous, money-poisoned collective consciousness."
He looked none impressed.
....
"So where did it all do wrong?"
"What do you mean?"
"Weren't you Mr. Acadamic-Varsity-Do-Gooder-Extraordinaire? Now you're you."
"There is an art to wasting time - letting the world-progress sweep us along into the dustbin of history."
Pseudo-Benjamin. But, there was more.
"Either you stand for something or you'll fall for anything. Belief has nothing to do with it."
I gave him a quizzical look.
"Like an accountant. An accountant believes in money. Money makes the world go 'round and all that hackneyed bullshit. They don't stand for money. They count it, make it, reposition investment portfolios, funnel funds to offshore accounts. They don't stand for anything. Their actions, their words, their very being mean nothing unless its attached to wealth. Accounting mastered nihilism. It is nihilism at its very height. The Last Man poured into a suit."
I peered over at the newspaper laying in his lap. "Accounting student, 22, decapitated by economist," read a headline.
"But that's flawed," I started. "People are willing to die for money or risk their necks for it. Take for example mercenaries or gangsters. That's the insanity of the thing, of an addiction; you'd rather perish than to be without it. Its a rather radical proposition. How can you say they're not invested in money? How can you be so sure its sheer vanity or appearance? If it's real to them, what else matters? If it's real to them, surely that's their stand, that's their belief, and they've made it mean something for them. What standard can you employ to judge their actions?"
His eyes lit up. He enjoyed disagreement. I suspect, on a odd level, it aroused him.
"What you're saying is money can become a substitution for virtue?"
"I did not say that. I'm saying that some do displace virtue with money and why should we be able to judge them."
"It's not about judgment. It's about an ethic of care. To love money alone is to neglect all else. Everything else is forsaken for it. Environment, culture, education, art, love, trust, friendship, peace, justice, equality, and so on. They're all commodities. They're are subjugated, laying far below the exalted mighty dollar. This is what concerns me as it should concern you. They don't care whether the poor peoples of the world are living worse than slaves, they don't care that mere kilometers from their suburban homes are homeless destitute people who cannot afford even the most austere comforts, they don't care, they just don't care. Money is value. All things are judged to have value according to money. If you have no money, you are of no value. Then you are Bestand. If you do not serve money or obstruct their pursuit of it, you are superfluity. And finally, you can be led to the ovens and they won't blink an eye."
Care. I liked that. I wanted to help him reveal more.
"Noblesse oblige," I said with a mischievous grin. "That'll always mitigate the radical evils you have so breathlessly enumerated. I appreciate your passion. And your point on care is well taken. But the portrait you have painted is stilted. It's nothing but a straw man. Plus, most people are just trying to get by. You can't say that the person buying groceries from Wal-Mart to save enough money for the rent is responsible for genocides in Africa. That extreme butterfly effect employed by the radical left not only is an imprecise analysis of the situation, it alienates those who progressive discourse should be engaging, namely those who don't constantly partake in these debates, the folks just trying to get by, those just trying to live and love and see another day."
He took pause and gazed outside the side window at the bustling lunchtime crowd moving along Blanshard Street. The silence between us lingered for sometime. I turned the car onto Cook Street, heading South towards the Strait and the coastline.
"We become hopelessly entangled in lies when trying to live truth." Then, he let out a resigned sigh. He sprung that nugget on me as we zipped past the outer edge of Beacon Hill park. That was it.
---
Standing there surrounded by the fractured remains of a world torn apart, he dreaded the thought of having to clean it up.
"Aw, shit, this fucking sucks."
Yes, always eloquent and unfailingly precise. He waded through the ruined miscellany in search of her. He believed he could instantly recognize her big blues even through the dust and soot. The question was whether those big blues were still with him and the traumatized world.
---
"I am become Time, destroyer of all worlds."
Nothing could be said, at least nothing that would be heard. The creatures stared dumbly, unmoved by words, numb to any attempt at communication. This was the dustbin and Time stood still at last, finally exhausted, with no distance to travel. So, they stood there agape at the sight before them, absolute negation, entropy rising tantalizingly close to its limit.
"Heat death," he said, as if privy to my inner thoughts. "Our fevered egos could go only so far. Here lies their destined end."
Time no longer dictated matters. Survival is indistinct from a lyrical melancholy, to go on was to go on suffering. To endure was to take on the duties that come with that pain. "Bury the dead and heal the living," was the wisdom gleaned from Lisbon in 1755. The dead was so numerous; they were inseparable from the rubble, from the world left behind. Bury the world and heal, what's left to heal? Time was now a needless thing. And Space? Space was chaos. Chaos was space.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
The stakes facing an aspiring ad man
He unwilling to sell
is doomed to relegation.
He who liquidates
is left with nothing.
Outrage, upon closer analysis,
is invariably a contrivance.
is doomed to relegation.
He who liquidates
is left with nothing.
Outrage, upon closer analysis,
is invariably a contrivance.
Needless Needle
It was revealed to him,
that he was the needle,
and they the haystack.
He embraced his needle nature,
and ceased with contrivance.
that he was the needle,
and they the haystack.
He embraced his needle nature,
and ceased with contrivance.
Friday, December 19, 2008
It's an allegory, well not really
"Quit being so insistent."
"Hmm, that's a curious thing to say. What do you mean by it?"
"Quit trying to get your point across with such, uh, erudition. It just bores the shit out of the rest of us."
"Are you speaking for everyone?"
"I'm representative of a shared sentiment, yes."
"You are the elect of the group?"
"No, just the spokesman."
"Does your authority come from the group? Or have you surreptitiously usurped it?"
"See, this is what I mean, the endless polemics and rational baiting. Can't you simply converse without all of this contrivance?"
"Its simply inquiry. Half of life is inquiry..."
"And the other half is experience without all the preponderance, you know, sensuality, frivolity, and mystery in the raw. You have made a habit of appointing yourself the Royal de-bunker. Just let things be in the meantime, it'll become clearer with time."
"I'm no hedonist."
"No one is telling you to throw all caution to the wind. Just look at the other side. Without Dionysus, Apollo would be awfully listless. Without darkness, light would be awfully unimpressive. And so on."
"The task of the philosopher is to search for truth and to teach. The philosopher is not to engage in any activity unrelated to this pursuit of knowledge."
"There are many paths, friend. Not all of them can be formalized. Actually, the best ones cannot be formalized as doctrine or as truth(s). There are paths which neither known or unknown, which can be understood yet arouse perplexity. These are the paths of life most vibrant and vivacious. These are paths of life lived and not simply contemplated."
"Truth is knowable. Life is unknowable. Only when truth is indistinct from life can the philosopher finally rest."
"Phooey, let go of your dialectics. Boot Hegel and Marx from your consciousness. They have clouded your faculties. There can be no absolutes for us beasts of burden and necessity. We can only grasp fragments. Ah, what boredom must burden the man who believes he has reached all absolutes and attained the endpoint of all pursuits. Such delusions are beneath you, friend."
"But without a final end, a grand unity, meaning disappears. This is endless relativism and fruitless striving, as man's particularized mis-perceptions lead no further than shadows dancing along a cave wall."
"Ah, the sun. The little parable left out one consequence: staring at the sun can damage your vision. Blindness. Myopia. You stare at it long enough and it'll be true, if only because you cannot see anything else. Look elsewhere, the forms are there as well, but not purely as forms."
"That is patently silly. It is an allegory, not a parable."
"Ha ha ha, fair enough. But, enough with this. Let's get you a drink and we'll start this great divergence."
"Great divergence?"
"It happens all the time, every moment of every day of every life. We just can't keep track of them all, because, like with anything, you have more fun when not keeping score."
"Beer me."
"Gladly."
"Hmm, that's a curious thing to say. What do you mean by it?"
"Quit trying to get your point across with such, uh, erudition. It just bores the shit out of the rest of us."
"Are you speaking for everyone?"
"I'm representative of a shared sentiment, yes."
"You are the elect of the group?"
"No, just the spokesman."
"Does your authority come from the group? Or have you surreptitiously usurped it?"
"See, this is what I mean, the endless polemics and rational baiting. Can't you simply converse without all of this contrivance?"
"Its simply inquiry. Half of life is inquiry..."
"And the other half is experience without all the preponderance, you know, sensuality, frivolity, and mystery in the raw. You have made a habit of appointing yourself the Royal de-bunker. Just let things be in the meantime, it'll become clearer with time."
"I'm no hedonist."
"No one is telling you to throw all caution to the wind. Just look at the other side. Without Dionysus, Apollo would be awfully listless. Without darkness, light would be awfully unimpressive. And so on."
"The task of the philosopher is to search for truth and to teach. The philosopher is not to engage in any activity unrelated to this pursuit of knowledge."
"There are many paths, friend. Not all of them can be formalized. Actually, the best ones cannot be formalized as doctrine or as truth(s). There are paths which neither known or unknown, which can be understood yet arouse perplexity. These are the paths of life most vibrant and vivacious. These are paths of life lived and not simply contemplated."
"Truth is knowable. Life is unknowable. Only when truth is indistinct from life can the philosopher finally rest."
