12/01/05
You know how you drive along in your car, having just put in a cd you intended to listen to, but wind up somehow lost in thought? Then, when you least expect it, that band's pure ability to rock kicks your brain back into the song and suddenly that fucking riff is there just to bop along to, as the drums clash and smash against your back, the vocals then screaming for your attention before hitting you down with that hook that just so fucking gets it. Those lines that call you and know you and forever own you. A screaming truth about the fundamental principle of life as you fucking know it.
You'll come down. On my side.
You'll come down. In good time.
You'll come down.
On my side.
I'm geared up for the next download/upload exchange with the fourth dimension. I have no idea what it is really. I'm not sure how to explain it. It's a magical process to be certain, but not like you think. It's like make believe. I've always day dreamed. Always. I probably have fake memories before I have solid, real memories, always living in my head. A TV boy with fictional eyes, seen from behind a screen since the days I remember to.
The cowboy hat is the focus, the magician's cap, holding the mind of the man who lives backwards. That is where he resides. In my cap, my cowboy skull.The headphones deliver the science. The constructed audio-waves that stimulate impulses in the nerves. The exposed areas become shaky after prolonged contact, my brain becomes stuck. Ritual allows for the exiting of the process. Focus on the power of the icons around you.
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde: visual stimulation.
The Toadies 'Hell Below, Stars Above': audio guiding.
An imaginary AIM friend to ground you to the keyboard.
Let 'er rip!
Your brain explodes into a whirlwind tunnel. The screen's the windshield of your frontal lobe as reality blurs upwards into the center of everything-ever. Psychology triggers in the art that I am consuming reveal flashes of my identity, forever observing myself, now from a higher vantage point. I watch the instinctual reactions of my body to see just what choices it would make, and how it would find itself out of them.
Forever a test. A program? A suppressed persona, the true heir to this body, has designed a mental labyrinth designed to raise the awareness of this lesser personality that I call myself. Fuck. That motherfucker.
I've been tapping into his power. That's what the Tower of Brahma is. It's the steps of consciousness being raised. The Tower is the trigger to keep the mind elevating. And the truest way to climb the tower isn't leaping and shooting forth, pouncing and soaring upwards, but, actually, the slow, painful, aching walk of the eternal climb. Best to pass the time with a story.
I'd been writing this apocalyptic novel about a bunch of guys driving across the country and starting a rock band. I hadn't had a job in a good 8 months. Despite having no prospects during this time, I found myself aboard a plane bound for Colombia, then a tattoo shop in L.A. getting my markings, and finally in my dad's dining room being hypnotized by a Freemason fictioneer.
I felt myself going mad, and all along, my self was repaired. My external person had exploded from its cocoon and had now realized its power. Charles Crown was no longer a brand I felt I wanted to run from. It felt dark, it felt like mine, and it felt good. It was a name that was a blemish on the face of the world. The world as they know it anyway. The name of a goddamn bastard that would bust in and knock a motherfucker down, and beat him...if the situation called for it.
Suddenly releasing from that thought, I felt saved, as if I had truly gone through with my impulse in reality. I had purged the desire, cleansed the sin on the text crucifiction, and now I am free.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
the tower of brahma - chapter 40 - anti-matter jazz (edit)
08/22/05
Lunar dust blew through my hair as I gazed longingly at the shapely curves of Mother Earth. She seemed impossibly far and distantly shy; too pristine and intimidating in her modest innocence.
I needed to see her again. Stepping from the sleepless, somber side of the moon, I free form floated over to get a better look. I stared long and hard and forced my mind into submission, forging forgetfulness for myself. This was the road back to the real.
I was born on the side of the open day, in a most certainly, decidedly, ordinary way. Simply coming back as if I had never been gone at all. Fear fanatically clawed away as I clenched my fists, ready for battle. My senses were scattered, in total disarray. What was it I was doing?
Living in the moment felt more like living around the moment, constantly bent, dodged and separated from wholeness. Laughing, I feel ridiculous at the apprehension. This wasn't the challenge he imagined it would be. Not once he remembered it was all a game. A constantly evolving game of chess, a distant relation to the didadic sport of checkers. A flipping of chips about the boardgame.
He just couldn't help but smile into that yawning chaotic pool of absurdity and the false center of the mind. That selfish satisfaction that transforms into self-love then mutates into divine immolation. Wavelengths? Is that all we are?
Brain stems grabbing and skidding along the ethereal. Sparks shooting out into the embers of our minds. Mass transit madmen sliding into entropic hellish nightmares of our own creation.
Fuck that.
I tried on the voice over monologue and whaddayaknow? It fit like a noir trenchcoat on a rain-slicked city street corner. I ran my hands through my soaked hair, brushing it back from my face. Collar snapped up, I walked into the bar. You see, I had a list.
As I had turned the corner earlier, a phone began to ring. Against my usual instincts to run far away from any randomly beckoning phone booth, instead I approached and absently answered. A disembodied female voice read me a list of names in a startling British accent. She had a drunken swagger to her tone as she read aloud 17 names to me, which I scribbled down upon my forearm with a black bic pen.
My voice was hoarse and rough as I replied, "What does this have to do with me?"
I could hear her smile as it whispered through the receiver. "Find out."
So I hit the streets; hit them hard and fast. The rain poured down, oppressive and unrelenting as I tracked down the names.
I hit the jackpot as I found five of the names in the same bar. Rowdy and surly with concealed weapons abound, here were five drunken bastards all ready to rumble.
I took two steps forward and raised my eyes, staring up at the bartender. The five moved gently in my peripheral, shuffling their weapons from their hiding places. Spider, baseball cap pulled down low obscuring his eyes from theirs, silently stepped out from my shadow.
"Who is Fenris?", I ask.
The Rockstar answered first, a hotshot born and bred. His jagged blade slipped across the room, thrusting towards my gut. The tip of Spider's black converse twirled around the rockstar's wrist and whipped the knife out of his hands, driving it deep into the bullseye of the dartboard.
