Trite Remarks.

Dr Pitch update

2011-04-21T16:56:00.002-06:00

Oh, lord. The story of Dr Pitch did not wind up being short at all. In fact, it's nowhere near the 5500 words I projected. I've completed a bare bones 1st draft today, and it's already come it at 9300 words. That is already outside the realm of short stories and well into the realm of the novelette. And it's only going to get longer once I actually start adding flavour to it.

Oh well. Being unsaleable at this length as a stand-alone just means that I'll include it in the anthology I'm working on. The title I finally decided on for this story is Five Witnesses to Dr Pitch's Final Experiment. (Subject to change.)

stories

2011-04-07T16:46:00.000-06:00

Completed Amidst Shadows They Wait. Really happy with the finished product - now I just have to start searching for a home for it. Found a couple new markets to try out, but not much in the way of anthologies where I'd prefer to submit.

Hopefully I'll have time to work on Dr Pitch this weekend.

Dr Pitch

2011-04-03T16:18:00.002-06:00

Been busy sort of casually working on a new short story tentatively titled Five Witnesses to Dr Pitch's Ascension. Have the first two chapterettes complete, and a very rough outline for the remainder of the story.

I'm really going to try to keep this one under 5000 words this time. I feel pretty sure that I'll be able to pull it off. With the first two chapterettes complete, the story sits at around 1500 words, and I feel like it's already 1/3 complete, so that should put me at around 4500 words when finished. We'll see.

I haven't looked at Amidst Shadows for awhile. It's complete but for a final proofread, and I've always felt this task is better done when I've given myself some distance from the work. Perhaps another week.

4th draft

2011-03-19T15:07:00.000-06:00

Completed the 4th draft of Wish You Were Here which is now called Amidst Shadows They Wait, Amongst Us They Play. The 4th draft also saw the word count grow to around 7200, which I think is right about where it'll stay. Just have the final draft to go, checking for straggling errors, before I format it and send it away.

3rd draft

2011-03-13T17:29:00.000-06:00

The 3rd draft of Wish You Were Here sees me dip below 7000 words, finally coming to rest at around 6950. I'm really pleased with how streamlined the whole thing has become. Still need one more draft which will see this number go either up or down by up to 100 words or so.

I'll definitely be changing the title, but I'm not yet sure to what. While working on the last two drafts, a previously hidden theme popped up and I'd like the title to reflect this. I'll have to think on it.

2nd draft

2011-03-12T12:36:00.000-07:00

Put in 3 more hours last night, and finished a 2nd draft of Wish You Were Here, paring it down to just under 7500 words. Feeling a lot better about that number, and I'm fairly certain I should be able to get it closer to 7000 in subsequent drafts.

long short stories

2011-03-12T01:42:00.001-07:00

I have a problem. It's incredibly hard for me to keep my short stories short. I had every intention of keeping this new one (Wish You Were Here) to 5500 words maximum, and now here it is sitting at a bloated 8000. That's such an undesirable length for a short story. Unsaleable really. I've tried selling pieces of similar length in the past, and typically get, "good, but too long, sorry."

Blah.

And so, now I have a few of these short stories of awkward length sitting on my hard drive. One piece of advice was to make them even longer, turning them into novellas. I tried that with one of them, blowing it up to 18000 words. In the end, it felt a little watered down.

I dunno. This one is the shortest of my awkwardly long short stories. I'll see what I can do to shave it down a little. At least get it down to the low 7000s.

Here's a screen capture of the completed first draft:

Haiku for today.

2011-03-07T07:58:00.001-07:00

On this wintry day,
a four-car pileup
freezes rush hour traffic.

hallucination (fragment)

2011-02-26T15:33:00.000-07:00

Some details can not help but be lost here. Driving aimlessly in the jungle for a day after the ingestion of an unknown hallucinogen. Psilocybin, but more so. Not quite LSD. Baby woodrose? Argyreia nervosa. Maybe. Ayahuasca, almost certainly.

There was strange mishmash of what Harlan thought to be hallucination, and what he thought to be reality. Mostly, though, he couldn't really tell for certain which was which. Strange shapes shuttling alongside the Jeep, existing only in his peripheral vision. Great birds circling overhead, just above the canopy, which he knew were far to big to be real. Weren't they? At one point he drove full speed into a mercifully shallow pond after mistaking the placid water for a stretch of much sought after asphalt.

With the guide curled up in the small backseat of the Jeep, drifting in and out of consciousness, moaning, but unable or unwilling to speak, Harlan had his wrecked mind set on getting to higher ground. Gunning the engine, they reached a certain elevation, and the vehicle broke from the tree line. Before he knew it, they were above the canopy, easily charging through the scrub, climbing higher and higher up a long, gentle slope.

There has to be something around here, Harlan thought. If I keep driving, I'll eventually find a dirt road, at the very least. Get up to high ground and do a little surveying. He raced higher and higher, the engine pinging and sputtering. Higher and higher. High, so high. Don't look down. Or do.

Harlan slammed on the brakes, skidding across the dew-slick underbrush, and came to rest with one of the Jeep's front tires hanging precariously over a sharp drop-off. He looked out through the muddied windshield over a great misty expanse, and marvelled at the green canopy far below. He was so in awe of the landscape's beauty that he paid no mind to the fact that he had nearly driven off a cliff.

Opening the door of the Jeep, Harlan got out and stood on the foliage-covered, but unnaturally straight, sharp edge, of the drop-off. He cocked his head as his eyes found a perfectly straight line running the length of the escarpment. He squinted, not believing what he was seeing, and turned his head to the right and found the same distinct line cutting beneath and past the Jeep. In all, the anomalous cliff had to be over four hundred feet long.

It clicked in a second what this was, and Harlan fell to his knees, digging frantically through the tough vegetation. Through a tangled, twisted mass of vines and tree roots, he worked his right arm down into the wet growth until he was nearly up to his elbow in it. Nearly a foot down, his fingers met resistance in the form of rough stone. Exhausted mentally, physically, spiritually, he collapsed, weeping.

He knew he had found the ruins for which he had been searching.

anthology

2011-02-26T15:13:00.000-07:00

New anthology available from Horror Bound Magazine, Fear of the Dark, a collection of short stories from twenty-one contributers (including me!).

five new reviews

2011-02-26T14:31:00.002-07:00

I've contributed five reviews to this installment of Horror Bound Magazine, starting with Brian P. Easton's Autobiography of a Werewolf Hunter. I'm not just blowing smoke in this review; this book seriously kicks some major ass. One of the best I've read in a long time.

John Savoie's anthology, The Zombie Chronicles, is a nifty collection of zombie short stories.

Jaym Gates and Erika Holt have truly put together a unique collection of short stories with Rigor Amortis, an anthology of zombie erotica.

Tesseracts 14: Strange Canadian Stories, edited by John Robert Colombo and Brett Alexander Savory, continues a succesful line of anthologies.

And Bekka Black takes the cell phone novel to the next level with iDrakula, a new look at an old monster.

In addition to my own contributions, there is also an extensive review by Jason Rolfe of Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan's Voices in the Dark, an excellent collection of horror writer interviews.

Issue #15 also features nine new short stories, a profile on author Lisa Mannetti, and much more.

hologram (fragment)

2011-01-07T01:15:00.001-07:00

“So, that leads me to today. Dead. And where am I now?” He frowned, glancing down at the box before him, that ominous symbol of death, the long, black coffin. “Certainly not down there,” he waved dismissively. “You'll notice – and some of you may disagree with this decision – that the lid on that box is closed. This is as I requested. There is nothing there but a husk. An empty shell. This,” he said, patting his chest, “this is how I want to be remembered. Full of life, full of thoughts, speaking. Not some waxy likeness.” The hologram flickered slightly, before blinking out completely and back on.

dream (fragment)

2010-12-12T19:12:00.000-07:00

I'm trapped between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche on a subway car hurtling beneath the ground at breakneck speeds. It's rush hour, standing room only, and we're packed in shoulder to shoulder, jostling for space, desperately clutching at the hand straps while this monstrous snake of steel and glass roars through the earth.

It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't already dead. All of them dead. Each and every one. And I'm stuck on this hellish commute with this bunch of mouldering zombies, diseased and decaying. Groaning aloud. Sighing within. Søren's once large friendly eyes have since disappeared giving way to gaping orbital cavities in a bleached skull. And Friedrich's distinctive large black moustache has been reduced to little more than the few bristles of a mangy broom on the last of some hardened skin.

seed (fragment)

2010-11-23T18:55:00.000-07:00

I was a younger woman of just twenty-four years when my father first told me of the Artesanos de la Revolución. Their overarching goal was to create a craving for change, he said. They would bring about change, I was told, and they would bring about this change on their own terms, whenever and however they desired. Now, some fifteen years later, the big change has yet to materialise – we have not, to my knowledge, undergone any sort of revolution, no uprising has been staged. And now, some fifteen years later, I’m still in the dark about what this revolution was even meant to be, and who, exactly, was going to lead it.

There are a lot of names in my father's journals, articles, and stories. Some of the names have apparently been changed, some of the names are attached to people no longer of this earth, and some seem to have never existed at all. A small handful of names, however, belong to people I have been able to track down, though most of my calls, letter, and emails go unanswered. Except for one: Wizman Aboudaram; he unexpectedly agreed to meet with no trouble. Wizman Aboudaram agreed to meet with me at a tiny cantina in the Petit Socco at the entrance of Tangier’s old city. It was there that he told me about his meeting with one of the AR’s three founders.

“Alexandre Lemonnier,” Wizman whispered across the dirty wood of the table, as though saying the name too loud may have resulted in instantaneous death. Showing his paranoia, he checked over one shoulder and then the next, the red of his fez like dried blood in the candlelight. “One of the three,” he continued, nervously toying with the buttons on his dark Sherwani. “One of the originals.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I said, perhaps a little too loudly. Noticing that I had caught the attention of a couple of sketchy gentlemen a table over, I lowered my voice, instinctively limiting the movement of my lips. “You can’t be serious,” I muttered. “The Artesanos de la Revolución was officially formed nearly one hundred twenty-five years ago. That puts Mr Lemonnier at, what… at least one hundred forty-three years old – supposing he was only eighteen when the organisation started up.”

Wizman raised his eyebrows. “They seem to live a long time, yes.”

deal (fragment)

2010-10-17T01:05:00.000-06:00

Klaus was haggling over the price of a small, pouch in a bazaar in the bordertown of el-Azhr. Money, gems, and guns littered the table, but at the centre of it all were two matched lenses in a simple velvet pouch. Polished to perfection. The Eyes of On'uhq'el.

“Does he know how much this gun is worth?” he yelled at his guide. Both Klaus and the dealer were clutching at a nickel-plated Kalashnikov on the table, feeling its cold metal in their hands, spitting harsh words at one another.

“Really,” he demanded, “does he know? Ask him if he knows how much this thing is worth. Does he know who it belonged to?”

The guide animatedly tried to explain the rifle's worth to the dealer. He was having none of it.

“He wants more money!” Klaus screamed. “Of course he does! Fine! Fine, look at this.” Klaus reached into a battered leather attaché and withdrew another stack of hundreds, angrily throwing it down on the table. “You want money, I've got money! Here's ten thousand more.”

The dealer smiled a broad, toothless grin and calmly slid the small velvetine pouch across the table.

note

2010-09-07T22:00:00.000-06:00

It's beginning to feel like the human race is now obsessing over planetary statistics and records to the point where we're becoming like the hypochondriac who thinks he is dying every time he discovers a new nonspecific symptom.

The water is trying to kill us with hurricanes, flash floods, blizzards, tsunamis, and avalanches. The air is out to get us with tornadoes. The earth brings landslides, and earthquakes. Fire wants to get us with volcanoes, forest fires, and heat waves. You can throw epidemics, famine, and droughts into the mix. And let's not forget about dangers from space in the form of gamma ray bursts, asteroids, solar flares, and alien invasions.

This is the source of our collective anxiety.

It's no revelation that each and every generation since the beginning of time feels in its gut that it may be the last. The end of the world is always near. Extinction right around the corner. We are, as they say, all terminal.

But our memories are short, and our collection of statistics too recent, only going back a few hundred years at best. We forget that the earth was covered in ice only 20,000 years ago and will be again in time. The Sahara desert was lush and populated as recently as 10,000 years ago. These changes, quite rapid considering the earth is around 4.5 billion years old, are due to cycles, and there is nothing we can to to change them, and no amount of worry is going to help.

tree (fragment)

2010-08-30T23:42:00.000-06:00

He shouldn't have been driving. He shouldn't have been, but he had to get out of that infernal jungle.

A family of Cyrilla trees in his headlights – Cyrilla racemiflora, mammoth bastards – seen through the thick cloud of dust after a sudden stop. Let's start here. The guide was snoring loudly in the backseat of the Jeep, and Harlan's chin was resting on the steering wheel. He was staring, half-dazed, half-crazed, with bloodshot eyes at the bark of one great tree in particular.

Zoom in. Thousands of giant black ants, maybe even millions, crawled up and down, marching through the deep grooves etched into the thick skin of this ancient tree. He was seeing everything. He bloody well saw it all. Every god damned ant, every woody rut, every bead of sap – his eyes picked up every detail.

The excruciatingly slow dripping of this tree's lifeblood. Its slight sway in the wind. Roots shallowly worming their way through the ground. Having already spent more than eight hundred of its predetermined thousand or so years, this tree's life yawned, stretching slowly, as it prepared to enter the era of gradual decline. Harlan felt he was there at the planting of a tiny seed. He felt he had been there for important moments along the way. He felt he had always been there, and would be there at the end.

lead-in

2010-07-09T00:58:00.000-06:00

We should not wake
the ones who sleep;
the ones who watch,
the ones who keep.

These brutes we see
fulfil a role:
they guard the ones
who will swallow us whole.

ayahuasca (fragment)

2010-06-11T19:11:00.000-06:00

Ayahuasca, herself, was present before him, around him, within him, a being of troubling beauty, awash with flickering, sliding colours for which he did not yet have names. There were no features visible that Harlan could identify, no details that he could pinpoint, but he was entranced by her beauty all the same.

She spoke without breaking the silence, filling his pulpy, wooden brain with unearthly, but wholly meaningful sounds. Planting the seeds for instructions that he could not yet fully understand, could not yet fully appreciate. Seeds which would in time grow to saplings with the proper sunlight, nutrients, and moisture. Saplings which would in time grow into strong adult trees.

Flash of copper. Suddenly, a giant, lumbering shadow fell over the once tranquil scene, and Ayahuasca vanished without so much as a goodbye leaving Harlan, the once majestic Cyrilla tree, a shivering, shaking, sweating human.

The dreams had stopped, and in their place a dense void took up residence, a veritable black hole, squatted in his unconscious. Ingesting intuition. Consuming common sense. Snacking on his soul. But, something had to be done.

“This was necessary. Sometimes one has to go in and set things straight.”

“I—”

“Now, you will need to be leaving.”

“I don't think I can move.”

“You can not stay here.”

surprise

2010-05-22T19:16:00.000-06:00

Before he could even hear them, he could smell them. The familiar scent of deodorant covering body odour, of cigarets, of sweat-stained playing cards. Each carried a distinctive odour, and as Harlan slithered silently through the trees surrounding the clearing, he rifled through the files in his brain to place each scent.

He crept further through the trees in the direction of his prey, and was soon welcomed by another layer of scents. The steel and grease of firearms. Copper bullet jackets. Cordite and nitrocellulose. Fairly standard weapons, all of them. Routine. Nothing to fear. Closer yet, allowing the sounds into his ears for classification. The soft crackling of boots standing on the ground. Trying to be silent.

Almost beside them. Harlan finally spotted the group of men through the trees. Four South Americans standing around an overturned card table, rifles drawn, peering through their scopes into the clearing. They were caught totally outside of any alert mode, Harlan thought. One even had his boots off. Stupid bastard.

Knife out, Harlan flew. Seriously flew, and sliced through both of the bootless man's Achilles tendons before anyone knew what was happening. Screams and pandemonium. The poor sap tried to stand, only to come crashing down. River of blood. The three unmolested men instinctively spun around, letting loose a blind barrage of bullets. One soldier fell to friendly fire. Then another.

Harlan, still hovering close to the ground, plunged his knife deep into the throat of the first downed man before leaping up to engage his remaining enemy in unarmed combat. There was a struggle, and Harlan's hands found their way around his adversary's throat. The man put up a decent fight, but within seconds, he, too, was dead. Choked by Harlan's pitiless hands.

heartless (2)

2010-04-14T21:59:00.000-06:00

memory

Another party in the thick of the Hollywood Hills, at some producer's mostly unfurnished Romanesque redbrick and terracotta mansion. More drugs, more booze. A who's who of A-listers, B-listers, and all their hangers-on, bootlickers, and parasites frolicking in their deadly wake. Directors, producers, and everyone else with something to sell.

Amongst all of this, yet another up and coming starlet. Long, dishevelled red hair with the bluest of eyes; glazed over with pink. She had a nice white smile for everyone, matched with white powder crusted under the nostril of a petite, upturned nose. Chipped nail polish, and eager to please. Looking for love, she found Gene Pleasant instead. Those types usually did.

A long stumble out to his car, a brand new 1971 Ford Torino Cobra. Custom powder blue paint, custom everything. Quick and messy make-out session in the car. A turn of the key, and that massive 429 engine rumbled to life.

They roared down the driveway, cruised over to Santa Monica Boulevard, and onto the Pacific Coast Highway at 70 mph. It's not certain where they were going, but they never even made it as far as Malibu. Instead, that big beautiful car careened off a cliff, and wrapped itself around a massive sequoia somewhere around Las Flores. Seemingly in slow motion, they had sailed through the air, silent, stunned. They had a great view of the moonlit ocean right before they died.

heartless (1)

2010-04-04T20:19:00.000-06:00

stir

He was cold when he first woke up. Cold and stiff. Confused, like when one wakes up from a night of drinking. Sore, like the day after a tough workout. He didn't know where the hell he was. He opened his eyes to darkness, complete darkness, the type of darkness that might be described as pitch. A complete absence of light.

With his aching eyes open, he saw nothing. Felt nothing but the pain, stiffness, and chill. Went to flex his fingers and found resistance there, the tendons straining, creaking. More pain. He was laying down, that he knew, but couldn't tell where. He struggled for some time to hoist a heavy, numbed arm. More pain, more straining in the shoulder's tendons. He went to cry out, but discovered that his voice was only a croak, seemingly coming from someone else, somewhere else.

Arm raised, his fingertips touched a smooth, frozen surface. Metal, he assumed. Weight shifted in his raised limb, and he felt the icy blood inside his arm slide, coagulated, from fingers, through the hand, down to his shoulder, and into his chest cavity. Something wasn't right. In fact, something was more wrong than he initially thought. Something was wrong with his heart.

It's not that his heart wasn't beating fast enough to match his growing fear. And not that his ticker was skipping beats in anxiety, which normally it ought to have been. No, there was simply none of the usual rhythmic pounding. No familiar thump-thump. There was a complete absence of movement. A total and incomprehensible emptiness in his chest. Hollow. His heart wasn't beating at all.

Needless to say, he panicked. Found within himself a surge of strength allowing him to flail arms, to smash his head, to kick his feet. The pounding of meat on sheet metal boomed, resounding, filling the cold steel chamber. His coffin. He panicked, kicking, battering the inside of the little box. Then, he found his voice, the screams exiting his dry blue lips as a guttural, animal yowl.

He found give at his feet, and so focused his strength, kicking harder. Harder and harder until something gave way with a clangorous crash. An awful buzzing fluorescent light invaded the space, forcing his pupils to painfully contract. He wrenched shut his inelastic eyelids, instinctively pulling them taut over the firm jelly orbs of his eyes.

The buzz became a ringing in his ears, and when he at last opened his eyes, he lifted his head to peer past the square of bright white light beyond his feet. In the centre of the room, a row of three steel gurneys, a sheet-covered body on the middle one. Across the room, a wall of identical square stainless steel doors. He wasn't so out of his mind that he couldn't figure out where he was. he had woken up in the morgue. The tag hanging off of his big toe was a tell-tale sign.

risen

2010-03-16T19:18:00.000-06:00

You saw them coming, but they were too many. There was nothing you could do, and you were overpowered, consumed by the moaning, howling masses of walking corpses. And now you're dead. Aren't you? There's a slow reawakening of consciousness. Dead fingers twitch with impossible animation. You hunger. For blood. For meat. For human flesh. You have this insatiable urge, this irresistible craving, to crack open a human skull and scoop out the warm brain matter, liberating it from its bony confines. You rise, supernatural pulses flickering into dead muscles. You rise, and join your new friends, reborn as one of the living dead.

lenses

2009-08-08T00:06:00.000-06:00

Mathis had apparently been sleeping for awhile when he woke up with a start, on the floor of his apartment, in the dark, surrounded by mess. The glasses were still on his face. He made no attempt to remove them. It didn't even cross his mind.

His head ached, his eyes burned, and all he could do was to let out a pained groan. This, while memories of his father, recently obtained memories, his father's own memories, horrible memories, came flooding back to him.

He had seen his father's end, the way in which his life was cut short in a dockside knife fight with a two-bit thug. And he had seen something else. His heart began to race just thinking about. He had seen something he couldn't even hope to understand.

Mathis, lying on the floor, lolled his head this way and that, trying to clear his mind of the images his father had seen. Then he stopped. He blinked. He thought back to the old man, and wondered what he had seen in the lenses that was so horrible. The old man had called him the devil, and forbade Mathis from ever doing business with him again. It had to be something pretty bad.

Abruptly blinded by an intense white light, Mathis' entire body again convulsed, his fingers wildly clawing at the carpet once more. Strange images coming into focus. Another's memories. A holiday dinner, surrounded by little kids and laughing adults. Flash. Shady business conducted by the dark light of old storm lanterns from behind iron bars. Flash. Mathis, himself, setting the glasses down on a stone counter. Flash. The old man trying on the glasses, witnessing the bloody hatchet murder of his wife. Flash. Blood, so much blood. Flash. Arms, legs, head being removed with a circular saw. Flash. Flash. Flash.

endings

2009-02-27T00:09:00.000-07:00

There is a little bit of comforting myth surrounding endings. We tell ourselves that endings are merely beginnings. We tell ourselves that for a new chapter to start, one must finish. We tell ourselves that a new word begins after the full stop. Period. Two spaces (one, if you're feeling particularly naughty). Capitalise, and begin again. We tell ourselves this because no-one likes to think of something as just being over. No-one likes to feel like there's no going back. We tell ourselves this because it feels good. Truth is, sometimes an ending really is an ending. Sometimes there really is nothing more.

I kissed you goodbye in the sterile airport during a bungled embrace – an embrace halting and clumsy. An embrace made awkward by the bulky books in the pockets of my coat, by the impending end, by the lack of any true emotion left in either of us. Your nose was cold and made me shiver as it made contact with my cheek. We both new that there was no more. You would get on the plane, and take off into the air, while I would not even stick around to watch the plane taxi down the runway. In fact, before your luggage was even loaded into the cargo hold, I was in the backseat of a cab telling the driver to take me downtown. And right around the time the wheels of your plane were leaving concrete, I was hoisting a fresh pint of lager to my lips. We both smiled then. We both let loose a sigh of relief. We never saw each other again. Now, that's an ending.

Taphonomy

2009-01-12T00:06:00.000-07:00

The night was a corpse. So still, one may have been inclined to check its pulse, panicky fingers fumbling at its wrist in search of a heart beat. Or to check for even the shallowest breath from its lifeless, cold lips. Or to, at the very least, kick its foot and wait for a response. But none would come. No, the night could not have been more still – for nothing is as still as death.

But, it's only inevitable that tranquillity eventually turns to commotion. Even in death, calm ultimately moves over for disturbance. And when this disturbance begins, it builds so easily. Easier than school of piranha swimming downstream, easier than a vulture flying with the wind – it comes easily.

After death, nothing can stop the rot, the decomposition. One dies, and in that instant, there is a coming apart, a breaking down into simpler forms of matter. Things begin to move. Autolysis: one's internal enzymes and chemicals begin to break down one's own tissues. Putrefaction: bacteria consume. Then the scavengers come. There's an unbuilding, a dispersal, and a scattering amongst the still living, reborn.

Daylight does come.

(h)ex

2008-12-28T15:29:00.000-07:00

Something just wasn't right. But not in the 'walked on the clean floor with muddy boots, forgot to feed the dog, reused a theatre ticket, misplaced my truck keys' kind of way. No. Worse than any of that. This was more of a 'surfed porn on my boss's computer, hit a parked car and left the scene, stole from the tip jar, slept with my best friend's wife' kind of wrongness. A strange overwhelming desire to apologise. To someone. Anyone. Just as soon as I could figure out who it was I had wronged – and what it was that I had done exactly.

To say my head hurt would have been a gross understatement of the facts. Due to the tens of thousands of years that mankind has been treating his taste buds to all manner of fermented bevvies, all of the good comparisons have been used and reused. Head in a vice. Hammer to the head. Hit by a car. A bus. A Tractor trailer. Throbbing, pulsating, pain. If I were a cartoon character, the artist would depict me with saggy, baggy, bloodshot eyes, tousled hair, and little bubbles floating around my head.

Shit.

Looking in the mirror in my en-suite, I'd be damned if the cartoonists didn't have it right.

I took some acetaminophen with a gulp of cold water, hoping I'd have to the strength of stomach to keep the pills down. Next, I rattled some ibuprofen out of the plastic container and down my raw throat just in case the first pills didn't work. Tried to drink as much of the water as I could. Emptied my bladder, my bowels, and tried to do the same with my mind before heading back to bed with plans of staying there until the late afternoon.

Goddammit.

Something wasn't right. Something. Sweating beneath the covers, head pounding, stomach churning, I could not shake the feeling that I had somehow screwed something up. I fumbled around in the dark, searching for my mobile on the night stand, and scrolled through my address book, squinting at the too-bright screen.

“Seth, dude, how're things?” I croaked.

“You sound like shit, man.”

“I feel worse. How're you feeling?”

“My mouth tastes like I've been chewing on decaying dog rectums.”

“That's bad,” I said, swallowing back some bile. “Hey, so, some night last night, hey?”

“Meh,” Seth sighed. “It was all right. You were pretty loaded, though, eh?”

My stomach was knotting up so bad. Chest tightening. What did he know?

“Oh yeah? I didn't feel too bad,” I lied. “Felt pretty sober most of the night, actually.”

Pause.

“Yeah, me too. Taking it kind of easy, I guess.”

I was breathing a little easier. Surely if I had done something horribly stupid, he'd have brought it up straight away. But, I had to go for it.

“Hey, Seth, was I being an asshole last night or anything? Did I do anything stupid that you know of?”