"Phooey, let go of your dialectics. Boot Hegel and Marx from your consciousness. They have clouded your faculties. There can be no absolutes for us beasts of burden and necessity. We can only grasp fragments. Ah, what boredom must burden the man who believes he has reached all absolutes and attained the endpoint of all pursuits. Such delusions are beneath you, friend."
"But without a final end, a grand unity, meaning disappears. This is endless relativism and fruitless striving, as man's particularized mis-perceptions lead no further than shadows dancing along a cave wall."
"Ah, the sun. The little parable left out one consequence: staring at the sun can damage your vision. Blindness. Myopia. You stare at it long enough and it'll be true, if only because you cannot see anything else. Look elsewhere, the forms are there as well, but not purely as forms."
"That is patently silly. It is an allegory, not a parable."
"Ha ha ha, fair enough. But, enough with this. Let's get you a drink and we'll start this great divergence."
"Great divergence?"
"It happens all the time, every moment of every day of every life. We just can't keep track of them all, because, like with anything, you have more fun when not keeping score."
"Beer me."
"Gladly."
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Method and structure, borrowed or stolen
Without method, all pursuit is blind. Blind pursuits, however, are often the most fruitful. Without structure, all work is fractured. The fractured fragments of what passes for work are the impetus for heightened creation.
Without method or structure, the writer must borrow another's in the meantime. She must understand the borrowed material adequately in order to reverently desecrate it when the time comes.
Without method or structure, the writer must borrow another's in the meantime. She must understand the borrowed material adequately in order to reverently desecrate it when the time comes.
Productivity matrix
I read the morning paper before going to bed during periods of high productivity. Words, ideas, insipid logical frameworks of once impassioned spontaneity spill out at nocturnal hours. When sound asleep, I suspect perfect, ephemeral, withering insights pour into my mind. They're forgotten by morning, the other morning, my morning, when the sun slowly descends and darkness patiently consumes the soon to be forgotten light. The news is now old and the day anew. I sit, with a lamp light standing as solitary sentry against surrounding darkness, incurring a terrible toil on mind and body, in pursuit of the wispy outlines of faded dreams.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Keep your day job
Visanthe Shiancoe,
Keep your day job. Although there's a lot of growth potential in the business of banging teenage runaways and blondes with daddy issues, there are many reasons not to:
* no uniforms - well, I guess that's not always true; just avoid the bobby socks and plaid combo.
* no health benefits - then again, its only VD and possible back issues; so it won't be all that different from the NFL.
* no job security - but that would be the case if you worked for Al Davis anyways.
* having your body exploited and fetishized for the profit of others - okay, so when Madden says "look at the hamhocks on that stud", he doesn't mean it in that way.
* no pension plan - the Player's Union is working on that, right?
* there's no commentator jobs after retirement - but there would be producer gigs, though?
* the title Dancing with the Stars would need an alteration if you ever hope to make an appearance. Actually, I think FOX has that idea coming as a mid-season replacement.
* finally, protection is extremely thin compared to football gear.
See, plus, even OJ never went there. Oh wait, he went there, as OJ tended to do, unwittingly. There's no better reason not to do porn than the realization that OJ Simpson unintentionally almost did a porno. Yeah, it ranks right up there to having Michael Vick star in a Doctor Dolittle sequel among bad NFL entertainment ideas.
Sincerely,
A concerned fan.
Keep your day job. Although there's a lot of growth potential in the business of banging teenage runaways and blondes with daddy issues, there are many reasons not to:
* no uniforms - well, I guess that's not always true; just avoid the bobby socks and plaid combo.
* no health benefits - then again, its only VD and possible back issues; so it won't be all that different from the NFL.
* no job security - but that would be the case if you worked for Al Davis anyways.
* having your body exploited and fetishized for the profit of others - okay, so when Madden says "look at the hamhocks on that stud", he doesn't mean it in that way.
* no pension plan - the Player's Union is working on that, right?
* there's no commentator jobs after retirement - but there would be producer gigs, though?
* the title Dancing with the Stars would need an alteration if you ever hope to make an appearance. Actually, I think FOX has that idea coming as a mid-season replacement.
* finally, protection is extremely thin compared to football gear.
See, plus, even OJ never went there. Oh wait, he went there, as OJ tended to do, unwittingly. There's no better reason not to do porn than the realization that OJ Simpson unintentionally almost did a porno. Yeah, it ranks right up there to having Michael Vick star in a Doctor Dolittle sequel among bad NFL entertainment ideas.
Sincerely,
A concerned fan.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
They put the chains on the Pearl
They chained up the Pearl in New York. New York will fucking do that to you. Its a clinical, vainglorious, anxious, and insecure big town. They're fuckin' New York, centre of the motherfucking universe, if you didn't know. You can't be you in New York. Manny can be Manny in Boston; but not in the Big Apple. The Pearl was Black Magic in Winston-Salem and Baltimore, Black Jesus always in Philly. In New York? Monroe. He was just Earl Monroe in New York, playing second fiddle to the "No Play for Mr. Gray" guy.
They put the chains on the Pearl, Lebron. They always put on the chains. Then, when its time, you get the boots. You go from Black Magic, Black Jesus, to just another flamboyant disposable. A-Rod? He's just Madonna's playoff choke-artist. Darryl Strawberry? He's the straw no more, just broke up, washed up, and never reaching the insane expectations of New York fans. Patrick Ewing? The frozen envelope got them a yearly playoff ass-kicking courtesy of the Bulls, Pacers, or any team that could put together thirteen able bodies. Ewing was not just a savior; he was the savior. Look at what that got him - I mean, other than a lifetime VIP at the Gold Club.
Spike is suffering. He wants the true chosen One to redeem the heathen Knicks. But there's no redemption. Its fate was sealed when it robbed the world of Black Magic, denied the rise of Black Jesus. Ewing, X-Man, Starks, Oakley, LJ, Spree, and the whole lot of the know what invariably lies in wait in New York: an ignominous and inglorious descent into mediocrity.
They put the shackles on the Pearl, Lebron. Remember that come the summer of 2010. Don't let their standing ovations fool you. New York will chew you up in a flash and trade your bones to Oklahoma City for Kevin Durant and a couple D-Leaguers. Don't let them put the shackles on the King.
They put the chains on the Pearl, Lebron. They always put on the chains. Then, when its time, you get the boots. You go from Black Magic, Black Jesus, to just another flamboyant disposable. A-Rod? He's just Madonna's playoff choke-artist. Darryl Strawberry? He's the straw no more, just broke up, washed up, and never reaching the insane expectations of New York fans. Patrick Ewing? The frozen envelope got them a yearly playoff ass-kicking courtesy of the Bulls, Pacers, or any team that could put together thirteen able bodies. Ewing was not just a savior; he was the savior. Look at what that got him - I mean, other than a lifetime VIP at the Gold Club.
Spike is suffering. He wants the true chosen One to redeem the heathen Knicks. But there's no redemption. Its fate was sealed when it robbed the world of Black Magic, denied the rise of Black Jesus. Ewing, X-Man, Starks, Oakley, LJ, Spree, and the whole lot of the know what invariably lies in wait in New York: an ignominous and inglorious descent into mediocrity.
They put the shackles on the Pearl, Lebron. Remember that come the summer of 2010. Don't let their standing ovations fool you. New York will chew you up in a flash and trade your bones to Oklahoma City for Kevin Durant and a couple D-Leaguers. Don't let them put the shackles on the King.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Posture, poet
So many wasted gestures, too many forgotten pleas,
life fraught with insane inanities.
He ceased lying to himself and acknowledged his true nature. Not the man of numbers, not the accumulator, nor king consumer. He was poet, the world his audience. Soon, soaring invocations shall complete long promised prophecy; fiction beyond the real.
life fraught with insane inanities.
He ceased lying to himself and acknowledged his true nature. Not the man of numbers, not the accumulator, nor king consumer. He was poet, the world his audience. Soon, soaring invocations shall complete long promised prophecy; fiction beyond the real.
Friday, December 05, 2008
Honourable
Success is your balaclava. Honour can be sold and bought; it's an object, a commodity. I'm sorry, you say. I'm sorry for something. Just let me off the hook. Do you know who I am? Do you know who I was. The money, the fame, the success can't help you now. You were a meme of some inferior hero. Now, you gaze helplessly at the smouldering ashes.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
overexposed
Imagine if you will a world without images.
Imagine now a world of nothing but images.
Underexposed, nothing registers. Overexposed, everything registers.
The grays, though, the grays defy the poles of black and white.
We're underexposed and overexposed. The tragedy, of course, is the either or.
Imagine now a world of nothing but images.
Underexposed, nothing registers. Overexposed, everything registers.
The grays, though, the grays defy the poles of black and white.
We're underexposed and overexposed. The tragedy, of course, is the either or.
My cliche is more cliche than your cliche...
All opinion, whether insightful or plain asinine, is derived from cliche. Need proof? Read the reviews of a television show, let's say Mad Men, on IMDB.
There are those who love it; their comments involve the liberal use of the words "genius", "masterpiece", "flawless", and "perfect". They elevate the show beyond its medium and onto a metaphysical plane, an archetype.