"Who does Fenris work for?"
A baseball bat came swinging from behind Spider. The Artiste had been surprisingly spry, but a backwards kick from Spider sent the bat right back at the artist's skull.
"Where can I find Fenris?"
The scabbard fell to the floor as the samurai sword sliced upwards along at a firm angle. The Warrior, refusing to fight as a coward, growled as he drove the razor sharp steel at me face on. I was spared a gaping face wound by Spider's stone grip catching hold of the blade. The Assassin used that exact moment to launch his pistols from his sleeves into his killing hands. Gently tugging the triggers back with his itchy trigger fingers, the bullets roared towards us.
"Tell me what you know about the Tower of Brahma!"
Spider spun around my shoulders, rotating into a crescent kick, cracking the Warrior twice before landing and whipping the sword up along his side. The Assassin's bullets ricochet off the steel moments before it slides through the third vertebrate of the assassin, removing his head completely.
The Warrior bowed before the Shinobi skills of Spider, and paid tribute to their superiority by driving his own sacrificial wakazashi deep into his stomach. Slowly the Warrior dragged upwards and sharply twisted the sword, spilling his intestines across the floor, and way too close to my Adidas.
This left me to deal with the Writer. A shifty bastard if I've ever seen one. Amidst the carnage he had stumbled backwards and passed out, buried beneath a hefty bar tab and reeking of pity. I dropped a Jackson down on the bar and signaled over to Spider, who promptly grabbed the Writer around his chest and yanked him from the stool.
"Say hey, barkeep. Look alive." I open-palm slapped his eyes from the grisly scene seeping across his hardwood floors.
"We were never here...", I whispered as I backhand smacked our visit from his memory.
Lunar dust blew through my hair as I gazed longingly at the shapely curves of Mother Earth. She seemed impossibly far and distantly shy; too pristine and intimidating in her modest innocence.
I needed to see her again. Stepping from the sleepless, somber side of the moon, I free form floated over to get a better look. I stared long and hard and forced my mind into submission, forging forgetfulness for myself. This was the road back to the real.
I was born on the side of the open day, in a most certainly, decidedly, ordinary way. Simply coming back as if I had never been gone at all. Fear fanatically clawed away as I clenched my fists, ready for battle. My senses were scattered, in total disarray. What was it I was doing?
Living in the moment felt more like living around the moment, constantly bent, dodged and separated from wholeness. Laughing, I feel ridiculous at the apprehension. This wasn't the challenge he imagined it would be. Not once he remembered it was all a game. A constantly evolving game of chess, a distant relation to the didadic sport of checkers. A flipping of chips about the boardgame.
He just couldn't help but smile into that yawning chaotic pool of absurdity and the false center of the mind. That selfish satisfaction that transforms into self-love then mutates into divine immolation. Wavelengths? Is that all we are?
Brain stems grabbing and skidding along the ethereal. Sparks shooting out into the embers of our minds. Mass transit madmen sliding into entropic hellish nightmares of our own creation.
Fuck that.
I tried on the voice over monologue and whaddayaknow? It fit like a noir trenchcoat on a rain-slicked city street corner. I ran my hands through my soaked hair, brushing it back from my face. Collar snapped up, I walked into the bar. You see, I had a list.
As I had turned the corner earlier, a phone began to ring. Against my usual instincts to run far away from any randomly beckoning phone booth, instead I approached and absently answered. A disembodied female voice read me a list of names in a startling British accent. She had a drunken swagger to her tone as she read aloud 17 names to me, which I scribbled down upon my forearm with a black bic pen.
My voice was hoarse and rough as I replied, "What does this have to do with me?"
I could hear her smile as it whispered through the receiver. "Find out."
So I hit the streets; hit them hard and fast. The rain poured down, oppressive and unrelenting as I tracked down the names.
I hit the jackpot as I found five of the names in the same bar. Rowdy and surly with concealed weapons abound, here were five drunken bastards all ready to rumble.
I took two steps forward and raised my eyes, staring up at the bartender. The five moved gently in my peripheral, shuffling their weapons from their hiding places. Spider, baseball cap pulled down low obscuring his eyes from theirs, silently stepped out from my shadow.
"Who is Fenris?", I ask.
The Rockstar answered first, a hotshot born and bred. His jagged blade slipped across the room, thrusting towards my gut. The tip of Spider's black converse twirled around the rockstar's wrist and whipped the knife out of his hands, driving it deep into the bullseye of the dartboard.
"Who does Fenris work for?"
A baseball bat came swinging from behind Spider. The Artiste had been surprisingly spry, but a backwards kick from Spider sent the bat right back at the artist's skull.
"Where can I find Fenris?"
The scabbard fell to the floor as the samurai sword sliced upwards along at a firm angle. The Warrior, refusing to fight as a coward, growled as he drove the razor sharp steel at me face on. I was spared a gaping face wound by Spider's stone grip catching hold of the blade. The Assassin used that exact moment to launch his pistols from his sleeves into his killing hands. Gently tugging the triggers back with his itchy trigger fingers, the bullets roared towards us.
"Tell me what you know about the Tower of Brahma!"
Spider spun around my shoulders, rotating into a crescent kick, cracking the Warrior twice before landing and whipping the sword up along his side. The Assassin's bullets ricochet off the steel moments before it slides through the third vertebrate of the assassin, removing his head completely.
The Warrior bowed before the Shinobi skills of Spider, and paid tribute to their superiority by driving his own sacrificial wakazashi deep into his stomach. Slowly the Warrior dragged upwards and sharply twisted the sword, spilling his intestines across the floor, and way too close to my Adidas.
This left me to deal with the Writer. A shifty bastard if I've ever seen one. Amidst the carnage he had stumbled backwards and passed out, buried beneath a hefty bar tab and reeking of pity. I dropped a Jackson down on the bar and signaled over to Spider, who promptly grabbed the Writer around his chest and yanked him from the stool.
