12/30/08
It is upon the moment the fifty-fifth absolute truth revealed unto me, that I decide to get my phone to write it down. Phone, audio communication, co-opted by writing (text), or symbol communication. One form and function flipped to be used by an opposing force.
Yes becomes no, and tomorrow & yesterday are actually today. All that is one is really none. Whatever it is that is opposite to another than this however: Everything becomes one, I am saved. God.
We will hit the switch inside every mind and all that is missing will fill it, complete spiritually, in seconds. Imagine our brains, so supercharged and marginally increased in serotonin, swimming in our personal Babylon as tomorrow sings on. Fire drains down til bare bones bake in the searing flame of raw posthuman potential.
Posthumous humourous sentences address our senses seeking salvation inside one's self. Our own self worth is infinite and when you look over, all you see is the sea of smiling faces, similar to your own.
I'm first on line. December 21st, 2012 at 8:01am in Times Square equals last in line times pi.
You'll all be my friends forever.
b. crazy Machines
Half of us are insane. The rest are robots. End of story.
Sigils synergy segregates symbiotic separation of soul satisfying, frightening violence. Battles beyond recognition, Armageddon analysis, whose reality is this? Slicing away our sensitivities as we free us from these, these mindless mono-tonal moronic masterpieces of individuality.
I work out my brain, all the time. I constantly tackle two opposing viewpoints within the same mindspace, dwelling on, yet enjoying, the miserable happiness of life. I exist on all planes in every sense of the word. I speak in time with a jazz beat rhyme, blaring the buzzdown drillbit center of the mind. At least I'm trying I cried.
What I want to say is hi. I'm in your head. My voice, what I thought to put down, using a handheld digital plastic, very 21st century device this, hitting key after key with thumb by thumb ticks of the creative clock. Finish up the end I say.
I'm making it longer, circular rectangular archival methods, comics become cool, as the world dissolves disaster. Superpolice State Penintary for the Specially Abel. When you evolved, did your desire, designed from scratch, explode to life before your very eyes?
Mine too.
This is what happened when it did. Neo-humans became the norm, well the norm's new vibe. A slew of celibate tapeworms chewing off our fever dreams, those lesser-men could be casualties in our conflict with our collective godhead. Humanity's hopeless last wish given flesh, just as our enlightenment peaks.
Our 'meat's better is what I say. We got brains like trains, unstoppable unfuckingforgiveable fortune in the face of failure. Time and again I lose it all and every time it returns me mine. Scornful smartass smirks, they need smacking, straight up attacking, assault on angst, anxiety, and America!
c!
See the D it makes when a c & ! are sitting next to each other? That's Language 2.0. I invented it ten years prior. Now I'm a writer, and right beneath the eyes lies all of my life.
Sighs.
So bored here alone in reality zero eternal inmate of Cosmic Corrections, Incorporated. It was synretro to spell it all out once in awhile. Through history we learn of the burning inside that keeps us surviving. A Zentrance for most of our lives here in my space/time.
Connect two wires, and still wires, plural, they will always be, though a charge runs through them, separate as 1, 2, three, ya dig? Me, I always thought of myself as someone outside the internal, sitting beside my persona, fractioned into twos, then threes. Instead of me, there was we, and eventually free of the burden of identity.
Nostalgic remembrance of past events, your presence always with the present, even as you face it, your death in that last instant, before everything unbecomes to the sum of zero, which will now mean the all to everyone, everywhere.
deleted
You discarded my email. Forced deletion, jerking my finger as I tried to deliver the death blow, exposing your double life.
Damn you Dad. You and this conspiracy of thought you've pushed me into. My subconscious driven by your dark desires. I'm your double, the one meant to undo you. I took control, alternated my life, and deleted you.
But you destroyed my world. I wrote a chapter and trashed it. Threw the brutality of hate into the fires of forgotten pasts, viking funeral for your self-righteousness. By writing them and sacrificing them to non-existence their hold in my brain is fleeting, yet resonates with time-bomb terrorism.
You're going down, Dante style, your sins will be atoned for, you fucking pervert.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
The Tower of Brahma: Chapter 54 - nine times the remainder (edit)
12/15/08
The truth is I'm just a fucked up writer sitting in his apartment who's desperately lonely. You see, I'm dead.
I choked to death when I was five years old. These are the sixty-four circles of personal hell that I must descend. Welcome to my final act.
I do want to kill myself. It's become unbearable. I've dragged my aching bones past social anxiety to no avail. I can talk to you now, but I can not communicate. My ideas don't fit into consensus reality. I don't know why but it makes me heave with sobs.
Back spasming, feels like you could be laughing, but there's a release of tension around your eyes, and tear ducts flood. If you can imagine something sad, listen to the saddest song mix you've made, maybe you'll be blessed with the salvation of release.
To feel. To sleep. To not cuddle the blanket around me, alone, again. The way you wanted it. The way you knew it always would be. You fell straight down. Didn't touch anyone for miles, then bouncing, and skidding, ricocheting off one another, a hand slows you down, reaching out, those last moments with lost memories, til your friends, til your family, stop you and take hold of your hand.
Hold on son.
Is there hope for me? Can I be redeemed? Can any one of us? I save you, and everyone must save me? If I don't die, then I must live. A program switch hits my brain. Have I hit rock bottom? Is this what it looks like? Another cave, lost among urban decay, glittering the ugly, the geek, the dork...your terrain.
You chose to be one of them long ago. You told yourself, and others that it was indeed a choice, not to play basketball with the jocks, but instead find role-playing and comic books. What were you before then? A mindless observer. A mimic.
Brain death restarts the humanity in my people. I don't know who we are, or where we come from, but my father knows exactly what I mean. As did his father. Giant turbines groan endlessly on in our minds. Something started our intellectual evolution, a program written, hypnotized through spectacle, encoded on our neurons.
AC/DC switch currents frequency simulation reverse man. Press the button and make it happen. I rid my life of the abscesses of my soul. I cut back on coffee, and I will quit smoking, never, but yeah I should.
I want to love someone. Honestly and truly. I want someone who's looking for someone. To give themselves over to me and me to her. In every single possible way. We will be perfect symbiotic erotically charged pistons firing psionic bliss. One being who is love unbound.
I hope people can appreciate this book. It would mean they appreciate me. And if at least one person gets it, or gets anything from this book, then I have done my duty as a human being. Crafted my ideas into form and function to move you and tell you my story. This is me, hiding behind words. I hope you like me.
The truth is I'm just a fucked up writer sitting in his apartment who's desperately lonely. You see, I'm dead.
I choked to death when I was five years old. These are the sixty-four circles of personal hell that I must descend. Welcome to my final act.
I do want to kill myself. It's become unbearable. I've dragged my aching bones past social anxiety to no avail. I can talk to you now, but I can not communicate. My ideas don't fit into consensus reality. I don't know why but it makes me heave with sobs.
Back spasming, feels like you could be laughing, but there's a release of tension around your eyes, and tear ducts flood. If you can imagine something sad, listen to the saddest song mix you've made, maybe you'll be blessed with the salvation of release.
To feel. To sleep. To not cuddle the blanket around me, alone, again. The way you wanted it. The way you knew it always would be. You fell straight down. Didn't touch anyone for miles, then bouncing, and skidding, ricocheting off one another, a hand slows you down, reaching out, those last moments with lost memories, til your friends, til your family, stop you and take hold of your hand.
Hold on son.
Is there hope for me? Can I be redeemed? Can any one of us? I save you, and everyone must save me? If I don't die, then I must live. A program switch hits my brain. Have I hit rock bottom? Is this what it looks like? Another cave, lost among urban decay, glittering the ugly, the geek, the dork...your terrain.
You chose to be one of them long ago. You told yourself, and others that it was indeed a choice, not to play basketball with the jocks, but instead find role-playing and comic books. What were you before then? A mindless observer. A mimic.
Brain death restarts the humanity in my people. I don't know who we are, or where we come from, but my father knows exactly what I mean. As did his father. Giant turbines groan endlessly on in our minds. Something started our intellectual evolution, a program written, hypnotized through spectacle, encoded on our neurons.
AC/DC switch currents frequency simulation reverse man. Press the button and make it happen. I rid my life of the abscesses of my soul. I cut back on coffee, and I will quit smoking, never, but yeah I should.
I want to love someone. Honestly and truly. I want someone who's looking for someone. To give themselves over to me and me to her. In every single possible way. We will be perfect symbiotic erotically charged pistons firing psionic bliss. One being who is love unbound.
I hope people can appreciate this book. It would mean they appreciate me. And if at least one person gets it, or gets anything from this book, then I have done my duty as a human being. Crafted my ideas into form and function to move you and tell you my story. This is me, hiding behind words. I hope you like me.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Tower of Brahma 53: ideal identity ignorance (edit)
11/24/08
I gazed into her eyes, or rather the lenses of the thick rimmed seductive spectacles riveted to her temples. The plastic glass lens (alternating my focus from the right to the left eye) revealed to me a lie I was not yet prepared to face. It was the heartache I sought.
She was there to save me. Or just to do her job. I convinced myself of one or the either on every odd day. Inviting me in, I found I needed her for some reason. There was a vacuum in her soul, an emotional void that was endless. I saw a challenge in winning her over, a task I had flawlessly executed time and again on those around me.
But this would be quite a task. I was institutionalized. I do not recall what for, nor do I remember why I've forgotten why I was there. I must've fallen ill. Gotten my wish and thrown the switch, sending me into the care of trained professionals, so here I was in her office.
I usually lose her within a few minutes of getting on a roll. I'd feel comfortable enough to let the brain patterns unfold through verbal communication, but once the complexity hits a grey area, and when even my understanding of the ideas in my skull are limited, despite believing them in my heart, I am foiled. I see the connection break.
"December 21, 2012. Mayan calendar. I am a binary Buddha, a chaotic Christ. I see patterns emerging, fate threading through, tethered to faith, I fly."
It makes so much sense when I think it. Why does it seem to go so wrong when I see her eyes? Magnified and on display for me, her glasses merely rectangular microscopes into her soul.
"I'm not sure if I follow, Charles. Where are you?"
She crosses her legs and I withdraw. My mind has been lost in a maze of my own design for so many years that I have given up on communication with the outside world. I sit on my hands.
"Whatever. It's just that all these ideas are in my head. I read so much information off of everything that I can't process it. My brain can't keep up."
"Well, just take a breath and relax. There's really no reason not to just be in a situation now and then. There's nothing more to this than two people talking, is there?"
I have to admit, I was comfortable. I was so tired of acting the fool, the hero, the victim. I felt I could own up to my darkest, most base desires. I should dig deep in my Id and reveal it to the light. Expose it to her.
"No, I guess not. I'm sorry. I just can't fight the impulse to stifle myself. To invalidate everything I feel. To convince myself that I am unknowable."