There are those who loathe it; they can't understand why the protagonist is amoral, they believe Don Draper's stoic veneer can be blamed on Jon Hamm's supposed inability to emote, they believe that looking back at a less than progressive time, in this case the 60's, makes for uninteresting material, since "we moderns" have come so far - far more evolved than those archaic philistines populating that obsolete world.
Both sides put forth cliches and dress them as something profound. Regardless of the opinion, a subjective taste - regarding what one believes to be beautiful or entertaining or interesting - is elevated to a universal standard. But that opinion wasn't derived from a pure vacuum in a subjective head space. In fact, most opinions come from a deeply ingrained miseducation stretching from elementary school to staring at a computer screen for hours on end.
All opinions are cliche, especially this one. Let's internalize that for a second, take a breath, and quit thinking so highly of our precious opinions. Like the old colloquilism said, "An opinion is like an ass, every has one..." Oddly, of course, its usually the same huge dimpled ass that is trotted out.
There are those who love it; their comments involve the liberal use of the words "genius", "masterpiece", "flawless", and "perfect". They elevate the show beyond its medium and onto a metaphysical plane, an archetype.
There are those who loathe it; they can't understand why the protagonist is amoral, they believe Don Draper's stoic veneer can be blamed on Jon Hamm's supposed inability to emote, they believe that looking back at a less than progressive time, in this case the 60's, makes for uninteresting material, since "we moderns" have come so far - far more evolved than those archaic philistines populating that obsolete world.
Both sides put forth cliches and dress them as something profound. Regardless of the opinion, a subjective taste - regarding what one believes to be beautiful or entertaining or interesting - is elevated to a universal standard. But that opinion wasn't derived from a pure vacuum in a subjective head space. In fact, most opinions come from a deeply ingrained miseducation stretching from elementary school to staring at a computer screen for hours on end.
All opinions are cliche, especially this one. Let's internalize that for a second, take a breath, and quit thinking so highly of our precious opinions. Like the old colloquilism said, "An opinion is like an ass, every has one..." Oddly, of course, its usually the same huge dimpled ass that is trotted out.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Rimbaud: First Blood
How do you pronounce his name?
What? Really? Like the fucking action hero! Imagine that shit will you...
A chain smoking Frenchman, trekking around the fucking jungle with only a book of poems and an AK-47. He fucks up the enemies and serenades their corpses in verse. He breaks out in song and dance to seduce the natives into joining his genocidal cause. Its an action musical spectacular.
What's pastiche? What do you mean by pastiche?
Pitch that shit and they'll throw money and pussy your way.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Unrejected
Initiating is the cruelest of tasks. The would be actor meditates deeply on how to proceed. Anxieties awash his thoughts. Failure, that perpetual inevitability, hangs perilously over every action. He normally freezes and abstains, allowing others to initiate. He was swept along by the decision of another. One day the young man awoke to revelation: his life, if afforded any meaning, must actively pursue rejection, persecution, solitude, and exile.
The young man sat at his unused desk and began to write. He would not leave it until he finished that perpetually deferred work. A week later, after a diet of only bread and water, he completed the task. He did not give the text another look. It was good. It was bad. Most importantly, it was done. He sent it out and awaited the vertiginous recognition he had evaded all his life.
Criticism, especially that of acrid kind, affirms. Dismissal confirms. He craved confirmation. In the past, their eyes unmade him. Their words tore him with voracious malice. Just words, he was told. They're just words. No. Whether kind or offending, all words directed his way were shrapnel. Now, he wanted to lay bare. He expected neither exaltation or infamy. He wanted the recriminations. He wanted their words now.
But, silence, he did not expect silence. No response. The portfolio of rejection letters he had crafted laid barren. Weeks and weeks passed, silence grew unbearable. He sent out another round, this time with a note attached.
"To whom it may concern, this manuscript is utter tripe. I neither want it read, much less published. If you may attach a consolatory letter - "Thank you for your submission, but we're sorry to inform you..." - I would be forever grateful."
Months passed. The note helped very little. Still silence. The young man realized the delivery itself was flawed. The lines of communication were exclusively spectral. He needed to return reality to its material past. He left his home, text in tow, and ventured to an office he had sent two copies of the text to. He entered the iridescent halls of a life forever beyond his reach and saw the betrayal on the wall. It was the cover of a publication. It was his title, his work, with another's name. His head sunk into his chest. He searched for rage but found a only familiarly loathsome feeling. He threw the text into the trash and headed home to begin anew.
The young man sat at his unused desk and began to write. He would not leave it until he finished that perpetually deferred work. A week later, after a diet of only bread and water, he completed the task. He did not give the text another look. It was good. It was bad. Most importantly, it was done. He sent it out and awaited the vertiginous recognition he had evaded all his life.
Criticism, especially that of acrid kind, affirms. Dismissal confirms. He craved confirmation. In the past, their eyes unmade him. Their words tore him with voracious malice. Just words, he was told. They're just words. No. Whether kind or offending, all words directed his way were shrapnel. Now, he wanted to lay bare. He expected neither exaltation or infamy. He wanted the recriminations. He wanted their words now.
But, silence, he did not expect silence. No response. The portfolio of rejection letters he had crafted laid barren. Weeks and weeks passed, silence grew unbearable. He sent out another round, this time with a note attached.
"To whom it may concern, this manuscript is utter tripe. I neither want it read, much less published. If you may attach a consolatory letter - "Thank you for your submission, but we're sorry to inform you..." - I would be forever grateful."
Months passed. The note helped very little. Still silence. The young man realized the delivery itself was flawed. The lines of communication were exclusively spectral. He needed to return reality to its material past. He left his home, text in tow, and ventured to an office he had sent two copies of the text to. He entered the iridescent halls of a life forever beyond his reach and saw the betrayal on the wall. It was the cover of a publication. It was his title, his work, with another's name. His head sunk into his chest. He searched for rage but found a only familiarly loathsome feeling. He threw the text into the trash and headed home to begin anew.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Prefrontal cortex is the executive part of your brain.
- Focus
-Forethought
-Judgment
-Impulse control
-Empathy
-Learning from mistakes
What do you want? Fashion your behaviour to get it.
====
Self-help isn't all that, um, helpful, is it?
Christina Hendricks in then out of a form fitting dress. That's something I want.
Sipping from the Stanley Cup. That's something I want.
I want to create something meaningful. That's something I want.
I want someone to share a life with.
I want peace. I want serenity. I want to hold off death for a little while longer.
I want to be. I want to become, to evolve. I want to stay. I want to transcend here and now.
I want the girl behind the circulation desk.
So, how would you accomplish that?
I would ask her for a name.
What's in a name?
I can stop calling her, hey...you, or refer to her as "girl behind circulation desk"
and call her Danielle. She looks like a Danielle.
Then what?
I would ask her to coffee or lunch or maybe to just hang out.
Good. Good. And then? What are your intentions precisely?
I don't know, not quite yet. She's lovely. She enchants me. She's a mystery begging me to explore.
Okay. But what do you want?
I want her. I mean I want to know her. I want to see more of her, to reveal something more than a periodic giggle, a smile, a beaming lovely pair of eyes, and just a kind voice.
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
I can't see tomorrow, much less a decade. Whatever comes to pass, I'll find a way to deal. Life is this endurance, survivial, and persistence.
Relax, in my mind, you are not the most screwed up person I know.
Thanks, I needed that.
- Focus
-Forethought
-Judgment
-Impulse control
-Empathy
-Learning from mistakes
What do you want? Fashion your behaviour to get it.
====
Self-help isn't all that, um, helpful, is it?
Christina Hendricks in then out of a form fitting dress. That's something I want.
Sipping from the Stanley Cup. That's something I want.
I want to create something meaningful. That's something I want.
I want someone to share a life with.
I want peace. I want serenity. I want to hold off death for a little while longer.
I want to be. I want to become, to evolve. I want to stay. I want to transcend here and now.
I want the girl behind the circulation desk.
So, how would you accomplish that?
I would ask her for a name.
What's in a name?
I can stop calling her, hey...you, or refer to her as "girl behind circulation desk"
and call her Danielle. She looks like a Danielle.
Then what?
I would ask her to coffee or lunch or maybe to just hang out.
Good. Good. And then? What are your intentions precisely?
I don't know, not quite yet. She's lovely. She enchants me. She's a mystery begging me to explore.
Okay. But what do you want?
I want her. I mean I want to know her. I want to see more of her, to reveal something more than a periodic giggle, a smile, a beaming lovely pair of eyes, and just a kind voice.
Where do you see yourself in ten years?
I can't see tomorrow, much less a decade. Whatever comes to pass, I'll find a way to deal. Life is this endurance, survivial, and persistence.
Relax, in my mind, you are not the most screwed up person I know.
Thanks, I needed that.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Fight Club on Blu Ray
The irony of it was lost on him. He searched and searched for Fight Club on Blu Ray. It was the only thing that could complete him. It was a futile pursuit. There was no such thing. He felt sad, downtrodden, and devoid of all hope. His life remained incomplete. He could not sleep. All was not well.
