Anthology Complex III by M.B. Julien - HTML preview
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He had the same theatrics to his name but this guy was literally one-dimensional. He actually had to walk sideways to get from point A to point Z. Even with that disability, I wouldn't have found him without the help of Ermac.
Csaloth was a boyscout compared to Rhathe, your average run-of-the-mill criminal who was getting away with robberies and batteries, and in consequence I believe this made him easier to convince.
There was a scientist of the Chambri ethnicity who proposed that the way the atoms in an element are composed and arranged determined the element itself. This never came to light, however it does ring true in other aspects of life.
You see, Rhathe and Csaloth, they are like most of us. On an ordinary day and by default, they wouldn't wish an ill-fortune on anyone else, unless of course the ill-fortune benefited them in some way or another. The human composition has a propensity for love, kindness and all things goodness, and the only time this natural will can be influenced is when personal gain interferes.
Where things come into perspective is when you apply this notion to the man in black. He does not care for benediction or personal gain, and on that same ordinary day he is the one in one billion who does indeed wish ill-fortune on another person even if it has nothing to do with him. He just wants to see the world burn.
That kind of darkness falls in two camps; he found the wickedness and then he found the truth. In my continuing year-long search for him, I have only seen two things change; technology and culture. Politics, it remains the same as it's ever been and continues to breed men.
He is indeed a gem, a rare type of evil and in a different dark plate he might be something you'd want to preserve, but we were here now and I had followed him into a frigid place. The windy city, Chicago.
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Houses. They exist in many parts of the world, and in other places there are none.
They provide shelter. From danger, weather conditions, a place to sleep. They come in many different forms, all types of shapes colors and sizes. Sometimes it seems like the only thing that is constant about a home is the metaphor that it houses.
It's been a long time since I've put the hammer to the nail but I have just begun a new project. There was already a swing in the backyard of my parents' home from the early years and I decided to compliment it with a treehouse for S&D.
Still quite a ways from being finished but it was beginning to take form and it would probably be done soon after the roadtrip.
After packing up the instruments I head home and intercept Lynne as she is checking her mail. “Hey stranger,” she says. I take out my keys and begin to open my own mailbox, wondering whose mail I'll receive today.
“You know the trip we were suppose to take?,” she asks me. “The trip we were suppose to take?,” I ask emphasizing the supposition. “Yeah, we have to cancel,” she says crooklyng her smile, “my sister kind of moved in with us.”
The logic didn't dawn on me. Your sister, who is an adult, moves in with you and somehow it prevents you from going far away from your home. In most cases something like this would free you up, especially if you have children.
Lynne begins to whisper, “She's not doing so well and I don't think it's a good idea to leave her alone.” Claire's not doing well. Who is?
“I guess we could watch a movie over the weekend or something instead,” she proposes. I agree and we begin to walk up the stairs to our floor. She didn't have to say that depression was a clear symptom of desired suicide.
Phantom pain describes a sensation of a body part that is no longer part of the body.
You might be thinking of Lynne and predict that the coming words will be about her, and they will be, but only in so many words as it is Claire who will be my subject.
We don't know much about Claire. Not much except that she has relationship problems that no doubt affect every other area of her life, including her mental life. How much severance can a human being take. You are together one day and then apart the next. Enough of this has to have its toll on the human mind.
You get to be where Claire is at and every day you probably find yourself thinking back on past loves, thinking of what they could have been. Where they could have gone and where you could be right now. You find yourself thinking of all the people you tried to make it work with and all the people who didn't give you that same second chance.
Anyone who thinks too much eventually becomes dangerous.
It's safe to say the dating world is harsh if you're not lucky. There are different abjectives to war; psychological, biological, chemical, nuclear, economic, and in the 46 | THE WINDY CITY
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dating world you can find these same types of warfare. Some people are natural commanders and others just aren't fit for battle. I don't know where Claire falls but maybe the best thing for her right now is to commit surrender.
I stop Lynne in front of my door and ask her if she ever thought about inviting Claire along. “You wouldn't mind?,” she asks. There really wasn't any reason to mind.