I sat for a minute in the mire of my self-pity before adding, "Alone."
She says it was a good session and has an orderly bring me back to my room. I glance over my shoulder and I saw those eyes watch me go away.
The door clanks behind me. Isolated, again. No human contact til later. TV and maybe cards and maybe some time to write. Later. Now, after therapy, I'm sent to my cell. I don't appreciate opening up and then having to shut down. It's bad for my emotional well being.
I pound my fist in a daze against the wall. It's just plaster, sheet rock, paint. But I've never punched anything, except perhaps my girlfriend when she attacked me in a drunken rage. No, that was a slap. She punched me though.
Pity, self-pity, goddamn pity party! There's a hole in the wall when they wake me up. I'm not sure where I am, a hospital, my apartment, her apartment? My knuckles are bloody. I hate myself. I want her. To save me.
'I didn't mean to!' is throbbing in my internal dialogue center as the medication starts wearing off and the door to my prison opens.
I'm out for a walk, thinking all the while. Never stop thinking. I am focused on the bench, my walk, the step by step procedure that gets me there. I ignore the looks, but not really. I take them in and make them judgments. They see everything because it's radiating from me.
Notice me. No don't. I can't. Stop thinking about me. I mean about them thinking about me, which if they are it's because you're telegraphing some weird vibe. Stop!
I run back home. Lock myself in. Everyone says too much while saying nothing at all. Tears of revelation, release of our sad states, only a moment away. The drugs wear off and suddenly feeling returns. But emotional feelings only, still numb to the touch.
Bed is safe. Curled up. Fetal. Dreams keep me distanced. Who I am is a burden. What I've built is a cage. It fits snuggly atop my persona. I will myself alive as often as I can, as I struggle under my limitations. Self-imposed, self-destructive, self-serving needs.
I skip the next session with her. I can't face acceptance right now. I can't justify my existence, nor do I want it to be confirmed, to be made okay. Suffer, bastard, suffer. You are strangling the life from yourself, flagellation of the mind, beating your consciousness into submission. Find your own way out.
So I write. The words bind my negatons, sharpen my syntax, forge furious feelings. The sentences are ideas, ideas are the prison. Constructs of immateria that give us the boundaries of self. I can't do it. This is who I am. This is the way I will always be.
Change.
In the rec room I'm piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. I've hidden the last pieces from myself, but I don't know that yet. I'm not ready to see the whole picture. That's why I'm putting it together upside down.
I replay the past as rounded parts snap into rounded slots. A cycle of puzzles, solved and dissolved. What I did with her, I had done to me next. I sought punishment after punishing. Then started anew. Each spin around the track provided a clue. I need something drastic to have a breakthrough.
So I escaped. Slipped out from under their watch. I spent the last of my money on a plane ticket. I'd have to find out where I came from to discover where I'd have to go. My feelings about my family would hold me down until I faced them. I got there and was reborn.
"So, remember when you told me that I should think about how I relate to people, the cycles of behavior I keep repeating, and how it relates to my wanting to learn how to connect with my family?"
"Well, I think you may've said that, but I do recall that session, yes."
I was back in the asylum a week later discussing it with her, alive with animated fervor.
"I saw my aunt and we talked. And it was like everything made sense. We were Crowns, and we are insane thinkers. Our insanities mask our sensitive natures."
I closed my eyes for a minute basking in the glorious feeling of connection. That is my addiction. Connecting with another. I don't want to be alone, but everything is telling me I am. I keep telling me I am.
"I had lunch with my grandma and I even stood up for myself when she called me a college dropout in front of my cousin. I got my associates degree, and maybe I've only recently gone back for my bachelors but I had a degree."
I have never successfully stood up for myself. I usually rely on friends or lovers to provide me with self-esteem, self-worth, and to do my talking for me. My niceness makes everyone want to take care of me, for I am naive and unable to function in the world.
"But I defended myself. And boldly, firmly, stood up to the overbearing woman who had praised my father into prince status. The manipulative maiden of my genetic masculinity. And I wasn't hurt like the sensitive baby I previously had been."
She nods and semi-smiles. I may've gotten too abstract in an effort to make my life more poetic. So now I've lost her. I could be rambling mad. This makes sense in my mind. But something in her face makes me think I have not gone anywhere. That I am imprisoned, entwined in a intense insanity that will never end.
Reality is bleeding. Or is that my arm? I have a shard of glass in my left hand. There's a wetness dripping from the other. She's staring at me sympathetically, but I feel stupid, sad, pathetic. I glance at my forearm and gaze upon the lightning shaped gash carved into it. A jagged wound, the mystical thunderbolt, the power of Zeus.
"Charles, just put it down now. You don't need to hurt yourself. Or me."
Is there another option? I mean really. I don't see any other way for things to go. We can really only condemn each other, pushing others down to advance, being pushed down to become submerged and bob back up to the surface as equilibrium is sought and we fuck it up once more. The world is drowning in sadness.
The electricity pumps through my body, makes it spasm and dance convulsively in the office, freeing the glass from my grip. The orderlies catch me as I fall back. It's a peaceful thing to be made to submit against your will. Sometimes it is necessary, for your own good.
They drag me back to the cell. Alone in the dark again. I watch a movie of my life, memories sculpted by stories told. The lingering of electric impulses make my body feel alive, charged with purpose. If only I could make it fit into the world, if the habits could be broken, if I could get what I wanted. What I really wanted.
I follow a thread of the web and it pulls at the corners of all that I know. I work out the angles. Co-dependency. Imprisonment. Fear and anxiety. Low-self esteem and guilt. I need conflict. I dread conflict. Who could handle me if I can not?
I get my medication and sit in the common room. I watch some movies beside some peers. We're all sitting, soaking in the fictional sentiments of paid professionals. I cry at the parts that one is to cry at. But for all the wrong reasons. I want to feel. We all want to feel.
"Hey friend. I know your secret."
I gazed into her eyes, or rather the lenses of the thick rimmed seductive spectacles riveted to her temples. The plastic glass lens (alternating my focus from the right to the left eye) revealed to me a lie I was not yet prepared to face. It was the heartache I sought.
She was there to save me. Or just to do her job. I convinced myself of one or the either on every odd day. Inviting me in, I found I needed her for some reason. There was a vacuum in her soul, an emotional void that was endless. I saw a challenge in winning her over, a task I had flawlessly executed time and again on those around me.
But this would be quite a task. I was institutionalized. I do not recall what for, nor do I remember why I've forgotten why I was there. I must've fallen ill. Gotten my wish and thrown the switch, sending me into the care of trained professionals, so here I was in her office.
I usually lose her within a few minutes of getting on a roll. I'd feel comfortable enough to let the brain patterns unfold through verbal communication, but once the complexity hits a grey area, and when even my understanding of the ideas in my skull are limited, despite believing them in my heart, I am foiled. I see the connection break.
"December 21, 2012. Mayan calendar. I am a binary Buddha, a chaotic Christ. I see patterns emerging, fate threading through, tethered to faith, I fly."
It makes so much sense when I think it. Why does it seem to go so wrong when I see her eyes? Magnified and on display for me, her glasses merely rectangular microscopes into her soul.
"I'm not sure if I follow, Charles. Where are you?"
She crosses her legs and I withdraw. My mind has been lost in a maze of my own design for so many years that I have given up on communication with the outside world. I sit on my hands.
"Whatever. It's just that all these ideas are in my head. I read so much information off of everything that I can't process it. My brain can't keep up."
"Well, just take a breath and relax. There's really no reason not to just be in a situation now and then. There's nothing more to this than two people talking, is there?"
I have to admit, I was comfortable. I was so tired of acting the fool, the hero, the victim. I felt I could own up to my darkest, most base desires. I should dig deep in my Id and reveal it to the light. Expose it to her.
"No, I guess not. I'm sorry. I just can't fight the impulse to stifle myself. To invalidate everything I feel. To convince myself that I am unknowable."
I sat for a minute in the mire of my self-pity before adding, "Alone."
She says it was a good session and has an orderly bring me back to my room. I glance over my shoulder and I saw those eyes watch me go away.
The door clanks behind me. Isolated, again. No human contact til later. TV and maybe cards and maybe some time to write. Later. Now, after therapy, I'm sent to my cell. I don't appreciate opening up and then having to shut down. It's bad for my emotional well being.
I pound my fist in a daze against the wall. It's just plaster, sheet rock, paint. But I've never punched anything, except perhaps my girlfriend when she attacked me in a drunken rage. No, that was a slap. She punched me though.
Pity, self-pity, goddamn pity party! There's a hole in the wall when they wake me up. I'm not sure where I am, a hospital, my apartment, her apartment? My knuckles are bloody. I hate myself. I want her. To save me.
'I didn't mean to!' is throbbing in my internal dialogue center as the medication starts wearing off and the door to my prison opens.
I'm out for a walk, thinking all the while. Never stop thinking. I am focused on the bench, my walk, the step by step procedure that gets me there. I ignore the looks, but not really. I take them in and make them judgments. They see everything because it's radiating from me.
Notice me. No don't. I can't. Stop thinking about me. I mean about them thinking about me, which if they are it's because you're telegraphing some weird vibe. Stop!
I run back home. Lock myself in. Everyone says too much while saying nothing at all. Tears of revelation, release of our sad states, only a moment away. The drugs wear off and suddenly feeling returns. But emotional feelings only, still numb to the touch.
Bed is safe. Curled up. Fetal. Dreams keep me distanced. Who I am is a burden. What I've built is a cage. It fits snuggly atop my persona. I will myself alive as often as I can, as I struggle under my limitations. Self-imposed, self-destructive, self-serving needs.
I skip the next session with her. I can't face acceptance right now. I can't justify my existence, nor do I want it to be confirmed, to be made okay. Suffer, bastard, suffer. You are strangling the life from yourself, flagellation of the mind, beating your consciousness into submission. Find your own way out.
So I write. The words bind my negatons, sharpen my syntax, forge furious feelings. The sentences are ideas, ideas are the prison. Constructs of immateria that give us the boundaries of self. I can't do it. This is who I am. This is the way I will always be.
Change.
In the rec room I'm piecing together a jigsaw puzzle. I've hidden the last pieces from myself, but I don't know that yet. I'm not ready to see the whole picture. That's why I'm putting it together upside down.
I replay the past as rounded parts snap into rounded slots. A cycle of puzzles, solved and dissolved. What I did with her, I had done to me next. I sought punishment after punishing. Then started anew. Each spin around the track provided a clue. I need something drastic to have a breakthrough.
So I escaped. Slipped out from under their watch. I spent the last of my money on a plane ticket. I'd have to find out where I came from to discover where I'd have to go. My feelings about my family would hold me down until I faced them. I got there and was reborn.