He began a petition. He searched for others, others like him. He found them, one by one, at different times, different places, all of them spectral. People, places, and time, all of them virtual and so very ghostlike. No matter how immaterial these voices were, he felt something akin to solidarity. This was his purpose, his vocation, to get a Blu Ray release of that movie, that movie which left his collection incomplete and, hence, utterly meaningless. Meaning was this movie, a movie that he was rather indifferent to. It began with F. He needed this F movie. It was simple as that.
The calls grew louder, the voices many. The emails were sent, hundreds upon hundreds. Still, there was no response. Not enough. Not enough for profit and cost considerations. He was not cowed. He needed it. The campaign grew epic and the cohort he developed needed to evolve and elevate the spectacle. They began to brawl in front of the closest Best Buy and picked fights with random costumers - most trying to get their new LCD television home without many problems. There was some local coverage, although the message was lost. "Antisocial miscreants," the whole lot of them were called. He was not cowed.
He knew the group could no longer exist immaterially. They had to meet at the studio's doors.
Only a half dozen showed. So much for solidarity. But, he had that covered. There was enough C4 to go around. The crowd thinned down to one. Him. Alone again. He snuck in. He found the boardroom. He made his ultimatum. The suits found it too absurd. They laughed, tears streaming and all. What a jokester, they thought. Who put you up to this? He was cowed. It was over. He pressed the button and nothing happened. The laughter roared even louder.
"It was Brad, wasn't it?" one of them mustered between guffaws. The second attempt was more successful. In the moments, eight seconds or so, his flew through the window and landed on the pavement below, it glanced over at the discarded issue of Variety and caught the ad: "Fight Club - available only on DVD." Hell would be a welcome reprieve.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
The Trauma to Come
Upon his release, he forgot what brought him there. He could only recall life draining from another. It was probably by his hand. They were there, he was there, suspended in the elapsed time. How long had it been? The answer remained a mystery. He was released and that was all. That was all he needed to know. There was no need to know the trauma or traumas scattered in the past. Only one thing mattered: the traumas to come.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Sprint on a prayer
On Saturday, August 16, 2008, Usain Bolt ran the 100m final at the Beijing Olympics in a mind-boggling 9.69 seconds, a new Olympic and World Record. The then 21-year-old Jamaican stopped accelerating with about 30m left to engage the thousands of fans in the stadium and the billions watching on TV and over the Internet with an exultant display of chest-pounding bravado. The race ends in less than ten seconds. The intrigue begins. Did he or didn’t he? Is he clean or is he, like the majority of the “champions” before him, pharmaceutically enhanced?
In Seoul, South Korea, 1988, Ben Johnson blew away the field in a similar fashion, clocking in at a brisk 9.79. The world sat amazed. They would heap praise and exultation on the new Olympic champion. Ben Johnson was on the verge of becoming a global celebrity and sporting icon. However, only days later, after Johnson tested positive for anabolic steroids, reality set in; cynicism and sport were to be forever entwined. After Johnson, anyone and everyone who performed like an exceptional sprinter would be assumed guilty until proven otherwise.
Usain Bolt and Ben Johnson both are Jamaican born sprinters. Both set extraordinary marks in arguably the biggest event at any Olympic Games. While Usain Bolt’s effortless performance that draws snickers and accusatory whispers mere seconds after he crossed the finish line, Johnson’s revelation in 1988 came as a shock to the world. It was shocking that a top Olympian - who ostensibly embodied many of the ennobling virtues of sport - could ever do such a thing as utilize steroids to gain an unfair advantage over the field. Johnson became a running punch-line after Seoul. He did indeed become the standard those who followed would be measured against - but for all the wrong reasons.
The events in Seoul once and for all ushered the sporting world into an era of limitless and pitiless cynicism, where sport was no longer about the camaraderie of play or the inspiration of being witness to great feats. Rather, sport was an object of suspicion, a site for the cynical to render extemporaneous judgment on those who strove to transgress existing physical limitations. After Seoul, spectators embraced schadenfreude and attempted to tear down supposedly extraordinary athletes to the level of criminals and charlatans. In short, the ubiquitous suspicion - nigh, assumption - of misdeed is one sporting “fans” share with the twisted logic of totalitarian Nazi Germany: all are suspect of ambiguously defined “sins” and all may be destroyed.
What I propose in this paper is to examine this situation through three accounts of three ideas in relation to modernity: cynicism, judgment, and disenchantment. Gilles Deleuze’s brief essay “To Have Done With Judgment”, Jane Bennett’s book The Enchantment of Modern Life, and William Chaloupka’s Everybody Knows will be texts to supplement my ideas. In what way is spectator / fanatic suspicions about athletic accomplishments a symptom of larger social, cultural, and political problems in modern life? I attempt to posit an answer through an examination of one term and its lack: trust-mistrust. The proliferation of this complacent attitude of resentment, unfounded skepticism, and insatiable suspicion has conditioned “moderns” into creatures of ressentiment. The joy of a player sublimely interacting with spectator has been displaced. The player comes to resent the prejudicial and commodifying eye of the crowd. The crowd resents the player for having aspirations of transcending the terrestrial bounds chaining down ordinary men. The consuming eye partakes in schadenfreude, accusation, and denigration.
The judging eye is, first, a policing gaze: enforcing obsolescent morals. Deleuze illustrates this point well. Second, the judging eye sees its task as being serious, in spite of the medium it expresses itself. Deleuze provides a difference between combat and war that provides a starting point to this discussion. And lastly, the judging eye is the eye of the consumer. Man no longer encounters man. Man buys and sells man.
In Seoul, South Korea, 1988, Ben Johnson blew away the field in a similar fashion, clocking in at a brisk 9.79. The world sat amazed. They would heap praise and exultation on the new Olympic champion. Ben Johnson was on the verge of becoming a global celebrity and sporting icon. However, only days later, after Johnson tested positive for anabolic steroids, reality set in; cynicism and sport were to be forever entwined. After Johnson, anyone and everyone who performed like an exceptional sprinter would be assumed guilty until proven otherwise.
Usain Bolt and Ben Johnson both are Jamaican born sprinters. Both set extraordinary marks in arguably the biggest event at any Olympic Games. While Usain Bolt’s effortless performance that draws snickers and accusatory whispers mere seconds after he crossed the finish line, Johnson’s revelation in 1988 came as a shock to the world. It was shocking that a top Olympian - who ostensibly embodied many of the ennobling virtues of sport - could ever do such a thing as utilize steroids to gain an unfair advantage over the field. Johnson became a running punch-line after Seoul. He did indeed become the standard those who followed would be measured against - but for all the wrong reasons.
The events in Seoul once and for all ushered the sporting world into an era of limitless and pitiless cynicism, where sport was no longer about the camaraderie of play or the inspiration of being witness to great feats. Rather, sport was an object of suspicion, a site for the cynical to render extemporaneous judgment on those who strove to transgress existing physical limitations. After Seoul, spectators embraced schadenfreude and attempted to tear down supposedly extraordinary athletes to the level of criminals and charlatans. In short, the ubiquitous suspicion - nigh, assumption - of misdeed is one sporting “fans” share with the twisted logic of totalitarian Nazi Germany: all are suspect of ambiguously defined “sins” and all may be destroyed.
What I propose in this paper is to examine this situation through three accounts of three ideas in relation to modernity: cynicism, judgment, and disenchantment. Gilles Deleuze’s brief essay “To Have Done With Judgment”, Jane Bennett’s book The Enchantment of Modern Life, and William Chaloupka’s Everybody Knows will be texts to supplement my ideas. In what way is spectator / fanatic suspicions about athletic accomplishments a symptom of larger social, cultural, and political problems in modern life? I attempt to posit an answer through an examination of one term and its lack: trust-mistrust. The proliferation of this complacent attitude of resentment, unfounded skepticism, and insatiable suspicion has conditioned “moderns” into creatures of ressentiment. The joy of a player sublimely interacting with spectator has been displaced. The player comes to resent the prejudicial and commodifying eye of the crowd. The crowd resents the player for having aspirations of transcending the terrestrial bounds chaining down ordinary men. The consuming eye partakes in schadenfreude, accusation, and denigration.
The judging eye is, first, a policing gaze: enforcing obsolescent morals. Deleuze illustrates this point well. Second, the judging eye sees its task as being serious, in spite of the medium it expresses itself. Deleuze provides a difference between combat and war that provides a starting point to this discussion. And lastly, the judging eye is the eye of the consumer. Man no longer encounters man. Man buys and sells man.