“She's a wreck right now but something like this might actually be good for her I think,” she follows. “I'll ask her tonight and she how see feels.”
As Lynne walks away and as I enter my apartment I try to find any problem that may exist with inviting Claire to come along. There were probably fifty problems with it but I couldn't know, that's something Lynne would have figure out, and if she already knows that it's a bad idea then she just won't ask and tell me Claire said no.
Thinking more about Claire, I begin to wonder what types of guys she's had relationships with. Why is it so common for races to stay within races? We always see whites with whites, blacks with blacks, Hispanics with Hispanics and Asians with Asians.
I think I read somewhere that our bodies biologically tell us not to reproduce with siblings or cousins to limit defects in offspring, but I'm starting to wonder if that mechanism can also be the reason why people stay within their own heritage.
Is it possible that such an entity influences us to stay within our class as well? Or should we credit that to family and societal external influence? Anyhow, these things always change over time. Or maybe they don't; some people are bothered by a black and white wedding while others aren't. Makes you wonder, could homosexuality be on the same track as interracial coupling.
I go to sit down on the couch and when I get there I lay my head flat out and stare up at the ceiling. I wonder what Anthology is up to.
“Knock knock,” the door eventually yells. A classic Tao makes his way in and for a moment I guess we're back to how it was before.
He immediately walks to my window and looks out towards the parking lot, “Come look at the new tenants,” he demands. The first thing I notice, after the moving truck, was a blue minivan that had a bumper sticker of the Philippine flag.
“I don't know who I can't stand more, Filipinos or Koreans,” Tao says. I ask him what any of this has to do with Koreans and he tells me that there was one running around on the first floor trying to peer into the apartments by looking through the bottom of the door. That didn't make much since considering you can't see shit when you do that.
“You remember that one family that used to live here? They had like eight or nine kids?,” he asks me. I did. “Well so far I've already seen five of them going back and forth.
I'm just glad they don't live next to me.” “Five kids?,” I ask, “How are they all going to fit in there?”
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We watch for a bit and I ask him which apartment they moved into, to which Tao answered, “You remember that guy that didn't talk much?” I almost forgot about him.
We now had a large first-floor family to add to the roster of tenants and looked to register an even higher decibel score.
After Tao leaves I continue to sit and watch and as the time goes by I eventually see them all. It looked to be a family of a mother, a father and five kids, one of whom was a bit lighter than the rest.
Standing there and watching all of them made me feel like Julia. She once told me that she sometimes writes about the people she'd meet and the things she'd see in every day life. Helping an elderly woman carry a box a few yards to the post office, letting a person with fewer groceries go ahead in line, those sorts of things. I figured I'd go to sleep tonight and maybe dream a Philippine dream.
When I wake up the next morning I realize that I forgot to shut the television off, and when I go to turn it off I can hear knocking on my door. I remember when this place used to be quiet.
“I've been knocking for like ten minutes,” Lynne says. My eyes still half closed and my mind still halfway in the dream world, I simply stand there and wait for what she has to say next. “Claire wants to come. She's actually very excited,” she laughs. I honestly thought the roadtrip idea was dead, but I guess I was dead wrong instead.
“How is your weather forecast. I mean work forecast. I mean are you working at all for the next few days?” She says no and tells me that we could actually leave today, and that she had already been planning the whole trip once Claire said yes. That's to say, she did it all in one night. “I don't know, I'm just eager about it and I've been playing it out in my head since we talked about it. The children can't wait either.” These are her words.
She tells me that they had been preparing and asks me if I could be ready in an hour or two. Yeah, I got nothing better to do anyway. In the middle of all this we hear someone walking up the stairs. It's Jack, who nods at Lynne as he walks closer to us.
He greets us then proceeds to open his door, and as he is entering his apartment he asks me if I would be able to help him move in an armoire at my earliest convenience.
Lynne cuts in and says that we were actually finishing up and I tell Jack that I would be out in a minute or two and we all depart.