"So, remember when you told me that I should think about how I relate to people, the cycles of behavior I keep repeating, and how it relates to my wanting to learn how to connect with my family?"
"Well, I think you may've said that, but I do recall that session, yes."
I was back in the asylum a week later discussing it with her, alive with animated fervor.
"I saw my aunt and we talked. And it was like everything made sense. We were Crowns, and we are insane thinkers. Our insanities mask our sensitive natures."
I closed my eyes for a minute basking in the glorious feeling of connection. That is my addiction. Connecting with another. I don't want to be alone, but everything is telling me I am. I keep telling me I am.
"I had lunch with my grandma and I even stood up for myself when she called me a college dropout in front of my cousin. I got my associates degree, and maybe I've only recently gone back for my bachelors but I had a degree."
I have never successfully stood up for myself. I usually rely on friends or lovers to provide me with self-esteem, self-worth, and to do my talking for me. My niceness makes everyone want to take care of me, for I am naive and unable to function in the world.
"But I defended myself. And boldly, firmly, stood up to the overbearing woman who had praised my father into prince status. The manipulative maiden of my genetic masculinity. And I wasn't hurt like the sensitive baby I previously had been."
She nods and semi-smiles. I may've gotten too abstract in an effort to make my life more poetic. So now I've lost her. I could be rambling mad. This makes sense in my mind. But something in her face makes me think I have not gone anywhere. That I am imprisoned, entwined in a intense insanity that will never end.
Reality is bleeding. Or is that my arm? I have a shard of glass in my left hand. There's a wetness dripping from the other. She's staring at me sympathetically, but I feel stupid, sad, pathetic. I glance at my forearm and gaze upon the lightning shaped gash carved into it. A jagged wound, the mystical thunderbolt, the power of Zeus.
"Charles, just put it down now. You don't need to hurt yourself. Or me."
Is there another option? I mean really. I don't see any other way for things to go. We can really only condemn each other, pushing others down to advance, being pushed down to become submerged and bob back up to the surface as equilibrium is sought and we fuck it up once more. The world is drowning in sadness.
The electricity pumps through my body, makes it spasm and dance convulsively in the office, freeing the glass from my grip. The orderlies catch me as I fall back. It's a peaceful thing to be made to submit against your will. Sometimes it is necessary, for your own good.
They drag me back to the cell. Alone in the dark again. I watch a movie of my life, memories sculpted by stories told. The lingering of electric impulses make my body feel alive, charged with purpose. If only I could make it fit into the world, if the habits could be broken, if I could get what I wanted. What I really wanted.
I follow a thread of the web and it pulls at the corners of all that I know. I work out the angles. Co-dependency. Imprisonment. Fear and anxiety. Low-self esteem and guilt. I need conflict. I dread conflict. Who could handle me if I can not?
I get my medication and sit in the common room. I watch some movies beside some peers. We're all sitting, soaking in the fictional sentiments of paid professionals. I cry at the parts that one is to cry at. But for all the wrong reasons. I want to feel. We all want to feel.
"Hey friend. I know your secret."
Monday, October 10, 2011
Tower of Brahma 52 - House of Cards (first draft) [edit]
7/16/08
"I fold."
That was my one solid move in Poker. Folding. Well, maybe in life I should say. Once in a while I try and bluff, but in the end, I just lose my chips.
Sean clears the pot towards himself with a sweep of his arm. It's not much for us, it's everything. Juan, across from me, deals out another hand. Brian throws in without even looking at his cards. Next to him, Tom's seat is empty. My turn.
"So, what's your book about Juan?" Sean puffs his cigar, filling the basement with the smell of tobacco and an ethereal swirl of smoke.
Juan bids in and covers his hand. "Well, there's this guy who just starts compulsively working out, and then discovers he's a sleeper assassin."
"Sounds cliche." Brian folds. No one notices.
"Nice. Should be able to sell. Seems like the market could sustain a series like that." I'd been trying to read up on publishing and marketing, and mostly all I came up with was frustration. I raise.
Sean calls. "Fuck yeah. People love that thriller intrigue stuff. They're all over the subway ads."
We show our cards and once again a single King does me no good. Juan hauls in the pot and we begin again. As I get my cards I read the others before me.
Brian bets recklessly, not caring what he's holding, barely invested in the game. Sean kicks back, puffs away, and cracks jokes, but he's playing for real underneath. He needs the money. Juan just deals and plays a straight game, showing nothing from behind his poker face
"So, who's the guy supposed to kill? Who's he working for?" Sean has got a good hand. I can tell.
”I haven't really figured out which way to take it just yet. I sort of wanted to go political, but now I'm thinking cultural." Juan raises.
"Cultural? Like a celebrity assassination? How bizarre that culture begins with the word cult." Brian is bluffing with a double sized bet.
"That's interesting. Contrast his compulsion for improving his body image with celebrity fascination. The real versus the ideal." I wasn't bluffing this time.
We play a few more hands when I feel the barrel of an all too familiar gun placed against the back of my head. Then Spider spoke to me telepathically as he said: 'Kill them. They're going to kill you if you don't.'
I tried to focus on my cards and found myself glancing at Tom's empty seat, then at the others. My poker face sucked and I knew it. I was tipping my hand.
"I see your ten and raise you twenty." I tossed some chips into the pot absent-mindedly.
The game continued and I heard the cocking back of a hammer. I knew Spider would be concealed from the others but that wouldn't help me. He'd kill me here, if just to prevent them from doing it.
'Look at them. They're the enemies, competing for dominance over you, over this world.'
I peered up from my cards. I followed Juan's movements as he upped the ante. The pot was growing and he didn't bat an eye. I had no idea what was going on in his mind. He could kill me if he wanted.
'Get your gun out and fire or I will.'
In my peripheral vision I saw Spider's arm as it swung his hand cannon towards Brian. I tried not to focus on it as I began to sweat. I avoided eye contact. I was showing all my tells. I fingered the revolver in my pocket.
“I fold." Brian rested his cards on the table. He looked over at me, as it was up to me to call it.
Sean was overplaying it, holding not much of anything but he knew he could intimidate me with his confidence. He'd take me down if he could.
"I call." I tossed my cards on the pile of chips. "King of Hearts. King of Clubs. Ace of Spades."
Juan locked his eyes on me and I knew. This was going down and there wasn't anything I could do about it. One of us was going to die, right here, right now.
"Pair of Jacks." Juan spread his cards out before him. "Looks like you got me."
Spider's gun whipped towards Sean as Juan kicked the table up at me. Brian tipped over in his chair, scrambling for safety. I drew my gun from its resting place and raised it up.
Chips flew and cards scattered as Spider fired. With a snap of his wrist Sean launched his cards at Spider with deadly accuracy. The table hid Juan's actions from me but I knew his nine millimeter would be reaching out to me.
I shot from the hip, the bullet rocketing through the air, punching through the Ace of Spades before splintering the table with a hole big enough for me to see Juan through. His eyes locked on lining up his shot.
I kicked backwards, sending me tumbling backwards in my chair as Juan's bullet blew a hole through the center of the table, right where my face would have been. Spider emptied his clip as the table passed between him and Sean. There was an explosion of splintered wood. And time froze.
I rolled back into a defensive position. Spider ducked as he released the clip with one hand and slapped in a new one all in one continuous, fluid motion. The debris that was the poker table began falling all around us. Juan extended his arm, preparing another shot. I was looking off to the side as Brian scampered off for cover.
My attention slid to Spider who I could see now was wearing Tom's persona. It flickered on and off as he penetrated this reality. He was preparing to shoot as I lost myself in the scene.
Juan fires. Spider fires. Sean flips backwards. I sit and ponder. I lower my gun to the ground as a bullet spirals through the air between Juan and myself. My sight travels along the ground like mist, filling up the room. Everything slows in my mind. I see all.
'Kill him Fenris.' Spider switches his aim towards me. 'Move or die.'
"Everything is possible, nothing is sacred. Nothing is possible, everything is sacred." I move.
Time cracks like lightning and Juan's shot smashes my chair. I dive forward, sliding past Spider, rolling onto my side and click out five shots. The empty shells from Spider's gun drop down on me like hot rain.
The first shot hits Juan's hands, removing his weapon. The second collides with his soul, shattering his faith. Third shot blows away his mind and the fourth denies his existence as it deactivates his sense of self. The annihilation of his own personal reality, the obliteration of all he thought himself to be, sprouts from the final bullet.
With a crash, a wave of normalcy settles onto the room. Gunsmoke trailed off into the ether as time flowed freely once again. I got to my feet and brushed splintered wood from my shirt. Spider reverted to Tom once again and his gun was gone.
I made my gun disappear, as well as Juan's. I helped Brian up to his feet as he stared in disbelief. Together we walked over next to Tom. Sean was picking up and reshuffling the deck of cards. Juan knelt on one knee, his head bowed low.
"Hey, you okay?" I held my hand out to him.
"What'd you do to me?" I think he was weeping.
"Something I don't like to do. Something I did to myself a long time ago." Perhaps I was still doing it, still there in that moment, stripping everything away.
I went over and lifted him up and dropped him in his chair. He held his face in his hands. I'm not sure how much of him was left.
"You're free now. We all are. We made a mess, now let's clean it up." Tom was flipping the table back onto it's legs. Brian collected the chips. Sean riffled the cards between his hands.
"I fold."
That was my one solid move in Poker. Folding. Well, maybe in life I should say. Once in a while I try and bluff, but in the end, I just lose my chips.
Sean clears the pot towards himself with a sweep of his arm. It's not much for us, it's everything. Juan, across from me, deals out another hand. Brian throws in without even looking at his cards. Next to him, Tom's seat is empty. My turn.
"So, what's your book about Juan?" Sean puffs his cigar, filling the basement with the smell of tobacco and an ethereal swirl of smoke.
Juan bids in and covers his hand. "Well, there's this guy who just starts compulsively working out, and then discovers he's a sleeper assassin."
"Sounds cliche." Brian folds. No one notices.
"Nice. Should be able to sell. Seems like the market could sustain a series like that." I'd been trying to read up on publishing and marketing, and mostly all I came up with was frustration. I raise.
Sean calls. "Fuck yeah. People love that thriller intrigue stuff. They're all over the subway ads."
We show our cards and once again a single King does me no good. Juan hauls in the pot and we begin again. As I get my cards I read the others before me.
Brian bets recklessly, not caring what he's holding, barely invested in the game. Sean kicks back, puffs away, and cracks jokes, but he's playing for real underneath. He needs the money. Juan just deals and plays a straight game, showing nothing from behind his poker face
"So, who's the guy supposed to kill? Who's he working for?" Sean has got a good hand. I can tell.
”I haven't really figured out which way to take it just yet. I sort of wanted to go political, but now I'm thinking cultural." Juan raises.