Pause.

“Uh, nope, I don't think so.”

I sighed. Sweet relief.

“Man,” he said, “even after Cara showed up, you were fine. Shit, you two were even getting along for once.”

Cara. Oh my god.

“Not sure what happened to her, though,” Seth continued. “Kind of disappeared a little before we took off.”

Oh. My. God. Cara.

Down the hall, in the main bathroom, someone turned the shower on, as memories trickled back to my alcohol riddled brain. Wandering hands and sly smiles. Compliments and reminiscences. Cara. My ex. Oh man. I could smell her, then. In my room. In my bed. I leant over, almost cautiously, and pressed my nose into the pillow beside me. Sandalwood. Patchouli. Cara. I smelt a big, big mistake.

And I owed myself one major apology.

deceit à gogo

2008-12-14T00:14:00.000-07:00

“So, then, what is it that tips the scales between you sticking around and you leaving?” The waitress leans over the table, the buttons on her too-tight, striped shirt straining. It's all I can do to keep my eyes on hers. All I can do to keep my eyes from drifting down, down, down....

And I'm caught.

“Yoo-hoo, I'm up here,” she says, pointing at her eyes. She doesn't smile. Not even a bit. “What is it that keeps you, Ethan, God's gift to women, hanging around the next day? What is it that keeps you from creeping out before dawn. Just what can a poor girl do to make you stay, anyway?”

It's all here. The automatic nervous system doing its thing. Heart palpitations. Palms sweating. Laboured breathing. All sympathetic responses designed to push me into fight or flight – and my balls have crawled so far up into my abdomen, I think they might never find their way home again.

“listen I—”

But I've got nothing.

***

We met at a club down on Fairfax. No. Scratch that. Was it the little place behind that Asian café in the Warehouse District? Yeah, that's it. Though, maybe it wasn't behind a café as such, but kind of a bubble teahouse. Right, yeah. Now, what was the name of that place? The club, not the teahouse. Was it Wrecks? Yeah? That place with the velvet couches, and all those damned brown pillows. That's the one.

All dim lighting, tiny friggin' lamps all over the place. We rolled in a good twenty deep that night, as I recall. More? Yeah? What was it, Busy's birthday or something? Guy's crazy, man. Anyway, we get in there, and find the place packed. Bass thumping. Drinks spilled or swilled. A sea of hotties beneath the lights, swirling, sweating on the dance floor. Ha! Like tasty burritos under the heat lamps at Taco Bell, am I right?

But, we were in, and edging our way through the place, and it wasn't long before we found out there wasn't a free table in the joint, let alone room for twenty plus. Some guys got all ornery, and started bitching. Other guys start dissing the place, and acting like they never wanted to walk in the door in the first place. Me? I'd been watching this one girl across the way, and I noticed that she'd been parked at a table by herself since we walked in. Designated purse watcher, I figured. Slithering through the crowd, it wasn't long before I was parked beside her.

Damned if I can remember her name now, though.

***

Right in front of me. I'm watching her lips move, and feeling the heat of her breath, her words, her hostility on my face. All spearmint gum, Cherry Chap Stick, and vitriol. This, and I only wanted a friggin' beef dip.

“K, k, k, k, k,” I interrupt. Anymore, I can't take it. “Listen to me now. I don't know who you think I am, but you've got the wrong guy. Probably just a case of mistaken identity. You know how it—”

“Ethan Duane Miller? Thirty years old. Apartment #111—”

“All right, all right.” I wave a hand at her to stop the humiliation. “That's me. You met me. We met, whatever. How do you know all that anyway? You some crazy stalker or something?”

She smirks. “You paid with your Visa last time you were in here. I looked at your driver's licence, asshole. Security measures, you know... for your protection.”

Bitch.

“So, you gonna tell me what it takes to make a guy like you want to stick around? Or should I send another waitress over here to take over while I go have a little cry in the ladies' room?” She's more delicate now. Her fine jaw a little less hard. Smooth, olive skin softening on her pretty face. Brown eyes melting just a little.

“It's really nothing personal,” I hear myself saying. “In fact, it's entirely my problem. I've got a system, is all.”

She sits down across from me now, and I know I'm in this for the long-haul.

“Out with it, then.”

“OK,” I start, a little hesitantly. I lean in. “I look for three things, and she's got to pass two of them.”

“And if she doesn't?”

“Then I'm out the door before you can say, 'one night stand'.”

“And number one is?”

“She's got to still be hot in the morning.”

***

So, I managed to convince her to tap out, and appoint another friend as the table guardian extraordinaire, and next thing I know, we're making out in the back seat of a taxicab. She paid, I think, or maybe I did. I don't know. But, I do know that I woke up a random number of hours later, tangled up in her sheets with a serious hangover.

Untwisting myself from the linens and carefully sitting up on the side of the bed, I called on years of experience to creep silently around the moonlit room, picking up my clothes, before making my way out the door. I was a veritable ghost, floating down the darkened hall, and into the bathroom. It's like I had been there before. And I had, of course, been in that exact situation dozens of times.

Dressed, and still smelling of the night before, I made my way into the living room, scanning the walls and flat surfaces for photographs. A high school photo of a fresh-faced cheerleader, all smiles and innocence jumping out at me. Cute teenager. Next, a university graduation photo, radiating pride and relief. All grown up, and ready to take on the world. Couldn't have been that long ago, I thought. Two years, tops. Finally, I found a stack of unorganised pictures on the coffee table – photos from a recent trip to some sunny, sandy place – and it was confirmed: still hot. I smiled, and exhaled.

***

“Shallow much?” she asks, leaning back, putting up her guard.

“Naw, naw, it's not like that. There's more. Looks are just one thing, right? And they're important, you know?”

She looks a little dubious, but says, “All right, so, number two?”

I smile.

“Number two: she must be interesting.”

***

A collection of music as outdated and uninspired as my great-uncle Luke's wardrobe. Eagles. Van Morrison. Warrant. Warrant? Really? I almost couldn't believe what I was seeing, and had to hold the CD up to a sliver of moonlight to be sure. I shuddered a little before moving onto the bookcase.

The contents of the bookcase were actually a little hard to look at. Romans de gare as they're known to the French. Railway station novels. Airport novels, as known to us Americans. Peter Benchley. Dan Brown. Dean Koontz. My eyes, my poor stinging eyes. I could only hope that the DVDs would offer up something of more substance.

The first movie I picked up was Crossroads starring Britney Spears, and my soul actually began to weep a little. I could go no further. I would not allow myself to.

***

“All right,” she says. I'll give you that. If a person can't carry a conversation, then what good would it be to spend time with them.”

“Exactly.”

“And? Lastly?”

“Ah,” I smile. “Number three. This one is, perhaps, the most important of all: she must be able to cook a mean breakfast.”

***

Looking through the cupboards, I would be a liar if I said I wasn't a little disgusted. No, it wasn't due to the fact that they were nearly bare. It wasn't the jar of expired peanut butter, or even the myriad rolled-up half-bags of potato chips. No, hands down, the thing which turned my stomach, and sent a gag reflex up my throat was the package of pre-cooked, individually wrapped bacon slices. I had never seen such a thing before, and, in that moment, I couldn't help but feel a little saddened by the state of humankind.

The fridge was no better, with its half jug of orange juice, and countless bottles of Evian. A flip-top box of baking soda stood like a watchman over a bag of shrivelled oranges, and a lonely, sugar encrusted bottle of maple syrup wished that it was back home in Canada. I closed the door, and pretended that I had not seen the atrocities that I had just seen. In the freezer, a solitary box of pre-formed hamburger patties sat in a block of frost and ice waiting to be found by archaeologists in the year 4327.

Heart heavy, mouth agape, I collected my shoes and crept out the back door. I walked down the street until I could figure out where the hell I was, and called a friend to come and collect me.

***

“A food man, hey? Well, that's not so bad. Things could be worse. I was half expecting you to be one of those creeps who rates a girl based on how good she was in bed.” With this, she throws me a wink, and makes to slide out of the booth. “Got to get back to work before the boss catches me fraternizing with the customers.”

“Hey,” I say, “people gotta eat, right?”

“Yeah,” she smiles. “But, before I go, which of those three tests did I fail to make you leave? Did I pass any, even? I mean, you actually seem all right; might have been nice to spend more time together.”

I don't even take a second to think of my answer.

“If you recall, I said a girl's got to pass two of them, and I'd stick around.”

“Yeah?” She cocks an eyebrow, hands on her hips.

“Well, if a girl passes zero or only one, I'm out the door.”

“Oh yeah? Just like that, huh?”

“Yeah. Just like that. But wait, here's the rub – if a girl passes all three, I'm out the door even quicker. I'm not so simple that I don't know how quickly perfection can bring a man to his knees.”

insecure: formless and void

2008-11-30T23:53:00.000-07:00

Lily had a laugh like the sound the moon makes when it's too full, bloated, and pouring its syrupy excess over the tops of the trees and on down the mountainside. Something which came easy and often, flowing, golden, from her red-stained lips to my contrastingly pallid ears.

Beside her, Lily's blazingly tangible self, I was black and white. Beside her, lying as we were in this clearing, side by side, I was little more than some ghastly, barely real, achromatic figure plucked from a neighbouring dimension and rudely transposed into that otherwise dazzling picture. We call this burn-through. And I was it. An unwanted, unwarranted image soiling that serene scene. She just has that effect on people, you know?

Lily talked, and as she did, her voice hit that taut tarpaulin of stars, bounced off, and rained back down on us. And I was soaked, right through my clothes, right through my skin. Drenched in all that talk of where she'd been and where she'd be going. What she'd done, and what she was going to do. Who she'd met, and who she planned on meeting. Shit, she hardly knew I was there, and even I was beginning to doubt that I was. So, in an ill-fated attempt to prove to myself that I actually did exist, I guardedly cast forth an utterance – a mutterance, really – while she was in mid laugh.

“You ever think about the Big Guy up there?”

She was still on, giggling and talking, about to outdo herself by dropping yet another big name, when she realised that I had gone and dropped the biggest name possible, and abruptly dropped off in mid sentence. Lily turned to look at me, sending a wave of jet hair cascading down over a beryl eye.

“Huh? You mean, like, God?”

“Yeah, God. Our Father, you know....”

“I'm no bible thumper if that's what you're asking.”

It was my turn to laugh then, and I did so with not nearly the magical effect of my companion. In fact, there was no nifty echo, but almost a weird absorption, rather. The trees barely noticed, and the moon nearly turned away. Not to be dissuaded, I plugged on.

“That's not what I'm talking about. I was just wondering if you ever think about that kind of stuff. You know, where we came from, why we're here, and all of that.”

It wasn't one second before that last batch of bullshit was out of my mouth than I was regretting it. See, I hadn't delved into the theosophical as a matter of purity, but, rather, as a matter of impurity. Lily glanced off into the tree line, and as they did, my own eyes made a beeline to her full baby tee, her tiny waist, and on down to those skinny jeans stretched tight over perfect legs.

When my eyes returned, hers had too, and she smiled, pulling a shock of hair out of her face, tucking it behind a bitty ear.

“Can't say that I have,” Lily said, and leant in a little. She seemed to be studying my face. Her lips parted. I shivered. Then, she delivered the blow. “Hey, I never noticed how cute you could be.”

That hurt. Try as I might, I'm sure I wasn't able to hide my anguish.

“Th-thanks,” I stammered. Then, neurons fired at a connexion, and, against my better judgement, I was off again.

“That, uh, that makes me think, it reminds me of Genesis and the creation,” I said. “Have you ever wondered what God looks like?”

“No,” she sighed, slumping back into her original distracted position. “I guess he's, like, a powerful ghostly dude who's everywhere all at once?”

I cackled. I actually cackled, and still the moon paid me no mind. I launched into the topic to show Lily that I was smarter than all of those other guys. Those doctors, those lawyers, those politicians. My goal, to show her that I was more interesting, more learned, more... exceptional than those actors, those musicians, those artists. Again, against my better judgement, I continued.

“Isn't it interesting,” I asked, “that in Genesis, it's written that God created Adam in his image? Taken literally, as a perfectly written book should be, should we not, then, expect the reverse to be true, and that God should be assumed to look as we do? Should we not, then, expect God to be made of flesh and bone as we are?”

Lily shrugged. She simply shrugged and offered a disappointingly non-committal, “Sure.”

I was losing grip. Scrambling on a rocky slope, too steep to easily scale. Hands grappling for solid handholds, feet slipping loose from fragile outcroppings. A steady slide of rocky debris beneath me.

“It's just really interesting, isn't it, when you start to really look at it?” I was desperate. Clearly. “I mean, isn't it weird that God needed to create Adam from dust? Eve from Adam's rib? I mean, he's God – why does he need ingredients?”

There was a smile again, but this time something was different. Pity, I think; Lily's eyes, two pools the colour of charity. Her lips, little more than a scarlet suspension bridge between treacherously deep dimples.

“Oh!” she suddenly exclaimed. “Now I know who you kind ofremind me of! There was this assistant Professor I briefly dated back in my second year of uni. All the girls were just, like, totally in love with this guy, but he—”

And that's how it was the rest of the night. Me, steadily crowded out by an ever-growing assemblage of ghosts. Lily, the centre of this spectral attention. So, I just settled back and listened. Not to her, but to the sound of jagged indifference. To the cascade of pale yellow light streaming through the pines. To the sound of God's dry lips cracking into a jeering grin somewhere in the Great Beyond.

synth

2008-11-12T21:13:00.000-07:00

The least I can do:
a short glass of sparkling green,
a perforated spoon,
and a cube of sugar
the shape of a dream.

simple ceremony

2008-08-17T03:48:00.000-06:00

There's a dead fly next to the sink, and I can't think of anything other than the events which might have come to pass resulting in this death. Starvation, thirst, or exposure to the elements. Depression, anxiety, or a heart heavy with loneliness. An accident, a suicide, or blunt force trauma. This list gets longer, and includes more words than I have minutes to write at the moment.

Its thorax rigid, with six little black legs stuck straight up in the air, and its diaphanous wings spread out, this is a symbol of what I – we all – would one day come to be: a corpse. Red, beady, compound eyes unblinking, unliving, there is an emptiness here which suggests that a certain energy has moved on. Just as our eyes, too, will one day be still as glass orbs, and just as soulless, signalling to all that it is time to say goodbye.

But, no, there would be no funeral for this fly. No grieving loved ones that I know of. No archaic rituals to smooth the passage of its soul from this realm to the next. No destruction of this empty husk by earth or by fire. No–

But now I'm struck by an idea.

Water.

And I snatch a few squares of bathroom tissue off of the roll, gather up the fly's body in the wad, toss it in the toilet, and flush. The black speck spirals down into the void with the rushing water, and I make a mental note to someday soon clean the porcelain bowl. This rite ends with me – the pastor, priest, or master of ceremonies – washing the imaginary germs off of my hands, and walking out the lavatory door, closing the light behind me.

I've things to do, and can't be bothered with these trivialities any longer. I've words to write, sentences to form, and writer's block to shrug off. Moreover, I've this nasty, lingering, lurking sense of mortality to forget about. This story ending, this final act, this d'enouement, that we all must put out of mind lest we become trapped down in it.

the purpose of grass

2008-04-20T13:32:00.000-06:00

the purpose

It took forever to find the true purpose of grass. Not to fill the vast space of one's garden, to cover up the yards and yards of dismal dirt. No, not simply to please the eye, or to generate envy in one's neighbours with one's pristine living carpet of green. This is to grossly oversimplify. This is to sell short that leafy blanket of flora. This, my friends, is to be mistaken. The true purpose of grass is to provide a soft runway for steamrolling down a hill on a hot summer's day. To catch warm drops of summer rain. To tickle the tender toes of children.

Don't ever forget this.

the near miss

As a young man in Paris, Samuel Beckett was stabbed in the chest by a pimp and nearly killed. The long, silver blade, narrowly missing Beckett's heart, punctured a lung, and left Beckett lying on the cool, green, nighttime grass, coughing and bleeding out from a hole in his chest.

One romanticised story has a piano student named Suzanne coming to the aid of the young author as he lay dying under the cold eye of the moon. Another, more probable, if not slightly less dramatic story, is that this Suzanne visited Beckett in the hospital after reading about it in the papers. Either way, she helped him through a rough time.

His assailant's name was Prudent. His saviour became his wife.

casual acquaintance

My fingertips met hers, worming their way through the cool slender blades of grass, our minds abuzz with the beginnings of a psilocybin trip. Our tongues still thick with the mouldy flavour of rotten mushrooms. Our eyes afuzz, veiled by the gauzy light of the moon.

“Why do we do this?” she asked. “Why do we poison our bodies and minds. Why do we poison our thoughts with these...” And she trailed off, lost in thought.

“Our own reasons,” I replied. “We each have our own reasons for this exploration. Me, I'm a biology student. The interaction between this hallucinogenic crystalline solid and my own body's chemical make-up intrigues. Psilocybe mexicana. I wait for it, counting out the formula in my head: C12, H17, N2, O4, P. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorous. Is this not a good enough reason?”

“I guess,” she sighed. “Me, I suppose I do it to find the answers to important questions. Questions like: which number is greater? The amount of grass blades in this park, or the number of sand grains beneath that swing set over there. I suppose I do it to find meaning in the lyrics of a particular Billie Holiday song.”

Ooh, ooh, ooh/What a little moonlight can do.

monster

Abuse: a noun used to describe bad or improper treatment. For example, the systematic maltreatment of a wife or husband, either physically or mentally. One child's bullying torment of another on the playground. Self-abuse, that primitive cutting or burning; trichotillomania – the pulling out of one's own hair; the childish tantrums, punching or scratching one's self. Abuse: the treatment of anyone or anything that is seen as harmful.

Bored, little Jake crawled through the grass tearing out handful after handful of the lush, green vegetation, giggling maniacally as he threw each handful over his shoulder before moving onto the next. Shorn blades of grass, scattered in the wind, left to dry and yellow under the hot sun. Countless silent cries. Thousands of tiny souls flying heavenward.

To the grass, this was a holocaust.

re-purpose

A blade of grass never asks for what purpose was it created. It knows. It exists as part of a lawn to be the most versatile piece of furniture. To scratch the back of a rolling dog. To catch a smile. It exists to persuade the soil to stay where it is, and to sway in the wind when it's allowed to grow long.

Yes, the purpose of grass is to make us wonder at its purpose, and to be the plaything of near misses, casual acquaintances, and monsters – and to turn from green to blue under the wan light of the pale moon.

suture

2008-04-14T23:50:00.000-06:00

First the cut. Like a deep, crimson wound, just shallow enough to be non-life threatening, and just deep enough to be painless. With shock, there is no pain. Blood, yes. Pain, no. An irregular wound, a laceration, caused by blunt force trauma to soft tissue lying over hard. A tearing of skin over bone. Scalp over skull as one example. Psyche over soul as another. This is your immortal grief.

A wound might be fixed in the ER by some adept resident doctor. Practising her bedside manner. Exercising her efficiency. Stitch, stitch, stitching your mangled flesh, curved needle flashing in and out of skin. Black thread cinching tight. The other wound is repaired by an aged psychiatrist. Applying his expertise, working out his wit. Talk, talk, talking in your ear. Sensible words diving past the drum, swimming through the subconscious. This is your supposed fix.

Gone, those days of carefree walks through untroubled scenery, those untouched minds, those happily idle hands. Eyes taking in the words of others for want rather than need. Fingers caressing new textures with minds exploring new chemicals. Toes pressing into new sand. Lips kissing new lips.

“Gone,” the doctor says. “Those days are gone.” And he absently runs his gnarled fingers through his great, white beard. “Why man's endless fascination with the past? Because it's the one thing he can never have back. And why his obsession with the future? Because he knows it's where he will spend the rest of his life.”

But you've heard this somewhere before, and paying to hear it from some old man in a tweed coat doesn't make it any easier to accept. Exactly fifty-five minutes and one hundred-seventy dollars later, your feet are carrying you swiftly down the carpeted hall, shoes shushing along a well-worn path. Mind ransacked, you feel as violated as if someone had kicked down the door of your flat and tossed your shit all over.

Your finger hits the cracked elevator button, and the dented stainless steel doors promptly grind open with an accompanying ding. Main floor. You'll get off at the main floor. After a swift ride down with your stomach in your throat, with your eyes studying your shoes, you'll walk. Through the lobby, and outside, squinting. Across the parking lot, and on.

You don't know where you're going, but it certainly isn't back there. You'll fix your god damned self.

strike out (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)

2008-01-30T19:10:00.000-07:00

The comedown is hard. Nearly two weeks of late nights and early mornings, cocaine highs mashed with boozy lows, had finally brought me to my knees. Brilliant white beaches and manic sunsets plague me. Blue black night skies and a fiery morning panorama past the smudged hotel window blind me. I hug the toilet bowl and expunge last night's evil from my insides. Blow some blood-flecked mucous into a tissue. I rinse my face.

“We're out,” announces Jed on my entry into the sleeping area.

“Out?”

“Last of the posh,” he says, flicking a crumpled powdery square of magazine paper in my direction. “And not a great chance of finding any here.”

I collapse on the bed, covering my aching eyes in the crook of my arm, groaning just a little. A giant fucking mess. Sore legs from indiscriminate dancing. Sore head from hapless high living. Sore heart from her.

Her name is Kenya.

A whirlwind of a bartender, I first met Kenya at the other end of a long line of double gin and tonics. Skin nearly black, and eyes even blacker, the whites of her eyes leapt in my direction as I entered the room, and they held me, they wouldn't let me go. Mesmerized, I walked right up. Unable to speak, I allowed her.

Over the course of many biting drinks I learnt that she was not from Kenya as her name would suggest, but from Ethiopia. I learnt that she went to school not to become a bartender, but to become a lawyer. I learnt that lawyering never worked out, and tending bar was not her primary profession – I learnt she made most of her money as a hooker.

“But I will not work while you are here,” she said. “Instead, I will be your girlfriend.”

And who was I to refuse such an offer.

“You think the strike is still on?” Jed asks, breaking me out of my reverie.

“Hm?”

“Back home. The strike. You think it's still going?”

I think for a time, nearly falling asleep. I scratch a little at the scruff on my face.

“Well? Would be nice to get back to work, wouldn't it?” Jed asks again.

“I don't really care,” I say. “No. Let me rearrange that line. I really don't care.”

Jed is silent for a moment.

“Isn't it weird that writers can go on strike in the first place?” he asks. “I mean, we write all the time, not just for work. Have you worked on anything since November?”

“No.”

“Not even notes? Not even in your journal?”

“Not really, no. I've nothing to write. Not right now.”

And that's how we leave it. I stare for awhile through the window at the late morning horizon. Searching the soft white clouds for something indefinite. Settling my gaze on the lightest blues of infinity for a time. Scouring the tiny outlines of the distant cityscape for my inspiration. She's out there somewhere. Her name is Kenya.

She went back to work two days before. Prostituting. Searching the alleyways for something indeterminable. Settling on her knees in dark corners or beneath the fluorescent lights of offices throughout the city core. Scouring her soul for something more.

I have nothing to write about. Not right now. Nothing is right now. In fact, I don't care if the strike ever ends. No. Not anymore. I can stay right where I am. Drifting around Africa. From Tanzania to Zaire. Zaire to Uganda. Uganda to Kenya. Maybe back to Kenya. Maybe back.

I fall into a troubled sleep. A strung out, hungover, painful sleep. I dream of nothing.

sanguine song in A minor

2008-01-11T17:46:00.000-07:00

hard landing

2007-12-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

A shot rang out in the humid night air, and a pigeon was startled into wakefulness by a stray bullet ricocheting off the wrought iron trellis beneath its dirty little feet. It took off into the sky, a panicked, nervous flight, seeking a more tranquil locale. It took off, and as it did, it let loose a big glob of runny white shit, narrowly missing the executor of the aforementioned commotion. There was a second shot, but by this time the shithawk was already safely out of the way.

Then, the blinding red-orange light like a wavering future sunset, a solid beam of killer energy.

I withdrew my raygun from the fat man's back, tucking it into my coveralls, and stood to my full height, allowing the charred rotund corpse to fall to the alley's wet pavement. I stood there for a moment, watching as thick black smoke curled up from the man's vast chest, and frowned at the ruination of perfectly fine French-cuffed shirt.

The wail of sirens already. Nothing gets by the sensors. I crouched low, making quick work of unburdening the corpulent gentleman of his riches. An exquisite gold watch, fine cufflinks, and tiepin. Like looting was instinct, I was through the pockets in a matter of seconds, relieving my victim of petty cash and coins. Then I struggled a little with the massive weight of the colossal body, heaving it up just enough to extract the fat wallet from its confines.

Flashing blue lights whipped by one mouth of the alley and then the other. I stood tall again, but couldn't shake the feeling that I was forgetting something. Holding perfectly still for a moment, finger touching pursed lips, I calmly inspecting my handiwork. More flashing blue light momentarily invading the darkness, this time tipping me off to my lapse – the glint of shining metal on the man's fat ring finger. I was relieved to find it slip off with no trouble at all.

“Guess you shouldn't have been cruising for whores, mate,” I said, giving the puffy cheek of my victim a friendly slap. “Whatever would wifey think?”

The fat man could not have been allowed to live. Not after witnessing my slow descent from the sky at the bottom of a parachute. He had stood there watching the entire fall, I could see him, fat face bathed in moonlight, fat, black hole of a mouth agape.

The fat man had watched as I leapt from the black helicopter. Watched as I plummeting through the night sky before pulling the cord. Watched as I fluttered slowly down, and watched as I missed my target, the warehouse roof, becoming entangled in the ironwork of the fire escape. The fat man had watched it all and could not have been allowed to live. Especially not after he had pulled out a gun and started shooting, missing me by mere inches with one shot. Luckily, I had managed to cut myself free before the fat man could load a fresh clip, and shot him, concentrating the beam on him, before my feet even hit the ground.

Cutting my chute down from the fire escape, I threw it on top of the fat man's corpse before dowsing the whole pile in lighter fluid and striking a match.

“Cheerio,” I said, setting it alight. Then, there was a loud chopping and the whooshing of air, and I looked up just in time to see the mysterious black helicopter float away. I couldn't help wondering who had dropped me, and why. And who were they and what did they know?

Purposefully striding out of the alley, small fire already becoming a blaze behind me, I glanced up and down the street. Then, with all the cool of a star athlete on top of his game, I crossed to the other side, casually strolling down the block. I didn't even flinch when a squad car slid up the kerb alongside me, flashing blue.

“See anything funny around here, then?” the cop grinned, leaning awkwardly out of the car's window. He was all gleaming white teeth set in a burnt brown face.