On the way down Jack tells me about where he went, and when we get to his car, I see the armoire tied to the top of his car. We take it down and carry it into his apartment and set it down in a random location, and just like it to be Jack, he doesn't let me leave without giving me something. “I got something for you too, buddy.” This time it's not cereal.
He goes back to his car and meets me in the hallway to hand me a compact-disc case.
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“I picked it up in Springfield, I think you'll like it. It's the album 'Moodpiece,' by Cloud Hemingway. No one knows about them but I think they can make it big.” I thank him and read the backside track listing as I walk into my apartment.
1. Born Again 1:28; 2. Incognito 4:16; 3. Dead Wrong 4:57; 4. Sunroom 0:45; 5. Small World 5:20; 6. Surreal Dreams 3:25; 7. Shapeshifter 4:58; 8. The Lost City of Atlantis 3:44; 9. Metamorphosis 0:04; 10. The Sand Graves 3:29; 11. Lords Of All Creation 4:01; 12. Devil's Nest 0:27; 13. Merry Go Round 1:59; 14. If I Should Die Before I Wake 4:51; 15. Mind Terror 3:33; 16. Gallery of Faded Memories 4:38; 17. Third Millennium 2:39; 18. The Toll Road of Denial (The Price, Your Soul) 5:13
Before I know it someone is knocking at my damn door again. I open it and this time it's Sara who is telling me they are leaving in five minutes. What the fuck? Her mom just said in an hour or two and now they are leaving in five minutes. Whatever, I don't have much that I need to bring anyway.
I got whatever it is that people bring with them on long trips and was ready to go within ten. On my way out I see Claire for the first time in almost a year. For the most part she looked the same but I couldn't be sure of who she was going to choose to be today or for the next three days.
Claire and I are the last two out of our respective apartments while the others waited for us downstairs, and while we head down the stairs she thanks me. She thanks me for talking to Lynne that one day, convincing her to stray away from Silvio, but I guess she was gone long enough and had no idea that the person she should have been thanking was Emily. She goes on to also thank me for watching over them and for being there for them.
I just simply nod my head, it's far less than words.
I take the passenger seat and Claire rides in the back with the kids and sooner or later we arrive at my parents' home. “Aren't you glad you have a three-day weekend?,” Claire asks Sara and David. For some reason the question makes me think about her dog.
Lynne runs to the trunk of the car and takes something out, then approaches my window and in her hand displays me the item. She wanted to put up one of those annoying ass door chimes that make sounds in the wind.
I help her set it up while the other three walk around in the house. After we're done she goes and grabs a few items for the trip and then we all head back into the car. Claire, for a while I wondered what she thought of the house and I wondered if it changed her perception of me at all. I wondered if the neighborhood changed her composition.
In a dream that I can't seem to remember completely, I recall Lynne telling me that a dandelion symbolized change. Something of a metamorphosis; unlike the warm-blooded, 49 | THE WINDY CITY
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a reptile's inner temperature relates to the temperature of its environment. She is almost the same, in the sense that she seems to be sad if the people around her are sad and happy if the people around her are happy.
If their genome is in anyway similar, the same might apply to Claire and maybe on an even more sensitive stage. It might be where her seemingly bi-polar tendencies stem from. There's also the chance that it's all external, though. I am not a doctor but I am a human being and I can tell you that stress is one of the biggest causes of a poorly functioning body.
We officially begin the roadtrip as we drive away from the parents' home and the first interesting thing I see is a house that sported an American flag on its western roof and a Japanese flag on its eastern roof. Tao certainly would not approve.
Once we got further out we headed to a gas station that resided on the edge of the city. There, they got gas, snacks and things to drink. I stayed in the car and looked down the road to observe four streets signs before me; a stop sign, a no u-turn sign, a one way sign and a(n) ECAP bus stop sign.
Once gone, we knew we were in for good when we passed the Ernest Gate. A large statue of a gate and a woman on one of its sides; laying there on her stomach and her face down, she begs for mercy. It fell back behind us like the way you'd like to leave complex algebraic problems behind you and there was nothing now except road.
We were now entering a windy city, and every once in a while I would look at the side-mirror to find David looking out of his window. I wonder what he's thinking.