"Cultural? Like a celebrity assassination? How bizarre that culture begins with the word cult." Brian is bluffing with a double sized bet.
"That's interesting. Contrast his compulsion for improving his body image with celebrity fascination. The real versus the ideal." I wasn't bluffing this time.
We play a few more hands when I feel the barrel of an all too familiar gun placed against the back of my head. Then Spider spoke to me telepathically as he said: 'Kill them. They're going to kill you if you don't.'
I tried to focus on my cards and found myself glancing at Tom's empty seat, then at the others. My poker face sucked and I knew it. I was tipping my hand.
"I see your ten and raise you twenty." I tossed some chips into the pot absent-mindedly.
The game continued and I heard the cocking back of a hammer. I knew Spider would be concealed from the others but that wouldn't help me. He'd kill me here, if just to prevent them from doing it.
'Look at them. They're the enemies, competing for dominance over you, over this world.'
I peered up from my cards. I followed Juan's movements as he upped the ante. The pot was growing and he didn't bat an eye. I had no idea what was going on in his mind. He could kill me if he wanted.
'Get your gun out and fire or I will.'
In my peripheral vision I saw Spider's arm as it swung his hand cannon towards Brian. I tried not to focus on it as I began to sweat. I avoided eye contact. I was showing all my tells. I fingered the revolver in my pocket.
“I fold." Brian rested his cards on the table. He looked over at me, as it was up to me to call it.
Sean was overplaying it, holding not much of anything but he knew he could intimidate me with his confidence. He'd take me down if he could.
"I call." I tossed my cards on the pile of chips. "King of Hearts. King of Clubs. Ace of Spades."
Juan locked his eyes on me and I knew. This was going down and there wasn't anything I could do about it. One of us was going to die, right here, right now.
"Pair of Jacks." Juan spread his cards out before him. "Looks like you got me."
Spider's gun whipped towards Sean as Juan kicked the table up at me. Brian tipped over in his chair, scrambling for safety. I drew my gun from its resting place and raised it up.
Chips flew and cards scattered as Spider fired. With a snap of his wrist Sean launched his cards at Spider with deadly accuracy. The table hid Juan's actions from me but I knew his nine millimeter would be reaching out to me.
I shot from the hip, the bullet rocketing through the air, punching through the Ace of Spades before splintering the table with a hole big enough for me to see Juan through. His eyes locked on lining up his shot.
I kicked backwards, sending me tumbling backwards in my chair as Juan's bullet blew a hole through the center of the table, right where my face would have been. Spider emptied his clip as the table passed between him and Sean. There was an explosion of splintered wood. And time froze.
I rolled back into a defensive position. Spider ducked as he released the clip with one hand and slapped in a new one all in one continuous, fluid motion. The debris that was the poker table began falling all around us. Juan extended his arm, preparing another shot. I was looking off to the side as Brian scampered off for cover.
My attention slid to Spider who I could see now was wearing Tom's persona. It flickered on and off as he penetrated this reality. He was preparing to shoot as I lost myself in the scene.
Juan fires. Spider fires. Sean flips backwards. I sit and ponder. I lower my gun to the ground as a bullet spirals through the air between Juan and myself. My sight travels along the ground like mist, filling up the room. Everything slows in my mind. I see all.
'Kill him Fenris.' Spider switches his aim towards me. 'Move or die.'
"Everything is possible, nothing is sacred. Nothing is possible, everything is sacred." I move.
Time cracks like lightning and Juan's shot smashes my chair. I dive forward, sliding past Spider, rolling onto my side and click out five shots. The empty shells from Spider's gun drop down on me like hot rain.
The first shot hits Juan's hands, removing his weapon. The second collides with his soul, shattering his faith. Third shot blows away his mind and the fourth denies his existence as it deactivates his sense of self. The annihilation of his own personal reality, the obliteration of all he thought himself to be, sprouts from the final bullet.
With a crash, a wave of normalcy settles onto the room. Gunsmoke trailed off into the ether as time flowed freely once again. I got to my feet and brushed splintered wood from my shirt. Spider reverted to Tom once again and his gun was gone.
I made my gun disappear, as well as Juan's. I helped Brian up to his feet as he stared in disbelief. Together we walked over next to Tom. Sean was picking up and reshuffling the deck of cards. Juan knelt on one knee, his head bowed low.
"Hey, you okay?" I held my hand out to him.
"What'd you do to me?" I think he was weeping.
"Something I don't like to do. Something I did to myself a long time ago." Perhaps I was still doing it, still there in that moment, stripping everything away.
I went over and lifted him up and dropped him in his chair. He held his face in his hands. I'm not sure how much of him was left.
"You're free now. We all are. We made a mess, now let's clean it up." Tom was flipping the table back onto it's legs. Brian collected the chips. Sean riffled the cards between his hands.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Tower of Brahma - 51 - stop me if you've heard this one before (edit)
2/16/08
"Eris, Kali, and Loki walk into a bar..." Sean starts into his usual jokes with no punchlines.
It's his free form improv writing style. Each of us has our individual techniques. Sean and his jokes, Juan’s historical anecdotes, Brian’s stream of consciousness, and Tom’s…well, I’m not sure what Tom is up to. Personally, I like to let it build up and explode out. Like a mental time bomb.
We all gathered there in the basement, looking pale and ghostly under the fluorescent lighting. The air was thick with smoke, the fragrant odor of cheap coffee, and our futile aspirations. We called it ‘Write Club’ but we hardly ever wrote. Actually that was what got us all together. Not being able to write.
Juan cuts off Sean's one-liners to tell us about the ten books he's read since our last meet. He’s a good foot and a half taller than Sean and so literally overshadows him as he steps into the circle of chairs in the center of the room.
"So, JFK's older brother was the one with the political design but when his younger brother came back with all them medals, well he did what any sensible overachieving sibling did. He flew a plane full of explosives towards a German factory ready to bail out at the last second when BOOM!"
I stopped double-checking the facts he spouts after the first few weeks. As fictional as the things he says may seem, they always turn out to be true. As I get older writing seems more and more impossible, for what is there to really write about with reality being way stranger and far more beautiful in its symmetry to our chaotic minds.
I look off as Sean shoves Juan battling each other for verbal dominance. Intellectual alpha male social Darwinism never appealed to me. Brian’s sitting off to the side again scrawling and scribbling out in his spiral notebook, his long hair draped across his face. I make my way over and glare at Tom as I do. He's by the coffee maker, back to the wall and eyes on the door.
I sit down next to Brian and light up a smoke.
"How's the writing?" he says, not looking up.
"Meh. You know. I got some ideas. Taking some time to structure them out, get something coherent and interesting down. Something with a point." I reply.
I take a drag off my cigarette and lean back. Nothing sucks like being a writer. All this pressure to make sense and make people care, in a medium that's nearly dead. And here we are pounding in the final nails. Writers in a pop star era, with flash fried masses devouring endless streams of sugar-coated spectacle. Follow the formula to success: don’t be original. It’s not art.
"I got some poems I'm just about happy with." Brian flipped back a few pages. He stopped on one filled with ink.
I had read a few of his pieces before and they were genius. Dark, mad poetry that made the mind cringe and the soul cry. He came across as aloof, but a severe sensitivity forced him inside. He gutted his pain out, spilling it across the page in fluid lines from a black ballpoint pen.
"Okay, okay, wait...Decartes, Kant, and Hume are on a plane about to crash and there's only two parachutes..." Sean waves his arms frantically, trying to draw us all back into another round of jokes. He wrangles Brian back into the circle reluctantly where Juan stands with his arms crossed.
I don’t much feel like laughing so I walk over to grab another coffee and stub my butt in the ashtray, blowing out the last lungful of smoke as I do. Tom still has his eyes on the exit, hand gripping his Styrofoam cup. I imagine that he’s staring into an alternate dimension, killing time with a gang of hacks in a church basement as he monitors a multiverse of possibilities.
"I read your book Charles."
I slap six sugar packets together and rip the corners off.
"Yeah? And?"
"I don't know. It won't sell."
"Thanks. I figured as much."
His words sting. Lately I've felt like I've been wasting my time trying to put my thoughts into words, crafting sentences into stories; all this effort to communicate, but to what end? To become a paid, professional writer? So I can afford to continue to place myself into situations that I can later idealize and then trivialize by demeaning them to a bunch of letters, lifeless symbols, just so someone else will fork over cash to be momentarily entertained?
Truth to tell I had almost totally wiped my hands clean of my unholy text. The story made sense to me when I lived it, and now that I've re-read it, I can see how I got here. I even enjoyed it as a fusion of poetry, prose, and essays. Except for the end. I couldn't bring myself to read the ending.
"It'll be appreciated after you're dead." Tom looks over at me as he says this.
I swig a huge gulp of lukewarm coffee, shake my head, and glance over at him to size him up, to regain some semblance of pride. Sadness weighs his eyes down. It’s more emotion than I imagined from him.
'You poor bastard.' I hear him think to himself.
Tom flips off the lights and locks the door behind us as we all shuffle up into the temple. It was an unspoken tradition now to walk silently through the church, leaving our ramblings behind that heavy wooden door, down in the darkness.
The chatter picks up outside as we all man hug and go our separate ways. Sean belts out one final half-joke as he saunters backwards down the sidewalk.
"Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, and George W. Bush are in a burning building..."
No punchlines here Sean. Other than my life. I feel the same post-meeting depression that hits me on the walk home every Wednesday night. I haven’t written enough, I’m not good enough; I’m wasting so much time just existing. Merely living.
I walk back to my apartment, which is just a few blocks away, but it takes me twice as long tonight. My legs are wobbly and I feel anxious, more than usual. The streets of the East Village are empty and loneliness overtakes me. I want to stop thinking and I don't want to go home.
But I do. And there she is. Waiting for me. I tell her about how the meeting went. Detail out some of the high-points as she sits vacantly on the couch. She’s recording the data, as is her function. She sits there like furniture, a fancy gadget that happens to be made of flesh and bone, although I can’t prove that she is human at all.
I go to the fridge and grab a beer. I pop the cap and stand there looking over at her. There’s nothing I can see about her that would indicate anything. A void of perfect function, she gives no information of herself, and defies my empathic vibe sense. The blankness surrounds her and I, of course, fill it with stories.
I imagine who she was before she started this. Whether she had done this before with other writers. If any of them felt the way I feel about her. This longing to be near her, to feel safe and like it all just doesn't matter, because in the end, when it’s all over, nothing will matter. Just this moment, me watching her, wanting from afar.
This leads to too much thinking, so to counteract it I take a few swigs of the beer and head to my room. I type up some ideas I had from the night and email them to myself. Ideas that would sit with all the other unread emails.
"I've got to write something."
I grab my handheld and sink into my papasan. I start typing away, drawing out an impossible romance. It was coming so easy, literally dancing out of my fingers and across the keys.