Friday, May 23, 2008
We need expression in our lives. We need to create and to destroy. We need to feel something, anything, when faced with the inhuman forces of global capitalism, rationalized survivalist paradigms, and the parochial inflexible roles we are jammed into. When the blunt leaden weight of ostensibly pointless routine presses upon our already weakened spirits, we either express ourselves through letters or music or art or our energies find what are regarded as uncouth outlets. Violence and sex are sides of the same coin; that is flat generalization of Freud. What is on that coin? It is Overman – equal parts beast and human. Rules are there for order. An overabundance of rules, some arcane and others flatly draconian, combined with a lack of compelling reasons to obey arouses disobedience. However, disobedience is frowned upon and actively discouraged by those ostensibly entrusted to maintain order in society. Disobedience and dissent are inefficient, unprofitable, and requires far too much independent thought and concerted action – what a hassle! Scared of spectral consequences, we become ready and willing to obey, even when those rules that are explicitly contradictory and absurd. Obey, that is the rational thing to do. For all the beautiful eloquent words celebrating the highest faculties of man, we have progressed to a point where deference and rationality are one in the same. Of course, I do jest. Independent thought itself has been shunted completely out of the picture. There’s only two things to do, if you are to thrive in the real world, obey and become resigned to the fact that this is the way things must be. But as I’ve been reminded on far too many occasions, scholars do not affect the ‘real world’, The ‘people’ do not affect it. Ideas and thoughts have no influence. The ‘street’ does.
The first street, the one most close and dear to people, is not the one in front of church or synagogue or a mosque; it is Wall Street that holds a most dear place in the individual’s heart. Sure, there are no pop songs serenading Alan Greenspan and his fiscal regime. And most individuals of North American culture would fake their way through a conversation about economic fundamentals and fiscal policy, lest they appear to be out of the loop. But Wall Street, bar none, is the definitive street for most in our backward, Neanderthal filled, excuse for a society. How much am I worth? How can I make more money? What can I buy with it? All are justifiable queries if your purpose in life is to accumulate wealth, enriching oneself, and in the process, measuring oneself against others – those more affluent, as well as the impoverished. Wall Street, home of the most virulent insecurities, neuroses, is where sociopaths and psychopaths come to have lunch and IM their mistresses, while ignoring their mother-whores. Schumpater’s idea of “creative destruction” applies to the material produced and rubbished as quickly, to the ideas that are brilliant one instant and irrelevant the very next, and certainly applies to the nature of romance and lust. It is accepted as a fact of life –natural and utterly primal, an inevitable consequence of being a competitive beast. This is the ‘street’ for the battle over wealth, thus also the battlefield for power.
The first street, the one most close and dear to people, is not the one in front of church or synagogue or a mosque; it is Wall Street that holds a most dear place in the individual’s heart. Sure, there are no pop songs serenading Alan Greenspan and his fiscal regime. And most individuals of North American culture would fake their way through a conversation about economic fundamentals and fiscal policy, lest they appear to be out of the loop. But Wall Street, bar none, is the definitive street for most in our backward, Neanderthal filled, excuse for a society. How much am I worth? How can I make more money? What can I buy with it? All are justifiable queries if your purpose in life is to accumulate wealth, enriching oneself, and in the process, measuring oneself against others – those more affluent, as well as the impoverished. Wall Street, home of the most virulent insecurities, neuroses, is where sociopaths and psychopaths come to have lunch and IM their mistresses, while ignoring their mother-whores. Schumpater’s idea of “creative destruction” applies to the material produced and rubbished as quickly, to the ideas that are brilliant one instant and irrelevant the very next, and certainly applies to the nature of romance and lust. It is accepted as a fact of life –natural and utterly primal, an inevitable consequence of being a competitive beast. This is the ‘street’ for the battle over wealth, thus also the battlefield for power.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Parched Metaphysics [incomplete]
He entered a room. It looked like a meat locker with slabs of hanging frozen meat. Some of the dangling pieces made noise. They were not incomprehensible noises. Closer, he heard a female voice, speaking English with a nordic accent he could not place.
She pointed to her chest with both her free arms.
"Nice, very nice," she said, caressing her chest.
"They're tightly bound," a distant, shadowy voice tells him. Everything but her arms and head appeared to be tightly bound in what he assumed to be gauze.
"Tight," she responded to the voice. "Yah, tight, tight yah, yah." Her hands moved upward to her crotch; her right hand forcefully cupped the area. "Tight again, yah."
He gazed disinterestedly. She tried to smile. She tried to put him at ease. She tried to please.
"You like?" she giggled. "You like tight?"
Her voice resonated a sweet, erotic innocence; her wide untamed eyes betrayed an ingenuous mania concealed by skin and gauze. He ignored her and forged ahead through the series of dangling parcels. At close quarters, from a cursory glance, he could tell that some were asleep, hands defiantly crossed onto their chests. Others were completely immobile, their cold blue lips gave off not the slightest hint of life. A few, like the girl, brimmed with exuberance, overcome with energy - or maybe simply desire and hunger - threatening to burst the constraints that contained it.
"Come here," the shadowy voice commanded. It took him a moment to grasp where the voice came from. He waded through the misty, cool, nearly ubiquitous, fog filling the room. After traveling ten paces toward the presumable source of the voice - he made a habit of counting paces while exploring strange spaces, he saw the outline of a figure, dangling - perhaps floating - from a chain attached to the floor. It dangled - or floated - by its neck, feet facing skyward. The body was straight, perfectly perpendicular to the ground. Unlike the others, its arms, if it had arms, were not free.
"Come closer, I won't bite, unlike Helga there," the voice, now produced a cleaner, crisper sound. At closer proximity, the voice sounded familiar.
"Helga?" he asked, although he knew full well whom the voice referred to.
"Yes, she is tight, as she claim. But all who have dared to venture to that terrain have yet to return," the voice faded with every passing word into silence. It remained silent.
--
Misdirected passion led him to this room. His initial impression was as follows: there must be a reason these figures are here. He presumed these were domesticated brutes: sociopaths, accountants, retired pitchmen, lawyers, politicians, and debutantes. If freed, each would inflict untold horror on others. Collectively, they would annihilate humanity en masse. This was the reason, he believed. This was the reason why Helga, blessed with the elegant, flawless visage of a beauty queen dangled like a piece of butchered flesh. Justice cannot be without reason, nor reason without justice. He continually tried to convince himself of this.
He stared at the still shadowy figure, ostensible source of the enigmatic voice. He peered back and could see only a distant outline of Helga. He imagined she was licking her lips with a perverse formality, cupping her bounded breasts, letting out tiny, polite, lascivious moans.
"Words are truth," the voice continued. "Action, in its truest sense, is merely a series of accidents - haphazard, stupid, and without direction."
He knew the voice. He was certain now.
"Then again, isn't that how you have reached this point, Franz?"
He stood motionless, petrified by the sudden revelation. The voice, however, continued prodigiously.
"Impatience permits an inquisitive eye no more than a cursory glance at life. A reality of images, of supposed beauty and boundless enthusiasm, vibrant and unbounded, overwhelms the senses. The sensual transcends the senses. Physical, empirical, sensual beauty - this is what is fixated upon. Smooth, unblemished, perfect, abundant: an image is invested with all improbable aspirations - absolute unity cobbled from the infinitesimal fragments of salvation, immortality, and acclaim."
"Images, inviting images, erect icons, titans, and gods before the unseeing eyes of mere mortals. Alas, images lie; icons are mirages, distracting from the parched desertscape of sensory reality. Accursed recognition, hollow shallow glory - these manufactures of our natural egotism and shared insecurity."
The voice went silent, again. He walked five paces closer for a clearer look. But as he approached, the figure became increasingly pixellated.
"The image lies. Stand down, its useless to proceed any further." He heeded its reproach and retreated five paces. Helga's tiny moans grew louder in his mind. He imagined her tightness was a distraction by design. He cleared his mind, recalling a mantra the familiar voice once taught him, "Concentrate, concentrate, my dear old friend, concentrate..."
---
In prior times and a past life, he filled his days with activity. He was at a lost when idle; felt incomplete and profane. Every morning he would read the paper cover to cover, have a bagel - plain, no cheese, and mull over the current events on an early jog. Recurring sights blurred by as he ran his nine minute mile, three times, twenty seven minutes and he would be home; three minutes to strip and he'll be in the shower - under thirty minutes all told. The morning shower gave rise to mediative thoughts; profound musings, dripped in languor and which demanded patient attention, ended abruptly when the water ceased and he stepped in front of the mirror.
In and out in under five - a motto he rarely contravened, except on those lonesome occasions of involuntary arousal, which took some time to alleviate. Onanism provided occasion for prolonged thought. The mind emptied as his motor activity proceeded according to instinct and automatism. He would close his eyes to seek a complete image of existence. A random draw of ephemera streamed through him and into oblivion. As he approached alleviation, the images attained a startling clarity, intensifying a fear stirring beneath a well regimented life: an awareness that time is death unfolding without direction, without purpose, and without end. On occasion, when the fear struck him most potently, he would kneel down and watch the water, spiraling near the drain, carry off his spilled seed towards the sewer. The sight solidified a paradoxical neurosis. It made him feel at once a profound power and a miserable impotence. The spiraling stream of squandered sugars and proteins served as reminder of his power over life - its creation and cessation. But the sight of an infinitesimal series of possibilities now rendered impossible laid bare the fragility and insignificance of his own being - life, the most unlikely of impossibilities. These two paradoxical thoughts would often visit him, taking a brief, intense sojourn from the unconscious into waking life.