Imagining. The thoughts lead me down into a dark tunnel that He had passed through long before. A dark tunnel that was once called home and a place to get away.
“Oh, mother, tell your children not to do what I have done. Spend your lives in sin and misery in the house of the rising Sun.”
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Chapter 79
ABANDONED SUPERHIGHWAY
1:3:8:79
YESTERDAY, I had a dream. The problem is I can't write it down. Stuck in a car with four other bodies on a busy freeway, even if I did have the paper to put to the pen I'm sure one of them would eventually ask me what I was writing down.
“Here,” Sara says as she hands me half a bottle of green soda from the backseat. Back on topic, it's interesting to ponder all the thoughts that have now gone with the wind.
Retaining memory is useful but there will come a time when the memory faults and the thought vanishes like a gas before you can transfer it to paper. And when you think it has permanence, you lose that loose leaf of paper.
Imagine if Moses was writing down scripture one day and by mistake, or maybe by chance, the pen slipped out of his fingers and onto the ground, and for a complete minute he searches for the pen and at the same time loses his train of thought, so that after he finds the pen and after he sits back down to continue writing, an entire verse is missing from the Old Testament. Or, maybe in another dark plate he doesn't lose the pen, maybe instead he loses an entire page that he had previously written.
Documentation is so fragile and ideas are so weightless; so many times I've written something down to remind myself and then completely forgot about it or simply lost it.
So many things get lost and we never get the chance to experience them. We never get the chance to see them, the chance to hear them. Never get the chance to read them, never get chance to watch them.
It's a bit annoying that I can't write anything down at my own convenience because when I stop writing I get withdrawal symptoms. What if I have a really important dream, like one that answers the biggest question and solves the biggest mystery of the puzzle.
You just never know when it will dawn on you.
I take a look at the roadmap, and after crossing the state line, I tell Lynne that she has to get to the I-90 if we want to get to where we're going. Soon enough we're on it and traveling at a high velocity. The changes in position make me wonder how far away from home we are. Even how far away from the Sun.
“Ey Rafiki!” I look back to find that David has his ass hanging up in the air. “A Sunday sauna squash banana!” I adjust my view to find Sara rocking back and forth.
Claire, she's trying to get David to sit down properly and Sara to stop singing but all appears to be lost.
“He, he's alive?!,” David asks Sara. Sara closes her eyes and almost goes into a meditative position, then calmly replies, “It is time.”
When I first met David I could clearly see the reservation. The reservation from his 51 | ABANDONED SUPERHIGHWAY
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mother, his aunt, even his sister. He still has it but I think doing something like this has opened him up a little bit. Like a flicker of light down that long tunnel. Sometimes you just have to do these sorts of things, whether it be by yourself or with other people. It helps to thin the blood.
A few minutes later and Claire has reassumed control of the situation and the vehicle is somewhat silent. I look at the roadmap again and see that we are still some klicks out of where we're going.
“??? ??? ???? ????,” Lynne says to me. What? “You ??? ???? nine,” she repeats herself. I can't hear her over the sound of the wind so I tell her to roll up her window.
“You see that sign?” I look up and see an expressway sign that yells “MBJ Airport, 12
miles.”
“It was never suppose to be built,” Lynne says, “throughout his life he told his family that he didn't want to be remembered in any way, so of course they build an airport in his name.” Claire and I laugh at the piece of information we never knew.
About half of an hour later we get on the A-1 and see our first political billboard. Yes, you pictured it exactly right because they're all about the fucking same.
“Change,” this is the one word that will be tied to every political campaign you will ever see. It'll be bounced around and mangled and used very loosely through all the years.
As one person stands from the seat, another shall sit, and from the elect's mouth you shall hear words that you've heard many times before.
I began to run up the stairs. I ran and I ran until I reached the very top of the skyscraper, and then I looked down at the massive interstate. I had been up here before but it was with my family. My parents and my little brother. And it was daytime. “?”
someone says. Somebody was calling my name but I was daydreaming my life away.
And then I woke up.