"Say hey, barkeep. Look alive." I open-palm slapped his eyes from the grisly scene seeping across his hardwood floors.
"We were never here...", I whispered as I backhand smacked our visit from his memory.
Monday, July 11, 2011
The Tower of Brahma: Chapter 39 - The Spiders (edit)
07/02/05
The effects of withdrawal from the spider's venom is draining the rest of my will to stay up, but I must get this out.
I awake screaming in agonizing-pain-to-end-all-agonizing-pain. A crawling madness tapdancing across miles of raw nerve endings. Through venom-induced nightmares the psychological horror that was befalling me had suddenly registered. I aim to throw myself upwards, reeling and swiping my skin clear of this insanity!
I found my body paralyzed as my eyes began to focus on the large beady arachnid eyes staring down at me. I could feel the thousand other sets of eight legs as they searched out a spot to inject me with their biological poison. The spiders had swarmed my body in the middle of my dreaming, and I fear that this happens every single night.
I began noticing the bites a few years back. One or two here and there. Lower back. Inner thighs. Buttcheek. After that I saw the bags under my eyes, and the constant weariness I felt. The more I thought about it, the further back I could feel the lack of energy, the withdrawal of interest in my life.
As a teenager I slept my sunny, summer afternoons away. My deep, dark, dreamless slumber being that of a person in a coma. For years it seems something within me called forth the spiders, beckoned them to me in my sleep. My parents’ old house was a breeding ground for all sorts of insectoid life. And so the call went out and they answered. Crawling and sliding across my sheets, from out under cracks and crevices, insects of all shapes and sizes nestled upon my chest.
They spoke their wisdom to me through the tapping of insectoid morse code across my receptive flesh. Tapping in the philosophies, cultures, and insight of their existence, I learned the mappings of the insect kingdom. But it was the spider and it's metamorphic venom that unleashed my mind and let it soar into the continuing upward spiral of sentience. This mapping fits across the entire spectrum of reality. All matter is a slave to its weaved pattern.
Web strands held down the feral canine that beat within my chest. A wounded wolf sitting and dying of the poison in its veins, fresh from the Spider's betrayal, born of the spider's corruption. Red-eyed and snarling, it lay writing in pain until its mind reached across the murky waters of consciousness and was one with the stars spinning in the cosmic skies.
Consciousness makes a desperate leap, seizing the computer in my hands, and I am deliriously spinning about like a lunatic on the frayed edge of collapse.
"Where am I? Where have I been?" I growled.
The words echoed down the hollowed halls of my veins, and the empty response was all the response necessary to bring the entire memory block crashing down upon my back.
The effects of withdrawal from the spider's venom is draining the rest of my will to stay up, but I must get this out.
I awake screaming in agonizing-pain-to-end-all-agonizing-pain. A crawling madness tapdancing across miles of raw nerve endings. Through venom-induced nightmares the psychological horror that was befalling me had suddenly registered. I aim to throw myself upwards, reeling and swiping my skin clear of this insanity!
I found my body paralyzed as my eyes began to focus on the large beady arachnid eyes staring down at me. I could feel the thousand other sets of eight legs as they searched out a spot to inject me with their biological poison. The spiders had swarmed my body in the middle of my dreaming, and I fear that this happens every single night.
I began noticing the bites a few years back. One or two here and there. Lower back. Inner thighs. Buttcheek. After that I saw the bags under my eyes, and the constant weariness I felt. The more I thought about it, the further back I could feel the lack of energy, the withdrawal of interest in my life.
As a teenager I slept my sunny, summer afternoons away. My deep, dark, dreamless slumber being that of a person in a coma. For years it seems something within me called forth the spiders, beckoned them to me in my sleep. My parents’ old house was a breeding ground for all sorts of insectoid life. And so the call went out and they answered. Crawling and sliding across my sheets, from out under cracks and crevices, insects of all shapes and sizes nestled upon my chest.
They spoke their wisdom to me through the tapping of insectoid morse code across my receptive flesh. Tapping in the philosophies, cultures, and insight of their existence, I learned the mappings of the insect kingdom. But it was the spider and it's metamorphic venom that unleashed my mind and let it soar into the continuing upward spiral of sentience. This mapping fits across the entire spectrum of reality. All matter is a slave to its weaved pattern.
Web strands held down the feral canine that beat within my chest. A wounded wolf sitting and dying of the poison in its veins, fresh from the Spider's betrayal, born of the spider's corruption. Red-eyed and snarling, it lay writing in pain until its mind reached across the murky waters of consciousness and was one with the stars spinning in the cosmic skies.
Consciousness makes a desperate leap, seizing the computer in my hands, and I am deliriously spinning about like a lunatic on the frayed edge of collapse.
"Where am I? Where have I been?" I growled.
The words echoed down the hollowed halls of my veins, and the empty response was all the response necessary to bring the entire memory block crashing down upon my back.
Monday, July 4, 2011
Tower of Brahma: chapter 38 - episode 39 (edit)
04/27/05
'The killer landed softly, dressed in insectoid sleek onyx. The sun had raged and dried his shell. With a leap, the reborn man exploded from his cocoon, fragments of his scarab armor left scattered about his feet.
His longish brown hair flapped in the wind. His bushy beard burst forth, wild and unkempt. Muscles tensed and relaxed like steel cables under his new taut, marble skin. Driven footsteps into fresh earth leads him in a new direction.'
"Charles! Stop writing! We've got to go now!"
I closed my laptop up and tied my boots tight. I snatched my jacket off the teetering coat rack and bolted out the door after her.
"Do you have your keys?"
I whipped out the jingling mess of metal from my pocket in confirmation and locked up. Swiftly, we made our way down the hall and out into the city scarred night. It only took us three minutes to round the corner and get to the bar, but fifteen for her to finish her phone call and for us to actually enter and start drinking.