“Naw,” I said. “On my way down the block to tidy up some windows for the bank on the corner.” I drew attention to my coveralls with an exaggerated shrug, gave my nametag a casual flick. “Heard a few shots fired, but that's nothing so extraordinary for this area is it?”

“All too ordinary,” the cop snorted, taking a sip of coffee from a polyurethane takeaway cup. “You'll make sure you get out to vote next week, hey?”

“Ah,” I said, waving the remark aside, “voting's not for me. One man can't make a difference, can he?”

“You'll do well to get out and vote for General Montalvo.” It wasn't so much a suggestion as it was a command, and the cop sat there leaning out of the window, glowering.

“I guess I'll be seeing you at the polls,” I said grudgingly.

The cop smiled broadly. “We'll leave you to it, then.”

I nodded my appreciation and continued down the block while the car roared away.

“Goddamn cops,” I muttered. “Pigs, all of them. No matter what country a guy's in, grunting, filthy swine.”

words

2007-12-20T15:45:00.000-07:00

Played out–

A cool, crisp sky of winter blue,
she says he can't rhyme 'blue' with 'you'.

She: “Hey! You used it right there;
is this some kind of joke?”

He: “But it counts for naught
when trapped in quotes.”

Outplayed.

cavernous

2007-12-15T15:59:00.000-07:00

“I know
I'm gonna crash hard from this one.”

Dustin Bentall, Crash Hard, 2007

We just do what we do to help us forget. This type of tie-up. This kind of enmeshment. This awkward tangle of arms, and backs, and lips, and necks in the crushed corner of a claustrophobic, vinyl-clad booth at the back of a hole-in-the-wall bar. These are the times we remember. These are the times which we use to forget – one another.

These are not replacements. These times, these scenes, are not surrogates for the memories we made together. These short, sharp breaths in the ears of another are not stand-ins for what we once shared. No, these women are not replacements for you – but they do help me forget. Medicinal: they help me move on.

My arm slips effortlessly between the small of a feminine back and the gaucheness of torn, red vinyl. Smiles come easy now, even if they are induced. Words come even easier, even if they are not our own. She smells a little like you, and that'll do. Crashing waves of booze and smoke. Little ripples of strawberry and lemon twist. I say something half funny, and she laughs, a drunken giggle into her gin and tonic. Ice cubes clink coldly against glass, and I tell her we should take a walk. Find a quieter place to talk. To get to know each other.

And we wake late in the morning tangled in strange sheets. A harsh sun spears through a split in the drapes, and we concern ourselves with plans to let each other off easy; plans dampened by these mortal wounds. Aches in our heads, shades of black beneath our eyes, and guilt in our hearts.

Songs still play from the night before, while sketchy memories shake loose from jagged barbs of debauchery in our cavernous minds. Shaky images slipping from Jäger stalactites, building up in towering gin stalagmites. A haunted beat echoes maddeningly, resounding from the taut skins of a thousand primeval drums. We both know the other hears it, and neither can look the other in the eyes. Instead, there's an inelegant pulling on of rumpled trousers. A graceless fixing of hair. An artless goodbye. This, the parting of two strangers: a meaningless kiss across the threshold of a cheap motel in the crass morning light.

The worst part, I suppose, is not the regret associated with this long line of such insubstantial trysts. No. Nor is it the dead feeling brought about when one leaves his dignity on a barroom floor, or the empty spot where my heart used to be. The worst part, the very worst part of this whole thing is that it never makes me forget what we once had. You're never too far away.

I flag a cab, and tell the driver to take me home, and he asks me a question which doesn't seem to agree with me. My stomach turns as he steps on the gas, and it's all I can do do avoid retching onto the floor.

“Just waking up or going to bed?”

I take a few moments to compose myself, and to tumble the question about in my head. One hand clutches my stomach while the other covers my mouth, and I blink furiously to clear my watering eyes.

“I don't know,” I say at last. “I don't really know, but I'm hoping to hell it's the former.”

the myth of planning

2007-12-04T16:38:00.000-07:00

“[I'm] happy enough. I don't expect much. I don't get much, I don't give much. I generally enjoy whatever comes along. That's my answer for you, summed up for your feminine consideration. I'm happy enough.”

-Cal, Waitress, 2007

You plan. Oh, you plan. You plan because that is how things are done, you were told. You plan to one day be at the top of your game. To work your way up that corporate ladder, to madly scramble over the aching heads and shoulders of your colleagues, to one day reach that top rung. From there, you'll take in the panorama with tired eyes and throbbing arms. An unblemished scene stretching before you, if nothing can be unblemished, you'll feel some kind of pride, some kind of accomplishment. An achievement to tide you over for those few years between goal and death.

You plan to one day find a nice girl and settle down. She'll be smart and funny, capable of making you laugh when you're down, and keeping you interested when you want to stray. She'll be perfect, you think, with her own life so she stays out of yours. With a solid career, and a passion for all things culinary. And she'll exist in a small space beyond beauty. There isn't a word for it yet, because nothing, so far, has existed to which such a word might apply. But you'll use it when you find her. Only then, will the dictionary be altered.

You plan; do you see it yet? You plan your route to work in the morning, choosing one snarl of traffic over another, thinking all the while, “If I had only gone the other way....” But this inconvenience allows you time to plan which complicated caffeinated beverage you will choose when you get to your destination. You decide on a non-fat, double latte and while sipping at the concoction begin to wish you had gone with the double short, non-fat, low foam latte.

You plan out your work day, but discard that manifesto at the first unexpected turn. Then, you plan to throw the week away to whimsy only to get drawn back into your original plan of structure when things begin to go smoothly. Plan, plan, plan. Wrench, wrench, wrench. The weekend is planned, but falls apart in a flood of cancellation calls and poor weather. Suppers are planned, but these plans, too, are rerouted by restaurant closures and out-of-stock markets.

Sigh.

You plan to be happy, but it seems that something out there is taking preventative measures against said plan. Yes, something is obviously working against you at this point. How else can the cancellation of your flight be explained? The breakage of your car? The death of your cat? These annoyances have got to be part of the well-executed plan of some other, benevolent, being.

***

Lying in bed one night, you suddenly hit on a new plan. You plan to toss out this passion for plans, to take things as they come, to never expect, because it is this absurd expectation of success which inevitably ends up drowning you in a sea of failure in the end. Yes, there is a new plan in place. A great plan. An infallible plan. You plan to just be... happy enough. And that should be all right.

jangle

2007-12-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

The barista tells me about how she doesn't believe in love, but I'm not listening. Instead, the metallic clank, clank, clanking of a spoon making the rounds of a cheap café coffee cup fills my ears and pilfers my thoughts. My caffeine-charged leg bounces to a relentless, phantom bass line. My nerves jangle.

Fingers tap furiously at the keys of my laptop, and the barista edges in a little closer across the table, still talk, talk, talking. Something about love. The end of love. Her obsession with it. Fingers tap, and eyes vibrate, taking in the string of words before me. These are my thoughts. Not love, but something else. An obsession, surely, but one different from that of the barista's. Not deeper, not shallower, just altogether—

“What?” I ask.

The barista stops dead in mid sentence, her eyes wide, pupils dilated, huge, like two cups of strong, black coffee.

“Pardon me?” she asks in return, a lock of chocolate hair slipping carelessly from behind a petite ear.

“You were saying something,” I reply. “I'm sorry, but I wasn't quite listening.”

Her candy cane lips effortlessly form a smile, and she tells me that's okay. “I know you're usually quite a good listener,” she says, obviously oblivious. “You must be working on something awfully important....”

Now it's my turn to smile, but I can't quite keep the pity out of it, I'm sure. Eyes flit to cup, and I notice I'm nearing the bottom. Hand trembling, vibrating, really, I clutch desperately at the cup, raising it to my lips and drain the last of the acrid black liquid. I slide the cup across the table toward the barista.

“Would you be a dear, and grab me another?”

“Of course!” she bleats, snatching it up and turning on her heel.

“Oh, and one more thing,” I say, meeting her dark eyes as she turns back to me. “Make it something really complicated. Have fun. Be adventurous.”

Take your bloody time, I think, and resume the tap, tap, tapping of keys. My leg continues its bounce. My nerves jangle still. I know it won't be long before she's back – and I wouldn't have it any other way.

pivot

2007-11-17T13:18:00.000-07:00

I really feel like I'm gonna give the slip to time,
and everyone I meet is a damn good friend of mine.
But will I ever stop to think just how wrong I was?

We start to feel like there's nothing left for us to know,
there's nothing left for us to see, there's nowhere else for us to go.
But will we ever stop think just how wrong we were?

I show up in town in the pouring rain, exiting the taxicab in a rush before the driver really realizes how much I've shortchanged him. Words are exchanged. Opinions are expressed. There's some yelling. I pull the collar of my old loden coat up over my neck to block out the harsh wind, and make a vain attempt to shield my head from the pouring rain with a folded newspaper. The ink runs, staining my fingers an angry black.

Though it might look like it, I'm not homeless.

Clumsily trotting half a block down the wet street, I hastily duck down a crumbling loggia before coming to rest in the chill, still air of a great stone archway. Tired, I throw my soaked back up against the wall. I try the mammoth door beside me; it's locked but has a little give.

This is the beginning. Where it all starts. This really is the new new. Each life has one; an instant where everything changes. One man encounters it when he decides to take flying lessons. Another woman finds it when she decides to wash a few bottles of pills down with a pint of Jäger. Things change. Things are irrevocably different. There is no going back.

I throw a little weight at the door with a heavy shoulder. There's a cracking, but the door maintains its integrity. I give it a little more, harder this time, and the frame splinters. Once more, and I'm in, pleased to find the air dry and the furnace on.

Though it might seem like, I'm not a vandal.

The debris in the stairwell tells me that no-one's been here for a long time. At least not for a couple months. My feet find their way, the soles of my shoes nestling softly into the layers of dust on the stairs. At the top, I find a sea of abandoned grey cubicles, ringed by the yawning mouths of a couple dozen vacant offices. How much suffering was incurred in this very place? How much displeasure?

Pausing for a moment, my nose twitches, shocked by the sterility of it all. My ears...my ears catch something just a little ways off. The soft hum of an electric motor coming to life. The ka-chunk of a feeder. The whir of paper. A printer has started up, or a fax machine, somewhere nearby.

Though I act like it, I'm not a detective.

Cautiously, I duck my head into a few empty work areas before I find the source of the sounds. A blue LED flashes, showing me the way. My heart pounds. I try to swallow, but find my mouth parched. Shaking, I clutch at the lone piece of paper expelled from the haunted machine. I switch a lamp on beside me, not at all surprised when the light comes on.

CONFIDENTIAL

Operation BGM has been aborted. Potential agent, 98235, has been removed. Carry on.

ML

Somewhere in the room, there are footsteps with no body attached. The paper slips from my grasp, fluttering to the floor at my feet. I bolt. Across the floor, and down the stairs, wildly vaulting the debris field at the bottom.

This is my beginning, this is how I leave behind the old me, ushering in a one: legs running like mad through a darkened loggia. Lungs filled with crisp wet air. Mind filled with fear.

choked in layers

2007-08-19T17:08:00.000-06:00

I would save you if I could. And, if things go my way, I just might. I could save you from light and noise pollution. I could save you from advertising overdose and urban sprawl. Overpopulation and mutated viruses. Propaganda and counterpropaganda. Terrorism and counterterrorism. Wars, global warming, and off-gassing. Big business, government monitoring, and social disconnection. Most importantly, I could save you from banality. I could save you from yourself.

Someday, you might thank me. Parades in my honour, streets and civic holidays named after me. Everyone will remember the day when I saved humanity. Everyone will remember the day when Becker Garvey Moore saved humanity from slipping into the whitewashed folds of a lacklustre hell. That, or I’ll wind up dead or destitute, lucky to have you toss me some change for a pint. Fortunate to have you walk by me with eyes filled with something other than disdain. Who knows what the future might bring.

I could have been comfortable in my big house. I should have been. My big rambling house on its rambling street. My big rambling house on its rambling street in that great, insipid sea, suburbia. That sea of bleached vinyl and colourless shingles. Empty, staring windows and vacant decks. Manicured gardens and faultless hedges. That roof of lazy blue skies, and that eternal green carpet of broad-leafed, weed-free grass. I could have been comfortable – but just how is an imperfect man supposed to feel at home amongst such perfection?

Each day was the same. Wake up at the same time. Drink the same two cups of black coffee. Eat the same toast and eggs. Read the same bloody news. War over here. Terrorism over there. A little murder. Some rape. A lot of thieving. I’d unplug my car, make the same trip to work, do the same meaningless bullshit. I’d sit vacantly at my desk, or, if I needed a change, angrily. Sometimes, on a good day, I’d just sit there complacently. Watch the clock. Drive home. Warm up the same supper. Watch the same television. Sleep the same sodding sleep.

Excuse me if I seem a little disillusioned, a little disappointed, a little disparaging. But we were promised more, were we not? Should not life be at least somewhat interesting? Flitting trip back to childhood, and dreams of adventure and exploration. Of world travel and voyages into space and beyond. We were allowed to foster certain expectations, then, while our elders kept the sinister truth to themselves: that our adult selves would never amount to what we expected; that our lives would not be different, unique; that we would never have any fun.

2031, and I was far, far away from what a naïve me just twenty years ago thought I might one day become. I had grown into little more than a sucker at a desk, my work monitored by management, my life monitored by the govvies. I was an empty shell, a husk, my insides scooped out years ago by the authorities and replaced with sterile foam filling. Creativity suppressed, any individuality deterred. Bubble-wrapped for my own protection.

Then, it never occurred to me that I might one day be in a position to construct change, to posit permutation. Then, it never occurred to me that I might one day elevate myself to an architect of my own advancement. Our advancement. That I might one day wake up, rub these tired eyes, and see everything, for the very first time, as it really was: a nightmare within a nightmare within a nightmare. Ad nauseum.

small matter of questions

2007-07-25T15:57:00.000-06:00

Where are you now? Sitting on another ashen shore, just outside of time, a little beyond space. A rocky coastline stretches out for miles beneath a vacant white sky, and that infinite ocean rolls in and out, its brackish waters coldly existing without a second thought for its guest. It doesn’t care about you, with your petty wants and concerns, your mundane needs and inquiries. No. That ocean flatly ignores you and continues doing what oceans do: coming and going.

“We could have been,” you say, your voice barely audible above the crashing waves. “I could have been - but I didn’t try quite hard enough.”

Little hands digging into soft sand. Petite feet pushing out and away.

“I wound up in exactly the place I deserve,” you say. “The end of my life was the sum of my decisions. I could have done more.”

You’re a memory, resting inside my head, forever wandering those desolate beaches. This is your afterlife. Sitting on a rotting pier we never knew in life, existing in a harbour forever hidden away just around the bend in the furthest recesses of my mind. What do you think about while wandering through the wilds of my thoughts? What do you dream about while sleeping in my dreams?

“Inconsequential. Average. Pursuer of the status quo.” You sigh because it’s all you’ve left to say. “Doomed.”

Sad that your once glowing skin has grown to match the colour of nothing, and your hair has become as washed out as that colourless sun. And how your eyes, those same eyes which were once so bewitching in life, have now become so dull, so empty, so prosaic.

“I could’ve done more,” you whisper. “Jesus, I could’ve done more. All I needed to do was to ask myself what it was that I needed to do next. Just once.”

So, where are you now? Sitting on another ashen shore, just outside of time, a little beyond space. Questioning. At the end of a life unfulfilled. At the end of a life unlived.

a comfortable place

2007-07-18T18:15:00.000-06:00

You wonder, a little, if it is so wrong that you don’t really care about Africa. Today, an entire village is burned to the ground, but your thriving metropolis remains intact. A warlord orders the extermination of more than two hundred souls, but you’ve still got your decaf mocha latte. A child, a soldier, ten years old, hoists an aging Kalashnikov in celebration, and it is all you can do to hoist that television remote one more time. There has to be something better on. Something a little – lighter.

click

You wonder, a little, if it is so wrong that you don’t really care about politics. Today, a raging debate about the nature of debates. Behind the scenes, people are busy deciding which candidates are more important for you to see more of, and you just think, Has he always had that same hairdo? She’s really aging poorly, isn’t she? Look at those neck wrinkles. Behind the scenes, your next president is being chosen, and your finger just can’t wait to press the button. There has to be something better on. Something a little more – interesting.

click

You wonder, a little, if it is so wrong that you don’t really care about religion. The dirty fingers of war ceaselessly poke and jab at this earth, while your fingers are finding sticky salvation at the bottom of a family-sized bag of zero trans fats crisps. Don’t bother to ask yourself why one country goes to war with another. Tell yourself that it’s for the better good of mankind. Tell yourself that it’s because of human rights. Heck, go ahead and tell yourself that it’s because of oil. Just don’t dig any deeper. Go ahead and push that button. Just push it.

click

You wonder, a little, if it is so wrong that you don’t really care about reality. And we’re talking real reality here – you have no trouble getting on board with the reality television variety of reality. That reality where one man is challenged to find love or lust amongst a flock of sprayed and spackled beauties. That reality where a dozen losers are cast away on a fake island. That reality where a dozen young hopefuls sing their hearts out for a once in a lifetime deal with the devil. No, you have no trouble accepting those realities.

You can relax now, your heart and mind at ease.

You can relax now, your finger no longer itching.

You can relax now, your soul having found its place.

hail to the chief

2007-07-13T13:33:00.000-06:00

Skin pinches, needle sticks in. No noise comes from my mouth. No. Not this mouth. Teeth grind a little, molars crunching roughly on molars. Muscles in the jaw tighten, sinewy chords in neck bulge, and fists clench straining against canvas restraints. They can’t take me. No. Not this guy. Stainless steel spike withdraws, giving way to the big, forgery of a smile stuck on a pretty nurse’s face. My eyes roll. The walls are a pastel blue - and I haven’t seen anything so pretty in such a long time.

The mirrored sunglasses of a dozen young suits. Ear buds planted in alert ears. Hands ready to fly through lapels at the first sign of—

Another pinch. Another stick of the needle. This chair is my home now. These four blue walls, my whole world. Ghastly chrome apparatuses. A confusing array of tools. A single window, the outside closed off from me by clinical white blinds. I gasp, and the pretty nurse hushes me with a slender finger pressed to nude lips. “Shh,” she says. “Everything’s going to be all right. You’re going to be just fine.” But I don’t believe her.

Trouble. There’s a quick silvery flash in the crowd of onlookers lining the street just as the old man’s glistening motorcade rounds the corner. Billowing fender flags and white wall tires. Gleaming lapel pins and a helmet of white hair. They told him not to take the convertible. They told him to keep himself behind glass.

This liquid is hot in my vein, and I can feel it travelling down my forearm and up through my bicep. Numbing. Anaesthetizing. Killing all sense as it goes. Entire arm is soon dead. Shoulder, useless. There’s a slight tickle of concern on the pretty nurse’s lips. She breathes in gently, filling her lungs, holding her breath. Her eyes meet mine before jumping away. She exhales shakily, withdrawing the spike from my vein.

That flash in the crowd. The young suits converge, wrestling the perpetrator to the ground. The old man glides by oblivious, smile on his face, hand waving in the air. The crowd is ecstatic. No-one seems aware of the struggle but me. A set of mirrored lenses spot me through the masses. Words are spoken into a lapel. In that instant, it was made very clear to me that I had just seen something that I wasn’t supposed to see.

“There, there. I told you everything was going to be all right.” The nurses words are soft, and her hand is patting me gently on the shoulder. She tousles my hair. “Nothing to it.” This chair is my new home. These four pastel blue walls are my whole world. “The doctor should be in to see you straight away. Until then we’ll monitor your vitals.”

A quick pursuit. A little resistance. A long drive to nowhere.

My jaw doesn’t clench anymore, or else it would be right now. My teeth don’t grind. My mouth doesn’t open. No. Not this mouth. And something tells me it won’t be doing much from this point forward. No eating – that’ll be handled intravenously. No singing – these lips have been patriotic enough. And certainly no talking. No. No talking. And I’m not even sure what I ever had to say in the first place.

ambitious apparatus (programming)

2007-06-30T23:34:00.000-06:00

“Scholo, do you know if you are you a human or a machine?”

The question hung there for a time, riding on particles of dust, warmed by the soft glow of the sun infiltrating the nearly drawn drapes. Tension. It was building. Heat. It was rising. The gentle whine of hydraulics, the hissing release of steam, the crackle of pure harnessed energy – each added a new layer of discomfort to the tiny cluttered office.

At last, Scholo spoke. “Doctor, I have to tell you,” he said, “sometimes I find the ease of your questions insulting.”

The doctor smiled a little awkwardly, self-consciously smoothing the lapels of his crisp white coat. “Well, if my questions are so easy, Scholo, then you should have no problem answering them.”

The grinding of gears, the rapid firing of pistons, the fervent hum of transistors. Scholo raised his hand as he spoke, bringing one shining fingertip to his gleaming face for a scratch.

“With all due respect, doctor,” Scholo said, “I have no problem answering your questions, but sometimes they do seem a little demeaning.” He stirred in his chair, lifting one aluminium buttock and then the other. “For example,” he went on, “how should you feel if I were to ask you whether or not you knew if you were a man or a woman?”

“Oh,” the doctor huffed, leaning back and tenting his fingers arrogant before him, “I think I should be able to answer that question quite easily, and tell you with no uncertainty that I am, indeed, a man.”

“Now, imagine for a second,” Scholo continued, “that our positions are reversed, and let us say that I am the authority figure, that I am the one in the smart white coat, and that I am the one sitting at the nice oak desk with you,” he pointed an angry finger, his normally silver cheeks flushed a hot blue, “you, the experiment, you, on the other side—”

“Scholo, you’re being ridiculous, I—”

“Am I doctor?” Scholo shot, “Am I being ridiculous? Have I no right to be hurt by your insolence?”

“I-it, it,” the doctor stammered, “it was just the next in a series of questions, Scholo. It’s right here on this piece of paper.” He held up his stack of notes, fanning them with his other hand. “I don’t even think of this stuff, myself – it’s all created by the board, all written for me. I meant to harm.”

The barely audible squeak of oxidising irises. The mild flushing of lubricant. The persistent thumping of a complex series of tiny pumps.

“Well, to answer your question, doctor, I am a machine through and through.” Scholo hissed and whined to a standing position, looking down at the flustered doctor before turning to leave. “And, if I might add, humans such as yourself and your board only make me happier with that fact with each passing day.”

a slow dark march

2007-06-24T13:42:00.000-06:00

The shadows pain me just a little. Their slow dark march across the floor, an unrelenting slide, kicking up equal parts regret and misery. Something there but not. Something altogether—

This is only a fragment. Only a creation of my hungover brain.

Phone rings, too shrill, and my hand lazes its way to the receiver. Through the still of the dark, through that delicate sliver of light nosing past the thick drapes. I answer the call to find that it’s PT.

“I think I’ve done something stupid,” he tells me.

“Um, hello?”

“John, I think I’ve done something stupid,” he repeats, a little more earnest.

“All right,” I say. “It’s probably nothing that can’t be undone.”

“John, I’ve burned my manuscript.”

I lay there for a moment on the sofa, staring through the dim light at the shadows playing on the ceiling. His manuscript. Three years work at least. A slow dark march of words across page after page, an unrelenting—

“John, come on. Are you still there?”

“Yeah, PT – I’m still here. Listen,” I say, “it’s just a bunch of paper, a mere hard copy. You’ve got the files on your system, and you’ve got a back-up of those.”

Silence.

“Right, PT? You’ve got digital copies.”

“Um, no,” he said. “I formatted everything – thought I’d wipe the slate clean.”

“Jesus.”

“Going on four years now,” he said. “I just couldn’t bear it any longer, seeing those same sixty thousand words, those same fifteen hundred paragraphs. It was all just too much.”

Piercing pain right behind my eyes. Mouth parched and a mad desire for water. Free hand reaches up to the drapes to shut out the invading light, and the many murky shadows close up into one.

“Two hundred seventy thousand letters,” PT continues. “Fifteen hundred lines. Oh god. I just could not bear to read it, to look at it, one more time. I couldn’t look at the title even once more. Couldn’t stomach the opening line.”

“Guess you should have come out last night,” I say. “Might have averted this tragedy.”

“Oh god,” PT groans. “What am I going to do?”

I was in no shape to carry this on any longer, though on any other day I would have gladly strung him along. “PT,” I say, “you emailed me a copy of your third draft a few months ago, remember? I’ll fire it back to you as soon as I’m mobile.”

Silence.

“Bye, PT,” I say, and hang up the phone.

I close my eyes, and soon after fall into something of a slumber. I’m off to that place where headaches cease to exist, and shadow and light get all confused in their meanderings. That place where language is not so much spoken or written as it is seen, where signified and signifier trade places. That place where PT and his troubles can not reach me. That place where all—

This is only a fragment. This idea stops right here.

caught out in it

2007-06-21T18:59:00.000-06:00

Thank God for rich parents. That’s all I have to say. Thank God for their money, their lack of responsibility, and their sheer idiocy, or I might never have met her. She, so young, so busy, so damned grown up, living this crazy life in the backseats of taxicabs, hotel rooms, and out on the catwalks. No parents. No rules. No turning back.

“No chaperone?” I asked.

“Naw,” she said, sipping at weird orange drink. “My parents don’t worry about me.”

“But you’re so young,” I said. “So young and so far from home. And this business. I mean, you’re paid to be beautiful and to have all of these strange people look at you—”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “You hear the stories – the temptations, the predators, the ensuing downward spiral – but it’s all nothing.” She paused a moment to really study my face. She paused, weird orange drink hovering just below her lips, and looked me right in the eye. “You’re really concerned, aren’t you. Concerned about me, a stranger – that’s so sweet.”

I shrugged because I didn’t know what else to say.

“Well, you can rest assured that I’m not going to let anyone take advantage of me. We girls,” she said with a silly grin, “tend to fend off predators by becoming predators ourselves.”

I laughed.

She didn’t.

“Want to come back to my room?” she asked.

Thank God for poor parents. That’s all I have to say. A one-way ticket to Europe and a suggestion that I find myself. “Come back,” they said, “when you’ve figured out who you are. Come back when you’ve decided what you’re going to do with your life.” Thank God for their lack of money, their foresight, and their sheer brilliance, or I might never have met her.

“Are you going check out any of some of the sights while you’re here?” she asked, turning over in bed, twisting herself up in the sheets.

“Naw,” I said. “Probably just step out and grab a coffee. Maybe pick up a newspaper.”

“So much to see, though!”

“Ah,” I said dismissively, “it’s all pretty much the same. Once you’ve seen one city, you’ve seen them all.” Just into my twenties, and already so cynical. “Some gaudy tower,” I went on, “a dirty river, and a bunch of old buildings – Just not for me. Besides,” I added, “I’ve already found the prettiest thing in this country.”