When I came to we were on the I-80 and on a fast track to where we were going.
“Was someone calling me?,” I asked. Claire tells me that Sara wanted to ask me something, and when I look at Sara she pauses, then says she forgot what she wanted to ask. Oh well. “Some of us have no name so that death may never find us.”
As the longhand continues to tick I pay attention to all the billboards we pass, maybe trying to see a familiar face. Trying to see something that wakes me up from a long nightmare. “I love her,” Claire breaks the silence. On the other side of the road was the billboard for a new movie, “Scarlett Fever,” that stared Anna Briol Walkhill. “From the director of 'Snowy Pastures.'” I always hated that.
Claire starts to talk about how much she loves Anna's films and it's not too long until Lynne enters the conversation and they end up talking about popular female actresses.
In the midst of the conversation, David leans forward and whispers something into 52 | ABANDONED SUPERHIGHWAY
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my ear. A question. “Why do you keep tapping the window?,” he asks. I thought about the silent tapping and wondered why he wondered about it. Yeah, you know kids, they can be very perceptive.
“Because I feel like it,” I respond. He looks at me and then leans back into his seat, periodically kicking the back of mine. It doesn't bother me, at least not yet.
We were now taking a right and exiting the PRI-3. We were finally away from the speed and the wind and were in a much calmer place riddled with red traffic lights, gas stations and corner stores. What jumped out the most though, was the high amount of homeless people that resided in the area. This was indeed the asshole of the city and this would be the way we entered her. Not through any other orifice butt this exit, where in every alley lays a man or a woman who once had a dream.
We stop at some hotdog joint but I don't join the others in going in, instead I tell them to just get me something. I then begin to walk around, as I've done so many times before, and I look around the scene.
I suppose it was too early for prostitutes but I did however see a woman in suggestive clothing standing on a street corner. I went up to her and asked her what town we were in, and she tells me that we were in Greenville. “Thanks,” I start to walk away but she asks me which way I was headed, then eventually tells me that she needed a ride.
I told her that I couldn't help her and that was pretty much the end of it. She didn't persist. I wanted to give her twenty bucks and tell her to call a cab but I couldn’t, and no, it wasn't because of the way it would look to onlooking bystanders. It was because at that moment I felt that not helping her was in a way helping her. Something happens to a person when they hit the bottom, and from the look of where we were now, she was very close to it.
Goodbye Miss Greenville, maybe I'll see you again someday with your lime green miniskirt. When I get back to the hotdog joint I see them walking out and Claire hands me mine. “Do you want to see a building get blown up?,” she asks me. The owner of the joint told them that two apartment towers were going down today. We didn't even have to drive to get there, we just walked and stood next to all the people who were waiting for The Fall.
“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two.” A cloud of dust goes up into the air as Sara and David witness something they will probably never see again.
Reconstruction. Making way for the new by tearing. Down the old. I've realized that the closer you get to your dreams in life, the more they start to make sense, unless they take a turn for the worse and become hellish nightmares. I'ved died twiced over and lived lifed moreover'd.
Once it was all over we got back in the car and left Greenville. Back on the speedway 53 | ABANDONED SUPERHIGHWAY
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we promptly took the I-70 and were ever closing in on where we were going. It wasn't dark yet but it would be soon.
For a while the car is silent, Lynne hasn't even remembered to turn on the radio yet.
Really the only sounds were the ones that came from the wind. The ambiance of it all. To the left and right of us were city buildings showing off their city's lights.
In literature we have what you would call a recurring theme. Certain aspects, subjects, that continue to reappear throughout the writing. And in life, we have recurring dreams.
Desires, fears, opinions, these things that continue to pop up night by night and from time to time.
After enough time of writing and studying your dreams, you start to see the worlds collide and notice they have the same common denominator. A thematic representation of reality. How long is it until the denominator makes it difficult to separate reality from fiction? Until your life begins to feel like a novel and a novel begins to feel like your life?
Back on the way and on the track of the I-70, I offered the others music to accompany the scene. I put in Moodpiece and by the fifth track I realized that an album like this was meant to be played on long trips of any sort.