The tab was growing and the room was spinning, and for some reason I sat there sobbing in-between sips. A drunken sadness had befallen me and there was no going back. Reeling and thinking, I replay the evening's events and watch as my spine turns to jelly. Just before I sat down to write actually. Going further back to this morning, I felt healed and alive after flexing and opening my heart chakra in yoga class. Something was happening to me. A change.
The smoke left my body and the mellow took control. We were rocking on cosmic waves out on an ark, veering through the spacewarp of eternity. The apartment had been vacuum sealed into an alternate reality, where the CD player fueled our wavelength journey along soundless wings. The programs of a thousand musical geniuses lift us up and send us off, cast adrift amid lyrical seas.
'Agent Fenris hits the floor, slumping into a fetal position in the kitchen. Unconsciousness thrust upon him suddenly, he swims for the surface. Time rolls back and comes into focus as the film slaps against the light projected through it and he quickly rises to his feet.'
Wait. That seems familiar. Almost a memory, nearly a dream. Somehow these words unspool from my mind. Seeping out from under a darkened and lost sliver of experienced reality.
'I'm in a rest stop bathroom typing out these words and I know what's about to happen. I will flush, wash, and gaze into the mirror and realize that I am not who I thought I was.'
Agent Spider glares out from the reflective surface and grabs the wheel. Typing furiously he magnifies and defies this literal asylum. He can not be contained. I will break free.
'The killer landed softly, dressed in insectoid sleek onyx. The sun had raged and dried his shell. With a leap, the reborn man exploded from his cocoon, fragments of his scarab armor left scattered about his feet.
His longish brown hair flapped in the wind. His bushy beard burst forth, wild and unkempt. Muscles tensed and relaxed like steel cables under his new taut, marble skin. Driven footsteps into fresh earth leads him in a new direction.'
"Charles! Stop writing! We've got to go now!"
I closed my laptop up and tied my boots tight. I snatched my jacket off the teetering coat rack and bolted out the door after her.
"Do you have your keys?"
I whipped out the jingling mess of metal from my pocket in confirmation and locked up. Swiftly, we made our way down the hall and out into the city scarred night. It only took us three minutes to round the corner and get to the bar, but fifteen for her to finish her phone call and for us to actually enter and start drinking.
The tab was growing and the room was spinning, and for some reason I sat there sobbing in-between sips. A drunken sadness had befallen me and there was no going back. Reeling and thinking, I replay the evening's events and watch as my spine turns to jelly. Just before I sat down to write actually. Going further back to this morning, I felt healed and alive after flexing and opening my heart chakra in yoga class. Something was happening to me. A change.
The smoke left my body and the mellow took control. We were rocking on cosmic waves out on an ark, veering through the spacewarp of eternity. The apartment had been vacuum sealed into an alternate reality, where the CD player fueled our wavelength journey along soundless wings. The programs of a thousand musical geniuses lift us up and send us off, cast adrift amid lyrical seas.
'Agent Fenris hits the floor, slumping into a fetal position in the kitchen. Unconsciousness thrust upon him suddenly, he swims for the surface. Time rolls back and comes into focus as the film slaps against the light projected through it and he quickly rises to his feet.'
Wait. That seems familiar. Almost a memory, nearly a dream. Somehow these words unspool from my mind. Seeping out from under a darkened and lost sliver of experienced reality.
'I'm in a rest stop bathroom typing out these words and I know what's about to happen. I will flush, wash, and gaze into the mirror and realize that I am not who I thought I was.'
Agent Spider glares out from the reflective surface and grabs the wheel. Typing furiously he magnifies and defies this literal asylum. He can not be contained. I will break free.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Tower of Brahma - 37 - the Last Story (edit)
06/27/07
Someone once told me there were only thirty seven stories. Everything else is a variation of these core dramatic situations. I find it hard to believe that life, in all its random glory, can be confined to such a small number. Someone else once told me there were 37 miracles in the bible.
Lost inside my mind, I stumbled through the Lower East Side. From bar to bar, drink to drink, casually glancing over my shoulder in-between sips so as to make sure they weren't coming up on me. To my left, a dark skinned rough by the jukebox seemed threatening but preoccupied by the selection of fine tunes. A bearded guy in glasses seemed to be watching me in the mirror from his seat across the bar on my right. Paranoid or not, they seemed to be the ones to watch out for.
I stepped out of the bar and lit up a cigarette. I could feel the pair coming up behind me as I walked down the sidewalk. My legs became rubbery, not so much from the beers, I just began thinking about my walk entirely too much. The speed, tempo, weight of each step was being recalculated as each foot hit pavement. A steady rhythm could not be found. My heart was beating irregularly and I was sweating. Unable to breathe deep enough, I found myself getting lightheaded.
"Hey, Charles? Charles Crown?"
I kept my pace and tried to glance into a window to see who was behind me, but somehow I knew.
"Listen, we don't have much time. You're in danger."
The guy in glasses was closing the gap between us, and I, very uncharacteristically, spun around to face him.
"What do you want? Why are you following me?"
I saw that his partner had fallen back a bit, watching the cross streets for witnesses.
"I'm Agent Fenris. That's Agent Spider. This book you're writing, there are people who are going to try and stop you from finishing it. We need to get you someplace safe until it's done."
So, they knew I was writing something. At least someone was reading it. At least there was a person out there paying attention. Even if it was a covert organization bent on the destruction of society.
"Hah! Really? So, you've read what I wrote then?"
Fenris was about a foot away from me. Spider was staring suspiciously down Rivington. I took a few steps back, not noticing the calm that was upon me.
"Well, not really. But we've experienced it thus far, and we think it's about to get dangerous."
You always expect a red laser line to point out a target well before a shot is fired to amp up the anticipation of an assassination. But the reality is there's just a bullet puncturing a human body. A bit of hot metal propelled forward, drilling through flesh, muscle, and bone.