These thoughts passed away and quickly as they came and the activities of routine continued unabated with the precision of a metronome. But they would recur, coincidentally when primal desires overflowing its bounds and demanding, at least in his case, a most routine conclusion. After his morning shower followed brushing his teeth, shaving, and applying deodorant...
---
In prior times and a past life, he filled his days with activity. He was at a lost when idle; felt incomplete and profane. Every morning he would read the paper cover to cover, have a bagel - plain, no cheese, and mull over the current events on an early jog. Recurring sights blurred by as he ran his nine minute mile, three times, twenty seven minutes and he would be home; three minutes to strip and he'll be in the shower - under thirty minutes all told. The morning shower gave rise to mediative thoughts; profound musings, dripped in languor and which demanded patient attention, ended abruptly when the water ceased and he stepped in front of the mirror.
In and out in under five - a motto he rarely contravened, except on those lonesome occasions of involuntary arousal, which took some time to alleviate. Onanism provided occasion for prolonged thought. The mind emptied as his motor activity proceeded according to instinct and automatism. He would close his eyes to seek a complete image of existence. A random draw of ephemera streamed through him and into oblivion. As he approached alleviation, the images attained a startling clarity, intensifying a fear stirring beneath a well regimented life: an awareness that time is death unfolding without direction, without purpose, and without end. On occasion, when the fear struck him most potently, he would kneel down and watch the water, spiraling near the drain, carry off his spilled seed towards the sewer. The sight solidified a paradoxical neurosis. It made him feel at once a profound power and a miserable impotence. The spiraling stream of squandered sugars and proteins served as reminder of his power over life - its creation and cessation. But the sight of an infinitesimal series of possibilities now rendered impossible laid bare the fragility and insignificance of his own being - life, the most unlikely of impossibilities. These two paradoxical thoughts would often visit him, taking a brief, intense sojourn from the unconscious into waking life.
These thoughts passed away and quickly as they came and the activities of routine continued unabated with the precision of a metronome. But they would recur, coincidentally when primal desires overflowing its bounds and demanding, at least in his case, a most routine conclusion. After his morning shower followed brushing his teeth, shaving, and applying deodorant...
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Poetry of the Damned
An inscription, scratched onto a bathroom stall of an unnameable place on a long forgotten island,
"The world's ending, let's go out fucking."
"The world's ending, let's go out fucking."
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Imperiled [rubbished]
Trapped between serenity and tumult, a thought came to mind. It was a thought of my own. I thought it to be superior, for it came from me...
Imperiled between waking and slumber, a series of images flash onto your mind('s eye). They cannot be deciphered. They're slippery instances, racing through a beguiled imaginary space.
Imperiled between waking and rebirth, a series of images flash onto a mind. They're foreign, novel, and implacable. They're from a forgotten past. They're about a non-existent future. Trapped between reality and higher reality, the non-existent future emboldens a most vile affectation: hope, eternal hope.
Imperiled between slumber and ecstatic artifice, a series of images rush past him. They melt and give way to forms - abstract and unknowable lines and obstructions. The flash of images appear as imagined pasts, deprived of material, floating in fanciful ether. Suspended, they project fatal futures - fatal inescapable futures - in timespace undone.
Imperiled between a calm river and raging rapids, a series of images slowly roll by. He feels oppressed by them. They're images he cannot recall, but which are no less haunting. There's an old man slouched, seated on a rocking chair. An infant comes into view, partly obscured by darkness, cackling uncontrollably. The old man slumps off his throne and onto dry cracked earth. The infant's laughter ascends from innocence to mania with every rising decibel. The infant turns to meet his eyes. He averts his gaze, aware, without having to gaze into them, the eyes of true evil are now upon him.
He turns and walks away - the distant laughter grows with every step. An expansive meadow comes into view. In the distance stands two malformed trees, standing far apart. He walks toward them. As he approaches, he notices a tiny river running between the two. The deafening laughter goes silent upon his arrival to the river. It is narrow and immature. He sees the purple tributaries, five in all, scattered along it. On the furthermost tributaries sit flutists playing identical wooden instruments. On the most immediate tributary sits a young girl. The girl sings. Her soaring voice rises from the tributary up to the deformed branches hanging above the river. They sway to her voice, straighten up, and stretch toward the sky. The branches point sharply upward. He looks up to see the eyes he tried to avoid. Loud ever present cackling silences the flutes and the girl. A torrent of crimson pour down. The river widens. It devours its tributaries and the musicians. He takes flight. But it is of no use, the relentless downpour gains strength. Knee-deep, he struggles to move. The liquid rises past his waist, above his neck...
Submerged, he remembers something someone told him, "Evil lurks beneath innocuous surfaces." Sinking, a wide, anxious, stretch of uncertainty separates him from sanity. Sanity, lucid reality, spirals from sight, fades beyond earshot, and he enters the waiting dark depths. "Concentrate, concentrate, old friend...concentrate," a voice from his past echoes inside his skull, which begins to succumb to unbearable bodily forces. "Concentrate, concentrate, old chap..."
Not yet, it wasn't time quite yet. Not yet. Time stopped, went in and out. It was out of joint and then not. The spiraling figure, suspended in darkness, dared to look up at a sliver of blinding brightness. The torrent halted. The surrounding liquid began to solidify and excreted him skyward. From his peripheral view, he caught a glimpse of the sky. The eyes were still there. But something changed; everything was silent. The laughter was gone. In place of the boundless mania that he had imagined overflowed from the eyes, he thought they may now be calm and a tad perturbed. He was nevertheless unwilling to gaze upwards. The time was not right; it was out of joint and, just as quickly, not. Gravity, forgotten gravity, tugged on him and he returned. He landed and tumbled on dry dusty earth. The tumultuous torrent, the trees, the river and its tributaries, the girl and the flutists; they vanished.
He sat there for a moment, looking at the large inexplicable orange shadows casted onto the ground. There was nothing around and he stared shadows, which shifted according to winds. He concentrated and focused, but the shapes and forms made no sense to his eyes. They were without origin or logic and were mere distractions for his weary state of mind. Soon he grew bored and got on his feet.
He watched the dry soil shift below his feet. With steely and resolute eyes, he was determined to will a lush virgin sprout from the parched ground. He wanted to create. "Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate, my dear friend..." The soil just continued to blow away and swirl in an aimless fashion - but no sprout, no virgin birth. Gazing with loathsome, resentful eyes at the increasingly cracked soil, he could still sense they were still looking at him and his impotent desolation. The very thought of eyes, cackling in silent delight, stoked his anger. But, not yet, he couldn't yet. He couldn't look up, not quite yet. "Don't look up. Don't look up." Resolute and unflinching, he continued to futilely will life from dead dirt. "Concentrate, concentrate...you bastard..."
Fixated, he fixated on a murky remembrance, a wispy outline, suspended in space. It may have been a bloodied infant, enveloped in fire. He heard nothing but laughter, his own.
Projected onto the back of his muddied mind was a single image. It was an image of his inevitable death: a figure slouched, almost supine, onto a divan. Trapped between an irretrievable past and unattainable future lies an ineluctable fate. In order to be, in order to exist, one evolves both as body and mind. But natural fragility dictates that eventual decay is both unavoidable and cruelly abrupt. Insufferable are the chambers of the mind that house intimate, tender, memories. They house pleasant remembrances - those comfortable instants that anesthetize the decline. They also house regrets about an incomplete life. They house silent disaffection.
At the end, a life appears incomplete, leaves one longing for now impossible fates. At the end, all - including death - remains unalterable and the person, the body and mind, feels a most profound, if not primordial, impotence.
He awakens to the infant child's plaintive cry. It wants mother. But mother's gone. Mother dangles lifelessly in the backyard. He holds it in his arms. He looks into its tearful eyes. "Swear," he heard an inopportune whisper. "Swear..."
He holds the child. The crying stops and the child is placed back into its crib. He looks out into the yard, spends a ponderous moment focused on the dangling body. Soon, he no longer can bear the sight and shifts his gaze upwards toward the empty starless night sky. Alone, alone again with accursed thoughts. Alone, alone to concentrate, concentrate, concentrate...
Imperiled between waking and slumber, a series of images flash onto your mind('s eye). They cannot be deciphered. They're slippery instances, racing through a beguiled imaginary space.
Imperiled between waking and rebirth, a series of images flash onto a mind. They're foreign, novel, and implacable. They're from a forgotten past. They're about a non-existent future. Trapped between reality and higher reality, the non-existent future emboldens a most vile affectation: hope, eternal hope.
Imperiled between slumber and ecstatic artifice, a series of images rush past him. They melt and give way to forms - abstract and unknowable lines and obstructions. The flash of images appear as imagined pasts, deprived of material, floating in fanciful ether. Suspended, they project fatal futures - fatal inescapable futures - in timespace undone.
Imperiled between a calm river and raging rapids, a series of images slowly roll by. He feels oppressed by them. They're images he cannot recall, but which are no less haunting. There's an old man slouched, seated on a rocking chair. An infant comes into view, partly obscured by darkness, cackling uncontrollably. The old man slumps off his throne and onto dry cracked earth. The infant's laughter ascends from innocence to mania with every rising decibel. The infant turns to meet his eyes. He averts his gaze, aware, without having to gaze into them, the eyes of true evil are now upon him.