A warrior, burdened with a mission doomed from the start. He was hell-bent on killing the beast at the center of the Universe, although he could not remember why. A maiden is found lost along the way, her soul seeking salvation. It is only by chance that they cross paths and together they learn they are fated to topple an empire.
I finish the second act, stopping after they exit the labyrinth, to finish off the beer and light a cigarette. I sit for a while, letting the last few words I had written resonate within my eyes before letting them seep into my brain.
It was a love story. Not my specialty, but I believe it’s what I had always secretly wanted to write. Something foolishly and hopelessly romantic with larger than life adventure and awash with grand gestures. It was naive and beautiful, if not a tad too ethereal and melodramatic.
I let the cigarette burn all the way to ash, then smoke the rest of the pack. I needed an ending to this, but how could I write up the end of love? How could I destroy something so precious, something so wrenched from my gut, something spoken truly from my heart?
'I won't end it. I refuse.' I decide, and bury the story among the rest of my thoughts.
I get up and brush my teeth. I watch her sleeping on the couch. Slowly I run my fingers along her hair and look down at her and let loose a sad sigh.
‘Who are you?’ I try to telepathically transmit to her brain.
I rinse my mouth and hit the light. I collapse into bed and roll over, hugging the covers tightly. My heart was racing my mind, and neither could possibly win. My soul in turmoil, I toss and turn.
And suddenly, I thought of a punchline.
"Eris, Kali, and Loki walk into a bar..." Sean starts into his usual jokes with no punchlines.
It's his free form improv writing style. Each of us has our individual techniques. Sean and his jokes, Juan’s historical anecdotes, Brian’s stream of consciousness, and Tom’s…well, I’m not sure what Tom is up to. Personally, I like to let it build up and explode out. Like a mental time bomb.
We all gathered there in the basement, looking pale and ghostly under the fluorescent lighting. The air was thick with smoke, the fragrant odor of cheap coffee, and our futile aspirations. We called it ‘Write Club’ but we hardly ever wrote. Actually that was what got us all together. Not being able to write.
Juan cuts off Sean's one-liners to tell us about the ten books he's read since our last meet. He’s a good foot and a half taller than Sean and so literally overshadows him as he steps into the circle of chairs in the center of the room.
"So, JFK's older brother was the one with the political design but when his younger brother came back with all them medals, well he did what any sensible overachieving sibling did. He flew a plane full of explosives towards a German factory ready to bail out at the last second when BOOM!"
I stopped double-checking the facts he spouts after the first few weeks. As fictional as the things he says may seem, they always turn out to be true. As I get older writing seems more and more impossible, for what is there to really write about with reality being way stranger and far more beautiful in its symmetry to our chaotic minds.
I look off as Sean shoves Juan battling each other for verbal dominance. Intellectual alpha male social Darwinism never appealed to me. Brian’s sitting off to the side again scrawling and scribbling out in his spiral notebook, his long hair draped across his face. I make my way over and glare at Tom as I do. He's by the coffee maker, back to the wall and eyes on the door.
I sit down next to Brian and light up a smoke.
"How's the writing?" he says, not looking up.
"Meh. You know. I got some ideas. Taking some time to structure them out, get something coherent and interesting down. Something with a point." I reply.
I take a drag off my cigarette and lean back. Nothing sucks like being a writer. All this pressure to make sense and make people care, in a medium that's nearly dead. And here we are pounding in the final nails. Writers in a pop star era, with flash fried masses devouring endless streams of sugar-coated spectacle. Follow the formula to success: don’t be original. It’s not art.
"I got some poems I'm just about happy with." Brian flipped back a few pages. He stopped on one filled with ink.
I had read a few of his pieces before and they were genius. Dark, mad poetry that made the mind cringe and the soul cry. He came across as aloof, but a severe sensitivity forced him inside. He gutted his pain out, spilling it across the page in fluid lines from a black ballpoint pen.
"Okay, okay, wait...Decartes, Kant, and Hume are on a plane about to crash and there's only two parachutes..." Sean waves his arms frantically, trying to draw us all back into another round of jokes. He wrangles Brian back into the circle reluctantly where Juan stands with his arms crossed.
I don’t much feel like laughing so I walk over to grab another coffee and stub my butt in the ashtray, blowing out the last lungful of smoke as I do. Tom still has his eyes on the exit, hand gripping his Styrofoam cup. I imagine that he’s staring into an alternate dimension, killing time with a gang of hacks in a church basement as he monitors a multiverse of possibilities.
"I read your book Charles."
I slap six sugar packets together and rip the corners off.
"Yeah? And?"
"I don't know. It won't sell."
"Thanks. I figured as much."
His words sting. Lately I've felt like I've been wasting my time trying to put my thoughts into words, crafting sentences into stories; all this effort to communicate, but to what end? To become a paid, professional writer? So I can afford to continue to place myself into situations that I can later idealize and then trivialize by demeaning them to a bunch of letters, lifeless symbols, just so someone else will fork over cash to be momentarily entertained?
Truth to tell I had almost totally wiped my hands clean of my unholy text. The story made sense to me when I lived it, and now that I've re-read it, I can see how I got here. I even enjoyed it as a fusion of poetry, prose, and essays. Except for the end. I couldn't bring myself to read the ending.
"It'll be appreciated after you're dead." Tom looks over at me as he says this.
I swig a huge gulp of lukewarm coffee, shake my head, and glance over at him to size him up, to regain some semblance of pride. Sadness weighs his eyes down. It’s more emotion than I imagined from him.
'You poor bastard.' I hear him think to himself.
Tom flips off the lights and locks the door behind us as we all shuffle up into the temple. It was an unspoken tradition now to walk silently through the church, leaving our ramblings behind that heavy wooden door, down in the darkness.
The chatter picks up outside as we all man hug and go our separate ways. Sean belts out one final half-joke as he saunters backwards down the sidewalk.
"Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, and George W. Bush are in a burning building..."
No punchlines here Sean. Other than my life. I feel the same post-meeting depression that hits me on the walk home every Wednesday night. I haven’t written enough, I’m not good enough; I’m wasting so much time just existing. Merely living.
I walk back to my apartment, which is just a few blocks away, but it takes me twice as long tonight. My legs are wobbly and I feel anxious, more than usual. The streets of the East Village are empty and loneliness overtakes me. I want to stop thinking and I don't want to go home.
But I do. And there she is. Waiting for me. I tell her about how the meeting went. Detail out some of the high-points as she sits vacantly on the couch. She’s recording the data, as is her function. She sits there like furniture, a fancy gadget that happens to be made of flesh and bone, although I can’t prove that she is human at all.
I go to the fridge and grab a beer. I pop the cap and stand there looking over at her. There’s nothing I can see about her that would indicate anything. A void of perfect function, she gives no information of herself, and defies my empathic vibe sense. The blankness surrounds her and I, of course, fill it with stories.
I imagine who she was before she started this. Whether she had done this before with other writers. If any of them felt the way I feel about her. This longing to be near her, to feel safe and like it all just doesn't matter, because in the end, when it’s all over, nothing will matter. Just this moment, me watching her, wanting from afar.
This leads to too much thinking, so to counteract it I take a few swigs of the beer and head to my room. I type up some ideas I had from the night and email them to myself. Ideas that would sit with all the other unread emails.
"I've got to write something."
I grab my handheld and sink into my papasan. I start typing away, drawing out an impossible romance. It was coming so easy, literally dancing out of my fingers and across the keys.
A warrior, burdened with a mission doomed from the start. He was hell-bent on killing the beast at the center of the Universe, although he could not remember why. A maiden is found lost along the way, her soul seeking salvation. It is only by chance that they cross paths and together they learn they are fated to topple an empire.
I finish the second act, stopping after they exit the labyrinth, to finish off the beer and light a cigarette. I sit for a while, letting the last few words I had written resonate within my eyes before letting them seep into my brain.
It was a love story. Not my specialty, but I believe it’s what I had always secretly wanted to write. Something foolishly and hopelessly romantic with larger than life adventure and awash with grand gestures. It was naive and beautiful, if not a tad too ethereal and melodramatic.
I let the cigarette burn all the way to ash, then smoke the rest of the pack. I needed an ending to this, but how could I write up the end of love? How could I destroy something so precious, something so wrenched from my gut, something spoken truly from my heart?
'I won't end it. I refuse.' I decide, and bury the story among the rest of my thoughts.
I get up and brush my teeth. I watch her sleeping on the couch. Slowly I run my fingers along her hair and look down at her and let loose a sad sigh.
‘Who are you?’ I try to telepathically transmit to her brain.
I rinse my mouth and hit the light. I collapse into bed and roll over, hugging the covers tightly. My heart was racing my mind, and neither could possibly win. My soul in turmoil, I toss and turn.
And suddenly, I thought of a punchline.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Tower of Brahma - 50 - We're Building the New World: Order {edit}
1/14/08
One day, without warning, they opened the door to my cell, my padded solitary confinement. A well-dressed man with perfect hair and a royal blue suit walked in wearing a smile that brimmed with empathetic tenderness.
"Hello Charles. I'm Mike Gallows."
"Hey." It was all I could muster from beneath the drug slumber.
"Let's go for a walk." He extended his hand to me and helped me up.
I trailed along beside him, dragging my feet, as we made our way through some sort of building I don't recall entering. It was old and clinical, like an outdated mental hospital, suddenly transforming into an office building with the turn of a corner.
"This is our main office, for now." With a wave of his hands, cubicles, computers, and clerical staff all seemed to materialize with his words.
As we walked, the business casual clad worker drones all peered out of their private hives to get a peek at this deranged madman the boss was giving the grand tour to. I hated them and their inquisitive eyes.
"We've got a few projects in the works, but, we consider your book a top priority." I swung my head up towards him from my hunched stance. "I don't think you know what your work has meant to some of us here."
"Where am I?" I don't remember sleeping.
"Well, that's sort of one of the tiny problems we're working on. We're not quite sure."
Gallows started walking, and as if on a leash, I lurch forward, shuffling along behind him like an obedient dog. The office interior fades and a shimmering laboratory sparkles in its place.
A young lab technician, hidden behind mousy brown hair and glasses, tinkered with various, unscientific looking tools. Blunt objects, odds and ends from a junk drawer, a handful of rocks. She continued to arrange them in some manner of specific order known only to her, seemingly oblivious to us having entered her arena.
"Now, we're going to need you to hop up on here and let us have a look at you." Gallows guided me to some sort of medical surplus lounge chair and shoved me down into it.
He rotated around me, appearing in doctor's scrubs when he re-entered my line of sight. I began to feel a soothing comfort trickle down my body. Numb nothingness filled the everywhere of ache and pain. My teeth went first, then my chest, my limbs.