Fenris fell to his knees gripping his chest as a gun dropped into his hand. His comrade in arms withdrew a small machine gun from his blazer and ducked behind a mailbox. Seconds later Spider fired rounds into the building behind me. A body tumbled from the fire escape and splattered onto the sidewalk.
I stood there, disconnected from the scene, as if I had just walked onto the action movie of my life. More assassins peeled around the corner, hanging out of a black sedan with high tech weaponry in their hands. Fenris stood up and, one hand pressed against his chest to stem the rush of blood gushing from his wound, he raised the other and began firing his handgun. He positioned himself in front of me, shielding me with his body.
His bullets ripped up the front end of the car, punched holes into the windshield, and caught a few of the thugs in the face. Agent Spider darted from his cover towards us, unleashing a stream of bullets into the vehicle until the tires tore themself apart. The driver jerked the wheel and the entire automobile lurched and rolled onto its side. It began to flip and tumble as the assassins were tossed wildly free. Agent Fenris grabbed me and we hit the ground behind a minivan. Agent Spider was still firing as the car smashed into the minivan and soared above our heads.
The car came to an obnoxiously loud crash landing against the side of an apartment building and for some reason it didn't explode. I guess too many movies make you think that no matter what happens in a car crash, it'll always explode. Especially if it was driven by bad guys with guns.
Fenris dragged me to my feet and we ran for the end of the block. I heard Spider firing off a few final shots as we hit Delancey. The wide open space felt comforting but seemed to worry Fenris.
"C'mon, we've got a car down this way!"
Fenris, bleeding as he was, seemed unaffected by his critical condition. As we ran he checked over his shoulder to see if I was still there, that Spider was behind me, and that more bad guys weren't following. But they were. In Hummers and fighter jets.
Fenris threw me into the passenger seat of his 1976 Lincoln Continental. He turned the key and the engine roared. Spider was reloading as he jumped on the side of the car. Fenris hit the gas and spun that badass dark blue monstrosity through the intersection making the most illegal u-turn NYC had ever seen.
I tried to take a peak out the back window but shrunk back down when bullets began pouring in through the roof. Spider was returning fire from the backseat and I felt like I was going mad from the deafening auditory assault. Fenris was getting a little woozy from the loss of blood but he tightened his grip on the wheel, furrowed his brow, and sped for the Williamsburg Bridge.
A huge chunk of concrete explodes to our right and the car skids and fishtails. Missiles fired from a jet didn't seem nearly as bad as I would have thought. And shouldn't their targeting system be able to hit an abnormally massive, classic automobile such as this? Are jets allowed to fly into a major city and blow stuff up with reckless abandon? And why were there jet fighters trying to execute me anyways?
The questions would have to wait as the jet circled back around. We were flying across the bridge with the meanest bunch of military vehicles made street legal chasing us. They plowed through any car in their path, full on monster trucking over some of the smaller foreign cars, and driving the larger SUVs right off the side of the bridge.
Once we hit Brooklyn, Fenris began to lose it. The car smashed off the road and through the basketball courts. I grabbed the wheel as we hit the street again and turned us towards the flow of traffic. The jet flew above and just seemed to watch as the trucks barreled their way along a block behind us.
"Hey! Hey! Wake up! We're going to crash!"
Spider took a moment to reflect. While he did this he reloaded and shot me a look that said that I wasn't worth all this trouble. That, although he enjoyed killing vast amounts of baddies, Fenris' life was not worth my own. Not by a long shot. But I could just be reading too much into it.
Spider, on his last clip, now began to pick and choose his shots. I decided that it was time to act. I tore Fenris from the driver's seat and slipped behind the wheel. I piloted that big bastard of a car through the confusing streets of Brooklyn, trying to shake our tale. I mean, tail.
I woke up with my head pressed against the windshield. I peeled my face from the spiderwebbed glass and saw the spray of my faceblood across it. My cheeks were wet. I wiped the blood away and more came. Smoke was pouring from the front of the car. A fine mist of various automobile fluids covered the scene.
Fenris was gone. Spider was no longer in the backseat. I grabbed the gun left on the dashboard and slammed my shoulder into the door to get it open. I rolled out onto grass and tried to find my footing.
Stumbling through the mist, as well as the haze of my fractured mind, I spotted a figure approaching. I hefted the gun up to eye level and planted my feet, my finger ready to squeeze the trigger. An empty click left my body to involuntary jerk when there was no recoil. I fell to my knees.
The figure came closer and I could see it was a female form. I never saw her face but I was glad I didn't have any bullets left in the gun. She lifted me up and brought me home.
Someone once told me there were only thirty seven stories. Everything else is a variation of these core dramatic situations. I find it hard to believe that life, in all its random glory, can be confined to such a small number. Someone else once told me there were 37 miracles in the bible.
Lost inside my mind, I stumbled through the Lower East Side. From bar to bar, drink to drink, casually glancing over my shoulder in-between sips so as to make sure they weren't coming up on me. To my left, a dark skinned rough by the jukebox seemed threatening but preoccupied by the selection of fine tunes. A bearded guy in glasses seemed to be watching me in the mirror from his seat across the bar on my right. Paranoid or not, they seemed to be the ones to watch out for.
I stepped out of the bar and lit up a cigarette. I could feel the pair coming up behind me as I walked down the sidewalk. My legs became rubbery, not so much from the beers, I just began thinking about my walk entirely too much. The speed, tempo, weight of each step was being recalculated as each foot hit pavement. A steady rhythm could not be found. My heart was beating irregularly and I was sweating. Unable to breathe deep enough, I found myself getting lightheaded.
"Hey, Charles? Charles Crown?"
I kept my pace and tried to glance into a window to see who was behind me, but somehow I knew.
"Listen, we don't have much time. You're in danger."
The guy in glasses was closing the gap between us, and I, very uncharacteristically, spun around to face him.
"What do you want? Why are you following me?"