He turns and walks away - the distant laughter grows with every step. An expansive meadow comes into view. In the distance stands two malformed trees, standing far apart. He walks toward them. As he approaches, he notices a tiny river running between the two. The deafening laughter goes silent upon his arrival to the river. It is narrow and immature. He sees the purple tributaries, five in all, scattered along it. On the furthermost tributaries sit flutists playing identical wooden instruments. On the most immediate tributary sits a young girl. The girl sings. Her soaring voice rises from the tributary up to the deformed branches hanging above the river. They sway to her voice, straighten up, and stretch toward the sky. The branches point sharply upward. He looks up to see the eyes he tried to avoid. Loud ever present cackling silences the flutes and the girl. A torrent of crimson pour down. The river widens. It devours its tributaries and the musicians. He takes flight. But it is of no use, the relentless downpour gains strength. Knee-deep, he struggles to move. The liquid rises past his waist, above his neck...
Submerged, he remembers something someone told him, "Evil lurks beneath innocuous surfaces." Sinking, a wide, anxious, stretch of uncertainty separates him from sanity. Sanity, lucid reality, spirals from sight, fades beyond earshot, and he enters the waiting dark depths. "Concentrate, concentrate, old friend...concentrate," a voice from his past echoes inside his skull, which begins to succumb to unbearable bodily forces. "Concentrate, concentrate, old chap..."
Not yet, it wasn't time quite yet. Not yet. Time stopped, went in and out. It was out of joint and then not. The spiraling figure, suspended in darkness, dared to look up at a sliver of blinding brightness. The torrent halted. The surrounding liquid began to solidify and excreted him skyward. From his peripheral view, he caught a glimpse of the sky. The eyes were still there. But something changed; everything was silent. The laughter was gone. In place of the boundless mania that he had imagined overflowed from the eyes, he thought they may now be calm and a tad perturbed. He was nevertheless unwilling to gaze upwards. The time was not right; it was out of joint and, just as quickly, not. Gravity, forgotten gravity, tugged on him and he returned. He landed and tumbled on dry dusty earth. The tumultuous torrent, the trees, the river and its tributaries, the girl and the flutists; they vanished.
He sat there for a moment, looking at the large inexplicable orange shadows casted onto the ground. There was nothing around and he stared shadows, which shifted according to winds. He concentrated and focused, but the shapes and forms made no sense to his eyes. They were without origin or logic and were mere distractions for his weary state of mind. Soon he grew bored and got on his feet.
He watched the dry soil shift below his feet. With steely and resolute eyes, he was determined to will a lush virgin sprout from the parched ground. He wanted to create. "Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate, my dear friend..." The soil just continued to blow away and swirl in an aimless fashion - but no sprout, no virgin birth. Gazing with loathsome, resentful eyes at the increasingly cracked soil, he could still sense they were still looking at him and his impotent desolation. The very thought of eyes, cackling in silent delight, stoked his anger. But, not yet, he couldn't yet. He couldn't look up, not quite yet. "Don't look up. Don't look up." Resolute and unflinching, he continued to futilely will life from dead dirt. "Concentrate, concentrate...you bastard..."
Fixated, he fixated on a murky remembrance, a wispy outline, suspended in space. It may have been a bloodied infant, enveloped in fire. He heard nothing but laughter, his own.
Projected onto the back of his muddied mind was a single image. It was an image of his inevitable death: a figure slouched, almost supine, onto a divan. Trapped between an irretrievable past and unattainable future lies an ineluctable fate. In order to be, in order to exist, one evolves both as body and mind. But natural fragility dictates that eventual decay is both unavoidable and cruelly abrupt. Insufferable are the chambers of the mind that house intimate, tender, memories. They house pleasant remembrances - those comfortable instants that anesthetize the decline. They also house regrets about an incomplete life. They house silent disaffection.
At the end, a life appears incomplete, leaves one longing for now impossible fates. At the end, all - including death - remains unalterable and the person, the body and mind, feels a most profound, if not primordial, impotence.
He awakens to the infant child's plaintive cry. It wants mother. But mother's gone. Mother dangles lifelessly in the backyard. He holds it in his arms. He looks into its tearful eyes. "Swear," he heard an inopportune whisper. "Swear..."
He holds the child. The crying stops and the child is placed back into its crib. He looks out into the yard, spends a ponderous moment focused on the dangling body. Soon, he no longer can bear the sight and shifts his gaze upwards toward the empty starless night sky. Alone, alone again with accursed thoughts. Alone, alone to concentrate, concentrate, concentrate...
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Over the Edge, Up your ledge
So I'm sitting here, over there, unable to sleep - maybe, unwilling to sleep - musing, musing about all sorts of dismal things. Life is short, unbearable, and interminably long. What to do? What you so-and-so do? Why the fuck do we care what so-and-so would do? What the fuck will we do?
I'm sitting here, over where?, crippled by this waken state of slumber, wondering how far over the edge is too far? This botched experiment most certainly will overshoot the ledge and touch that point of no return; terminal, time to bail and cut your losses and count your ill gotten gains. Fuck, the spiral's too soft, too seductive, too goddamned comfortable to get off of. The spiral will get you off for a cheap, illusory, release.
Sitting here, in here, contemplative, alone, fading back into plastic consciousness. Sadistic, cruel, vindictive reality lays it on thick. I'm fading, the next blink may be my last. But its a silly concern, I'll open my eyes, once again, to reality enhanced, reality in bright flashing fucking lights, reality in HD. I'll be there. I will have finally arrived at rock bottom of the fucking abyss.
Slouched over this rickety three legged piece of shit, all those nightmarish bogeys those murderous merchants of hyperreality peddled conspire against me. Sleep and be free, be free to do as you're told. You're free to do as you're told. Sleep and consent, sleep and we'll take care of the rest, sleep and be happy; happy with a yellow fucking smiley face. Sleep now, dear, leave the rest to us. Dear? Dear? Dear chump, you're here; you might as well be dead.
Laying on the cold floor, staring at a chipped ceiling, my face betrays the slightest trace of a smile. Enhanced reality wears down. Errors and deformities blot the fucked up smooth slick skin of plastic eternities. I can see home; I can see, with heavy eyelids, clearly again.
I'm sitting here, over where?, crippled by this waken state of slumber, wondering how far over the edge is too far? This botched experiment most certainly will overshoot the ledge and touch that point of no return; terminal, time to bail and cut your losses and count your ill gotten gains. Fuck, the spiral's too soft, too seductive, too goddamned comfortable to get off of. The spiral will get you off for a cheap, illusory, release.
Sitting here, in here, contemplative, alone, fading back into plastic consciousness. Sadistic, cruel, vindictive reality lays it on thick. I'm fading, the next blink may be my last. But its a silly concern, I'll open my eyes, once again, to reality enhanced, reality in bright flashing fucking lights, reality in HD. I'll be there. I will have finally arrived at rock bottom of the fucking abyss.
Slouched over this rickety three legged piece of shit, all those nightmarish bogeys those murderous merchants of hyperreality peddled conspire against me. Sleep and be free, be free to do as you're told. You're free to do as you're told. Sleep and consent, sleep and we'll take care of the rest, sleep and be happy; happy with a yellow fucking smiley face. Sleep now, dear, leave the rest to us. Dear? Dear? Dear chump, you're here; you might as well be dead.
Laying on the cold floor, staring at a chipped ceiling, my face betrays the slightest trace of a smile. Enhanced reality wears down. Errors and deformities blot the fucked up smooth slick skin of plastic eternities. I can see home; I can see, with heavy eyelids, clearly again.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Perfect, my ass
He hung his head. The very thought of digging through his papers for a single lost immaculate idea repulsed him. What a hassle! Couldn't he just fail the project and move on to a easy comfortable unexceptional existence eating chezzies and watching Seinfeld reruns. The 90s man, the 90s were the life.
He tore through a pile in a closet with a sort of frantic indifference; he always managed to feign a slight bit of concern in case somebody was catching a voyeuristic glimpse somewhere, somehow. He found empty condom boxes - a few of which had seven digits scrawled on them, a loose cornucopia of candy, chocolate bar, and gum wrappings, various mid-terms with marks scrawled in bright red across the front: B, D, F, C+, A- and etc. But there the immaculate idea, neigh the perfect idea, the now forgotten thought that was his salvation, was nowhere to be found. Digging deeper into the recesses of his badly neglected closet, he started singing a few lines,
"I'm a bad boy for breakin' her heart,
and I'm FREEEE....FREE-FALLING,
yeah, I'm Free-falling...."
Losing that perfect idea was like losing that titular chick. You start to spiral into unknown, repressed, hideous shit. You start singing Tom Petty at the top of your lungs, while taking in copious amounts of the noxious olfactory cocktail of old gym shorts, dirty socks, half eaten sandwiches, cigarette butts, and the faintest hint of lavender.
"Perfection is a bitch, reserved for the vainglorious and inhuman degenerates that frequent Pottery Barn and Sharper Image," he thought to himself. He decided to wing it. Boy would that be a mistake.