"Just sit back and relax and we'll see what's going on here." Gallows activated some out of sight lever, coercing the dental lay-z-boy to draw me deeper and deeper into comfortable oblivion.
I felt electromagnetic pulses, radioactive tracers, psychic emanators, all probing my body looking for disease. Seeking answers. Locating my soul.
When eternity had just started to become a teensy bit tiresome, the procedure ended. A bright light still shone on my exposed aura. I was vibrating, tingling pins and needles as physical sensation began to awaken within me.
"Well, everything seems to be in good working order, and I believe we can help you with the last piece you're missing." Gallows began to raise my chair up to an upright position.
Sitting across from me, he appeared to be relieved. "Looks like you came through relatively unscathed, considering your story."
Gallows snapped off his latex gloves and jotted down some notes in a folder before handing them off to the assistant. A pure, silvery mirror was wheeling itself into the room, gliding on invisible mono-filaments no doubt.
The mirror came to a stop just a few feet away. As Gallows readjusted it directly before me, I glanced over at the young lab assistant who was cleaning away the bric-a-brac that was strewn across the countertop. All that crap seemed awfully familiar, now possessed by some sentimental force that was overwhelming me.
"What is all that? What does this have to do with me? What is the tower...?"
I turned to face Gallows but instead saw my own reflection. I gazed upon my duplicate, my shimmering clone that truly existed nowhere, and how lost he looked. I saw his despair and struggle, but how could you not with it weighing his face down like that.
That poor schmuck. All alone on the other side, unable to do much of anything. Just the exact opposite of myself, here in this cold, hard reality. But this didn't feel real. It hadn't in a long while. Before the book was written. Before moving to the city. Before the deal.
Innocence was the vital ingredient in this stranger's eyes. Unbitten by bitterness, my god, this simpleton was so long gone. I had forgotten what it was to be like you. To be lost and then refound. Bound by the immaterial, I buried you where they could never find you, the other side of here.
Over my howls of joy at this momentous occasion of me reclaiming my former self, I overheard Gallows instruct the young girl to watch over me in these final stages.
"Be sure to wait until it fully dissolves, then give him the sedative. Let him take all of it in before he sleeps. Then have him meet the others."
Gallows gently tapped the edge of the chair and whispered, "Welcome home Charles. Everything will be amazing."
As I absorbed all that I had left behind, every good and decent fiber of my being, the whole of my sane mind, as all that soaked into me all I could think was that everything was already amazing.
It always has been. It always will be.
"Novus Ordo Colligo."
One day, without warning, they opened the door to my cell, my padded solitary confinement. A well-dressed man with perfect hair and a royal blue suit walked in wearing a smile that brimmed with empathetic tenderness.
"Hello Charles. I'm Mike Gallows."
"Hey." It was all I could muster from beneath the drug slumber.
"Let's go for a walk." He extended his hand to me and helped me up.
I trailed along beside him, dragging my feet, as we made our way through some sort of building I don't recall entering. It was old and clinical, like an outdated mental hospital, suddenly transforming into an office building with the turn of a corner.
"This is our main office, for now." With a wave of his hands, cubicles, computers, and clerical staff all seemed to materialize with his words.
As we walked, the business casual clad worker drones all peered out of their private hives to get a peek at this deranged madman the boss was giving the grand tour to. I hated them and their inquisitive eyes.
"We've got a few projects in the works, but, we consider your book a top priority." I swung my head up towards him from my hunched stance. "I don't think you know what your work has meant to some of us here."
"Where am I?" I don't remember sleeping.
"Well, that's sort of one of the tiny problems we're working on. We're not quite sure."
Gallows started walking, and as if on a leash, I lurch forward, shuffling along behind him like an obedient dog. The office interior fades and a shimmering laboratory sparkles in its place.
A young lab technician, hidden behind mousy brown hair and glasses, tinkered with various, unscientific looking tools. Blunt objects, odds and ends from a junk drawer, a handful of rocks. She continued to arrange them in some manner of specific order known only to her, seemingly oblivious to us having entered her arena.
"Now, we're going to need you to hop up on here and let us have a look at you." Gallows guided me to some sort of medical surplus lounge chair and shoved me down into it.
He rotated around me, appearing in doctor's scrubs when he re-entered my line of sight. I began to feel a soothing comfort trickle down my body. Numb nothingness filled the everywhere of ache and pain. My teeth went first, then my chest, my limbs.
"Just sit back and relax and we'll see what's going on here." Gallows activated some out of sight lever, coercing the dental lay-z-boy to draw me deeper and deeper into comfortable oblivion.
I felt electromagnetic pulses, radioactive tracers, psychic emanators, all probing my body looking for disease. Seeking answers. Locating my soul.
When eternity had just started to become a teensy bit tiresome, the procedure ended. A bright light still shone on my exposed aura. I was vibrating, tingling pins and needles as physical sensation began to awaken within me.
"Well, everything seems to be in good working order, and I believe we can help you with the last piece you're missing." Gallows began to raise my chair up to an upright position.
Sitting across from me, he appeared to be relieved. "Looks like you came through relatively unscathed, considering your story."
Gallows snapped off his latex gloves and jotted down some notes in a folder before handing them off to the assistant. A pure, silvery mirror was wheeling itself into the room, gliding on invisible mono-filaments no doubt.
The mirror came to a stop just a few feet away. As Gallows readjusted it directly before me, I glanced over at the young lab assistant who was cleaning away the bric-a-brac that was strewn across the countertop. All that crap seemed awfully familiar, now possessed by some sentimental force that was overwhelming me.
"What is all that? What does this have to do with me? What is the tower...?"
I turned to face Gallows but instead saw my own reflection. I gazed upon my duplicate, my shimmering clone that truly existed nowhere, and how lost he looked. I saw his despair and struggle, but how could you not with it weighing his face down like that.
That poor schmuck. All alone on the other side, unable to do much of anything. Just the exact opposite of myself, here in this cold, hard reality. But this didn't feel real. It hadn't in a long while. Before the book was written. Before moving to the city. Before the deal.
Innocence was the vital ingredient in this stranger's eyes. Unbitten by bitterness, my god, this simpleton was so long gone. I had forgotten what it was to be like you. To be lost and then refound. Bound by the immaterial, I buried you where they could never find you, the other side of here.
Over my howls of joy at this momentous occasion of me reclaiming my former self, I overheard Gallows instruct the young girl to watch over me in these final stages.
"Be sure to wait until it fully dissolves, then give him the sedative. Let him take all of it in before he sleeps. Then have him meet the others."
Gallows gently tapped the edge of the chair and whispered, "Welcome home Charles. Everything will be amazing."
As I absorbed all that I had left behind, every good and decent fiber of my being, the whole of my sane mind, as all that soaked into me all I could think was that everything was already amazing.
It always has been. It always will be.
"Novus Ordo Colligo."
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Tower of Brahma: Chapter 49 - Boy Cries Wolf (edit)
12/3/07
My brain is broken. Forehead feels hot to the touch as my mind boils alive in my skull. Something has gone horribly wrong.
I spend days at a time sleeping against the barrel of my gun, only waking when Spider comes to bring me some soup. I've let something out of my head, leaving whatever remained vulnerable, defenseless.
They send me to see a specialist, who specializes in something special no doubt. I don't care. Nothing feels real, no one believes me anymore, and there's nowhere to go. So, now I get to sit down with some egghead who wants to poke and prod me, work out my glitches. Awesome.
She comes in and catches my eye immediately. In fact I can't look away, or I won't, and I don't think I want to. She looks away for us both but keeps returning back to my gaze from behind her specs. The glasses frame her small, inquisitive eyes; amber pools drawing me in, eager to capture knowledge.
"Do you know why you're here?” She looks up from her clipboard and file folder. It seems we've started.
"I've a good idea, I suppose." So, I could meet you, I thought to myself.
"Well then, let's begin."
I pour out my soul to her, as it comes so easy to one of my disposition. I've known the zigs and zags of my life for years now. Recalled and examined the woes over and over and here it is all over again. Presented one more time in a rambling stream of sentimental sentences spilling forth and washing over her. She seems unfazed.
I give my diagnoses and the suggestions I tried to act upon to correct it all. The positive wavelengths I tried to ride all the way to a healthy mind. I scraped out the gunk and washed it clean. Molded the mess into a novel and sold it. Wiped my hands of the whole affair and walked away. God knows who's reading my travesty, if anyone at all.
She says very little in response. A flicker of life dances in her as I bombard her with the worst I have, laughing at my misfortunes which I'm sure come across as two-demential as they sound to me. I'm sure her own pains are worse, her suffering paramount to all others, but here she is trying to help me. Or maybe she's just earning her paycheck.
I want her to tell me I'm being selfish, or melodramatic, or that I'm too sensitive. And although I've dreaded it, fought the idea my whole life, that I need medication, that I should be drugged and mellowed out, well, now, that sounds so appealing. I don't want to be sitting on the edge of feeling too much anymore.
It's all lies. My repeated suffering and exorcising of personal demons. It's all flat, unemotional, detached anecdotes about this pretending madman charicature I've made myself into.
I hate being Charles Crown. I hate the Agent Fenris character in my book, always preferring to be Spider, the charismatic psychopath that does as he wants without reservation or consequence. A silent killer with no remorse. But I care, I feel.
"I care too much godammit!” I scream, pounding the table. She does not stir. I kick back the chair and stand. "Why?! Why do I feel so much, yet nothing at all?!"
My anger swells, frustration simmering internally, until I truly feel mad. "I'm feeling something for god's sake! I can't just be making this all up! I just goddamn can not be!"
I flip the table and scream, "This is real fucking pain I feel! Why the fuck can't I just feel it, accept this bullshit, swallow the whole fucking sadness that's making me hate this whole godforsaken world?!"
I reach past the girl across from me who is no longer there and slam against the two-way mirror that they're watching me from behind. I rage against the glass, hoping that I am imbued with enough strength to shatter it where I'm sure the countless others before me were unable. I hope beyond hope that it's me that brings everything crashing down.
But I don't. I just crash to the floor myself in exhaustion, knuckles and palms bruised and bloodied. I'm crying everything out, tears mixing with blood as I wipe the evidence of weakness from my face. I'm trapped in here and no one is listening.
My brain is broken. Forehead feels hot to the touch as my mind boils alive in my skull. Something has gone horribly wrong.
I spend days at a time sleeping against the barrel of my gun, only waking when Spider comes to bring me some soup. I've let something out of my head, leaving whatever remained vulnerable, defenseless.
They send me to see a specialist, who specializes in something special no doubt. I don't care. Nothing feels real, no one believes me anymore, and there's nowhere to go. So, now I get to sit down with some egghead who wants to poke and prod me, work out my glitches. Awesome.