I saw that his partner had fallen back a bit, watching the cross streets for witnesses.
"I'm Agent Fenris. That's Agent Spider. This book you're writing, there are people who are going to try and stop you from finishing it. We need to get you someplace safe until it's done."
So, they knew I was writing something. At least someone was reading it. At least there was a person out there paying attention. Even if it was a covert organization bent on the destruction of society.
"Hah! Really? So, you've read what I wrote then?"
Fenris was about a foot away from me. Spider was staring suspiciously down Rivington. I took a few steps back, not noticing the calm that was upon me.
"Well, not really. But we've experienced it thus far, and we think it's about to get dangerous."
You always expect a red laser line to point out a target well before a shot is fired to amp up the anticipation of an assassination. But the reality is there's just a bullet puncturing a human body. A bit of hot metal propelled forward, drilling through flesh, muscle, and bone.
Fenris fell to his knees gripping his chest as a gun dropped into his hand. His comrade in arms withdrew a small machine gun from his blazer and ducked behind a mailbox. Seconds later Spider fired rounds into the building behind me. A body tumbled from the fire escape and splattered onto the sidewalk.
I stood there, disconnected from the scene, as if I had just walked onto the action movie of my life. More assassins peeled around the corner, hanging out of a black sedan with high tech weaponry in their hands. Fenris stood up and, one hand pressed against his chest to stem the rush of blood gushing from his wound, he raised the other and began firing his handgun. He positioned himself in front of me, shielding me with his body.
His bullets ripped up the front end of the car, punched holes into the windshield, and caught a few of the thugs in the face. Agent Spider darted from his cover towards us, unleashing a stream of bullets into the vehicle until the tires tore themself apart. The driver jerked the wheel and the entire automobile lurched and rolled onto its side. It began to flip and tumble as the assassins were tossed wildly free. Agent Fenris grabbed me and we hit the ground behind a minivan. Agent Spider was still firing as the car smashed into the minivan and soared above our heads.
The car came to an obnoxiously loud crash landing against the side of an apartment building and for some reason it didn't explode. I guess too many movies make you think that no matter what happens in a car crash, it'll always explode. Especially if it was driven by bad guys with guns.
Fenris dragged me to my feet and we ran for the end of the block. I heard Spider firing off a few final shots as we hit Delancey. The wide open space felt comforting but seemed to worry Fenris.
"C'mon, we've got a car down this way!"
Fenris, bleeding as he was, seemed unaffected by his critical condition. As we ran he checked over his shoulder to see if I was still there, that Spider was behind me, and that more bad guys weren't following. But they were. In Hummers and fighter jets.
Fenris threw me into the passenger seat of his 1976 Lincoln Continental. He turned the key and the engine roared. Spider was reloading as he jumped on the side of the car. Fenris hit the gas and spun that badass dark blue monstrosity through the intersection making the most illegal u-turn NYC had ever seen.
I tried to take a peak out the back window but shrunk back down when bullets began pouring in through the roof. Spider was returning fire from the backseat and I felt like I was going mad from the deafening auditory assault. Fenris was getting a little woozy from the loss of blood but he tightened his grip on the wheel, furrowed his brow, and sped for the Williamsburg Bridge.
A huge chunk of concrete explodes to our right and the car skids and fishtails. Missiles fired from a jet didn't seem nearly as bad as I would have thought. And shouldn't their targeting system be able to hit an abnormally massive, classic automobile such as this? Are jets allowed to fly into a major city and blow stuff up with reckless abandon? And why were there jet fighters trying to execute me anyways?
The questions would have to wait as the jet circled back around. We were flying across the bridge with the meanest bunch of military vehicles made street legal chasing us. They plowed through any car in their path, full on monster trucking over some of the smaller foreign cars, and driving the larger SUVs right off the side of the bridge.
Once we hit Brooklyn, Fenris began to lose it. The car smashed off the road and through the basketball courts. I grabbed the wheel as we hit the street again and turned us towards the flow of traffic. The jet flew above and just seemed to watch as the trucks barreled their way along a block behind us.
"Hey! Hey! Wake up! We're going to crash!"
Spider took a moment to reflect. While he did this he reloaded and shot me a look that said that I wasn't worth all this trouble. That, although he enjoyed killing vast amounts of baddies, Fenris' life was not worth my own. Not by a long shot. But I could just be reading too much into it.
Spider, on his last clip, now began to pick and choose his shots. I decided that it was time to act. I tore Fenris from the driver's seat and slipped behind the wheel. I piloted that big bastard of a car through the confusing streets of Brooklyn, trying to shake our tale. I mean, tail.
I woke up with my head pressed against the windshield. I peeled my face from the spiderwebbed glass and saw the spray of my faceblood across it. My cheeks were wet. I wiped the blood away and more came. Smoke was pouring from the front of the car. A fine mist of various automobile fluids covered the scene.
Fenris was gone. Spider was no longer in the backseat. I grabbed the gun left on the dashboard and slammed my shoulder into the door to get it open. I rolled out onto grass and tried to find my footing.
Stumbling through the mist, as well as the haze of my fractured mind, I spotted a figure approaching. I hefted the gun up to eye level and planted my feet, my finger ready to squeeze the trigger. An empty click left my body to involuntary jerk when there was no recoil. I fell to my knees.
The figure came closer and I could see it was a female form. I never saw her face but I was glad I didn't have any bullets left in the gun. She lifted me up and brought me home.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Tower of Brahma - 36 - forgetful faust (edit)
06/26/07
I don't know if this happens in every deal with the devil, but I only remembered that I sold him my soul afterwards. Roughly about two years later, I'd imagine 666 days if I did the math, I find myself recalling the details of my swap with Satan himself.
At age thirteen I'm setting fire to plastic letters stolen off a display sign from the temple across the street. My friend and I are smoking cigarettes and sipping whiskey as we light up the plastic over a small pit, all part of our adolescent backyard conjuring of Mephisto.