The last thing he remembered when waking up in the drunk tank was being beaten down by a big black dude named Eli - the proceedings flanked by a pair of strippers. He couldn't remember their names. He assumed they were named Destiny and Mystique. Their names mattered little; they were ornamental to the proceedings.
The dude was named Eli, but he had a couple pasty midgets with him. One went by the name of Bipolar Bill and the other was Tommy Tit. They were kicking and punching away, at least he thinks they were kicking and punching away. But they were ineffectual, hence irrelevant. It was the big black dude supposedly called Eli who did the damage.
The bad motherfucker was death with knuckles, he recalled.
"You think you're pretty college boy," he recalled Eli saying. "You and your perfect teeth, perfect hair, and perfect glasses piss off ol' Eli. You think you're better than ol' Eli."
He tried to beg off and placate the behemoth, but Eli kept up his verbal and physical barrage. He prayed for the end and everything grew dimmer until it faded to black.
He sat on the edge of the cot. "I never said I was perfect," he mumbled to himself.
He tore through a pile in a closet with a sort of frantic indifference; he always managed to feign a slight bit of concern in case somebody was catching a voyeuristic glimpse somewhere, somehow. He found empty condom boxes - a few of which had seven digits scrawled on them, a loose cornucopia of candy, chocolate bar, and gum wrappings, various mid-terms with marks scrawled in bright red across the front: B, D, F, C+, A- and etc. But there the immaculate idea, neigh the perfect idea, the now forgotten thought that was his salvation, was nowhere to be found. Digging deeper into the recesses of his badly neglected closet, he started singing a few lines,
"I'm a bad boy for breakin' her heart,
and I'm FREEEE....FREE-FALLING,
yeah, I'm Free-falling...."
Losing that perfect idea was like losing that titular chick. You start to spiral into unknown, repressed, hideous shit. You start singing Tom Petty at the top of your lungs, while taking in copious amounts of the noxious olfactory cocktail of old gym shorts, dirty socks, half eaten sandwiches, cigarette butts, and the faintest hint of lavender.
"Perfection is a bitch, reserved for the vainglorious and inhuman degenerates that frequent Pottery Barn and Sharper Image," he thought to himself. He decided to wing it. Boy would that be a mistake.
The last thing he remembered when waking up in the drunk tank was being beaten down by a big black dude named Eli - the proceedings flanked by a pair of strippers. He couldn't remember their names. He assumed they were named Destiny and Mystique. Their names mattered little; they were ornamental to the proceedings.
The dude was named Eli, but he had a couple pasty midgets with him. One went by the name of Bipolar Bill and the other was Tommy Tit. They were kicking and punching away, at least he thinks they were kicking and punching away. But they were ineffectual, hence irrelevant. It was the big black dude supposedly called Eli who did the damage.
The bad motherfucker was death with knuckles, he recalled.
"You think you're pretty college boy," he recalled Eli saying. "You and your perfect teeth, perfect hair, and perfect glasses piss off ol' Eli. You think you're better than ol' Eli."
He tried to beg off and placate the behemoth, but Eli kept up his verbal and physical barrage. He prayed for the end and everything grew dimmer until it faded to black.
He sat on the edge of the cot. "I never said I was perfect," he mumbled to himself.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Kant revisited?
Fire was Prometheus' gift to those poor hapless incompetent humans. Prometheus may have took pity on wretched creatures huddled together - united in a common hope for another day. He may have loathed the sight of those brutes who killed each other out of panic - fearing that at any moment their fellows would betray them all the same. For these brutes, this common fear divided them. Fire allowed the timid to gather with greater comfort and permitted the brutes to cut a larger swath of destruction. Prometheus, having deified the gods, was condemned to eternity bound to a rock, having his insides pecked away again and again by scavenging fowl. From that rock he saw what man did with his gift.
[...]
Kant's What is Enlightenment - fire = enlightenment; a tenuous gift, renewed through practice, regenerated by error, changing, flux?
[...]
Kant's What is Enlightenment - fire = enlightenment; a tenuous gift, renewed through practice, regenerated by error, changing, flux?
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Dirty, he felt dirty when he sat down at work. All those eyes were judging him. Those eyes, whether he saw them or not, were tearing him down with burgeoning piece of wispy hearsay. His affair with the recently fired receptionist, the one with the fetching blue eyes, was popular water-cooler gossip. The two were caught in a supply room, after hours, by an eighty year old custodian named Art. Art, who, in his younger days, had similar indiscretions, thoroughly sympathized with their predicament and promised to keep their secret on one condition: he got to watch. He escorted Art outside and left the door open a crack, enough for a curious prying eye to catch a glimpse. The two were utterly absorbed with the task they shared, so much so that they were oblivious to the sound of Art collapsing - dead, and lecherous grin frozen for all time.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
inept gratification
[...]
His eyes became fixated on the snowy landscape, passed and forgotten by the bus. He let out a sigh and looked down at his blank notebook. He scribbled the following:
"inept gratification...ceaseless desiring...the end, the end, the end?"
The sheet was crumpled, torn up, and deposited into the 'trash' compartment of his bag. He turned to the snowy July landscape, his head heavy with nostalgia. He remembered taking in the crisp cold air into his lungs. He remembered the acrid scent of snow brewing in the clouds above. The autumn palette of infinite shades of red and brown soon would be overwhelmed by the multitudinous luminosity of snow - which left nothing untouched.
Snow in July was an inept gratification, a cheap substitute, and untimely, albeit cleverly crafted, insult to persistent, slowly fading, memories. Soon, even the remembrances would pass and be forgotten - as obsolescent as the world that inspired them.
He looked at his watch again to check on its condition. It read: 7:45AM. It was accurate. The bus approached the terminal in front of the building where he worked. The bus ran like clockwork as usual. He left the terminal at 7:47AM and the conveyor floor moved him towards the office, arriving at 7:53AM - on time, always on time.
His eyes became fixated on the snowy landscape, passed and forgotten by the bus. He let out a sigh and looked down at his blank notebook. He scribbled the following:
"inept gratification...ceaseless desiring...the end, the end, the end?"
The sheet was crumpled, torn up, and deposited into the 'trash' compartment of his bag. He turned to the snowy July landscape, his head heavy with nostalgia. He remembered taking in the crisp cold air into his lungs. He remembered the acrid scent of snow brewing in the clouds above. The autumn palette of infinite shades of red and brown soon would be overwhelmed by the multitudinous luminosity of snow - which left nothing untouched.
Snow in July was an inept gratification, a cheap substitute, and untimely, albeit cleverly crafted, insult to persistent, slowly fading, memories. Soon, even the remembrances would pass and be forgotten - as obsolescent as the world that inspired them.
He looked at his watch again to check on its condition. It read: 7:45AM. It was accurate. The bus approached the terminal in front of the building where he worked. The bus ran like clockwork as usual. He left the terminal at 7:47AM and the conveyor floor moved him towards the office, arriving at 7:53AM - on time, always on time.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
Quarter past seven
Sunrise,
infinite sadness awakened him.
He glared at the alarm. It failed to go off, again.
Evolved,
humanity evolved involved three strips of bacon, egg whites, instant oatmeal, and a cup of generic coffee. Humanity devolved, well, was all over the morning paper's front page.
"Work,
you work to get paid,
get paid to get laid" -
He silently recited his mantra in front of the mirror while brushing his teeth. He grabbed at the floss to finish, but, oddly, there was no more. Since he had never flossed until then, its absence struck him as odd. He reached for the mouthwash - it would make due.
Getting dressed, getting ready, he checked his timepiece - quarter past seven; the bus would arrive in seven minutes. He rechecked his lunch, deemed it to be rather scarce and dropped an apple into the nylon bag. Satisfied with his planned midday nutritional intake, he headed for the bus stop and checked his watch - a force of habit. It read: quarter past seven. He panicked. Did it malfunction??? Did he miss his bus??? More importantly, was he going to be late??? He paced frantically, until he saw an elderly lady walk towards the stop.
"Hello madam, would you happen to have the time?"
"Quarter past seven," she replied, showing him the face of her wristwatch.
[...]
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Control...
Control, concentration, calm, care;
Get control...concentrate, old friend...sputter away with courage...let the stream carry you to oblivion, concentrate with concern...control is futile, fortuna has your balls in a vice....stream to oblivion...sweet sexy stream of oblivion....without care to soothe, where mice moo, and cows gnaws on giant blocks of gouda - SACRILEGE!
Control...control control...concentrate on careful concentrations...dig in, set up, its a long way til the bottom, babe....careful, careful, now calmly, slip out of it, slink them to your heels, there you go, careful, careful, caress - concentrate, concentrate, concentrate....CONCENTRATE!
Care, with crack. Care with cruelty - cruel, criminal, care. Meticulous, inexorably so. The tiniest fleck opens a conscious stream into nullitude. Cruel, cruel, care...
Calm....calm....calm....control is gone....calm, cool cowering calm, croons a diddy - "CONCENTRATE! CONCENTRATE! CONCENTRATE!"
Concentrate, old friend; concentrate.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)