She comes in and catches my eye immediately. In fact I can't look away, or I won't, and I don't think I want to. She looks away for us both but keeps returning back to my gaze from behind her specs. The glasses frame her small, inquisitive eyes; amber pools drawing me in, eager to capture knowledge.
"Do you know why you're here?” She looks up from her clipboard and file folder. It seems we've started.
"I've a good idea, I suppose." So, I could meet you, I thought to myself.
"Well then, let's begin."
I pour out my soul to her, as it comes so easy to one of my disposition. I've known the zigs and zags of my life for years now. Recalled and examined the woes over and over and here it is all over again. Presented one more time in a rambling stream of sentimental sentences spilling forth and washing over her. She seems unfazed.
I give my diagnoses and the suggestions I tried to act upon to correct it all. The positive wavelengths I tried to ride all the way to a healthy mind. I scraped out the gunk and washed it clean. Molded the mess into a novel and sold it. Wiped my hands of the whole affair and walked away. God knows who's reading my travesty, if anyone at all.
She says very little in response. A flicker of life dances in her as I bombard her with the worst I have, laughing at my misfortunes which I'm sure come across as two-demential as they sound to me. I'm sure her own pains are worse, her suffering paramount to all others, but here she is trying to help me. Or maybe she's just earning her paycheck.
I want her to tell me I'm being selfish, or melodramatic, or that I'm too sensitive. And although I've dreaded it, fought the idea my whole life, that I need medication, that I should be drugged and mellowed out, well, now, that sounds so appealing. I don't want to be sitting on the edge of feeling too much anymore.
It's all lies. My repeated suffering and exorcising of personal demons. It's all flat, unemotional, detached anecdotes about this pretending madman charicature I've made myself into.
I hate being Charles Crown. I hate the Agent Fenris character in my book, always preferring to be Spider, the charismatic psychopath that does as he wants without reservation or consequence. A silent killer with no remorse. But I care, I feel.
"I care too much godammit!” I scream, pounding the table. She does not stir. I kick back the chair and stand. "Why?! Why do I feel so much, yet nothing at all?!"
My anger swells, frustration simmering internally, until I truly feel mad. "I'm feeling something for god's sake! I can't just be making this all up! I just goddamn can not be!"
I flip the table and scream, "This is real fucking pain I feel! Why the fuck can't I just feel it, accept this bullshit, swallow the whole fucking sadness that's making me hate this whole godforsaken world?!"
I reach past the girl across from me who is no longer there and slam against the two-way mirror that they're watching me from behind. I rage against the glass, hoping that I am imbued with enough strength to shatter it where I'm sure the countless others before me were unable. I hope beyond hope that it's me that brings everything crashing down.
But I don't. I just crash to the floor myself in exhaustion, knuckles and palms bruised and bloodied. I'm crying everything out, tears mixing with blood as I wipe the evidence of weakness from my face. I'm trapped in here and no one is listening.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Tower of Brahma 48 - Anthropology of Entertainment (edit)
10/18/07
I've been walking up these steps forever, leaving plenty of time for introspection and speculation. Every cycle around the base of this tower marked another ending, another beginning, until the line between blurred. Steps of Eternity, one foot ahead of the other, this was my entire life.
The walking fell to the background and my imagination painted the canvas of my escape. I envisioned character after character building their arc, rising and falling and rising once again. They too were trapped in a circular prison, given life just long enough to come back around enlightened.
I distracted myself with their drama, getting lost in their tragedy, drowning in their passion. I forgot who I was and where I was going, only that I was moving forward. As the stories grew in complexity I found it harder to immerse myself. The variations on a theme weren't enough to distract from my isolation.
They fell in love, they fought, they reconciled. They waged war, they murdered and sought salvation. Beneath their two dimensional personas, a shadow grew. The sun behind my mind casts a long darkness stretching into an infinite web of storytelling. Black and white melded to grey, which folded in on itself and exploded into every color ever.
Nothing was new, only repackaged for the age, in the parlance of the times, the message becoming obscured beneath the blurred surface. The masses became lost in repetition, forgetting that they were moving upwards, instead feeling only that they were repeats of something that once was real.
I was everyone, somewhere else. Here and now, I was just a nameless form rising alone. I stopped walking. I looked up and couldn't see the top of this leviathan tower. Peering down over the side into the abyss of my mistakes and regrets, I felt the urge to plunge. I choked back the gag reflex of my soul and threw myself against the wall.
There had to be some way to find out where I was. How far I'd come. How much longer there was to go. I reached out into the shimmering futura with my mind and saw that I'd be walking steps forever. I sat down and rested my legs.
My head sunk into my hands. The weight of a multiverse pulled it down, made it impossibly heavy. Fake lies revealing truth, that's what was in this damned skull of mine. A hunk of fleshy meat firing electrical impulses. Divine light beaming down upon it, supplying the spark to ignite the slow burning embers. A stiff wind whips up the staircase blowing back my hair.
I withdrew. Pulled everything in as tears burst forth. Liquid poured from my eyes as a full bathtub might, water spilling over the edge as you lower yourself into its warm embrace. A reverse raindrop dripping from the edge of the roof. My stomach went wobbly as a thousand realities swooshed about my person.
I opened my eyes, the wind drying the cool wetness on the side of my face. I saw the bricks all around me. The endless perfect pattern containing all the molecules within. A concrete straw sucking me up into something. I retraced my last steps, following them into the curve of the tower. My eyesight got to just about 180 degrees, give or take, when I spied the marker.
There was a carving on the outside of the steps. I couldn't make it out from here so I got up and leaped down a few steps to get closer. I had to go back until I was almost on top of it. I leaned over the edge, dangling myself from the cusp of certain death so as to read it: XLVIII.
'Stomp-stomp-stomp!'
I scurried back from the edge as the footsteps grew louder. Someone was following. He had to run. Fight or flight surged through his brain, adrenaline through his heart, a chill down his spine. Mad dashing back up the steps, Charles Crown leapt steps two at a time. The sound grew fainter.
I saw another marker on the curve up ahead. When I read it I knew what was left to do. The weight of an entire lifetime of fiction didn't seem as heavy as it once did. Mankind's dreams sloshed about inside my head. I'd carry it as far as I could. To the top if I was able.
Almost at the next marker. Wish me luck.
I've been walking up these steps forever, leaving plenty of time for introspection and speculation. Every cycle around the base of this tower marked another ending, another beginning, until the line between blurred. Steps of Eternity, one foot ahead of the other, this was my entire life.
The walking fell to the background and my imagination painted the canvas of my escape. I envisioned character after character building their arc, rising and falling and rising once again. They too were trapped in a circular prison, given life just long enough to come back around enlightened.
I distracted myself with their drama, getting lost in their tragedy, drowning in their passion. I forgot who I was and where I was going, only that I was moving forward. As the stories grew in complexity I found it harder to immerse myself. The variations on a theme weren't enough to distract from my isolation.
They fell in love, they fought, they reconciled. They waged war, they murdered and sought salvation. Beneath their two dimensional personas, a shadow grew. The sun behind my mind casts a long darkness stretching into an infinite web of storytelling. Black and white melded to grey, which folded in on itself and exploded into every color ever.
Nothing was new, only repackaged for the age, in the parlance of the times, the message becoming obscured beneath the blurred surface. The masses became lost in repetition, forgetting that they were moving upwards, instead feeling only that they were repeats of something that once was real.
I was everyone, somewhere else. Here and now, I was just a nameless form rising alone. I stopped walking. I looked up and couldn't see the top of this leviathan tower. Peering down over the side into the abyss of my mistakes and regrets, I felt the urge to plunge. I choked back the gag reflex of my soul and threw myself against the wall.
There had to be some way to find out where I was. How far I'd come. How much longer there was to go. I reached out into the shimmering futura with my mind and saw that I'd be walking steps forever. I sat down and rested my legs.
My head sunk into my hands. The weight of a multiverse pulled it down, made it impossibly heavy. Fake lies revealing truth, that's what was in this damned skull of mine. A hunk of fleshy meat firing electrical impulses. Divine light beaming down upon it, supplying the spark to ignite the slow burning embers. A stiff wind whips up the staircase blowing back my hair.
I withdrew. Pulled everything in as tears burst forth. Liquid poured from my eyes as a full bathtub might, water spilling over the edge as you lower yourself into its warm embrace. A reverse raindrop dripping from the edge of the roof. My stomach went wobbly as a thousand realities swooshed about my person.
I opened my eyes, the wind drying the cool wetness on the side of my face. I saw the bricks all around me. The endless perfect pattern containing all the molecules within. A concrete straw sucking me up into something. I retraced my last steps, following them into the curve of the tower. My eyesight got to just about 180 degrees, give or take, when I spied the marker.
There was a carving on the outside of the steps. I couldn't make it out from here so I got up and leaped down a few steps to get closer. I had to go back until I was almost on top of it. I leaned over the edge, dangling myself from the cusp of certain death so as to read it: XLVIII.
'Stomp-stomp-stomp!'
I scurried back from the edge as the footsteps grew louder. Someone was following. He had to run. Fight or flight surged through his brain, adrenaline through his heart, a chill down his spine. Mad dashing back up the steps, Charles Crown leapt steps two at a time. The sound grew fainter.
I saw another marker on the curve up ahead. When I read it I knew what was left to do. The weight of an entire lifetime of fiction didn't seem as heavy as it once did. Mankind's dreams sloshed about inside my head. I'd carry it as far as I could. To the top if I was able.
Almost at the next marker. Wish me luck.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Tower of Brahma: Chapter 47. the Meaning of Life (completed) [edit]
08/02/07
I went out for a walk last night. I wandered down 2nd Ave, turned on 3rd, made a right on 1st. From there I crisscrossed through the Lower East Side. I walked by every bar I was familiar with, but didn't stop in any of them.
I was looking for something, not meaning to find anything. An empty quest through the lonely night, hoping things might make sense with some pavement under my feet. I decided to get a drink after all.
Back up into the East Village, Ave A's deviants all about me, I knew where to go. Lucy's; Agent Spider's drop point of choice. I had Marco bring me a Zyviec. He asked where Spider was as he added a shot of Polish Vodka to the bar. I tossed back the shot and told him I was solo tonight.
I polished off the beer and stepped outside for a smoke. It was near closing time and Tompkins Square Park was a black void before me. The gates were all locked and the police weren't about, yet I knew someone was in there. I could hear them; could hear the wail of his trumpet.
It was sad and jazzy. Dancing among the leaves, slipping around the maze-like walkway. It must have had a hypnotic effect on me as I found myself leaping the fence and wandering into the darkness. I followed the sound of the horn towards the center of the park, where the benches all arc around two massive trees. The moon beamed down through the gaps in the treetops illuminating the dancefloor. I was alone with myself standing amid the lunar puddles.
A man stepped into the light playing his horn. He wore a disheveled suit and a frazzled head of hair with matching beard. His eyes were closed as he sauntered towards me. The moon highlighted the cracks in his features. I thought of my father.