She gave me a bit of a smile, and slid out of the bed on her way to the shower. Stopping by the window, she peeked outside, and let loose a heavy sigh.

“Rain today,” she breathed.

“See,” I said, “to me, travel is like the rain. Such a lovely idea when viewed through the gauzy veil of imagination – ugly if you’re caught out in it. I think we ought to just spend the day inside.”

shut tight those eyes

2007-06-17T13:47:00.000-06:00

You catch images of her now in flickering grey and black. Poorly developed film on old stock, grainy and scratched. These are shots taken of memories, weakly transmitted over the great abyss of time. A girl you once knew. A girl you will never know again.

“What will it bring?” she asks, her voice distant, crackling, the audio, poor. She’s there for but a moment, overexposed flesh projected onto a crumbling wall. The petite, fresh features of a then-innocent face. Inky sea of hair, blending into eternity. “What will the future bring?”

“There will always be us,” you say, your disembodied voice quavering on a tremulous wave of interminable distance. “There will always be an us in one form or another.”

She flashes for a moment, the feeble connexion nearly lost. Her image flashes, and as it does, a moment of panic flashes across her youthful face. These memories: barely there at the best of times. You close your eyes tightly in an attempt to focus, to bring that picture back.

“So, we’ll be together forever then?” she asks, hopeful.

You open your eyes to find her there again, her faint image right before you. Her big, bright eyes are open wide in expectation. Her long, dark lashes curl. Her lips part in the beginning of a smile. The camera shakes as it zooms in close, unfocused, then focused.

She blinks.

“I didn’t say that,” you reply. “I didn’t say that at all.”

And in that instant, she is gone, her ghostly image blinking out entirely. She is gone, and you are left alone in this darkened room, the heart and soul of a victim. Tears well up. Breath catches in your throat. Hands begin to tremble.

“But you’re the one who left,” a feminine voice says, rustling into the room from somewhere else. It’s not her voice, but the voice of another. You squint into the dark, trying to conjure up a face to go along with those words – but you try, and fail, to come up with anything tangible.

“Always leaving,” another faceless voice accuses.

Throat hoarse, and feet leaden, your knees buckle and you soon find yourself on hands and knees. “Leave me alone,” you say, pulling yourself forward. So weak. These fleeting glimpses of the past take too much from you. You begin to crawl towards where you think the door should be, but you try, and you fail to find a way out of this room.

“How many time have you left?” someone asks, with a taunting laugh.

Other join in, one phantom becoming many, laughing and talking over each other. They fill your ears with indistinct, acerbic noise. Mocking, derisive. They’re sharing stories. Laughing at your pathetic exploits.

“Just leave me alone,” you plead. “Please just leave me alone.”

You shut tight your eyes, clap hands over ears, and curl up right there where you lie. Shut them out. Just shut them all out. Focus. Focus on nothing. Wipe that mind clean.

Pillow over head, the sound of an old projector whirrs somewhere in the great beyond, the end of the film thwip, thwip, thwipping on the reel. Most nights, sleep doesn’t come soon enough. And some nights, such as this, sleep will not come at all.

love's lost fear

2007-06-07T18:38:00.000-06:00

You listened to his recordings the other day, the voice of an old man hammering out his thoughts, working them as though they were a piece of iron between hammer and anvil. His voice, cracked with age, his breath laboured, he was a tireless warrior pushing ahead into the great unknown. The greatest explorer you ever knew.

“March eleventh, nineteen ninety-one,” came the voice at the beginning of the tape. “Some quick thoughts on this final voyage, and an idea for some lines of verse. Ah, I don’t know. As usual, whatever comes.”

You could hear the sounds of outside. A soft breeze pushing gently into the tape recorder’s mic, the songs of birds, and the tinkling of some far-off wind chime.

“I feel like this is it, like I’m starting on some kind of little journey between journeys. Does that make sense? Almost as though I’m through with one leg of the trip, and I’ve reached a point in the river that I can not paddle across.” He cleared his throat, and you could hear him taking a long drink of water. “We’re portaging the canoe now, my spirit guides and I, across this unnavigable stretch. It’s a lot of work, but we know that it is a necessary thing. We know that our work will be paid off in full.”

You met him in London back in 1988 at one of Baudrillard’s lectures at the ICA. Old even then, he still managed a rather arresting figure with his tweed suit and wild mass of white hair. Those mesmerising grey-blue eyes. He wedged himself into the seat beside you, and immediately turned to you, holding out his hand for an introduction. Names exchanged, he proceeded to ask, “So, why are you here?”

“Well, to listen to JB speak of course.”

“No, no,” he said, waving aside your feeble reply. “I mean, why are you here? Why are you here on this earth?”

You didn’t know. You still don’t, but since then, you put more effort into thinking about it.

His voice again, crackling on the tape.

“I awoke this morning with some lines running amok in my head. Something about the embodiment of Love, and Love’s cast-off coat. Something about embracing this next leg of the journey.”

Left alone with the breeze, the birds, and the chimes for moment, before his voice started up again:

“Stepping softly past Love’s lost fear,
another time, just one more year.
While at the point when we must cross
there won’t be shed a single tear.
No loss,
not here.”

He bumped the tape recorder at this point, and you could hear him scrambling to right the situation.

“Blasted thing,” he huffed.

More thumping and banging ensued before the machine was finally switched off.

You smiled. You smiled, thinking about the man at his forge, working those words. You smiled, thinking about his massive body of work. You smiled, thinking about him in his canoe with his spirit guides, paddling away down another stretch of lonely river.

she goes softly

2007-06-06T14:09:00.000-06:00

Now, where were we? Rifling through memories, getting all caught up in nostalgia, weighed down by that terrifying beast of old. It stalks, tearing after us through that tangled unworldly jungle of the mind. We try to get away, but it’s always just a little faster, a little more cunning, a touch more persistent. It isn't long before we’re caught, pummelled by the many horrid limbs of reminiscence.

Thoughts creep up of small, dank rooms in unfamiliar countries. Of long short nights in smirched little pubs – those nights which never end and never really begin. Thoughts of never-ending bottles, of alien money, and of sweat-slicked bodies twisting between the cool sheets of roadside hotels.

***

Flower petals floating on a morning breeze.

“She loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, she loves me not.”

“You are a little tangled up,” she says.

“Naw,” I breathe. “Friends and enemies and all that. Each petal has a name and a face.”

“And which am I, then?”

I’ve no answer, so I press the last petal into her palm and smile.

***

A month later, and a mysterious train wreck in eastern Europe cuts our getaway short. A mountain pass aflame. Luggage and its owners strewn about. Things like this, one never forgets. The hellish stench of diesel and burning flesh. The angry red-orange of a fiery forest. The sun very nearly blotted out.

We’re sitting on a rock, the frantic flashing lights of emergency vehicles in our eyes, and I pluck a strange red flower from the ground beside us. Nervous fingers go to work, petals floating on a soft freeze. A head lies on my shoulder, words nuzzling into my ear.

“Which am I?”

I swallow, and fold the remainder of the flower into my fist, crumpling it into a tight little ball. I swallow again, hard, eyelids fluttering, tears welling up.

“None of these,” she whispers, answering her own question. She wraps her little hand around mine, repeating, “none of these.”

***

Years after the fact, and I only remember her first name. Her first name and her face. Her first name, her face, and the smell of her hair after a bath. The way she took her coffee, black with only a pinch of sugar. The way she would smoke only half a cigaret. The way she would steal the blankets each night.

I’m stalked ceaselessly by nostalgia, trying desperately to get away but finding that it is no use. There are certain things that one will never forget, memories that one will never be able to drive away. Our final meandering stroll along the muddied waters of that swollen river. The lights of her aeroplane as it taxied away. The taste of her lips, and the bittersweet bliss of that last long kiss goodbye.

archaeologist

2007-03-23T22:37:00.000-06:00

Everything is disconnected: no more communication, no more interaction, no more fellowship. Only a sea of blank faces now, all closed, unhappy mouths, averted eyes, and busy ears. A maze of cold, dead towers, monuments to greed, power, and corruption. The grey, cracked concrete of the sidewalks, growing greyer and more cracked with each passing second. Even the sun has been unplugged, the sky now little more than the empty, white screen of a disused light table.

Suddenly, my eyes meet the mirrored lenses of a guard near the entrance of a bank, and I flinch as I see him tense up, his one hand squeezing tighter on the truncheon, his other hand flexing impatiently at his side.

“What’s gone on here?” I ask, striding up to him. “What’s happened to everyone?”

“Move along, sir,” the guard cautions.

“But the people, they’re—”

“Just move along.”

He barely moves, but something in his body language suggests that he’s serious. A certain rigidity. A certain flatness. What is it? The curling and uncurling of his leather-clad fingers. The shiny black of that terrible club. My own distorted reflection in the mirrored lenses of his eyewear. All designed to awe, to intimidate, to threaten.

A cold chill breaches the feeble security of my upturned collar as I turn to walk away, the wind bringing with it a torrent of trash; tattered newspapers, battered coffee cups, ragged advertisements, and the like. Snatching up a soiled page of print, I’m immediately assaulted by headlines of war and upheavals, murders and rapes, discontentment and general tumult, before the wind steals the page from me, ripping it from my trembling hand.

Kick it up three ccs.

The Dark Ages: that’s what we’ll call this. No age of enlightenment, here. Perpetually overcast skies, polluted air, and a near dead population. Killing their bodies with fake foods. Killing their minds with fake knowledge. Killing their souls with—

He’s stable. Heart rate is stable.

Lose myself in the crowd, that’s what I’ll do. Completely lose myself, alone in that lifeless crowd. Would anyone notice if I just disappeared? Would anyone care if I vanished right before their eyes? It’s starting now. Already I can feel it, that familiar sensation. A numbness of the core, a slight tinge behind the eyes, pressure building—

Signs of internal tissue damage?

None.

Good. Brain activity?

Normal.

Great. Okay to unplug him. Wheel him to PC when ready.

A million points of light exploding around me, before me, and I’m ripped from there with such a light touch, almost peeled away. Stretched. Mind and body. My soul waits for me back home. Waits and surely wonders. Coronas growing ever larger, overpowering my ocular—

Mind shutting down.

Resist it. See if you can resist it.

Entangled, now, in that thin, silvery strand. Follow it. Tug at it. Toy with them a little.

Ha ha.

Toy with them.

Oops, faster now than—

Fading fast. So fast I—

Tell them—

Oh god—

sich zu besinnen

2007-03-17T12:34:00.000-06:00

A series of rooms, some darkened completely, others half lit, all austere and painfully vacant. Grubby linen drapes cover smudged windows, allowing very little light to invade the dilapidated domicile. A thin layer of dust covers the sills, thresholds, and decaying hardwood floors. This is the structure of a mind. A mind just prior to thought. Your mind.

Before thought, there is little more than possibility; unanswered questions, prospects, and potential for an infinite number of courses through an infinite number of rooms. You didn’t build this house, but here you are anyway. You didn’t even choose to inhabit this house, but now you’ve no choice but to wander its well-worn floors. You wake and sleep within its confines, almost comfortable in the cloistered nature of this aging structure. You’re not required to bother yourself with upkeep, as it was designed with decay in mind. All that is required of you is that you exist until you no longer do.

But, you awaken in one room with a question on your lips, knowing that an answer may be just beyond the threshold of one of the doors leading out of the room. Perhaps you choose one door over the other because it boasts a little more light. Maybe a familiar scent carries through from another and you decide to follow it, instead. Or it’s possible you simply go forth on a hunch. Whichever your reason, you will invariably find yourself in another room faced with another choice of exits. This goes on until you are either tired, frustrated, or satisfied that you have pursued the answer to your question as far as you are able at the moment.

There is a process to thought, beginning with a question and leading into a kind of investigative wandering, resulting in a conclusion determined only by the limitations of your cognitivity. All exist within the mouldering framework of a structure you did not build or choose, a structure which itself exists without an entrance or an exit, but which contains an infinite number of each within its crumbling walls.

A synchronized decay exists, which simultaneously solidifies the relationship between you and this structure even while necessitating the continuous desperate, but vain, search for a beginning or an end, an entrance or an exit. Growing increasingly anxious by the visual effects of age on your surroundings, there is this pressing need to escape the dwelling before it falls down. More questions are asked, while the answers are kept just out of reach.

What is also cruelly kept from you, however, is your reflection and the effects of aging you, yourself, have incurred. If you could only see yourself now, within the walls of your subconscious, you would know that there is no need to worry about the impending collapse of your body or mind. No need to worry, because you are all decaying together, and will pass through the gates of oblivion hand in hand.

When the walls at last come down, you will not, even then, be afforded a glimpse of the outside, for as they cease to exist, so will you. A new house will be built by wizened hands and ancient tools upon the primeval foundation of the old, and its next occupant shall have no greater knowledge of his- or herself than you did. In your eternal ignorance, you will not be alone – and this, unfortunately, is as close to a comforting thought as you can ever get.

great insipid sea

2007-03-09T19:57:00.000-07:00

You reach for the light, but the switch won’t work. Rather, the switch works, it does switch, but no light comes on, and you’re still in the dark. Beyond fear now, your heart rate plateaued a while back and you’ve settled into something new, something just outside of fear, a little beyond. The feeling is beyond the scope of words, so you don’t bother wasting any trying to describe the indescribable. But one knows the place if one ever gets there.

Your face and arms are still slick with the nauseating ichor encountered in the last room, and as you fumble about in the dark, you can’t shake the feeling that the source of the unusual, foul-smelling mucous can not be far behind. Imagined or real breath on your neck. You scream, you think you scream, and you think, so this is how it ends. Haunted. Hunted.

Suddenly, your hands find another door and you stumble through, nearly falling to the floor in your haste. There’s moonlight now, across this room, and you bolt towards it, frantically fleeing your pursuer. Within seconds, you’re through a door to the outside, and as you turn your head to check behind, your eyes catch an indefinite shape in the dark of the dilapidated house, something following without any regard for the solid of walls or doors, something wholly unnatural.

But you’re out now and running down the street, heart racing faster and faster, mind clearing a little more with each pump. There are those who do not believe in monsters, and you can’t help thinking their ignorance is something to be envied, that their ignorance is their greatest gift, for if they were to truly understand the nature of the universe, their lives would never be the same.

You’re still running as fast as your legs can carry you, and as you run you’re thinking about how you got here, your mind floating back to the early days of your learning and how the string of discovery went: Barthes led to Foucault, which led to Derrida, which led to Žižek, and on and on. It was really a whirlwind of breakthroughs for you then, with each day spent innocently wandering from café to café with pocketfuls of books and very little in your wallet. My, how thing have changed, haven’t they? Now, you run. And run. Onward and upward – or something like that.

You just want to be home, and your mind flits now to an image of your reflection in the bathroom mirror, and you’re asking yourself, who is that person? Each day you look in that mirror and see him. He’s never a man who looks a day older, but a man who does not yet look as old as he will tomorrow. You’ll call it positivism, taking the simple definition and ignoring everything else that’s built up around the word.

Legs gone numb, you’re nearly overcome by a sensation of gliding down the street. For a moment, you’re able to think about where you’re going and where you’ve been. That monster: the new shape of failure. Something to run from. Something to distance yourself from. Failure means that you would wind up back where you started, not a single step ahead, having gained nothing but memories – and you’re not going back to the beginning.

So you run and run. Past the darkened houses on that moonslicked street. Past the snowy park and its disused play equipment. Past the hollow schools, the locked up service station, and the vacant strip mall. This is the new new. You run all the way through one suburb, not even realising when you’ve entered another. Across a seamless quilt of bland and blander, through the great insipid sea, you flee.

There is sleep between the days, just as there is wakefulness between the nights, living and unliving, unliving and living, with such a fine line between that it is entirely impossible to tell which is which. Sleep: you trust yourself to its ebon arms, even while dreaming of ways to do without. Wakefulness: you welcome it like you would an old friend, with open arms and a kind word – but you can’t wait for him to get off your couch.

lusus naturae

2007-02-18T15:52:00.000-07:00

Barely anybody had clapped eyes on an authentic copy of Dr Hirschkovitsch’s Encyclopaedia of Monstrosities and Miscreations in the nearly two hundred years since the destruction of its scanty printing. In fact, the closest number of eyes I can come up with at present sits at nineteen; a number which counts up to and including the man’s who relieved me of the evil thing, but omitting those of whomever currently owns the last of those bedevilled books. And for him I feel nothing but the utmost sympathy, for his life, should he suffer any length of one at all, will not be anything approaching enjoyable.

first and second eyes

Dr Itzhak Hirschkovitsch, renowned explorer and acclaimed cryptozoologist, had set to task writing the manuscript during the early years of the nineteenth century after his nearly two decades of extensive travel and note-taking.

The things he had seen abroad had changed him, his wife was noted as saying, and once back home, Dr Hirschkovitsch flatly refused to discuss the things he had seen, and the “vast network of monstrosities” which he had discovered.

All would be laid out in his book, he said, and the world would at last see what it was never meant to see. The imaginary lines dividing countries would fall away, and religions would crumble with a new, greater one rising up to replace the myriad old. The earth’s population would assume its rightful place as a people of slaves, he said, and it would be happy to do so in place of the “other thing” which he repeatedly declined to elaborate on in his few interviews. All would be laid out in his book, he said. And it was.

By summer of 1808, the manuscript was ready for printing, and a title was chosen, with the words Encyclopaedia of Monstrosities and Miscreations emblazoned in gold on the book’s great leather cover. Dr Hirschkovitsch envisioned a book which could be kept locked by three brass hasps, requiring three different keys, each of which could be hidden in a different locations around the owner’s home. In addition to the aforementioned details, the book’s pages would be made of the sturdiest paper, and its accursed words would be printed with the finest of inks – all details which made the book one of the most expensive books to be printed up to that time.

third, forth, fifth, and sixth eyes

Dr Itzhak Hirschkovitsch inexplicably chose for the book’s printing one of the smallest and most ill-equipped printing houses in all of England – Kohlson’s. It was only Samuel Kohlson’s second year in the business when Dr Hirschkovitsch made the exhaustive request of him, and he would have declined the work if it were not for the handsome amount of money the weird doctor offered.

It’s been said that not even two dozen copies of the book were printed by the time Dr Itzhak Hirschkovitsch abruptly ordered the book’s printing stopped, and this order he followed by another: the immediate destruction of all twenty-three already printed copies. This order was to be carried out by Kohlson’s apprentice, a boy by the name of Johann Bruhner. It was this apprentice who saw something important in the tome, and managed to squirrel away a copy of the book before burning the rest.

But the books would not go down without a fight, and the fire which ensued raged large enough and so wildly that the printing house was burned to the ground with Samuel Kohlson still inside, unable to escape.

The body of Dr Itzhak Hirschkovitsch was found hanging in his home three days later. He did not leave a note, but he did tie a really good noose. So nicely tied was the noose, that it worked its way into all of the newspaper articles on the doctor’s suicide. A new length of the finest hemp rope was used and twenty-three coils made up the knot, one for each copy of the Encyclopaedia of Monstrosities and Miscreations which he had allowed to be printed. In life, Dr Hirschkovitsch enjoyed twenty foot ceilings – in death, this made for an awfully long drop over the second floor balustrade.

seventh and eighth eyes

Printer’s apprentice Johann Bruhner was never the same after the fiery destruction of his workplace, and it wasn’t long before his bloodied body was found in the basement of his parent’s home.

Police reports detailing the suicide mention how the young boy committed an act now known as seppuku, seemingly ripping open his own abdomen with a long knife. He was cut through, all the way, from side to side, they wrote, and his body was discovered nearly cut into two pieces. The knife was still in his hand. A book lay open by his side.

Police Inspector William Johnson is said to have collected a few things as evidence, including the knife and the unnamed book. The knife went where evidence is supposed to go; the book found its way to Inspector Johnson’s home.

eyes nine through eighteen

I’ve a theory that Inspector Johnson never did get to look through the book, instead, unthinkingly, but luckily, locking it using the three brass hasps without having the keys to open them again.

I think this only because Inspector Johnson apparently enjoyed a long life, a life free from any kind of curse save for the curse of mundanity, and by the time my great-great-grandfather – a noted bibliophile – found the book in Johnson’s attic, it was still locked and under a layer of five decade’s worth of dust. The book, considered little more than an oddity by my own family, found itself being passed down from my great-great-grandfather to his eldest daughter, to her eldest son, to his eldest son, until it wound up in my hands.

eye nineteen

That is, the book was in my possession until two years ago when it was stolen from me during a random burglary. The one-eyed career criminal, Hunter Hickley, was ultimately arrested for the break-in of my home, along with the homes of a number of others in the neighbourhood, but while the police were able to recover a few of the items stolen, the Encyclopaedia of Monstrosities and Miscreations was never found.

My only hope is that for his own wellbeing, Mr Hickley never got around to opening those three brass hasps. For if he did, I could not say with any certainty that he will live long enough to enjoy the resumption of his crooked career.

epoch

2007-02-14T14:52:00.000-07:00

He’s in the middle of another slurred soliloquy, a red-eyed rambling, a drunken discourse on the past pushed through his lips and into the smoky pub air. He’s stuck there, unable to free himself, and his voice has taken on the timbre of an imprisoned soul desperately crying out for liberation. I listen to his would-be eloquence in the same way that a mother listens to her child’s plaintive cries: with one part pity, one part unease, and one part scepticism.

“You ever think about going back?” he garbles.

“Pardon me?” I squint.

“I mean, do you ever think about going back home?” he asks again.

I only get to offer a slight snort, and I mean to answer when he answers for me.

“Of course you do,” he says. “It’d be bloody great, it would. We’re like goddamn legends there, can you imagine?”

And I can. I can imagine what it would be like. It’d be like we were ghosts floating through a world which we’d been irrevocably cut off from. A world which we can no longer interact with. A world which barely remembers our names. We’re not legends. We’re barely a scribble in the margin of that town’s storied history.

He talks some more, and as he does, I’m very nearly whisked back to a time when I didn’t care enough to care. An easy time. The hardest time of my life. But I steady myself against those evil winds of nostalgia, hiding behind this great brick and mortar bastion of the here and now. That wind; a vile, poisonous wind.

The next morning is one of those in which a man could easily lose himself in the cushy, voluminous folds of his blankets. And as I lay in bed with a beery head, the sunlight pushing gently on the front of the house, for a moment I’m swept away.

“Why do you do this?” she cried. “Always so eager to leave, so eager to get away. Have you spent one moment with me happy? Have you spent one moment here wanting to be here and not somewhere else?”

I stuttered the start of a response, and tried, clumsily, to wrap my arm around her, only to have the motion brushed aside.

“I – I am happy,” I said with some trepidation. “But – but I’ve my future to think about, I—”

“That’s the problem,” she said, tersely. “You’re too busy thinking about the future to enjoy the present. I only get to have this flickering, glimmering you. You’re barely here at the best of times, and when you are, your heart is elsewhere. It’s like I’m dating a homesick time traveller. A man visiting the past out of curiosity, thinking only of a time when he would return home to the future.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“You’re a writer,” she accused. “What’s the antonym for nostalgia?”

I stared at her dumbly for a moment.

“Well,” she said, “whatever it is, you’re guilty of it.”

Later that week, I fled my hometown, my past, and pushed ever forward into the future, to another time, another place. And it’s that place where I find myself presently, swaddled in thick duvets, head nuzzling pillowy pillows, eyes shut to keep out the morning light. Here, now, stuck betwixt nostalgia and that other thing, wanting to go neither backward nor forward, content in the present.

Yes, this time traveller has gone now as far as he wishes to go, and these days dreams only of stasis, not wishing to go backward, but not wanting to go forward, either. Laying awake now, my eyes closed against the morning light, I am at ease.

I don’t think much of the those blocks of years we call decades, neither the ones which have passed, nor the ones which will. I’ll happily deafen my ears to talk of the past, and if the Fates were to grant me one boon, I would only ask that they allow me the gift of continued ignorance of my end, for to know it, I fear, would be too much for my heart to bear.

sierra hotel india tango

2007-02-10T15:15:00.000-07:00

I left my wallet in the crumbling belly of a wretched inn in Srinagar, a city located on the bank of the Jhelum River in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, some 10,533 kilometres away from me as the crow flies.

An inch-think fold of stitched black leather, a gift given to me by a girlfriend from another time, the wallet sits forever in my mind atop the bedside table where I last saw it. Positively stuffed with dinner receipts, taxi chits, and coupons, the wallet pouts. "You go on without me," it whinges, "I'm so full I just can't budge."

And so I do. In the theatre of my mind, a past me walks out that door leaving behind an inch-think fold of stitched black leather atop a rickety little table beside the infested bed in which I had slept for the better part of three weeks. I walk out that door and hop in a taxicab, paying with a crumpled banknote from my pocket on my arrival at the airport.

Then, taking full advantage of the modern ease of e-everything, I show the grumpy little airline clerk my driver's licence – which I had smartly kept in a safe place apart from my wallet! – and he checks it against my e-ticket. The next thing I know, I'm through security and hunched into a terrible seat aboard a decades-old plane somewhere above Eastern Europe shouting repeatedly, "Oh, god! My wallet!" and frantically checking and rechecking all of my pockets while inadvertently elbowing my seat neighbour all about the upper torso.

Yes. These are the things which they didn't talk about in archaeology school. Even then, we entertained dreams of Indiana Jones-esque adventures in long forgotten tombs, circumventing snake pits and being chased by Nazis while taking care to not trigger the deadly traps laid for us two millennia ago. Aw, sweet, sweet naïveté, huh? What I wouldn't give now to have had one single professor say, "And please, please, people; be mindful of your personal belongings while checking out of a hotel. I know you're going to be hungover as all hell on the day of your departure, but please take the time to make sure you have everything." Not part of the curriculum I guess.

We had flown up from Sierra Leone where we had attended a lecture on the Transatlantic Slave Trade of the 1700s, and set out to work that very day. The site, located just outside of Srinagar, lent little to the imagination, as it was barely more than three shallow squares carved in the hard, yellow earth, each marked off by white string. Meticulous scraping, brushing, and sifting ensued, days spent on hands and knees, unearthing green-grey statuettes from the Maurya period.

"Look!" I excitedly called out at some point, "this one's smiling!"

My colleague just looked at me like I was mad, scowled a little, and returned to his tedious work.

"What do you figure we should do with ourselves tonight?" I asked.

He shrugged, wiping the dust off his forehead with the ratty sleeve of his shirt.

"Supposed to be a pretty good discothèque in town," he suggested, "could check it out if we wanted."

"Discothèque," I scoffed, "what the hell's that?"