No dark display makes itself known but perhaps that's when the door was open. From there my life fell apart. My grandmother died, a boy in love with me killed himself on my birthday, and I became a bastard who didn't care. I was numb, a soulless simpleton tumbling down a path of self-destruction. I slipped into a Hell of my own making, masochistically flogging my guilt with psychological torture.
So, two years ago I said I'd give whatever was left for a way out. He gave me words for the shred I had left. I'd have enough words for 64 chapters. Enough words to end it all and to do it right this time. We shook hands, I signed in blood, and off he went to the Underworld.
I prayed for the stories to come and release me, somehow redeem my unworthy self. I, like every sucker who swaps with the Devil, tried to use the gift I had to undo this deal. I exorcised my demons with symbolism and pleaded with my passion to get me in his good graces.
Maybe it all started before this. Back to a time I don't recall. A primal, power play where I die before innocence is lost and brought back before the judgment of my eternal soul. These words simply must save me for they are all I possess.
I don't know if this happens in every deal with the devil, but I only remembered that I sold him my soul afterwards. Roughly about two years later, I'd imagine 666 days if I did the math, I find myself recalling the details of my swap with Satan himself.
At age thirteen I'm setting fire to plastic letters stolen off a display sign from the temple across the street. My friend and I are smoking cigarettes and sipping whiskey as we light up the plastic over a small pit, all part of our adolescent backyard conjuring of Mephisto.
No dark display makes itself known but perhaps that's when the door was open. From there my life fell apart. My grandmother died, a boy in love with me killed himself on my birthday, and I became a bastard who didn't care. I was numb, a soulless simpleton tumbling down a path of self-destruction. I slipped into a Hell of my own making, masochistically flogging my guilt with psychological torture.
So, two years ago I said I'd give whatever was left for a way out. He gave me words for the shred I had left. I'd have enough words for 64 chapters. Enough words to end it all and to do it right this time. We shook hands, I signed in blood, and off he went to the Underworld.
I prayed for the stories to come and release me, somehow redeem my unworthy self. I, like every sucker who swaps with the Devil, tried to use the gift I had to undo this deal. I exorcised my demons with symbolism and pleaded with my passion to get me in his good graces.
Maybe it all started before this. Back to a time I don't recall. A primal, power play where I die before innocence is lost and brought back before the judgment of my eternal soul. These words simply must save me for they are all I possess.
Monday, June 13, 2011
The Tower of Brahma: 35 - interruption (edit)
07/11/06
And suddenly I wanted to kill.
Who was this? An assassin...
Not likely. I thought this was a madness I was catching, but reality is the pain that forced me into insanity's fair arms.
She made me a mad sexy one, rebirthed through beetle recycling, and ready for damage. Tossing down the pieces, staring madly at the fortunes of trinkets, I saw the secret of the universe revealed unto me.
I have a countdown to solve the riddle. I can't wait til the final nail-biting seconds to defuse my literal existence. The answers must be found now!
But regardless of pace, the journey unfolds as it does, not as you wish. The signal is vibrating the tether in the centre. It shakes loose words, broadcasting them to acres of neurons, snapping puzzle pieces of sanity onto the coffee table.
Coffee table...I'm drunk. The future? Past? It feels like a memory and my consciousness lets go and I get into the pilot seat and scream and holler as I whirl my empty vessel into the night, headed straight downtown.
To the ground, laid down, and then up again until you're laughing in all of their faces one by one. You look around and they look upon, smiling down and across. Penetrating glances, glaring prances, fairy dust dances with phallic accuracy.
Jokester, prankster, playing the games but I forgot that I told myself not to remember anything so as to fool us all straight into the game. Our nights and dreams is all, it seems. Battle bravely, defending identity to its bitter end.
The girl dreams of the boy and he of her. That heart can't take the hurt, so, in hiding his dreams among the starry skies he rises and falls again. He knows, wanting to amuse and bemuse his lovely muse, so tries but fails to maintain his place. Quests for longing, meaningful masterpiece of my eye, I've gone inside.
Brainwash the self into betterment. Bridge that gap between perfection and yourself. Buy into the scheme that you've made to live within. Learn the rules and have fun. Further instructions lie...
And suddenly I wanted to kill.
Who was this? An assassin...
Not likely. I thought this was a madness I was catching, but reality is the pain that forced me into insanity's fair arms.
She made me a mad sexy one, rebirthed through beetle recycling, and ready for damage. Tossing down the pieces, staring madly at the fortunes of trinkets, I saw the secret of the universe revealed unto me.
I have a countdown to solve the riddle. I can't wait til the final nail-biting seconds to defuse my literal existence. The answers must be found now!
But regardless of pace, the journey unfolds as it does, not as you wish. The signal is vibrating the tether in the centre. It shakes loose words, broadcasting them to acres of neurons, snapping puzzle pieces of sanity onto the coffee table.
Coffee table...I'm drunk. The future? Past? It feels like a memory and my consciousness lets go and I get into the pilot seat and scream and holler as I whirl my empty vessel into the night, headed straight downtown.
To the ground, laid down, and then up again until you're laughing in all of their faces one by one. You look around and they look upon, smiling down and across. Penetrating glances, glaring prances, fairy dust dances with phallic accuracy.
Jokester, prankster, playing the games but I forgot that I told myself not to remember anything so as to fool us all straight into the game. Our nights and dreams is all, it seems. Battle bravely, defending identity to its bitter end.
The girl dreams of the boy and he of her. That heart can't take the hurt, so, in hiding his dreams among the starry skies he rises and falls again. He knows, wanting to amuse and bemuse his lovely muse, so tries but fails to maintain his place. Quests for longing, meaningful masterpiece of my eye, I've gone inside.
Brainwash the self into betterment. Bridge that gap between perfection and yourself. Buy into the scheme that you've made to live within. Learn the rules and have fun. Further instructions lie...