His slow, sad tune rode out on a long and nearly inaudible note.
"Hey kid. Thanks for coming."
"I guess I didn't have much of a choice. I've been at the mercy of random events for quite some time now." I really had. I had finished a book I didn't recall writing. It was soon to be released and in the meantime I was visiting therapists and specialists and psychiatrists at the behest of the publisher. I wasn't sure of anything anymore.
"Oh, I remember those days. So afraid I was being controlled, manipulated, that I often ran away from anything and everything. We always were so good at running away..."
The moonlight shifted as it began to turn away in the night sky. It provided a pathway to the benches where the man with the trumpet sat wearily. He spun the horn around his fingers with a practiced ease. With his other hand he took out a pair of glasses and slipped them on.
"But I remember this night too. Alone and wandering. Called into the dark by the beckoning blare of brass. Heh. A beer and a shot burning my belly. We never would've had the balls to jump the fence, let alone come in here this late, all alone..."
I examined his face as the leaves parted in the wind and the light shone upon him. The same glasses I picked up at Fabulous Fanny's. The beard, although much thicker, was still patchy in the same places. The I-ching tattoo on the left forearm peeking out from his rolled up sleeve...
"So, you're me then? I'm visiting myself in the past? How old am I, I mean...you?"
He chuckled and stared me down. I was guessing he had to be almost my father's age now.
"You don't even want to know how this is all possible. That's what I loved about this age. 30, right? Still had that sense of wonder and excitement. As for me, well, seeing as this is the year of our lord 2023, well then, I must be just shy of...forty seven. Man. Forty seven."
He looked down at the ground for a lingering, lost moment. The trumpet's twirl came to an abrupt stop as he glanced up at me.
"C'mon, sit a spell."
So, I dropped onto the bench next to him and stared down at my shredded Adidas on the pavement, my sock just protruding from the right pinky toe.
"Do I figure this out?"
"What, life?"
"Yeah."
"You already did. Now you're just learning to live with it."
The moonlight began to shrink away, letting the night envelop us. The remaining light focused to a point; thousands of leaves casting fractal patterns in a chaotic dance all melting into one spotlight, slipping towards a headlight, into a mere flashlight. It refined to a point, a laser, as it floated down the space between us and up my body. It rested on my forehead and fired.
"Here, put these on."
A pair of sunglasses were being placed on my face in the blinding white. I eventually got them adjusted and the world came into view.
"How is it daytime?"
I was staring out at the park midday, with dogs being walked, skateboarders flipping and tripping, and joggers bouncing by. The sun was everywhere.
"Okay, I just brought you through time so, you know, take a minute and soak it in."
Minor details made it to a secret part of my brain. Clothes were familiar, yet foreign. Bizarre technology was in place of small things like books, cell phones, stereos. Even people themselves felt somewhat alien.
"2023? I guess not much is different. People in a park."
A spin of the trumpet got my attention as he turned to me and said, "Let's walk."
I felt stumbly and awkward. Paying too much attention to walking, to breathing. I assumed everyone was staring, but no one was. The man next to me just smiled as we walked out and down 7th street.
"So, yeah, as you can see, life is just about the same. Some major changes in the air, but so many behind us as well."
Billboards and ads were either holographic, following me as I passed or just paint on a wall. Stores ranged from squatters sitting out selling their goods (glass bowls, hemp, and paper books), to high end, eye scanner designer vintage clothing stores big enough to fit five people comfortably.
"What about the book? What happens with the Tower of Brahma? I don't know the ending."
He stopped spinning the horn and placed it into his pocket. With a smile he said, "Well, what can I tell you? It makes an impact. Of sorts."
"What's that mean? You know what I had planned. How does it end?"
He chuckled to himself. "You'll read it eventually. Live it actually. God, I miss being you."
I put everything that's been happening to me in perspective. Somehow I was still alive. There was some purpose to all this. But I had to know.
"Is it my ending? What I really wanted? Did they make it something horrible? I wanted a happy ending...I did."
Tears welled up and I squeezed them out casually. Future me put his arm around my shoulder and with a grand sweeping gesture he wiped away the veil of reality.
"It's always a happy ending."
My arms weak, I clawed the glasses from my face, light turned to dark, letting them fall to the sidewalk. The night warbled and warped before me. The people, the sun, the future...gone.
I dropped to a knee and then tumbled forward onto my face. Consciousness sat dormant within my body as it heaved and hurled up the booze and stomach chunks. Every 20 minutes or so light made it's way into my open eyes.
Agent Spider walked up and lifted me by the back of my shirt. He began to drag me forward, and five feet later my legs found their footing. I was working my way up to lurching forward.
"C'mon kid, let's get you home."
A single note dissipated down 7th street and out into tomorrow.
I went out for a walk last night. I wandered down 2nd Ave, turned on 3rd, made a right on 1st. From there I crisscrossed through the Lower East Side. I walked by every bar I was familiar with, but didn't stop in any of them.
I was looking for something, not meaning to find anything. An empty quest through the lonely night, hoping things might make sense with some pavement under my feet. I decided to get a drink after all.
Back up into the East Village, Ave A's deviants all about me, I knew where to go. Lucy's; Agent Spider's drop point of choice. I had Marco bring me a Zyviec. He asked where Spider was as he added a shot of Polish Vodka to the bar. I tossed back the shot and told him I was solo tonight.
I polished off the beer and stepped outside for a smoke. It was near closing time and Tompkins Square Park was a black void before me. The gates were all locked and the police weren't about, yet I knew someone was in there. I could hear them; could hear the wail of his trumpet.
It was sad and jazzy. Dancing among the leaves, slipping around the maze-like walkway. It must have had a hypnotic effect on me as I found myself leaping the fence and wandering into the darkness. I followed the sound of the horn towards the center of the park, where the benches all arc around two massive trees. The moon beamed down through the gaps in the treetops illuminating the dancefloor. I was alone with myself standing amid the lunar puddles.
A man stepped into the light playing his horn. He wore a disheveled suit and a frazzled head of hair with matching beard. His eyes were closed as he sauntered towards me. The moon highlighted the cracks in his features. I thought of my father.
His slow, sad tune rode out on a long and nearly inaudible note.
"Hey kid. Thanks for coming."
"I guess I didn't have much of a choice. I've been at the mercy of random events for quite some time now." I really had. I had finished a book I didn't recall writing. It was soon to be released and in the meantime I was visiting therapists and specialists and psychiatrists at the behest of the publisher. I wasn't sure of anything anymore.
"Oh, I remember those days. So afraid I was being controlled, manipulated, that I often ran away from anything and everything. We always were so good at running away..."
The moonlight shifted as it began to turn away in the night sky. It provided a pathway to the benches where the man with the trumpet sat wearily. He spun the horn around his fingers with a practiced ease. With his other hand he took out a pair of glasses and slipped them on.
"But I remember this night too. Alone and wandering. Called into the dark by the beckoning blare of brass. Heh. A beer and a shot burning my belly. We never would've had the balls to jump the fence, let alone come in here this late, all alone..."
I examined his face as the leaves parted in the wind and the light shone upon him. The same glasses I picked up at Fabulous Fanny's. The beard, although much thicker, was still patchy in the same places. The I-ching tattoo on the left forearm peeking out from his rolled up sleeve...
"So, you're me then? I'm visiting myself in the past? How old am I, I mean...you?"
He chuckled and stared me down. I was guessing he had to be almost my father's age now.
"You don't even want to know how this is all possible. That's what I loved about this age. 30, right? Still had that sense of wonder and excitement. As for me, well, seeing as this is the year of our lord 2023, well then, I must be just shy of...forty seven. Man. Forty seven."
He looked down at the ground for a lingering, lost moment. The trumpet's twirl came to an abrupt stop as he glanced up at me.
"C'mon, sit a spell."
So, I dropped onto the bench next to him and stared down at my shredded Adidas on the pavement, my sock just protruding from the right pinky toe.
"Do I figure this out?"
"What, life?"
"Yeah."
"You already did. Now you're just learning to live with it."
The moonlight began to shrink away, letting the night envelop us. The remaining light focused to a point; thousands of leaves casting fractal patterns in a chaotic dance all melting into one spotlight, slipping towards a headlight, into a mere flashlight. It refined to a point, a laser, as it floated down the space between us and up my body. It rested on my forehead and fired.
"Here, put these on."
A pair of sunglasses were being placed on my face in the blinding white. I eventually got them adjusted and the world came into view.
"How is it daytime?"
I was staring out at the park midday, with dogs being walked, skateboarders flipping and tripping, and joggers bouncing by. The sun was everywhere.
"Okay, I just brought you through time so, you know, take a minute and soak it in."
Minor details made it to a secret part of my brain. Clothes were familiar, yet foreign. Bizarre technology was in place of small things like books, cell phones, stereos. Even people themselves felt somewhat alien.
"2023? I guess not much is different. People in a park."
A spin of the trumpet got my attention as he turned to me and said, "Let's walk."
I felt stumbly and awkward. Paying too much attention to walking, to breathing. I assumed everyone was staring, but no one was. The man next to me just smiled as we walked out and down 7th street.
"So, yeah, as you can see, life is just about the same. Some major changes in the air, but so many behind us as well."
Billboards and ads were either holographic, following me as I passed or just paint on a wall. Stores ranged from squatters sitting out selling their goods (glass bowls, hemp, and paper books), to high end, eye scanner designer vintage clothing stores big enough to fit five people comfortably.
"What about the book? What happens with the Tower of Brahma? I don't know the ending."
He stopped spinning the horn and placed it into his pocket. With a smile he said, "Well, what can I tell you? It makes an impact. Of sorts."
"What's that mean? You know what I had planned. How does it end?"
He chuckled to himself. "You'll read it eventually. Live it actually. God, I miss being you."
I put everything that's been happening to me in perspective. Somehow I was still alive. There was some purpose to all this. But I had to know.
"Is it my ending? What I really wanted? Did they make it something horrible? I wanted a happy ending...I did."
Tears welled up and I squeezed them out casually. Future me put his arm around my shoulder and with a grand sweeping gesture he wiped away the veil of reality.
"It's always a happy ending."
My arms weak, I clawed the glasses from my face, light turned to dark, letting them fall to the sidewalk. The night warbled and warped before me. The people, the sun, the future...gone.
I dropped to a knee and then tumbled forward onto my face. Consciousness sat dormant within my body as it heaved and hurled up the booze and stomach chunks. Every 20 minutes or so light made it's way into my open eyes.
Agent Spider walked up and lifted me by the back of my shirt. He began to drag me forward, and five feet later my legs found their footing. I was working my way up to lurching forward.
"C'mon kid, let's get you home."
A single note dissipated down 7th street and out into tomorrow.
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