"Hey," he said, "that's what they call them here."

So we went, and found ourselves engaged in a reckless evening of tango far, far away from Buenos Aires, in the company of pushy beautiful women we could barely communicate with. One dance would end and another would begin before we could even stumble to the murky sidelines of the dance floor, and it wasn't long before the night was over and we were tossing and turning in the dirty, rough cots of our rooms. That's how it was that three weeks of trading the discomfort of days for the weirdness of evenings led to my eventual brain freeze and the forgetting of my wallet.

Home now. Back in metropolitan North America. Crunching toward my car down a snow covered sidewalk on campus, chatting a little uninterestedly on my cell phone to an acquaintance about my trip. I'm about to pay for my parking when I'm reminded again of the absence of my wallet.

"Shit!" I snap.

"Pardon me?" my acquaintance asks.

"Shit," I say, "I still haven't been sent my new Visa, and I've no cash for parking."

"Sorry," she says, "but you're breaking up – can you repeat that?"

"Shit, shit, shit!" I repeat, pounding on the ticket box. "Shit – Sierra Hotel India Tango – shit!"

I abruptly click my phone shut, and walk the one thousand kilometres back to the administration building where I happen to run into one of my Earth Sciences professors in the hall.

"So," she starts excitedly, "you're back! How was the dig?"

I let loose some kind of howl that transcends the noise needed to express mere frustration, and I storm on past her towards my office where I collapse into my chair and commence staring out the window.

10,533 kilometres away from me as the crow flies, an inch-think fold of stitched black leather dances the tango across the faded wood of a bedside table. It mocks me; the damn thing mocks me. And what's worse, is it's a better dancer, too, light on the toes with dexterity to die for, adroitly handling even the most expert of moves. My wallet: the adventurer I'll never be. Brave enough to never go home again. Courageous enough to not even care.

cyclical

2007-02-07T20:22:00.000-07:00

She lends herself to me just long enough so that I might pour some nonsense into her ears, fill them up, right to the top until the babble spills out, running down those delicate lobes and onto her tiny shoulders. She’s not listening, but is at least going through the motions, putting on a good show with her little nods and slight shakes of the head, her hms and haws. I’m relentless in my talk, I know, but I like her way too much to entertain any sort of cruel expectations of undivided attention.

Stop.

The incessant clinking of a spoon against the side of a coffee cup finds its way to us from a neighbouring table, and suddenly I’m lost. My thoughts crumble a little here and there, words falling apart, their individual letters fraying at the edges to such a degree so as to render them nearly illegible. Decay. There is decay even there, within my own head, and I’m left with nothing to do but sit back and watch as a sort of ps chic d comp sition h s its w w h the int lectuali n of a th r k

“Hey,” she says.

“Huh? Sorry,” I say, a little stunned. “Think I blanked out there.”

“Tell me about what you’ve been working on lately,” she suggests, lifting the tiny white cup to her deadly red lips. “How’s the writing coming along?”

“Eh,” I say, “It goes as writing does. It looks as though I accomplish so little when the written words themselves are held up against the amount time it took to think them, to log them, to edit them.”

Starting to depress myself a little again, I scrabble for a change of conversational direction, something a little lighter, something a little less severe – but nothing comes up.

“Time,” I say. “It’s a bitch, right?”

She nods and smiles a little, lending herself to me so that I might find comfort in the illusion that someone actually gives a damn. The illusion that someone understands. The illusion that perhaps, just perhaps, I’m not completely alone.

Time. Goddamn time. I think about the last decade and how quickly it slipped by me, which in turn leads to me wondering just how many decades a guy has in him. How quickly would this next block of years fall away? And the next after that? Eighty years seems like a long time until you’re at the end of it.

I get lost in research during my writing, sidetracked to such a degree that I often wind up getting very little done. Immerse myself in stories of lost cities, wandering through the lush foliage around Machu Picchu, or setting off to the underwater city of Kitezh, and the glassy waters of the Lake Svetloyar beneath which it rests. I’ll find myself pondering curious technologies like the seventeen hundred year old Baghdad battery, ancient Egyptian flying machines, or the Antikythera mechanism, a twenty-two hundred year old analog computer discovered in a wreck of the coast of Greece. I’ll read about all of this and can’t help but feel that we’ve done all of this before. Over and over again.

A short block of eighty insignificant years is what we’re given to work with, and there’s this uncontrollable desire to be more than just a blip, this yearning to leave something more behind than just my DNA. I talk and she pretends to listen. To my babble about Teotihuacán, Calakmul, and secret chambers beneath the Great Sphinx of Giza. I talk, and as I do, a crushing wave of nothingness washes over me, stretching all the way from the beginning of time and rushes relentlessly on into the future. I’m speaking into vacant ears, thoughts crumbling away. And she can not understand – because I barely do, myself.

the smartish few

2007-01-29T14:29:00.000-07:00

“Throw yourself into whatever it turns out you’re good at.” That’s what your old man used to tell you with a half-read newspaper open in his lap, and one hand on the television remote, click, click, clicking. An ever present, teetering stack of dog-eared political books rested on the table beside him keeping company with a tottering pile of thick-covered poetry compilations. “You find one thing,” he said, “one thing you’re good at, and you stick with it. Go wherever your passions take you.”

So you did. No-one can argue that. You found you were really good at trying, so you dedicated yourself to that for awhile, trying to make it on your own in the worn out flats of deserted cities around the country, working in the soul-sucking company of better men that you. You tried and you tried. You tried so hard that you very nearly lost your mind. Suffered a collapse of sorts. Committed yourself. Got better.

You then discovered a knack for school, and decided to stay there for a time, haunting the halls of that dusty, echoing sepulchre, listening and learning, memorising and reciting. Stayed there perhaps a little too long with your old man’s words ringing in your ears. “A man’s got to stick with something,” he said. And you tried. God, how you tried. Kept residence in the crypt for so long that you began taking on the lifeless appearance of your fellows. Speaking the words of men long dead. Thinking the thoughts of those same. Writing their words. Got a couple nice pieces of paper for your trouble, and found yourself suddenly outside in the land of the living, blinking in a too bright sun. Drenched in its life giving light.

So now you’ve gone and immersed yourself in your work, accepting new positions, taking more money, doing less work, and really shooting up to the top or somewhere. Double cuffed shirts, platinum cuff links, and seven-fold ties – yes, you sure have become a reasonable facsimile of a successful man. Heads turns when you walk down the street and everyone now knows that you are, indeed, a man on his way up.

And your old man’s so proud. “You’ve really made something of yourself, my boy,” he says, clicking that television remote with one hand, absently leafing through a literary journal with the other. “You’ve really become someone. Just have to stick with it, right?”

And his tired eyes close just for a moment, and for that moment he is asleep and you’re alone with only an idea of a man before you. Then his eyes flicker open and his lips move once more. “Yes, my boy, that’s all a man’s got to do,” he mutters, “find something he’s good at and stick with it. You’ll find happiness and purpose there on that path to becoming one of the smartish few.”

queued

2007-01-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

Where are you now that I’m in the dark? Another languid notion sets fire to my arm, albeit a weak fire, and I raise that withering limb through the gloom, up to my face, where fingers proceed to kneed at the bread dough flesh of my clammy cheeks. You’re still not here, and the absence would be nearly too much for me too bear – if I were actually capable of caring in this state.

One more, I think, and a new energy flares up from within, sending my other hand groping in the drawer of the bedside table. I withdraw a bottle of pills, wrench open the top, and shake a number loose, feeling them cascade down about the exposed flesh of my chest.

Just one more, I think, frantically snatching up at least five of the little suckers before throwing them into my mouth. Swallow. All good. You’re still not here, and I’m still in the dark. But at least I’m not alone, swimming in a sea of multicoloured pills, tablets, and capsules.

I think I sleep. At some point. I sleep through troubling dreams of eternal absence, and an ethereal existence devoid of companionship and true, no, unfeigned attachment. Even in dreams I am without you.

A shaky kneed wandering through waste high grass along a cold mountain pass, continually weakened by a distinct lack of

what is it?

flare. That fire from within. You’ll wander because you lack direction, and you lack direction because you can not give up this desire for wandering. Feedback loop. Crackling static broadcast out to the stars. Schizoid delusions. Distinct lack of

what the fuck is it now?

a distinct lack of

out with it, man!

self. A distinct lack of purpose plaguing your continued pseudo reality. No bloody idea of who you are, only who you’d like to be. Always the dreamer, you trudge along through the wastes searching for something, anything, that will set your mind at ease.

A shaky need wandering through the waste high thoughts of an overwrought unconscious, growing ever distant, lost in a

no, not again. Can’t you stay on track for even one thought?

lost in a

in a

come the fuck on already!

feedback loop.

I’m awake, and my hand is madly clutching the telephone handset to my ear, and the droning buzz of nothingness on the line gets increasingly louder. I’ve no number to call, so I let the handset fall to the floor where shadows swallow up even the sound.

I’ve no number to call, no-one to talk to, so I swallow a few more pills and wait for the day. Wait for the day, when the sun comes out and life returns to this lonely side of the planet. Wait for the day, when dysfunction moves out and regret moves in. Wait for the day, when I return to my place in this existence, wedging myself into normal just right so that no-one is the wiser.

Where are you now that I’m in the dark? One thought replaces another, perfectly, seamlessly, so that there’s not even an overlap. Only a waking cascade of ideas, burn-through from the unconscious onto the subconscious and outward. Queued. Waiting to be spoken by these sickly lips to your absent ears.

gordian knot

2006-12-11T13:29:00.000-07:00

So you decide to drive some evenings instead of walk. Long, black car gliding effortlessly round snow packed streets, while the blue-white exhaust mingles with the breath of frozen passers-by, and the chrome grill grins and growls, pulling up at the stoplight.

You don’t notice the look of desperate admiration squeezed out of the driver of the foreign sub-compact next to you. You don’t notice, and even if you did you wouldn’t care. Above pretence, the car is more than a mere simulation of affluence. Above the rat race, the car is more than a status symbol. Above excess for excess’ sake, the car is more than the embodiment of greed, but is actually the embodiment of you. The driver. The man. The kingfish. You, who everyone else wants to be or be seen with.

Suckers. Red light turns to green, and your foot finds its way, romping on the accelerator, whipping the car into action. Speed doubles and redoubles, and before you know it, you’re cruising at thirty over the posted limit. But there’s no danger here. No. The car has been outfitted with every piece of modern automotive technology. Technology making deadly mistakes nearly impossible. Technology nearly erasing the possibility of driver error. Technology removing the need for driver skill.

So you sit back in the heated, plush leather bucket seat and let the car do the work, this magnificent piece of state of the art engineering. You sit back and you’re comfortable in the fact that you would have to actually try hard to fuck up this ride. Aim it directly at a light standard. Drive it off a bridge. Allow yourself to quietly drift into oncoming traffic.

Leather gloved hands rest easy on the custom steering wheel, and as you’re pulling into campus, you catch the admiring recognition on the faces of a few dozen students. This – this is the type of respect you live for. Not the acknowledgement of empty riches on your drive in from suburbia. Not the bullshit recognition of some fantasy brotherhood of the status quo. Not the mutually masturbatory reciprocal back-scratching of those at the top of the present class system. No. This – this is the only respect that matters.

You pull into your reserved parking stall, and as you do, a shadow falls onto the driver’s side window. The door is opened for you, and a hand is already in yours before you even get out of the car.

“Professor Wilkins?” an eager, young voice asks.

“Indeed,” you say, climbing out of your car, and shutting the door. “And you are?”

“James Levea,” he says. “Professors Duncan and Graham both said I should come and talk to you. Apparently you’re something of an expert on the subjects of myth and modernity?”

The simple recognition of a lifetime’s work. It’s all you want. Right? A young man asks for your help and gains your automatic approval. It’s the way of things these days. Getting credit for cognition. Approval for authority. Identification of influence. It’s more applause than flattery, but more fawning than applause. No. More adulation than fawning. Yes, adulation – that’s the word. Oh. Adulation.

So you choose to drive some evenings instead of walk. And you do so, knowing full well that the very attention you pretend to disregard is the exact same attention you crave. Your money, your importance, is importance gained through intellect. Your net worth is the recognition of your vast knowledge, and your net worth is the universal language of suburbia. An impossibly tight knot of roiling respect and rodomontade.

Yes, the car you drive, the home you live in, the clothes you wear, the life you live are all representations of your mental proficiency. You may deny it, you may pretend to not notice or care about the envy oozing out of those around you, but you can’t lie to yourself. No. You’re too smart for that. You’ve too good a grip on the ideas of myth and modernity.

There’s the crisp thweep thweep of your car alarm as you walk away, teacher and student, side by side. Your car, that beautiful piece of automotive science, is protected now. Protected from those who would seek to steal or vandalise it. Protected from those who lack the mental facilities, the cerebral adroitness, to obtain, honestly, such a symbol for themselves. Protected. The mechanical beast, cosseted, every bit as you are.

old klestehl (anaesthetic)

2006-12-04T12:35:00.001-07:00

In the early afternoon, I parted ways with Agamen near the entrance to the old quarter after repeatedly assuring him of my safety, and coercing him and the giant burlap sack of coffee beans into a taxi back to the hotel.

“I’ll be fine,” I promised. “Trust me, I’ve dealt with worse than common thieves and murderers.”

Agamen peered at me warily. “Well, I do not want to have to go and identify you at the morgue – or what is left of you. Something tells me these people would not stop at seizing your possessions, but would take your body parts, as well.”

I laughed, finding humour in Agamen’s habitual worry, but caught a hint of anxiety in my reflection as Agamen rolled up the taxi’s window.

Of course I would be okay. I was always okay. I had to be. And nothing strengthens a man’s resolve like dropping a few hours in a seedy tavern, so I ducked into a grimy tent in Old Klestehl’s south side and sat down at the bar.

“Your strongest,” I told the barman, slapping a large note down in front of him.

The barman, a dark young man in a crisp, blood red turban, stared at me a moment with black-ringed eyes. “You want strong?” he asked, rhetorically, “I give you strong.”

With that, he spun around, deftly snatching a half bottle of bright green liquid from the top shelf, slamming it down on the bar before me.

“You want glass too?” he smirked.

I nodded and grabbed the grimy glass from him, polishing it on my shirt before pouring a measure of the foul, emerald liquid into it.

The smell was a highly offensive combination of dirt and liquorice mixed with a hint of pine needles and cough syrup, but I lifted the glass to my lips, tilted my head back, and poured the contents down my protesting throat in one fluid motion.

Catching the heckling face of the barman just as my guts started to fight back, threatening to expel the evil liquor from my body, I managed to barely keep it down even while my face started to twitch involuntarily, and my teeth began to chatter. My poor senses, dragged from heaven to hell inside of one day.

“You like?” the barman wryly asked.

“No,” I replied. “But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Tell me,” he said. “What are you doing around these parts? We’re used to seeing the stupid, the crazy, the—”

“I’ve come to find someone,” I said. “A diviner.”

“Well,” the barman said, “You might be able to find an oracle or a soothsayer or two, but make no mistake – save for our coffee, you will find nothing of the divine here in Old Klestehl.”

favourite waitress

2006-11-17T09:38:00.000-07:00

I don’t need another admirer. Slobbering drunks, squandering their miniscule paycheques. The calculated arrogance of wannabe kingpins. Ignorant frat boys rehearsing for a lifetime of buffoonery. So easy to drop these people into tight little categories. No, I don’t need another admirer. Not here. Not them. Not now. Not ever.

A waitress hears things. A lot of stupid things. Oftentimes, not very nice things. Piggish remarks from loutish losers in their one nice shirt. Their going out shirt. You can spot it as soon as they walk in, all stiffened gait and awkward poses. Soon, one beer turns to six and the loud-talking begins – and everyone’s a winner, then.

“Hey, sweetheart – ‘nother round here?”

Sweetheart. I’ll never play sweetheart to any guy who would wear his sunglasses indoors. I toss him a nod, and—

“What time you off, anyway?”

“An hour after close,” I say, hurrying to scoop the empties from the table.

“You busy later?”

But the desperate words are spoken to my back as I rush away to the next batch of washouts. I don’t hear him when he calls me a cunt – or at least I’ll pretend I don’t this time.

To the bar now with a tray full of empty glasses drained by empty people. Finding humour, I’m mentally checking off all the things these guys do wrong, ignoring the Five Tips For Picking Up Your Favourite Waitress:

1. Don’t be a drunken idiot – I see enough of these. Stand out by not standing out. If I have to pick you up off of the floor, tell you to put your pants back on, or clean up your puke, you are getting anywhere with me. Seriously. You know what they say about first impressions, right? Well, I’ll tell you right now that you’ll do best to just not make one at all – let the losers around you be the ones to highlight your strengths, making you look good.

2. Compliment. Don’t tell me I’m hot – I already knows this. It’s my job. You’ve got to tell me something that I don’t hear thirty times a night. However, if you insist on mentioning my looks, just tell me that I’m pretty. You’ll get a lot more mileage out of that. I can’t stress this enough, though: forget about using those lines you’ve got stored away. You’re dealing with a professional, here. A girl who’s heard everything you could possibly throw at her. Don’t even try to be cute.

3. Tip well, but not too much. You’re not trying to buy me, here. You want me to know that you’ve got class, but that you’re not slimy. Get it? I’ll be impressed because you know how reward me for my services, not because you know how to use a bank machine to fill your wallet with twenties. A buck on a drink tells me that you appreciate my hard work. Five bucks on a drink tell me that you’re hard up.

4. Be witty – and by witty I don’t mean sarcastic. Everybody knows that sarcasm is just a dull man’s wit. Release your inner Oscar Wilde. Make me laugh. If that means verbally trampling on your mates, calling them out for acting like complete cretins, then so be it. You’ll be saying the things I wish I could, and the things I would if I wasn’t on the clock.

5. Finally, ask me to breakfast. Waitresses love breakfast. We work late, closing the bar until well after three in the morning, so we tend to work up an appetite. Invite me to that all-night diner you know about, the one tucked away down a quiet side street downtown. Chances are, if you followed the other four rules above, I’ll reply, smiling, “Sure, pick me up out front a little after three.”

I was once told that if one ever gets to the point of thinking she is better than her job, then she has reached that critical point where she needs to quit. Well, I know that am better than my job. I am better than this cage, and I am better than the beasts which reside within. But I’m trapped here by a steady flow of tips from the idiotic masses. See, it’s the money which has me donning this fake hair and fake smile night after night. These fake clothes, this fake perfume. It’s not me. None of it is.

A waitress hears things. A lot of weird things. Oftentimes, outright bizarre things. Cryptic remarks from that strange, strange man down at the end of the bar. The one in the wide-brimmed hat, and too-short pants. Shirt opened a little too far; chest, a little too hairy for my tastes.

“So, I’m barrelling down this ravine in the backseat of a taxicab in Bujumbura – or what they call a taxicab anyway, the car being over fifty years old and driven by a man who could only have been its original owner – and we’ve got at least three cop cars behind us.

“I’m yelling at the driver: ‘Speed up! Speed up!’ – but of course he doesn’t understand a word of English, so he begins to slow down. Just as he slows to the point where I think I could survive a jump from the moving vehicle, I pop open the door and suddenly I’m tumbling out into the night, through the brush, and into the tree line, still clutching to my chest the item I had gone there for – the Crown of—”

Suddenly, he turns to look at me, having noticed that I’ve sidled up alongside him with my empty tray in hand.

“Well, hello there, sweetheart,” he grins with perfect white teeth. “Another round for me and my friends, here?”

Sweetheart. Yes please. Those eyes. Sweetheart – I guess it’s all in the deliverance. “I, uh, yeah, I – I’ll bring them right round,” I stammer. I’m about to spin on my heel, my face aflush, when I’m caught off guard again.

“Say – you busy later tonight?” the strange man asks.

“No,” I chirp, barely audible.

“Good, then I’ll pick you up round three o’clock,” he says. “Having a little thing back at my place. Some drinks, some stories, you know the rest.”

I’m not sure I do know the rest, but I’m game. I’ll be there, waiting for him a little after three. I’ll be there and I don’t even know why. Just now, I’ve surprised myself – but it’s a good thing I like surprises. Just another reason, above and beyond the money, that I stay at such a crummy job. A girl can learn a lot about herself living in a cage of beasts.

in obscurity

2006-11-13T15:53:00.000-07:00

I am afraid of the dark. Even then, crawling my way through the void, that deep dark cavern, I was more than a little terrified. Water dripping on the back of my neck. Things brushing – crawling? – on my face. Cramped, with little room for movement, legs begin to seize up. Back spasms with each twist. Arms grow so weary. With each yard forward, a new stage of the fear was realised: with each yard forward, I was one yard further away from safety, one yard further away from the light.

I am afraid of the dark. Yes, even then, I was afraid. Of the darkness, of what my eyes could not see. Of the unknown, of what my hands could feel but not recognise. Crawling through the darkness, my fingers clawed at the dirt and rocks towards the artefact. I hoped. Even then I was drawn to the strange and unfamiliar even while I was frightened by it. That untried and unusual. That indefinite nothingness.

***

Flash to six months earlier and a time of light – breakfast in the stone portico of a tiny café in Colmar. She sat sipping weak coffee, and I sat gulping strong Alsatian wine.

“Any progress?” she asked, knowing full well that I would know exactly what she meant. Her eyes shone with genuine contempt, something true, a sentiment so real bubbling up from within.

“A little,” I said, ignoring the hostility. “I’ve a general location in mind. Details in the documentation are sketchy at best, but at least I’ve my maps.”

“General location,” she snorted. “You say this as though it’s a good thing. And those maps – what good will come of them if all you’ve got is this general location?”

“A little triangulation,” I said, finishing off the last of my fourth glass of Silvaner. A wine fine, elegant, and strong – just like her. “A little trial and error. Some guesswork—”

“Guesswork!” she laughed, the mockery tinkling out past perfect white teeth and red, red lips. “You’ll never get by on—”

“Educated guesswork,” I corrected. “Remember, I’ve a general location in mind. I’ve narrowed it down, at least.”

“This location,” she said, accepting another tiny cup of coffee from our young server, “will it see you leaving the continent?”

“Would you like it to?” I asked, arching an eyebrow in jest.

“I’ll tell you what I’d like,” she replied, “I’d like to see you actually enjoy a glass of wine for once, rather than swilling it down as though it may be your last. It’s not even noon yet.”

I laughed, twirling a fresh glass slowly atop the table. “Yes, this new adventure will see me leaving the continent – but I should think that I won’t be gone for a long time.”

“When will you go?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

“So, we’ve tomorrow then.”

“Yes” I admitted, “we’ve tomorrow. I was thinking we could spend the day up in the Vosges. Beautiful this time of year, I think.”

She didn’t respond, choosing, instead, to stare vacantly into her coffee cup. Anxiety welled up from her clear blue eyes. Unease pulled tight her fine lips. Hate made her grow suddenly old. She didn’t respond – she didn’t have to. She knew that the next day would be our last together. She knew, as I did, that I was a leaver. All the time, I left. It’s what I did. I was actually really quite good at it. Notorious.

“Don’t you think you ought to be prepared,” she suddenly snapped. “Don’t you think you ought to think things through, plan things out a little further, before you throw yourself blindly into something?”

The morning fell away to lazy argument, as my cares were washed away in a sea of Silvaner. The sun rose, and the shadows played their usual games, slipping silently from one side of the portico to the other. All the while, we sat. All the while, we sat, frozen in argument, wasting our second last day together. Choosing the easy comfort of hate over the complicated awkwardness of love.

***

Crawling through that cave six months later, I was almost wishing that I had decided to bring along those spare batteries for the flashlight. Almost wishing. Hands blindly grappling at rocks on the ground, feet scrambling in the dirt, I was almost wishing, then, that I had been a little more prepared. But a year’s planning! What more could have been done?

I am afraid of the dark. Then, as ever, I was afraid of the dark and the secrets it concealed. Inching my way through that pitch black tunnel deep within the ground, I tried to think of nothing but the potential end result. Me, achieving my goal. Me, clutching that ghoulish article in my hands at long last. Me, somehow finding it in that swirling eddy of soggy darkness.

Thoughts flashed quickly from darkness to light and back again. From inky caves to sunlit porticos. To her and her advice. Think things through, she said. Plan. Prepare. Organise. But all of the maps and charts, diagrams and graphs on earth can not help the man who is determined to lose himself. I know that as well as anybody. I, the man who will brazenly act on the first tip, following the whispers of a stranger in a backwoods inn. I, the man so crazed for knowledge that he will cut his life short to get at it. I, the man who will leave his spare batteries behind just because.

Suddenly, my fingers met the fingers of another there in obscurity, and I desperately grappled my way up a sinewy, dead arm, its hardened, ancient flesh like lacquered rope. I tried not to think about how close our faces really were as I reached a twisted neck right about where it should have been, and felt the dull cold of a braided strand of precious metal.

Her face, right next to mine. Though she didn’t breathe, I imagined that I could feel her breath on my cheek, escaping from the gaping dead maw of her petrified head. Cloves. I could almost catch the scent of cloves whispering from her mask of death, skin pulled taut, lips pulled back, with rows of hideous yellow teeth. I didn’t bring the extra batteries for my flashlight because I didn’t need to see this. I didn’t need to see her expression when I pulled the necklace from her long, lifeless neck.

the curse of tlaxacuhlta (movement)

2006-11-03T23:05:00.001-07:00

Kinesiologists will tell you that to engage in a run is to engage in little more than a controlled fall. Well, I like to apply the same logic and say that to live is to engage in little more than a controlled death. Each day we make a thousand tiny choices which enable us to keep on living. That’s all life is: a systematic flipping of switches allowing our lungs to keep breathing, our hearts to keep beating, brains to keep thinking, legs to keeps moving.

But what happens when we accidentally – or intentionally – flip the wrong switch? It’s not always instantaneous catastrophe. No, oftentimes a singular instance of flipping the wrong switch can bring us close to death, allowing a fleeting glimpse of the other side. We trip, we nearly fall, but we manage to stay on our feet. We keep on running.

Me, I like to experiment a little. Change things up. We decided to leave that evening, renting a car and driving all night from Texarkana to Laredo. Agamen didn’t sleep. He couldn’t. He just kept looking over at me every fifty miles or so, trying to project his worry onto me.

“What do you think we will find in Mar del Mar?” he asked at one point.

I glanced over with an easy smile. I could only see his wet eyes flash in the moonlight.

“We’ll find truth in Mar del Mar,” I said. “We’ll stare a four hundred year old curse right in the face – and we’ll be better men because of it.”

We drove in silence through Dallas and then Waco, until we hit Austin and the questions started again.

“What will you say to it, this curse?” Agamen asked. “What will you say when we are staring this curse in the face.”