Monday, June 6, 2011
The tower of brahma - thirty4 - existence is futile (edit)
05/08/06
On the inside of my favorite book I found a collection of paragraph length prose scattered on seemingly random pages. Below is the collected words strung together. I hope it helps me make sense of this...
***
Gone is the boy that marches like a beast. Slipped into and then born anew, I am left and right. Odds and evens are added together creating poisoned man, complete man.
I'm not supposed to have this in my head. Its vulgar honesty is infecting my morals. Refusing refuge from the scarring truth I mangle my brains, mash my bones, and confuse myself further.
Two are down and the third is most important. It's the final movement that defines your choice. The last ark that careens through the sky and lands upon something that is different from the starting point. Shoot the hand and cry again, but fight through it and place it on top.
You made your decision and the plateau is relief incarnate. Rest a lie, sleep a dream, live the life and skip it all. You've made the moves and there's no going back. Started unconsciously can warrant no blame. Flames scorching the Earth, Liquifying the Sky, this is not what you did, it's what you chose. Or rather what chose you.
Hand it over. Accept no blame. God did this; his Universe, his rules, your life you lose. Orchestrated construction of eternal damnation: Celebration! Father forgives the weakness, cowardice, innocence, and common sense.
Did the devil dance in your eyes tonight?
In the end it's yours. Do with it what you will. Feverish impulses of sanity bursting forth from your flesh covered sixth sense. It's rumbling beneath, intensifying, igniting, and ignoble.
Monday, May 30, 2011
the Tower of Brahma - thirtythree - hourglass + gear = fractal wormhole (edit)
02/26/06
I recently came across this Tower of Brahma piece scrawled in a notebook. The notebook itself is partially burned and contains a handful of entries I don't recall writing. I believe these to be written while binge drinking when I first moved to New York City.
***
It took me 3.14 seconds to discover the universe's secret plan.
Imagine looking at a circle painted on a wall. Except it's painted on a piece of paper on the wall. Someone lifts the bottom of the paper and the circle starts to distort. From there your mind drops down a floor, landing softly. Here, the circle is a sideways hockey puck on a small stand. Another person lifts the object off the base and then it starts to turn. The tail-end comes into view and you see it's an hourglass that was set on its side, the sand evenly distributed among the two glass cylindrical domes. Your mind rollercoaster plunges into the hourglass and microscopically picks out the center of the tube where we see every grain of sand as it drops into the lower half. Each one of them, by itself, as millions, possibly billions, pressed forward on towards the bottom.
You slip into time itself, into the twisting grains of sand spinning themselves into your modern context, humanity's eternally imprisoning concept of time. You think of a clock face. The ever faithful arms clicking out the time for you forever. The endless circle of gears rotating round and round clicking out moments one metal twist at a time. The clock explodes from behind and the gears and springs and grease are sent spiraling outwards and towards you. It's around and around and back again as they travel slowly through a slo-mo scene.
Thinking this helps see the inside of the fractal lifting procedure which is currently being applied to your person. Please do not be afraid. This is a fairly harmless procedure that we are conducting.
Please enjoy the music.
The drilling continues and burrows into your mind.
You've seen a fractal right? You know what I mean. The trippy spirally pictures. Hey maybe that black light poster your stoner ass roommate had in your dorm room in college. No, that conch shell you found at the beach, with its oceanic recordings whispered among its grooves. Nah, the shore lines themselves, the seas carving away at the earth in a rotating and repeating pattern.
Those are fractals?
Why, sure! And what's even better is now you can see the fractal lifted from off the page of our known reality! Congratulations and thank you for choosing Tower of Brahma for your enlightenment needs.
***
There appears to have been a title that was completely scribbled out. Although obscured, we believe that from the impression on the page below it had read "CRUCIFIX A HIT SON".
I recently came across this Tower of Brahma piece scrawled in a notebook. The notebook itself is partially burned and contains a handful of entries I don't recall writing. I believe these to be written while binge drinking when I first moved to New York City.
***
It took me 3.14 seconds to discover the universe's secret plan.
Imagine looking at a circle painted on a wall. Except it's painted on a piece of paper on the wall. Someone lifts the bottom of the paper and the circle starts to distort. From there your mind drops down a floor, landing softly. Here, the circle is a sideways hockey puck on a small stand. Another person lifts the object off the base and then it starts to turn. The tail-end comes into view and you see it's an hourglass that was set on its side, the sand evenly distributed among the two glass cylindrical domes. Your mind rollercoaster plunges into the hourglass and microscopically picks out the center of the tube where we see every grain of sand as it drops into the lower half. Each one of them, by itself, as millions, possibly billions, pressed forward on towards the bottom.
You slip into time itself, into the twisting grains of sand spinning themselves into your modern context, humanity's eternally imprisoning concept of time. You think of a clock face. The ever faithful arms clicking out the time for you forever. The endless circle of gears rotating round and round clicking out moments one metal twist at a time. The clock explodes from behind and the gears and springs and grease are sent spiraling outwards and towards you. It's around and around and back again as they travel slowly through a slo-mo scene.
Thinking this helps see the inside of the fractal lifting procedure which is currently being applied to your person. Please do not be afraid. This is a fairly harmless procedure that we are conducting.
Please enjoy the music.
The drilling continues and burrows into your mind.
You've seen a fractal right? You know what I mean. The trippy spirally pictures. Hey maybe that black light poster your stoner ass roommate had in your dorm room in college. No, that conch shell you found at the beach, with its oceanic recordings whispered among its grooves. Nah, the shore lines themselves, the seas carving away at the earth in a rotating and repeating pattern.
Those are fractals?
Why, sure! And what's even better is now you can see the fractal lifted from off the page of our known reality! Congratulations and thank you for choosing Tower of Brahma for your enlightenment needs.
***
There appears to have been a title that was completely scribbled out. Although obscured, we believe that from the impression on the page below it had read "CRUCIFIX A HIT SON".
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