“I’ve questions, Agamen,” I said. “I’ve questions. The same questions that are going through your worried mind right now.”

“But what if, what if we do not speak its language?” Agamen pleaded. “What if we get there, what if we come face to face with the curse of Tlaxacuhlta, and we are unable to communicate?”

I drove awhile, pondering this. I drove awhile, my jaw clenching and unclenching, with the answer to Agamen’s question tumbling through my mind, the answer which I was unable to expel from the confines of my skull. Fear is the universal language. The curse of Tlaxacuhlta will have no trouble understanding us.

We cruised through San Antonio, and after driving a total of six hundred miles across Texas, we pulled into Laredo a little more than nine hours after we set out. Knowing I was unable to bring the rental across the border, I ditched the car and we checked into a derelict motel for a little sleep.

I lied awake for a time, listening to Agamen toss and turn in the next bed over. The poor fellow was positively beside himself with worry and unable to sleep.

“Agamen?” I said.

“Yes?”

“You need to not worry so much – everything’s going to be okay.”

“But I am not so worried right now,” Agamen insisted, rolling over again, hard, on squeaking bedsprings.

“You’ve been fidgeting for fifteen minutes,” I pointed out.

“It is this bed – I think it is infested,” Agamen whinged. “It feels like bugs are crawling all over me.”

junction

2006-10-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

“Wait, wait, wait. Wait just a minute, here,” the kid says. Jarred, he’s called. You know him: university dropout, wannabe artist, a real player. He’s figuring this whole thing out, this life, this grand enigma. Yes, he’s figuring it all out, and can’t help but to share it with the world. He’s got ideas and wants everyone else to know – and everyone else just can’t wait for him to stop talking.

“What’s all this got to do with Hunter?” he asks. “You’ve been hanging around here for over a month telling these…these ghost stories.”

There’re nods of dumb agreement from the other drunks listening nearby. Murmurs of endorsement. A couple of encouraging “Yeahs.” One of the regulars, Clive, waves his hand, mumbling, dismissing the whole affair, and gets up to take his regular spot at the bar. Leon and Gus fall into arguing over who’s going to buy the next round, but Marty’s much too nimble for them, surreptitiously slipping an order to the waitress while they bicker.

“You come around here saying that you’ve met him,” Jarred persists, “that you know where Hunter is, but all you do is talk and talk about weird shit that nobody cares about.”

Every once in awhile, someone feels the need to address the elephant in the room. Every once in awhile, some brave, tactless, or just plain stupid person decides that he or she needs to point out the obvious. In this case, I can’t decide which category Jarred falls into, so I try a little deflection.

“I thought you were moving to Latvia?” I ask, drawing laughter from the other guys. “Not that I’m eager for you to go or anything, Jarred, but you were supposed to leave last week weren’t you?”

“I had to move my flight back,” he says.

“Money or girl trouble?” I ask.

Jarred looks a little nonplussed, but answers anyway. “Girl,” he says, before adding, “but I really don’t see how this has anything to do with what I asked.”

So I can rule out stupid as an option, leaving behind only brave or tactless – and my gut’s telling me it’s the latter. I remove my Panama hat, placing it atop the table, and I scratch a little at my beard. I’m thinking of what to say, of how much I should reveal. A good storyteller is one who knows just the right time to tip his hand – and how much.

“I never said that I know Hunter,” I say at last.

“But all that talk of pirates…” Leon says, looking a little puzzled, a little disappointed.

“That’s what it was,” Jarred says. “Talk. A story. Nothing more.”

I can’t help but to laugh. “It was a story, to be sure,” I chuckle, “but the stories I tell are not those of fiction. I never said that I know Hunter; I said that I know of Hunter. He’s a brave man, a courageous man. A man courageous enough to seek what is obscured by shadow. Courageous enough to pull back that curtain, to reveal what is hidden from the eyes of most others. Courageous enough to go out and find the answers for himself in the darkest of corners.”

All the eyes in the room are on me now, all the ears in tune to my voice. Glasses are raised halfway to lips, unable to go further. There is silence when I pause, and it is the eagerness in this silence which keeps me, as a storyteller, going.

“Me,” I say, “I come here as a raconteur. I come here with a little flashlight poking into the shadows, its beam of light falling on the nasty and horrible, the strange and wonderful, the believable and unbelievable things found within. I reveal these things to you, and you then decide for yourselves what to make of them.”

More silence for a moment.

“Any questions?” I ask, raising my eyebrows.

“Just one,” a more subdued Jarred says. “All of this, then – it’s all in some way connected to Hunter?”

“Yes,” I say, “it’s all connected to Hunter. Everything is. Everything and everyone on this earth is connected – remove the blinders and you’ll see. Dots will start to connect. Patterns will begin to form in the chaos. We are, all of us, pieces of this puzzle. We are, all of us, born with the ability to see the whole picture – but only if we want to. And only if we are then brave enough.”

scathing review

2006-10-18T17:36:00.000-06:00

Part of the problem with your art, I think, is that it is not good art, but simply art for art’s sake. Images, words, melodies without significance. Material without content. No inherent meaning, no…essence. Is that the word?

The force which may be called a living creature’s élan vital is decidedly absent in your work. Rather than thrusting meaning upon the viewer, your work sits back, passively asking the viewer to seek meaning.

“Find it,” your work seems to say, “I dare you.”

An inferior artist might call this absence of substance ambiguity and be done with it, saying, “If you can’t find the meaning, then you’re the problem.” A true artist, upon creating such an empty piece, will scrap it and start over, saying, “There was no meaning, it was not art. It lacked that…something.” And the word she seeks will be essence.

“But what of the surrealists?” the inferior artist will ask, desperate to align herself with someone, anyone. “Decades later, we’re still trying to figure out what their art meant.”

But it’s simply the difference between hollow and multifaceted work. The difference between a piece with no energy, straining the viewer’s eyes with its absence, and a piece bursting with energy, blinding the viewer with its brilliance. It’s the difference, really, between an idiot’s trite remark and a wit’s double entendre.

Is it not cheap to write a book without a plot and ask the reader to look for one? Are fancy words enough? Is spot-on grammar, impeccable punctuation, and a good idea enough to lay down a classic which will be enjoyed for generations to come? Is asking a whole string of questions a lazy way to get your point across?

Part of the problem with your art, I think, is that it is not good art, but simply the art of someone who wants desperately to be an artist. It’s easy to surround yourself with others who want the same thing and feel that you’re all really part of something. Slap each other on the back. Be supportive. Throw around words like profound, genius, and brilliant. And as long as you never look beyond your circle you will never be wrong.

But what if, on the way to the market to buy some milk, you finally run into greatness? To pass Picasso on the street, you’d have known you were approaching a great man. To stand in line behind Kafka at the till, you’d have known you were in the presence of an awesome mind. Will your fantasy life be able to withstand such a shock to the system as when you finally come face to face with true brilliance? Or will the integrity of your fantasy life be undermined and those who you surround yourself with be instantly revealed as what they truly are? Non-artists. Anti-artists, even. Not celebrated creators, but mere manufacturers. Manufacturers of style, of personality, of the very lives they live. Manufacturers without that élan vital. Poseurs, the whole lot.

trade secrets

2006-10-14T22:14:00.000-06:00

“Just flash a twenty.”

“What?”

“Flash a twenty,” I tell the guy beside me, some loser who’s been waiting for a drink, leaning desperately across the bar for the better part of five minutes. “Flash a twenty and you’ll get the bartender’s attention quicker. Pay with twenties for your first three drinks, and he’ll know you mean business. You won’t be waiting around like a chump after that. No way he’ll want you to walk out that door with a pocket full of unspent cash.”

The guy looks a little chuffed at my words, but reaches into his pocket for his wallet. There’s that initial look of panic when he finds it missing. Eyes fall to the floor, searching, and the poor idiot’s practically on his hands and knees inside of ten seconds.

I allow him to make an ass of himself for a moment before tapping him on the shoulder. He looks up at me, his eyes nearly feral.

“Another tip,” I say as he slowly stands up from the floor. “If you’re planning on leaning across the bar like that, you really shouldn’t keep your wallet in your back pocket.” I say this, and as I do, I toss his wallet onto the bar.

I smile as I watch a range of emotions flash across the guy’s face in half a second. Confusion. Realisation. Anger – the guy really wants to kill me, but is just smart enough to know not to try. Finally, there’s humility.

He mumbles something at me, I pretend it’s “Thanks,” and he withdraws a twenty from the coffers, clutching it in his hand on the bar.

The bartender is there in seconds, and a beer is slid into the guy’s eager little hand seconds after that.

But I’m not the kind of guy to say “I told you so,” so I just sit back and watch as the guy disappears into the crowd.

The bartender leans across the taps with a smirk on his face. “Spilling trade secrets again, I see?” he says.

“Somebody’s got to help these suckers out.”

“And who better to learn from?”

I chuckle.

"You’re one of the good ones, Casey,” the bartender says. “A real character, you know that?”

“Aw,” I say, with a depreciative wave of the hand, “I’ll bet you say that to every sucker in here.”

beau ideal

2006-10-12T14:21:00.000-06:00

When you realise that every place is the same, you will invariably be called home. When the mountains fall out of sight, when the ocean’s magic dries up, when the trees collapse away into the back of your mind, home is where you’ll want to be. So just let go. Freefall. You’ve a safety net right below.

When the present falls away, when that carpet is ripped out from under you, where else is there to go? Most will wind up plummeting to the past, pulled down by the desire for familiarity, tempted by ease, beckoned home by nostalgia. Others will step off that carpet on sensing the slightest tug. Step off to somewhere new. Step off to start all over again – only to find that it’s all the same.

Wherever you go, you are doomed to follow the pattern you laid out at home. Your body is little more than simple machinery intended to carry around your brain which is little more than complex machinery designed to reset to default. So that’s how it is that you, plunged into a new chaotic environment, will inevitably slip back to old orderliness, condemned by a sequence of habits, sentenced to sameness by your own system. It’s more than fate – it’s design.

“But this time’s going to be different,” the kid whinges. “I’m going to plunge myself into a totally alien setting. Someplace where I don’t speak the language. Someplace where I don’t understand the culture. A tiny place filled with the strangest of strangers, a small town in the middle of nowhere—”

Then you will find the least strange stranger of the bunch – or he or she will find you. You will naturally seek the one place in that town where you feel the safest, the most comfortable, the most, yes, at home. And from that point, it’s all downhill. You’ll be falling into pattern even while taking in your surroundings, learning the language, immersing yourself in the culture. And soon you’ll be nothing more than yourself in another place.

“I’ll leave everything at home,” the kid cries, “everything which reminds me of home will be left there. I’ll pack light, you’ll see. Everything I need, I’ll find in my new home—”

But there are things you’ll bring along with you that don’t quite fit into a suitcase; things like memory, nostalgia, and yearning. Things you’ll bring along with you that you don’t need to sneak past the watchful eyes of airport security; things like regret, doubt, and worry. These are the things which conspire against change. These are the switches which will force you to reset to default.

How soon before you realise that every place is the same? Perhaps when you’re sitting, alone, at the bar of the most comfortable watering hole in your new town. Perhaps when you lift that first pint to your lips. Perhaps when the waitress smiles that same smile she smiles all around the world. Perhaps then you’ll realise that you’re not anywhere new, that you’re not doing anything different.

The barstool will quaver slightly with the realisation, and you’ll look down to ensure that the floor beneath is still sound. What if the floorboards were to suddenly fall away? What if they fall away, and you fall with them into the void below – where will you be? Freefalling in the darkness. Tumbling through the air. Plummeting home.

penumbrous leanings

2006-09-27T16:50:00.000-06:00

Have I gotten away, then, from what I originally set out to do? That writing without structure. That writing without hope. That writing without care. Have I gotten away from the ease of the improvisational, trading down for the burden of the calculated with the hope that I might discover a new voice within?

“When’s the next article due out?” Gus sweeps a hand across his comb-over, dabs at his glistening forehead with the corner of his serviette, digs back into his mountain of fries and gravy.

“I told the boss I’d write another review when somebody writes something worth reviewing,” I say.

Mouth full, Gus smirks. “So, you’ve finally reached that point, hey?”

“And what point would that be?”

He swallows, stuffs another forkful past his puffy lips. “That point in your career when you’ve reached the top,” he says, between chews, “when you’ve gone as far as you can go and can no longer resist the temptation to sabotage yourself lest you go mad with the impossible desire for more, more, more.”

Those days when writing came easy, bubbling up from the depths. Those phantom conversations, two voices echoing up from a dark chasm. Who spoke? It didn’t matter; what mattered most was what was said. Those distended thoughts, thoughts allowed to grow exponentially before being brought back from the brink of verbosity. But who thought, and why? It didn’t matter; all that mattered was the idea.

“That’s absurd,” I scoff, sipping at my vodka tonic, not even believing myself.

“That’s reality,” Gus tells me. “A little self-subversion. You’ll knock yourself back a few steps if only to make room for forward movement. Trust me – I reached that same point five years ago.”

I cock my head slightly, thinking. “The air rage debacle?” I ask.

Gus nods. “And I haven’t made a film since.”

“Sort of undermines your theory doesn’t it?” I ask. “You know, the whole making room for forward movement thing?”

“Well,” Gus says, sheepishly, “sometimes it takes a little longer to pick yourself up after you’ve knocked yourself down – and it doesn’t help that Happy Hour at this place is three hours long.”

“I hear that.”

That broken writing, words layered on top of words, signification covered by symbolization. I could ask, I could ask you or I could ask myself: who wrote, then? Who wrote and for whom? I could ask, but I would only be setting us up for disappointment.

Have I moved onward and upward, then, from what I originally set out to do or am I simply the victim of a creative devolution? One form changing for another. A backward movement of the artistic kind. A creative emollition? A softening, perhaps, of ideals. Trading the truth of extemporaneity for the falsehood of preplanning. A creative pollution. Indeed, a clouding of accuracy. Eclipsing genuineness. Obscuring ingenuity.

fork

2006-09-20T19:37:00.000-06:00

A simple thing, in the end, to look back and point out the exact moment in your life when you took a wrong turn. That moment when you neglected to look at the map. That moment when you let your attention stray. That moment when you ignored all the signs. A simple thing, in the end, to look back and say, Maybe I should have stuck to course, maybe I should have followed the predetermined path – or maybe you’ll just blame your co-pilot. Perhaps he or she should have said something.

“Is it so very wrong for a man of thirty-five to involve himself in a casual flirting relationship with a girl of twenty?” Leon asks, with a glimmer of that certain desperation in his eye.

At that moment, our favourite waitress, Janine, appears beside the table and we order up another round; Vodka for Leon and a pint of Stella for myself.

I allow a puff of air to escape my lips, throw my hands in the air. “It depends on the man,” I exclaim.

“A totally innocent flirtation from the man’s point of view,” Leon says quickly, oblivious to the onset of my exasperation. “Perfectly harmless. Friendly, you know?”

“Then it depends on the girl,” I sigh, already tired of Leon’s neurosis.

“Same thing on the girl’s end. Got a good head on her shoulders, that one.”

Janine returns with a tray of drinks, and sets ours on the table atop fresh coasters. She goes to make change, which Leon and I wave off, and turns to leave before suddenly stopping, turning on her heel. “Wait,” she says, pointing directly at Leon, “I’ve a tip for you.”

Leon crinkles his forehead, allowing the ghost of a condescending smirk to materialise on his thin lips. “All right,” he says, guardedly.

“Forget about the girl,” Janine says. “I was a twenty year old girl, myself, once. No good can come of this – trust me.”

And with that, she’s gone, off to deliver more drinks to the rest of the decidedly desperate.

The sheepish expression on Leon’s face brings a smile to my own, and I can’t help but to twist the knife a little. “So, tell me,” I say, leaning across the table, my voice conspiratorially muted, “does your wife know?”

Leon’s clearly horrified by the question, and his mouth hangs open on broken hinges. “Does my wife know that I’m infatuated with a twenty year old girl? What!” he shrieks. “Have you gone mad? Of course she doesn’t know!”

“Well,” I shrug, “how am I to know? For all I know, you could have one of them, you know, one of those open relationships.”

“Believe me,” Leon scoffs, “if my wife knew about this, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now. Never mind the open relationship – they wouldn’t even be able to give me an open casket at my funeral. My balls would be in the dog’s supper dish, my head would be mailed, express delivery, to the girl, and the rest of me would be buried in a shallow grave in the garden.”

“That bad, huh?”

The lenses of Leon’s glasses flash beneath the black lights. “I think there’s a reason you’re not married,” he points out.

I shrug, taking a few deep gulps from my pint. “Followed the signs, that’s all. Stuck to course,” I say, dabbing at the corners of my mouth with the serviette. “Most importantly, I listened to my co-pilot.”

Leon just sits there, tipping his vodka this way and that, letting the ice clink absently against the glass.

“Listen, Leon, don’t stray,” I say, sympathetically, my eyes momentarily meeting Janine’s through the crowd. “Just stick to the road you know. No good can come of this.” I pause to drain back the last of my pint before adding, “Trust me.”

life in the off-beat

2006-09-16T16:21:00.000-06:00

Keep the lights low so the patrons don’t see the grime, so the patrons don’t see each other. An age-old trick utilised by barmen down through the ages; illusionists, all of them. Building a haven from a hovel, a sanctuary from a shack. Keep the lights low so nothing is seen for what it really is: a wooden crate of cast-offs waiting to be picked up by the rubbish collectors.

“You always gotta play that jazz here?” Clive asks roughly, his eyes not budging from the paper in front of him.

I stop before him, resting on my elbows, leaning across the bar.

“What would you prefer I play, Clive?”

He looks up at me with bloodshot eyes over his bulbous, red nose. “Something with words,” he says, “I dunno – anything.”

“There are words,” I say. “Just have to listen for them.” I straighten up and begin tapping out a rhythm down the bar top with my index fingers. “Hear that, Clive? That’s a little off-beat syncopation for ya. A little stress between the beat.”

“Stress all right,” Clive snorts. “Little busy ain’t it?”

I laugh. “Just listen, Clive. You hear that? Hear that guitar riff, there?” I stop, cocking my head, concentrating. “Leads into a bit of call and response with the trumpet right aboouuuut…now. Cool, huh? You hear what they’re saying, Clive? You hear that?”

“I hear something,” he says, “the sound of a man losing his mind.”

“Okay, right here, Clive – the guitar says, ‘Clean, clean, come clean, baby’, and the trumpet says, ‘I’m as clean as I wanna be’, just like that. They’re talking to each other.”

“Right,” he says, “sure. How ‘bout you set me up with another pint o’ lager, jazz boy.”

“Coming right up, there, Clive,” I say, snatching a bleached pint glass from the end of the bar. “Coming right up.”

A forty-five degree tip of the glass, a simple pull of the tap, and I’m delivering a perfect pint of golden goodness into Clive’s hairy mitt. A quick glance at my watch reveals that it’s seven o’clock on the nose. Time to dim the lights a little more. Turn the music up just a notch. Get this night in gear. Evening staff will be showing up soon—

—and here’s Janine, one of my waitresses, walking in the door right now.

“Long hair tonight, hey?” I point out, as Janine ducks behind the bar to sort out her float.

“Yeh,” she says, looking up at me with that mischievous smirk. “Find the weekend tips are a little better with the wig.”

“Worth a shot,” I shrug.

Everyone here’s got a little trick; illusionists, all of us. Keep the lights low so the patrons don’t notice the wig, don’t notice the coloured contacts, don’t notice the look of derision on Janine’s face. Create a saint from a siren, a Venus from a vamp. Keep the lights low so nothing is seen as what it has the potential to be: something. The observer just needs a little prodding, that’s all.

Yes, there’s soul in the off-beat, only brought to the attention of an especially alert listener by the inclusion of an unexpected accent before or after the beat, creating a veritable auditory illusion - and that’s syncopation, baby.

the catechumen hustle

2006-09-14T18:45:00.000-06:00

Off shift, back in my civvies. Retired to the bar with a book opened on the table and a pint of beer in my hand, my brain soaks up words while my liver soaks up alcohol. Gone is the uniform of the servant, and on is the attire of the mistress. I’m in control, now. No-one’s lackey. If I had to build one more double latte espresso-chino with half decaf and extra low-fat foam I was seriously going to snap. A shadow sidles up beside me; a body slides into the booth opposite. Sara wielding an appletini. Speaking of servants.

“What are you reading?” she asks.

“Writing and Difference, I say, tacking on at the end, “Derrida.”

“I’m familiar,” she says with that hint of the aloof.

“One of those, hey?” I ask. “I caught the tone.”

“What are you talking about? One of which?”

“One of those holdouts from yesteryear,” I say. “One of those who still views Mr Derrida as an enemy of philosophy.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she says, “everyone knows Rorty is the real enemy of philosophy.” Sara smoothes out her skirt, recrosses her legs, and turns the appletini in her fingertips. “I’m just surprised you still bother to read this stuff at all.”

“Why?”

“I thought I remember you saying you’d never finished university?”

“I did, yes, but I don’t think there’s some kind of cap on my learning ability just because I didn’t get a degree.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” she says, sipping at her sickly green concoction. “I’m just surprised you bother, at all, to subject yourself to such opacity when you don’t need to.”

“To each her own,” I say, grimacing at Sara’s sugary potion.

Oblivious, Sara pushes on. “Why did you decide to drop out, anyway?” she asks.

“Drop out,” I scoff. “You make it sound like such a negative. We prefer opt out. We’re university opt outs.”

“We?” she asks. “Who’s this we?”

“My fellow revolutionaries and me.”

“Well,” Sara sneers, “you’ll call it what you will. Why did you decide to opt out, then.”

“Wanted to find an idea, to shake things up, to lead a revolt,” I say. “All things nearly impossible to do when confined to a classroom or auditorium ten months out of the year.” I pause to take a gulp of beer. “Better to be confined to a bar, I think.”

“Come on, seriously…”

“Seriously. I’m choosing to feed myself rather than be force fed,” I say. “It’s the difference between choosing to thrive on a nutritious diet of wholegrain breads, fresh veggies, and good, clean, meat, rather than merely subsisting on the unwholesome slop most are accustomed to. The difference between—”

“Are you saying—?”

“—the difference between intrepid adventurer and insipid milquetoast.”

Sara is clearly aghast. “So, you’ve really something against education, then!”

“No,” I correct her. “I’ve really something for choice is all. Carte blanche. I’ve also really something for courage, confidence, and creativity—”

“Verbal acrobatics and verbosity—”

“—all leading to certainty. Convinced?”

“Consternated is the word,” Sara says, with a modicum of disgust.

“Another C,” I wink. “I think you’re really starting to get it.”

pipe dream à go-go

2006-09-12T17:05:00.000-06:00

You are not a revolutionary. It’s the troubled dream of an adolescent mind to think that one might change the world. Might somehow make a difference. Might make one’s mark. No, you are not a revolutionary, not one to blaze trails, not one to call the shots – only the product of that age-old propaganda machine which has you believing that your life matters, that you are important, that you are unique. But you are not so much a puppeteer as you are a marionette. Dangling from strings. Played by fingers. Mouth chattering away.

“You like what you do?” I ask the cute barista from behind a steaming cup of morning coffee.

“I do what I do,” she says, cockily, blowing by me on her way to the espresso machine.

“How come you don’t wear a nametag?” I ask.

“Because this ain’t what I do,” she replies, peeking from behind stainless steel. “I only work here.”

Not a mover nor a shaker, not a rebel nor a leader – you’re no-one’s champion. More reactionary than revolutionary, you’re more than happy to don the uniform of an innovator once in awhile if only to have others believe that you are on the edge of something new. But you ain’t no pilgrim. Only a backyard camper in a shiny new pith helmet. Never venturing far from the comforting hum of electricity. Never straying beyond the familiarity of the manicured hedges. Never too far out of sight, out of mind.

“Probably meet a lot of losers in here, hey?” I ask. “Pretty girl like you must really attract them.”

“Nowhere near the level of loser they see here at night,” the cute barista says before adding, “but we do get the odd one.”

Ouch. She’s got claws, this one. A fragile little girl wearing the costume of a big tough broad, she has yet to find out that this is, really, what she does. And will do. Forever. Server – nothing more. Big plans, but I know all too well that her twenties will run out all too fast, and her thirties will rush in to fill the void. There will be a desperate grasping for meaning, a regret, a clawing at the past. Pessimistic? Naw, realistic. I hear, too often, the same story: they’re always better than their job. I’m only doing this for now, to save money, you know? I’m gonna travel the world. I’m gonna learn, like, seven languages. I’m gonna go back to school. I’m gonna—

“—need you to settle up your tab.”

“Pardon me?” I smile.

“I’m gonna need you to settle up your tab,” she repeats. “I’m going off shift.”

Yes, yes, run along, dear. You’ve things to do and you’re not going to get them done hanging around this place. Being cute. Forcing smiles. Serving caffeinated beverages to losers like me. Run along and lie to yourself some more. Start with an idea, put together an army, and change the world – at least until the start of your next shift. At least until you punch that clock, don that apron, and whip up that first double non-fat soy latte of the day.

Don’t worry – I’ll still be here. A defeated revolutionary, failed radical, conforming nonconformist. Sipping coffee percolated from the ground beans of some backward island nation. There’re tattered fatigues beneath this suit and tie, you know. Ragged ideas in this old head. I was once the guy. I was once the guy who was going to change everything. Now, I’m just a guy who has realised that he is unable to change the fact that he will never change anything.

schemata

2006-09-09T03:01:00.000-06:00

When I leave, will my ego leave as well? When I lift my ass up off of this stool, will he do the same? Will he follow me outside, across the parking lot, and onwards, home? No. Not my ego. My ego is apparently bigger than I am. That’s what she told me.

“You’re such an asshole!” Sara shrieked.

“So, you’re not going to go out with me next weekend?” I asked.

“I heard about you and the others!” she cried. “You make me feel special, you lead me on, and then I find out you’re flirting with practically every girl in the program—”

“But none are as pretty as you,” I lied.

My ego. He’s bigger and can hold more alcohol, so he decides to hang around a little while longer. Discord, here, while the flawless reflection looks back through the mirror at its flawed origination. It’s the personification of Lacan’s Ideal-Ego and Ego-Ideal; the Beautiful Me sits politely at the bar making witty conversation with strangers while scoffing at the Ugly Me tramping around the room bumming cigarets, leering at the girlfriends of other guys, and getting into fights. Stirring up all kinds of—

“You all right, there, Marty?” the bartender asks.

“Yeah,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Look a little dazed, that’s all.”

“Naw,” I say, “I’m fine. Thinking about work tomorrow. Another day at the pulpit, you know how it is.”

The bartender laughs and sets up another gin and tonic, the first sip of which nips my parched lips and the rest of which bites at the back of my arid throat, the tonic’s bubbles like a pack of rabid dogs.

Work tomorrow. I sneer. Work. Another day in that infernal hall. Another day at that rotten lectern. Another day preaching lies to the masses. If I’d have known then what I know now, that life in the belly of this dead and bloated institution would be so depressing, I never would have bought those lies all that time ago. Could have broken the cycle. Would have been one less echo in the—

I spot a student across the bar. What’s her name? Millie? Camille? Emily, I think. Cute little thing. Grad student, right? Philosophy? I can’t remember now. These days, they all seem to run together. Our eyes meet, she smiles, and is suddenly on her way over.

“Professor Wilkins?” she asks, beaming.

“The one and only,” I smile, my eyes momentarily dipping down to her cleavage.

“You want another drink?”

“Does a philosopher value opacity?”

She laughs, sits down on the stool next to me, and orders two gin and tonics from the bartender.

My eyes drift lower, down to her denim mini, down to her creamy white thighs. By now, I’ve lost track of which Me sits on this stool, and a hand finds itself on the small of her back. I’m leaning in, close, and filling her ear with disingenuous compliments, really laying it on thick.

“Are you familiar with Lacan’s Graph of Desire?” I ask.

“Vaguely,” she says. “But I’m sure you could fill in the gaps – in my understanding of it, I mean.”

“Of course,” I chuckle, “I’d be glad to. Say, what are you doing next weekend?”

mot juste

2006-09-08T17:59:00.000-06:00

So we’ll take this discomfort, then, and give it a new name. A name easily recognisable as something unwanted. A name easily recognisable as something undesirable, something unwished. This silence. This awkward, incommodious silence. It looms suddenly, a dark cloud above us, before falling down and wedging itself into the small space between. This fog, this unwieldy lack of words, this lack of communication – it shall be the death of us. So we’ll take this discomfort, then, and give it a new name.

But what should we call it?

“I can say it again,” he says. “I’m sorry I didn’t show up.” He’s fidgeting, really squirming in his seat. He’s lying. “I just didn’t – didn’t – I had this other thing that I—”

He’s lying, and while he does, I’m left with nothing to say. How does one respond to a boldfaced lie? Resentment? Anger? Fury? None of these things would make any difference – it’s not a lie if it’s a truth to the liar. So we sit, again, in quiet. This dreadful, uncomfortable silence. What should we call it?

“Listen,” I say. “You don’t have to—”

“No,” he says, interrupting, “it’s just that I want you to know that I didn’t forget, that I knew we had a date, but I just had this other thing – you know?”

And we easily slip back into silence. Staring at the table. Picking apart our napkins. Shuffling our feet.

The French probably have a word for it, this silence, them with their words to describe the indescribable. Their déjà vu. Their demimonde. Their avant-garde. The Germans, too, with their feared compound words, the awful German language as Twain dubbed it. Yes, they would have something – and if not, a word could easily be created.

He gives me that smile, and I laugh a little. We’re being silly, of course. There’s nothing wrong here. Our eyes quickly meet and flit away. Dreaded silence melting away to something more innocent.

“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him. “I just want you to call next time you can’t make it.”

He averts his eyes.

We both know that there will be a next time, and we both know that he, again, won’t call. We both know these things, but it seems to not matter at the moment.

So we’ll take this discomfort, then, and give it a new name. A name easily recognisable as something unwanted but something innocent. A name easily recognisable as something undesirable, something unwished, but something unsullied. This silence. This awkward, naïve silence. It emerges suddenly, a gauzy mist above us, before falling down and wedging itself into the small space between. This haze, this unwieldy lack of words, this lack of communiqué – it shall bring us together for the time being. So we’ll take this discomfort, then, and give it a new name. This silence, this façade – we shall have to call it something.

thick

2006-09-06T18:58:00.000-06:00

“So I told her, I told her, you can’t tell anyone anything about themselves that they don’t already know. I said to her, I asked her, why should he believe you if you call him up with all this garbage about how he’s irresponsible, about how he’s a jerk, about how he could be a better man?” Leon pushes his glasses further up onto his nose before continuing. “If he doesn’t believe these things, if he doesn’t see these things in himself, and, in fact, sees the exact opposite, then her breath is going to be going to waste. That’s what I told her.”

I want to tell him to stop. I want to tell him just to stop talking, to take a break, to have a few gulps of that beer instead of sloshing it around all over the table. Goddamn hand talkers. Goddamn beer wasters. Goddamn time stealers.

“So, I’m telling her all of this, and she’s just telling me all of this other stuff about how he thinks he’s this and he thinks he’s that, and I tell her—”

The bartender catches my eye, clocking my agony, really recognising my annoyance, and shoots me a smirk. He knows. Leon and I have been coming here for years, financing the place with our debauchery, and he knows all about Leon’s wanton verbosity. Makes me wish we were at our usual spots, hunched over the bar, side by side, bullshitting - least then I’d have the bartender to save me from this torrent of talk. But he had to talk to me about something, he said. Something private.

“He’s not going to believe it, you know? I told her that flat-out. If a man doesn’t see in himself the flaw that another is pointing out, then why should he believe it?”

I offer up a little shrug and a bit of a smile while dabbing at my temples with the corner of a napkin. I run my hand through my hair. Take a sip of my beer.

“I said to her, you’re going to point this out, expecting him to see it, too, and he’s just going to think you’re being a bitch. He doesn’t think he’s irresponsible, he doesn’t think—”

He doesn’t think – and that’s the problem. Leon doesn’t think of himself as a long-winded bore, so there’s no need to tell him that he is one. His theory is correct, but his delivery is a little lacking in pizzazz. Lacks that zing. That zest. That dynamism. Too many words to express a single thought. I listen, and as I do so, a smile creeps. Here’s Leon, before me, proving his own theory through his own actions.

“—wasting her breath,” he says.

And I desperately want to waste my breath, too. I want to tell him he’s an egotistical bore, a real drip. I want to throw the word soporific out there. I want to tell him he’s grating. I want to, but I won’t. After all, you can’t tell anyone anything about themselves that they don’t already know.

faux fur and fishnet stockings

2006-09-05T17:18:00.000-06:00

Everyone here’s on their way to checking out. They’ve had their little trip. Bags sit, packed, on unmade beds. There’s the cursory glance around a half-lit room to check for the inevitable – something potentially left behind. Nothing found. Short trip, now, to the front desk down dimly lit hallways, feet treading on threadbare carpet. An anxious glance behind. Tense. Hands clench.

Who sees more than a bartender? Years piled on top of years. Hours poured, the last ounce from an empty bottle. Minutes rung from a terrycloth towel. Glassware clean and sparkling, lined up in brass racks above. A veritable wall of booze behind. The crystal clean bite of a good gin. The warm amber of an aged whiskey. The top shelf where only the bravest dare to venture. Who sees more than a bartender? Not many. In here, the world is easily divided into two types of people. Me and everyone else.

Before me, the usual row of sad sacks and schlemiels. Snakebitten duds and luckless losers. Underdogs and also-rans. Good old Clive, right there in front. Civil servant and non-starter, his eyes rarely move from the newspaper before him, page always turned to the financial section. Gus and Leon down the way. Critic and washed-up filmmaker, together at last. Words fly, as words are wont to do, on drunken pomposity and dirty wings.

Emily, leaning through the regulars, chockfull of studenty potential, face radiant with the glow of an ever distant future, turns up the charm as she produces another folded twenty from her purse. I’m over in one second flat, pushing another bottle of brew across the bar.

“Still waiting, eh?” I ask.

She just smiles. She smiles through it, stood-up again by the jerk she’s dating.

I’m reaching for that twenty, and as I make change, instinctively sliding my tip into the spill tray, my eyes flit to the end of the bar where a stranger’s setting up shop. Bottle blonde and bogus bust. Faux fur, fishnet stockings, and a fake Fendi purse. That type - you know the one. Always selling some kind of image. Looking for just one more look.

The boys at the bar have taken notice, and I watch, bemused, as they try not to. Try to be civilised. Try to be just a little discreet. Distracted, conversation goes astray, and Leon’s left to clean his glasses on his shirt while Gus runs a thick hand over his immaculate comb-over. Clive’s eyes dance down the stock columns, unable to read a line, until he can’t take it anymore and cocks his head, staring at the beast balanced on a stool at the far end of the bar.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him, sotto voce, “I’ll handle ‘er.” I smile and zip away.

Within seconds, I’m leaning across the bar, breathing in cheap perfume and second-hand smoke. Drugstore shampoo and cherry lip-gloss.

“Manhattan,” she purrs, producing a hundred from the folds of her faux fur coat.

“I can’t break that,” I tell her, matter-of-factly. “Got anything smaller?”

She smirks and reaches into her fake Fendi, producing a five.

“Better,” I smile, snatching the bill from her hand.

I set up the drink, and slide the glass across the bar along with her change, which the wannabe socialite promptly waves away as though she can easily afford to do without. Instinctively sliding my tip into the spill tray, I move on to tending to the lemon slices before being called over by a thirsty Leon.

“Another?” I ask.

“How about a couple,” he says. “Got another coming by in five. You remember Casey?”

I do. Another lost soul wandering alone down a darkening corridor. Yes, everyone here’s on their way to checking out. Whether they’ve been here for a quarter century or it’s their fist fifteen minutes, they’re on their way out the door. It’s universal. Inevitable. Unalterable. They’re all handing in their keys one shot, one highball, one pint at a time. I’m just here to make sure their checkout goes smoothly.

crumble

2006-09-01T18:32:00.000-06:00

I am an archive,
a lonely monument to the past-
watch me deteriorate.

airport dreams

2006-08-26T14:46:00.000-06:00

Woke to dreams of political intrigue played out in the discothèques of a post-war Russia. Dreams of conspiracy and subtle manoeuvring, a crafty wrenching of one man’s life into the lives of others. Not so much a wrenching as it was a tinkering, gentle coercing, a tender coaxing. The difference between working with a tiny set of jeweller’s tools rather than the mammoth wrenches of an airplane mechanic. All of this action set to the vacuous beat of some nameless DJ’s uninspired soundtrack. Little more than Muzak. That background noise transmitted over the telephone to the ears of the on-hold. That filler to take the place of the dead silence of an elevator. That gormless tune played over the inferior speakers of an airport waiting area.

Dear god. I had drifted off, only to awake, once more, to find myself still curled into the tiny, unforgiving, plastic chair of an airport waiting area. Same insipid song playing. Same faceless waitees beside me. Same ache in my back. What is there to say about airports? Nothing that hasn’t been said before, I’m sure. Cold and utilitarian. Sterile, but not. Everything built with functionality in mind while creativity was left by the wayside. Shrines to the uninventive. More a sepulchre, perhaps, for the staleness of one architect’s unimaginings.

An already draining experience is made only more draining by the soul sucking environment one is steeped in while resting in stasis within the purgatory of the airport. Boredom is bloated. Anxiety is augmented. Loneliness amplified. I took a sip of substandard coffee from a cheap paper cup. Leafed through some pages of notes I had been taking before the collapse. Soon found myself out of my chair, clinging desperately to the plastic handset of a payphone. Dialled the number of an ex just for the hell of it.

Two hours more, and I had explored every explorable deplorable inch of that colourless structure. Spelunked through the yawning caverns of the souvenir shops. Reconnoitred the vast stretches of the duty-free stores. Traversed the wilds of the food courts. I was ready to board. And I was ready to be bored on a whole other level - for the wan surroundings of an airport do not even begin to compare with the totally bland interior of an airplane. There, once past the invasive searches and accusing eyes of security, I would be subjected to a higher plane of boredom. Films of yesteryear, screened for our mental safety. Tasteless gin. Poor company.

There, hunched into that polyester clad, stain resistant seat, I would fall asleep to troubling dreams of cursors blinking and untyped pages. Unwritten stories and things I have yet to check off on my ever lengthening to-do list. Subjected to horrifying nightmares of demonic robots giving chase, all glowing, red eyes and sooty, black breath. Forever running and getting caught. No leg room. Screaming babies.

Eyes will open to headache inducing yellow light. Panicked lungs filled with fake, opaque air. The grotesquery of a stewardess’s counterfeit smile. Somewhere, my ears will pick up the soothing manufactured melody of a piece of piped-in Muzak. On the wings of these artificial notes, consciousness will give way to unconsciousness, and the adventure of a clandestine cybernetics smuggling operation played out in the glittering future world of a pre-disaster France. All will be well for awhile. Packed into a steel tube. Hurtling through the blue, blue sky. Going elsewhere. Always elsewhere.

anamnesis in minor (canada, and memories of)

2006-08-13T15:02:00.000-06:00

Who was she, then, sunbathing on that southern beach beneath a hungry, orange sun? Lying tummy down, top untied with bronze back glistening, hair piled up. Rousseau’s Reveries of a Solitary Walker lay open before her, nearly forgotten, pages absently flipping on the fingers of a warm breeze. And what was it the breeze searched for over her shoulder? Which Walk did it seek? Just as Rousseau was able to find a haven in nature from the fickle, if not outright nasty, human world, so, too, did she on that day. Fingers trailing in soft white sand, sun hot on the back of her neck, mind a mere 93 million miles away.

“We don’t have to leave, you know.”

I heard her, barely, but there was no response to be offered.

“We can stay right here,” she said, her words little more than a mumble lost in the crashing of the Great Lake’s waves.

I pressed my feet further into the hot sand, jaw clenching. NK could do that to me.

“No-one to bother us,” she continued, “no-one to get in our way.”

I opened my mouth to speak, only to close it again. Mind change. I pushed the sunglasses further up onto the bridge of my nose, just for something to do.

Who was she, then, walking across campus in the inspiring cool of autumn? Great, felt coat wrapped around her, plaid scarf warming neck, furry, black hat pulled down low onto ears. I carried her books for her, just like the boys did so long ago. That scarf, I thought. Nuzzled up to creamy white, strawberry scented skin. Embracing her. Protecting her. That lucky, lucky scarf. JE could do that to me. Drive me right out of mind, right out of my senses. We walked, warm shoes clicking on old cobblestones, past the engineering building, past the annex, past the library. Cool breeze nearly breaching the upturned collar of my loden coat.

“We could leave, you know.” I said this, knowing full well that she really couldn’t.

“Right now?” she laughed. “And where would we go?”

“We’ll dump these books and head north to T______. Find a little café with a nice stone fireplace. Sit reading to each other from the new journals until they kick us out—”

“You’re being silly.”

“All right, then,” I said, wrapping my coat tighter around me. “We’ll take a little drive south until we find a suitable honky-tonk. Drink cheap draught until we’re walking all crooked. You can teach me how to two-step—”

“Really now, that’s even more ridiculous! I’ve a class in twenty minutes – my students are likely showing up already.”

“Keeners, eh? Just throwing some options out there,” I quipped. “How long have you been stuck on this campus, anyway? Between student life and—”

“A decade, at least. A lifetime? I don’t know,” she shrugged.

“What did Bacon say of studies?” I asked, arching an eyebrow with some dramatics.

“I don’t know – what?”

“To spend too much time in studies, is sloth.”

JE smirked. “I’d have to read the work to understand the context.”

I laughed. “You’re hopeless – but I love you anyway.”

Who were they, then, these women, these indefatigable memories? Little more than reminiscences cut from the satiny, star flecked cloth of experience. Pasted on the gossamer paper of mind. Bound between the worn covers of this illusory scrapbook. Strong women, obviously, for who else could so easily traverse the wilds of time? Independent women, apparently, for what other type could make such a deadly lonesome journey from past to present seem so effortless? And they would keep coming. Lying in my bed at night, I would often be visited by their spectral visages, their haunting, lingering voices.

“You could leave, you know.” Her voice, a whisper in the dark.

“I can’t,” I said. “I’ve responsibilities now – anchored, like.”

“No-one to bother us,” she continued, “no-one to get in our way—”

“Oh,” I interjected, “I can think of a few people who would get in our way.”

“We’ll take a little drive south until we find—”

“No!” I shouted angrily through the dark. “Responsibility aside, there’s accountability! Answerability! Liability, even!”

“Liability? Really?”

“Well,” I blushed, “it just sounded good.”

“You haven’t changed have you.”

“No,” I mumbled, rolling over and pulling my blankets up over my head. “I guess some things never do.”

the old man's promise (russia, and memories of)

2006-08-04T22:10:00.000-06:00

Time yawned, stretching its weary arms from the comfort of a hammock strung between the crinkles in an old man's aged eyes. We had met the old man, the inn's proprietor, in the inn's tavern on that first wintry night in Moscow. The tavern empty but for DB and I, the greyish old man invited us to sit with him at an elderly table in a forgotten corner of the bar. Being guests to his country, we could find no easy way to decline; so, the old man set down a bottle before us, along with four smudged glasses.

"I promise," he said, sitting down, staring at us intently across the table from behind his grizzled beard. He roughly opened the bottle of vodka to make his point. "I am a man of my word."

DB and I looked at each other sceptically.

The old man went on. "SK, my granddaughter, she has a way of knowing," he said, carelessly tossing the bottle cap across the room. "She has a way of knowing the future."

DB smirked, and snorted, "Impossible," while the old man set up our drinks.

"Oh, quite the opposite," the old man rejoined, his dark eyes stealing through the lamplight. "Very possible, in fact. My grandfather, her great-great, was chased out of Hungary by a fearful lot after he was found to be in possession of divining paraphernalia. His son, my father, SK's great-grandfather, bought his life and freedom from the concentration camps by secretly reading the futures of his Nazi captors. After the war, he fled to Russia where he met my mother, the daughter of a cobbler."

"And you?" DB asked. "Are you in cahoots with the future, as well?"

"Me? Not so much, no," the old man said with a dismissive wave of his wrinkled, liver-spotted hand. "Weak blood, you know how it is."

I fidgeted in my chair, made suddenly uncomfortable by all that talk of prognostication. The freezing wind pushed against the small, rattling windowpanes beside us, sending flurries of oversized snowflakes whipping chaotically at the glass.

"And where might one find Savka?" I asked, taking a nervous sip of strong vodka.

"There are some things you wish to know, yes?" The old man asked, smiling.

"Who doesn't wish to know what the future has in store for them?" I snipped, defensive.

"Not me," DB replied. "I'm more than happy to wait out the storm."

"Your friend here is not a very good liar," the old man joked, thumbing towards DB. "Anyway, to answer your question, my friend – SK and her good-for-nothing husband keep a penthouse in the Sadovoye Koltso. She's done quite well for herself, you know."

"Well, how can you not do well for yourself when you can see the future?" I said. "Talk about your safe bets."

"I suppose, hey?" the old man shrugged, gulping back half his glass. "So, where's the third?"

I looked confusedly to DB and then back to the old man. "The third what?" I asked, perplexed.

"My daughter told me I would be visited by a group of three foreigners on this night," he said, clinking his glass to the extra one he had earlier set on the table, "yet I see only two sitting before me."

DB laughed. "I'm telling you—"

At that moment, the front door opened, and SA tramped in with a blast of cold air and a whirl of snow.

"Right miserable out there!" he exclaimed, stomping towards us across the worn floorboards.

The old man smiled, and set up another drink. "Welcome to Russia!" he cried out, genially.

the right time (europe, and memories of)

2006-07-29T16:57:00.000-06:00

An old cobblestoned quarter in Vienna, luxe-bohemian, a little too trendy for my liking. The type of scene that never fails to make me feel a little awkward, a little out of my element, all touristy inside.

Turning down a narrow side street, claustrophobic, devoid of natural lighting, depressing, with just a touch of the suicidal, my feet walked towards our predetermined meeting place, a little café tucked away beyond a crumbling stone vestibule. Little more than a walk-in closet, really. I noticed her hair at first, auburn and long, hanging down about petite shoulders.

"La police, ne t'a pas encore trouvé?" she asked on first seeing me. NK smiled big, stood up, and wrapped her slender arms around me. She was so small, I felt as though I might have been hugging air.

"That's some greeting," I whispered in her ear.

"You are a wanted man, yes?" she asked playfully.

"By some people, I suppose," I acquiesced, and draped my loden coat over a tiny chair at the tiny table. "So, you've been reading Mirbeau?"

"Yes," she said, "Le Jardin des supplices, but how did you-"

"Oh, you've that look about you," I said, "like you've been flogged by a thick branch of solid pessimism."

"Really!"

"No, not really," I laughed. "You mentioned it in your last email."

An unnecessarily standoffish waitress came over, tiny, dark eyes, and stiff, irritable lips. NK and I cast an uneasy glance across the table at one another, before finding the courage to order.

"A croissant for me, thank you, and a cup of your strongest coffee," I said, adding, "I'm a little on the hungover side today."

"Today!" NK scoffed. "Try everyday," and she turned to face the waitress, quickly asking, "Parlez-vous français?"

The waitress smirked, then snorted, "Oui."

"Une café au lait s’il vous plaît," NK perkily responded, smiling.

"Con piacere."

I waited until the waitress had turned on her heel, stalked behind the bar, and was out of earshot, before I leaned across the table and jocundly demanded, "Why not just order in English? Italian, even!"

"It's a French drink," she coyly replied.

"It's called the same in English! You would have got what you ordered either way!" I exclaimed. "And why not just have the milk put in it? It's going to wind up there anyway."

"I like to add it as I go," NK shrugged, "different amounts of milk at different times during the drinking process depending on my state of mind. And you," she accused, pointing at me across the table, "you should know better than to order a croissant outside of France."

"But the Viennese make perfectly fine pastries!" I protested.

"Pastries, yes, but you'll never find a better croissant than a French one."

We argued like that until the afternoon grew into evening, and it came time for me to go and meet SA and DB. In an old cobblestoned quarter in Vienna, luxe-bohemian, a little too trendy for my liking, I sat at a diminutive table arguing with a willowy young woman about all things from art to life and everything in between. But schedules must be adhered to and I had a train to catch. I would see her again, to be sure, but not for awhile, and nowhere near that place.

Standing, we offered each other a hug in the vestibule, and I held her close, my face buried in her hair, auburn and long, hanging down about petite shoulders. We broke, and I stood back to get a good look at her face.

"Bonsoir, my dear," I said. "See you again soon."

"A presto," she smiled, her eyes dancing mischievously. And with that, she turned and walked away, new heels clicking down an old cobblestoned alley.

trapped in mind

2006-07-11T19:44:00.000-06:00

More yielding than assentive. More submissive than yielding. More acquiescent than submissive. Acquiescent; yes, that's the word. Thrown from the back of my throat, bounced off the top of my tongue, and squeezed out through the teeth, the word lands on the table between us, and we both stare, shocked, as though it were the rotting corpse of a dead trout.

"You have the gall to say that I, me, that I am acquiescent? I don't know if the word means the same as it did last time I used it, but I seem to recall it meaning something along the lines of 'willing to carry out the orders of another without protest'? Is that what you think? That I'll just go along with anything?"

Flies buzz. The carrion festers on the table between us like so much dead meat. Silent, I raise my eyebrows, and my pint to my lips. Not much to say when I'm right; no need to underline a fact. I wince almost imperceptibly as the acrid Japanese beer scores the back of throat, this same throat which recently managed to disgorge the diseased carcass before us. This caustic beer, antiseptic - I take another sip.

"You're telling me that you think perhaps there was some kind of choice? That perhaps I could have just gone another way, done another thing? That there even is another way? You don't know-"

You'll keep talking. You'll keep talking until you believe these things you say. Until all of these lies turn to truths. You'll turn from mere acceptor to believer. From convert to devotee. From doctrinaire to dogmatist. Yes, you'll keep talking until you believe your self. But, if there's one thing I've learnt in life, it's that while you may be able to lie to your self, you'll never be able to lie to your best friends. We'll see right through it.

"Another way! There is no other way! Pursuit of empty goals. Chasing meaningless dreams. All a man needs is-"

-acquiescence.

Apparently, all a man needs is acquiescence. Yes, all a man needs is to have the ability to believe unthinkingly. The resourcefulness to follow. A keen desire to find comfort in the echo chamber, and a need to make a home there. All you need is to finally make that jump from proselyte to prophet. To cross that nonexistent bridge between nothing and nowhere.

Acquiescent. A stench rises as the corpse begins to suppurate, its decaying flesh rotting and cracking, releasing streams of yellow-green puss. I catch the waitresses eye, and consider asking for cutlery. Delicious antagonism - I've a heaping plate of it before me.

You continue your rant, and as you do so, your voice fades into silence. Your lips move, but you're saying nothing, and I lift my eyes to the window beyond your shoulder. Clouds are rolling in, turning the afternoon sky from brilliant blue to dull grey - but it's all the same in here: a smoky haze and nicotine stained lamps, the fading wallpaper of decades gone by, books as ornaments high up on crumbling shelves. Years upon years of bullshit; not a shovel in sight.

what you do to me

2006-07-03T17:13:00.000-06:00

Why write? Nothing more than a little exercise in bridging the gap between what is real and what is not, what has happened and what never will, things actually done and things only dreamt. It's a short step from possible to impossible, but a step that will not, no, can not ever be undertaken by anybody - except in writing. It is for this reason that a writer writes: to experience unreality, to live the unliveable, to wake in a dream. To take that step.

My foot falters.

I am haunted. Tormented by this great asomatous beast forever on the horizon. A beast I do not run from, but instead run towards. I am a hunter; my game, plot. I wish to capture it, encage it in a prison of black and white words, put it on display for the whole world to see. And if I can't take it alive, I'll take it dead. On the wall of my study, a trophy, this monster's taxidermied head.

"Why write?"

I listen to the clink, clink, clinking of your coffee spoon, while searching for an answer in the swirl of cream in your cup. You wait for my words, brushing aside a lock of blonde. Then, your painted lips part, as if to speak again - but I can't let that happen.

"Because," I say. "Because I have things that need saying, and the only way to say them is to write them." There is a better answer, I know, but somehow I just can not put it into words. My gaze turns, instead, to the café window as if what I search for lurks out there in the street.

"And if you don't?"

"Pardon me?"

"What if you don't write?" you ask, taking a sip of steaming coffee. "What if you do something else instead? There are things that pay better, you know."

"If I don't write them," I say, "if I don't get these thoughts onto paper, then they bouce around in my head, and things get all muddled up in there." I pause briefly to root around in my pocket, looking for change. "And trust me - you don't want that. By the way, how much for mine?"

"Don't worry about it - get me back next time."

"Thanks," I say. "Listen, I've got to run. Call you later."

I'm in a hurry now, weaving between the tables towards the front door. Close, now, to the outside. Close, now, to an idea. Growing faint. In one motion, my hand is pushing open the door, and I'm about to step through, when I'm suddenly blinded by the midday sun. I'm just about to cross the threshold when

my foot falters.

Row upon row of polished oak pews, they sit, forever transfixed. Transfixed, because they found another to guide them. Transfixed, because they found someone to interpret Those Pages for them. Transfixed, because they saw the future reflected in his three hundred dollar gold-rimmed shades. In this old worn photo, he leans over the pulpit, all starched white shirt and gleaming epaulettes. He stands, eternally frozen in time, mouth agape, with those brilliant white teeth, in mid proclamation. The choir, having lost their collective voice, stands behind him, silent; everyone waits for the other to make a move. No-one does. Not now. Not ever.

I awake on the dirty sidewalk an indeterminable amount of time later with a crowd of concerned faces around me. You're there. I've been gone maybe seconds, maybe eons, but I'm back now, and you still look the same. A rope of blonde hair lightly brushes my cheek, a soft hand grips my rough one, and in a moment I'm back on unsteady feet, with a bruised shoulder and mangled pride. war wounds.

Injuries sustained during my latest hunting expedition.

attraction

2006-06-27T20:51:00.000-06:00

The Ego has a nightmare, and wakes up long before I do. He tramps grumpily around the house for awhile waiting for the coffee to percolate, the scent of freshly ground beans teasing his nostrils at every turn. On edge, he chews on his thumbnail while staring vacantly out the front window. Then, summoned by a desperate whinging, he lets the dog out for a piss.

I pass him on the stairs awhile later, and he just looks at me with these dark eyes as if to say, "I'm going back to bed - don't even talk to me." So I don't, and I make my way to the kitchen where I pour myself a cup of coffee, add a little Irish Cream, and sit at the table where I watch the dog sleep by the patio door, her legs kicking and lips curling. Bad dream, I think, and lift my tired eyes to the window.

Downtown in the afternoon beneath overcast skies, I pull my coat around me, its pockets heavy with books. Hegel's Science of Logic and Georg Lukacs' The Theory of the Novel tug at my waist, making their presence known. Striding hurriedly down the street, I'm sipping greedily at a paper cup of cheap coffee, watching people move in and out of buildings like shadows.

We're all ghosts down here, I think. Non-bodies gliding this way and that, spectral entities going about their lonely daily business, the true tragedy of it all being that though they are cut from the same cloth, they possess no conscious knowledge of one another. Rain starts, quickly turning to hail, and I duck into a portico, instantly melding with the stone.

But I can't wait around for long - there's another to meet. Just one bundle of atoms begging to move on, to move on and hook up with another. And these hands. These hands which will so easily forget the mind that they rely on when the waist they're wrapped around is yours.

Walking down the street,
I'm pulled in your direction;
a kind of subatomic coercion,
an extrasensory connexion–
confidante.

the experiment

2006-06-24T16:01:00.000-06:00

Easily the stupidest thing you've ever done. Soft white walls growing softer and whiter as the shit seeps into your brain. Slow haze and roiling guts, present fiction mixes with past reality forming a virtual psychoaudio collage of indeterminable quality. The angle all wrong, the ceiling stretches to become part of the wall.

No doctors. No, sir. Not me. Doctors are like goddam auto mechanics. Fix one-thing, unplug another...

Ratso. From the other room, fucking Ratso and Joe squawking from the television.

Well, just exactly what the hell you think you're gonna do? Die on me?

I'm going to Florida, that's my only chance.

You know what's wrong with you? You got fevers. You kinky as a bedbug. How you gonna get to Florida?

Are we there yet? Are we fucking there yet? Your shuddering turns to convulsions as you let loose a stream of vomit onto the kitchen floor. Hands and knees now. Steady, old boy - this is just an experiment. You remember how it is right? The sickness will pass. The sickness will

Why are you keeping this?

Jane. Janie, no. Janie's voice rises up from last month, an old conversation crackling out of the ether. A dusty old recording. Analog reel-to-reel.

I thought you were through with that shit...

I just-

What, are you going to start using again?

I just keep my old gear around as a reminder.

Bullshit.

It's not really quitting if you never have to resist temptation.

The tape snags, stretches, and snaps, your voices lost in the past, as nausea gives way to bliss. On the edge of Euphoria now; a warm, fuzzy blanket. Almost there. Just push on through.

When I put you on that bus down to Florida tonight, that'll be the happiest day of my life!

There are big, gaping holes in the fabric of time. The clock's hands skip seconds and entire blocks of minutes, jumping and jittering around the face.

You get your first palm tree in South Carolina.

You're telling me you keep this shit around so that you don't use it?

How'n hell a dumb Bronx kid like you know that?

I'm just saying that if I'm never tempted, I'll never know if I can resist-

Where the hell did you get a stupid idea like that?

I read it.

I read it. Saw it in some article about a month ago-

Shee-it. You believe all you read?

And you believe everything you read?

INT. LIVING ROOM - NIGHT

"What have you gotten yourself into, huh?

A mess. A goddamn mess. Treated to a private laser show, the stars explode in the heavens above. Your stomach is rattling the cage door, wanting desperately to vacate its confines.

"If you have to shiver, why don't you pull the blanket up more?"

Hurts. Hurts so bad. There's a pain now, right behind those closed eyes. Eyes as good as welded shut, and a mind that just will not wake up. Want to go. Want to get the fuck-

"Shhh - baby, be quiet, lie still. I'm-"

-out of here.

"-here now. I'm here now. Everything's going to be okay."

futur parfait

2006-06-17T17:04:00.000-06:00

You're little more than a faint voice nearly lost amidst crackling static, a tiny, tiny voice pushing her way through great, jostling, white and black globs of interference. I'm holding my cell phone up to my ear, and squinting through the train window into the gloom.

"I'm sorry dear, but I can barely hear you."

"Je serai-" Fade to fuzz. "-avant que-" squealing dissonance. "-arriviez."

"Pardonnez-moi. Really, now - my reception seems to be almost nil. Can I call you back when I find a more reliable telephone?"

"Je serai-" Urgent now, but this line, as well, deteriorating, crumbling away like those before it.

"Listen, the train is just about to depart. I'll call you right back."

Clicking my phone shut, I'm just about to get up from my seat when the door to my cabin is opened, and in blows a whirlwind of long legs, Luis Vuitton, and platinum hair.

"I'm sorry," she breathes, "I wasn't sure anyone would be in here."

I just stare, partially standing, my mouth agape.

"I think this is the right place is it not?" she asks. "Cabin B-2?"

"Yes," I acknowledge with some apprehension, "but I really wasn't expecting anyone."

"I know, and I hope you're not upset that I'm here," she says before nibbling at her bottom lip. "It does seem, though, that they have gone and overbooked themselves."

"Well, I'm not upset that you, in particular, are here, but I did pay for privacy," I say. "Now I'll have to rearrange my stuff." With that I begin clearing the other seat of my belongings.

"I'm sorry, but is that your phone beeping or mine?"

"It's mine," I say from amidst a great pile of things. Balancing my appurtenances in my arms, I attempt a clumsy gesture for the woman to sit in the newly vacant seat across from me. "Sounds as though I've a message."

All at once, the train lurches to life, there's a little confusion, and the two of us resort to sitting in silence as it gains speed, whisking us from the grey concrete of the platform into the barren yellow countryside. The mammoth machine settled into motion now, we fall into a semblance of relaxation, tranquilised by the droning thrum of steel rolling on steel.

"I'm sorry," I say, offering my hand, "I think we got off to a bad start back there."

She takes my half smile, making it her own, and takes my hand as well, shaking it gently.

"It's perfectly fine. Understandable, even. My name's-"

There's another beep from my phone.

"I think you're still beeping," the woman says, with a chuckle.

"Yes," I smile, "you'll have to excuse me while I check my messages."

Phone pressed to ear once again, I hear your voice now, clear as ever.

"Je serai parti avant que vous arriviez. J'expliquerai plus tard pourquoi."

I click my phone shut.

"Something the matter?" the woman asks.

"Seems as though I'm on a train to nowhere," I say.

She just looks quizzically, unsure of what to say.

"So, where are you off to?" I ask. "Maybe we're going the same way."

futur proche

2006-06-16T15:00:00.000-06:00

There is one question on the mind, and yet a whole host of letters waiting to be hammered onto screen by eager little fingers. Vocalisation, those words sung from another room, forcing a disconnect between that which is thought and that which might soon be writ; ideas not yet formed into words, interrupted, instead, by incessant half-threats.

"Je vais partir!"

How long will she wait? In my mind, there is an image of the impending paragraph; a photograph of an idea, I suppose. I know the number of lines this future paragraph is going to be composed of, and even the number of words in each line. There will be no waste, no unnecessary words, because such verbosity is intolerable, even inexcusable. No, there will be no waste, because such waste is not only supererogatory, but actually totally impossible. After all, an author is not actually capable of writing more words than is required to express an idea of his or her own.

"Je vais partir!"

How long, how long? The singsongy tone lost, and replaced, instead, by breathless fervency. Exasperation? She's going to leave, yes, but when, and will I be with her? At which point does the immediate future happen? When threat becomes reality. When the bolt is undone, door is opened, when threatener crosses the threshold and threatenee is left behind. It is at this point that she will walk arm in arm with the Present across the threshold, and the Future will slip inside, unnoticed, through the closing door.

"Je vais-"

"Just a minute, please."

The Future waits just on the other side of that door, an unwanted guest longing to breach the peace of my house. I hear, now, its hand rattling the exterior doorknob, and I'm out of my chair, running down the hall.

"Just a second! I'll be there!"

A head full of ideas, but not a single one transcribed. Frustration. To see life, to truly see life, to understand life at all, will bring about a yearning to make art of it. Will give birth to a restless desire to copy it. Could very probably hurt one psychologically to some degree. Truth through rose-coloured glasses; writing's just the price I pay.

futur simple

2006-06-13T15:59:00.000-06:00

How can the Future endure us? It sits, waiting patiently, in a small café outside of time, outside of mind. But the Future is never bored. No. In fact, the Future, right now, flirts unabashedly with a barista while sipping from a cup of strong Turkish coffee.

"Explain the weird taste in drinks," she says.

"It's simple, really," the Future replies. "Unlike your common, vastly inferior percolated coffee, this coffee takes time and effort to make. Listen to me now: the freshest of roasted beans ground so fine so as to be almost powder; an easily dissolvable, but equally tasty sugar - my personal favourite being blanco directo; filtered water; fresh cardamom. All of this is mashed together and boiled three times with time to cool in between." The Future closes its eyes for a moment, taking a sip, savouring the taste. "See, this relatively lengthy process cultivates not only the best tasting coffee, an unparalleled gustatory enjoyment, but a sense of satisfaction as well. And you will certainly appreciate the effort spent - you will have no choice."

The barista rolls her eyes. "You should write commercials," she suggests.

"Perhaps something for the future."

"That reminds me - you know what else Turkish coffee is good for?" the barista asks.

"Hmm?"

"Tasseography; a form of fortune telling. The Turks read their futures in the grounds left at the bottom of their coffee cups."

At this, the Future just smirks and stares at the waitress for a moment. "Come on..." it says, "who do you think you're talking to here?"

Smiling sheepishly, the barista blushes and mutters an apology.

***

"How can the Future endure us?" I ask, taking a brief sip from my Turkish coffee. "It knows not what or who it is waiting for, but it waits for us all the same. Twiddling its thumbs. Lying on the sofa with a television remote in one hand and a domestic beer in the other."

"I'm really curious," the barista starts. "Why do you suppose it is that you're so stuck on this idea of the Future as such a passive entity?"

"What other life is there for it?" I ask.

"I suppose one could go another route, she says, "and suppose that the Future is an obsessed collector. Cataloguing. Creating databases. Constantly researching. You know, taking an active part in its own neurosis."

"I don't know if I'm sold."

"Or maybe," she says, "it's a narcissist. A misogynist. A megalomaniac. Perhaps all of the above."

"Perhaps," I say, "but for now, it waits - I've no reason to believe otherwise."

"Vous changerez," she tells me. "You, too, will change."

And I've no reason to disbelieve her.

"Tell me," she says, "have you heard of tasseography?"

confidant

2006-06-12T15:08:00.000-06:00

Misery hangs. Its body swings slowly with the breeze, toes thumping on aged floorboards with each morbid sway. A fraying rope begs to be severed, whispering promises of sweet release which seem lost in the cool night air. Yes, Misery hangs, its eyes bulging amidst a bloated purple face, twisted, like the coils of the noose around its neck. Having kicked out the stool, it had only a split second of reservation - but by then it was too late. One second to fall, but falling forever, offering up an eternity of regret and the thought of but a single line: "I've fallen for you." This, perhaps, an extreme example of what the intelligentsia might call esprit de l'escalier.

—The above image, either wishful thinking, fraud, or outright fabrication.

***

It had been raining for days already when you called.

"Did you hear?" you asked.

My silence told you that indeed I had. Incapable of putting Grief into words, I could only stare out at the wind whipping the trees, the rain battering the window glass. Finally, a question came to mind.

"If Misery is truly gone, then what is this?"

You paused a moment while tailoring a response. "Perhaps Anguish or Heartache has been given a promotion."

"Perhaps," I agreed. "Or maybe Dolour - it really has been unappreciated in recent years."

"True, true."

"So, when's the service?"

"Wednesday."

"You going?"

"Of course.

"Then I'll see you there."

And with that I set down the phone, unwilling, unable to speak any longer. Although it may have appeared as though Misery had left this world, I knew this could not be the case.

—The above dialogue, either hallucination, delusion, and certainly fragmentation.

***

Misery hangs out. If not truly Misery, then its spirit, at the very least, has set up shop, made itself at home in my home. We're flatmates of a sort. It hangs out with me in the evening, sitting beside me on the sofa as we watch television. I want to watch sitcoms, while it insists on watching game shows. I bring home a case of Coke and it derides me for not choosing Pepsi. Yes, Misery hangs out and will not leave. It cooks elaborate meals, using every pot and pan in the kitchen, and does not clean up after itself. It wears its shoes in the house - a sore point between us. After a particularly nasty fight which saw us accusing one another of living fake lives and dying fake deaths, I fled the house and was arrested on the stairs by the sudden manifestation of a witty retort - a witty retort which had come just a moment too late. At once, I felt a chill across my shoulders in the shape of a ghostly arm, and we walked down the stairs together, me smiling, alone with my thoughts. L'esprit de l'escalier. My old friend.

—The above scene, personification, a play on words, and abstraction.

Last day of the punk show

2006-06-02T18:46:00.000-06:00

"Someday," you say. "Someday we'll go back down there. Late at night like. We'll dress all in black," you say. "Black jeans and hoodie. Maybe I'll even dig my old Ramones sweater out of the closet for the occasion. Pair of black Chucks for creeping around all quiet like. What do you say? You in? We'll pry open that rotten door at the back. The same door we used to skip past the line at. All those suckers waiting in line; you remember that? Head in through the back door," you say, "jump up on stage and give it one last go. You'll have your guitar and I'll-"

"Hey-"

"What?"

"The old hall burned down years ago."

"Really?"

"Four years at least."

"Oh."

Circa 1992. Lost in the pit, just a boiling mass of bodies, ripped jeans, and concert tees, damp with sweat and beer. Blood drips from my nose, the result of a wicked elbow to the face; an anonymous hit - no harm, no foul. My own knee connects now with the cheekbone of another, sending us both crashing to the sticky floor. There's the mad scramble to resurface before it's too late. Before we're trampled to death. My eyes briefly meet his through the chaos of legs and I'm offered a bloody grin. "No harm, mate," he seems to say. That second, we're both pulled back into the fray by the anonymous hands of the mosh angels. Got to rediscover the rhythm. Got to slip back into pattern, that swirling, agitated muddle. Got to get back

to

now.

Back to the calm of a sunny suburban day. Relaxing in the easy comfort of my backyard patio, I watch as you adjust the umbrella to better shield our eyes from the blazing sun. Hoisting my bottle of imported beer, I prompt you to do the same and offer a toast.

"To temporality," I say.

You echo the sentiment before allowing our bottles to clink.

"You know what the true failure of suburbia is?" I ask.

"Enlighten me."

"The true failure of suburbia," I say, "lies squarely in the very safety we all seek here. Its failure lies in its homogeneity, its uninspiring blandness, and in its rampant unoriginality. Where are the weirdoes and freaks to inspire our future children? Where are the decrepit arcades and concert halls they'll frequent?"

"Downtown, of course. They'll move out of here as soon as possible," you say, "and move downtown."

"I know. And then the adult switch will get flipped like an overloaded breaker and they'll all move back out here, each with the same burning question on their lips: why did I ever leave?"

"So much for antiestablishmentarianism."

"Ha!"

"You know, we used to mock this life and now we live it."

"There's just no way of getting around the way things are meant to be," I say.

"Formulaic, our lives."

"It's the natural progression of things," I say. "We all grow up yearning for anarchy only to wind up embracing antiquity."

apart

2006-06-02T00:21:00.000-06:00

A sliver of light
divides dawn from night-
and me from you.

how novel

2006-06-01T08:02:00.000-06:00

Manuscript-
five hundred pages
of bold-faced lies.

fight

2006-05-29T18:28:00.000-06:00

Ringside seat-
a drop of blood
on my dark glasses.

steps

2006-05-23T21:25:00.000-06:00

Grasshopper-
a small step for one;
a great leap for another.

greener in the morning

2006-05-15T18:31:00.000-06:00

Delia once told you of a time when she thought that death was transitory. I was convinced, she said, that death was a state which existed for only a short time, fleeting, like dew on the morning grass giving way, vanishing, at the sun's first caress. It comes from nowhere and disappears to the same, she said. From nothing we emerge and to nothing we fade.

I find, you said, that the morning dew has this peculiar way of making the grass seem greener; an illusion, of sorts, which is vanquished by the gushing of sunlight in the mid-morning. Free moisture saturates the structure of the leaves creating a temporary flushness, leaving the lawn rich as a dole deadbeat on cheque day - by afternoon, the lawn will have returned to its usual depressing, achromatic yellow-green.

Delia only nodded knowingly, not at all surprised by your observation, and told you of how death would bring the same ephemeral crispness to life by way of juxtaposition. But you'll only have a second to enjoy it, she added. The sun, that destructive ball of fire, is relentless and would soon burn off any moisture accrued during the cool of night.

So is night then life and day, death? you asked, made a little uneasy by this sudden turn in words.

Only for the purpose of this conversation, Delia said. Only for right now.

Light and dark; death and life.

They could each be each, you know.

Light is death to dark and vice versa.

And there is always a transition.

Something in between.

Dew on the morning grass.

The chill of an evening sun-

-making the grass seem just a little greener.

connexions

2006-04-23T19:13:00.000-06:00

What do I remember? Recording music in the sweltering heat of a cramped studio in Namibia. Just the three of us, our instruments, and pages of music decaying in the torridity. Sweat dripped, staining notebooks. Sweat dripped, causing ink to run. Sweat dripped, smudging lyrics, altering them, rewriting them as we played. Stringed instruments had to be retuned throughout the day due to drastic changes in temperature and humidity. But we played, suffered through that lengthy session. You can still hear the heat, the near suffocation, in those recordings.

"We've managed to trap disomfort there in those tracks," you said.

Indeed, the day's swelter had infected the music - and we were happy for it.

What do I remember? The slushy streets of Manhattan in November and a much-needed lesson in the ownership of knowledge. I met you and another - one of your students - at a previously arranged coffee shop in the theatre district. Having got there first, making myself comfortable in front of the fireplace with a book, I stood up, embracing you in a warm hug before I introduced myself to your company. After the introduction, the student, her name was Elise, pointed down at my book and asked what I was reading.

"Critique of Dialectical Reason," I said, adding, "Sartre."

You looked at the student, beaming, and said: "See, I told you. Can you believe he spends his time reading such stuff?"

The student shook her head, looking at me in disbelief. "You read for pleasure the stuff we read out of necessity," she said. "Can't think why."

I smiled a little, catching the mischievous twinkle in your eye, and I turned back to the student, Elise. "Two people read the same book," I said, "one because she wants to and the other because she has to. Who's going to get more out of it?"

She didn't answer; she didn't have to. We all sat and ordered up a round of caffeinated beverages and flakey pastries. Talk spun naturally from philosophy to art and onto life in general, while wet snowflakes the size of silver dollars stuck to the windows before melting into individual streams running down that glass. Talk spun naturally in that way that it is wont to do when the right people get together. That day, that snowy day in New York, we were those right people.

What do I remember? A long, strange trip between the moon and the beach of a tiny lake in southern Ontario. High on mushrooms and E, feet pressed into soft sand, digging deeper and deeper, seeking the cool, never finding it. The twinkling stars above with their swollen coronas. Our naked elbows resting on hot sand, feeling each and every grain digging happily into skin. You were beside me, as we watched the others wading in the placid, blood-warm waters.

"How do you know if you've found the right woman?" you asked.

I considered this question for about an eternity. It was a good one, as all questions are when you're that high. I searched the stars for an answer then, and found one floating in the yellow starlight glistening off a tiny ripple on the lake. I let it drift all the way to shore before I picked it up with my eyes, let it settle into my brain, and allowed it to work its way out of my mouth.

"You'll know you've found the right woman," I said, "if she makes a good batch of pancakes."

I could see you nodding slowly in my peripheral. Understanding. Fully.

We were connected, then, all of us. Those resting on the beach, those wading in the waters, those exploring the trees - we were connected, then. Each of us with the same questions on our lips, and the same answers in our ears. Each a thread woven into the same length of cloth, rolled tightly into a bolt. Connected. One. Always.

divertissement

2006-04-22T17:19:00.000-06:00

"Let me get this straight," you say. "The idea, then, is to write a novel that is completely untransferable to any other medium? Can not be translated to film? Can not be interpreted as a play? Can not, even, be effectively recorded as an audio book?"

The distance between these two cities has been shortened to such a degree that one city has grown right into the other. The line which once separated them, the barren fields of retired farms, has disintegrated entirely in recent years creating a new sort of barren in place of the old; that of an endless sea of cantankerous factories perpetually exhaling thick, black smoke into the sky, coupled with their callous cohorts, the automobile dealerships.

Adrift, now, in this unwelcoming grey sea, this space, this non-space, between cities, adrift, now, in our rented Toyota Prius, we talk if only to distract each other from the ugliness of outside, the slow but steady death of nature beyond our windshield.

'Can not' runs circles round my brain as I try to wrench myself back into our world of light conversation, new car smell, and Joel Plaskett on the factory stereo.

"Well, perhaps 'can not' is a little strong," I reply. "Certainly one would be perfectly able of forcing these transitions, but the idea is that the finished product will always be lacking, will always fail to live up to the original."

"Interesting," you say, absently flipping through the collection of CDs in the console.

"I'd like this novel to be as locked in its medium, as impossible to cover, as a Nirvana song," I continue. "Sure, it can be done - done by anyone, in fact - but it can never be done well."

"I really think you're on to something, and I'm eager to see how such a novel should turn out. Mind if I switch discs?" you ask, holding up a classic - Palace Brothers' There Is No-One What Will Take Care Of You.

"By all means," I say.

You exchange discs and within moments the controlled discord of Idle Hands Are The Devil's Playthings fills the car.

"By the way, how goes the writing these days?"

"These days, the novel practically writes itself," I say. "I've no control anymore. What started out as a vague idea, a seed, easily sprouted to a couple thousand words and onward to a healthy plant of twenty thousand strong. There was a bit of a struggle, then, for control over this unruly foliage - the taming of a concept I suppose - but once I was past that hump, it was all downhill from there-"

"-or uphill depending on how one looks at it."

"Indeed," I agree.

"So where are you at now? Progress-wise, I mean."

"Hit sixty thousand words last week, so I'm three quarters to my projected end total."

"Excellent job, mate."

We enter the city proper now, slowing slightly with the traffic, marvelling at the choppy Great Lake on one side and the concrete jungle on the other. It is here where nature and civilisation have made a reluctant truce, here where one pushes slightly on the other, deadlocked forever.

"At that rate," you continue, "you should be finishing up your first draft in, what, a few months?"

"Yeah."

"Do I detect a little trepidation there?"

"A little, I think. See, the thing is, it's going so well that I don't really want it to end," I say. "I'm starting to feel like I could go on writing this novel forever. Like maybe, just maybe, this is the novel I always have been writing and always will be. Like perhaps there is no beginning and there is no end."

The city swallow us whole, a sheer wall of concrete and glass rushing up alongside us now as the lake slips out of sight behind us.

"And can a novel exist without those two things?" you ask. "Without a beginning or an end?"

"Doing without a beginning is easy," I reply. "Authors do it all the time. Doing without an end is another matter altogether."

"Too true," you nod. "Ending a novel without ending the story is one definite way to infuriate your readers."

"Exactly," I say, "and one doesn't ever want to do that - right?"

haunted province

2006-04-18T21:11:00.000-06:00

Sometimes one needs to see the words written down only so that one can see them erased, typed up only so that one can hit delete, or said only so that one can take them back. Juxtaposition: sometimes a bad idea needs to be expressed only so that one can watch it flounder in a choppy sea of good ideas. Stark contrast: a fleck of black makes white seem whiter. It's like this whenever you go there.

Trips south under a fresh spring sun. Top down, and the roar of that old 318 sings perfectly in tune with tires humming along on aging asphalt. The highway's broken centre line skips by at one hundred, twenty kilometres per hour, hypnotic, while your head nods and your eyes fight to stay open. Serenaded by an endless line of country rebels. The ancient radio, with its one crackling station, plays on. You're strung out, son.

Just yesterday, you witnessed the beginning of the end of the world - but now you're not so sure. It was during one ten hour mescaline trip where the hours clicked by in double time, and the future flitted wildly back to you, stuttering like a nervous schoolboy. Eyes all black with that characteristic pupil dilation, images of the end, bright then dark, crisper than life itself, shone through to your mind on expired film stock. Glorious death and decay. Colourful, decorated armies of one million strong marching through war torn streets. Past the crumbling shells of impotent skyscrapers. Past the throngs of demoralized citizens, their faces hollow and ashen. A steady stream of neatly pressed uniforms. Firearms and battle standards. You, too, were strong once.

Today, the barren wheat fields zip by, full of potential, all too real. You're driving straight into the blue, blue sky, with each rotation of your tires finding an all new now, an all new present. Here, today, hours are hours and minutes are minutes. You're bound by time, and there is nothing you can do to make this trip go by any faster. You're locked in the nonce. Punished, like a disobedient dog. Trapped in a cage.

Sometimes one needs to go backward only so that one can go forward, be silent only so that one can someday speak, or trip only so that one can stand up again. And here's you, the day after the fall. A time traveller turned time captive. An uncommon entity turned common. Now, a guy hurtling down the highway in his car on a trip to nowhere - just a man in the machine.