By the eleventh track both Sara and David had fallen asleep and Claire was inbetween both worlds. Lynne was wide awake, but then again she had to be. The speakers sung a few more songs and afterwards it became silent again. Maybe for about a minute. Almost anyone would have thought that the album was finished but it wasn't. After the minute long gap, the speakers began to make weird buzzing sounds and the display read
“TRACK 20 UNUM.”
Lynne turns her head and gives me a puzzled look and I simply don't know what to say. A playful part on the producers to include a hidden track. I wonder if Jack knew about this. Eventually the buzzing sounds transform into actual notes and a mellow song begins to play. Lynne can't help it but to laugh.
At this point we traverse onto the H-2 and I'm left thinking about a poster plastered prominently on one of Jack's walls. “Music is the space between the notes.” Isn't it weird how you can recreate parts of songs in your dreams. Put an album on repeat, shuffle, chronological, then witness how every thing changes.
Minutes in and Claire is now losing the battle. We exit for the last time today and begin to look for a motel to stay in for the night. We drive around the town searching for one and we find one sooner rather than later. When we pull in, we see rows of parked cars and begin to assume that they are fully booked.
We slowly drive down the row looking for a parking space but there is none to be found. When we get to the end of the row we see a space but it's marked handicap-only.
When Lynne stops and begins to back up I ask her why we're going in reverse and she 54 | ABANDONED SUPERHIGHWAY
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tells me that we're parking there. I don't know if it happened to you, but I completely forgot that she was indeed a cripple.
We bump fists and exit the car, praying that there was a vacancy available. It turns out that there were four rooms left and we take two for the night.
Walking back to the car, Lynne points out the low autumn Sun that was setting before us. She stops in the middle of the sidewalk and grabs my hand to catch me. We stand there for a moment and watch it together, and given enough time it began to feel like something out of a poorly written melodramatic romance movie that was directed by an amateur. In a way that's exactly what it was.
When we get back to the car we see that Claire is waking up. Each of the older sisters grabs a child and carries them into the room we had rented. Once they are all set I leave the four and go to my own room located just to the right.
Inside a drawer I find a Bible and some paper along with a pencil. As much as I try, I can't remember what I dreamed only hours earlier. Giving up I go to lie on the bed and attempt to get some sleep. Sometime in the night I realize that I just can't fall asleep on a bed like this. Instead I get up to look out of my window and I see Claire smoking a cigarette right in front of our car. I started to wonder at what age she took her first blow.
There was a time, early in life, when I hated everything. Born too young, top of my lungs, sitting on the bottom rung. Took advice from the wrong shoulder, took a lot of everything. Black and blue, suffering fools, by the age of seventeen.
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Chapter 80
HOPES & PIPE DREAMS
1:3:8:80
CLAIRE drops the cigarette butt doesn't step it out, and then walks back into the room. Me, I drop the blinds to the window and go to sit back on the bed, and there I find a shotgun waiting for me. Wait no, I told you about that already last year. Actually, there is a Bible waiting there for me, yeah that's what it was, a Bible.
I lay next to the Bible in a familiar place and start to think about Moses again. About the dream I had of him where I was building our apartment building. I guess maybe I'm not really sleep-deprived right now, maybe I'm just homesick.
Eventually the birds begin to chirp and the day wakes, and as for me, I can't tell whether I ever really slept or not. This is not the first time and it surely won't be the last.
Once I hear the other four bodies talking outside, this is when I get up to greet them.
We pull out and leave the motel and begin to follow a high autumn Sun. For a while I think about the handicap sign that became of great use to our adventure.
I look at the roadmap and give Lynne instructions to find the nearest highway. On the way there, we pass by a sort of park where we see children playing and parents walking.
Turning a corner I see a small statue of a man sitting on the ground, almost a bit Indian style, and with a sign that reads “I was forgotten by the 51st state. Any change would be well appreciated, God bless.”
I didn't quite catch the name but it was nonetheless an interesting statue. What came next was the highway we sought, and soonafter we crossed our second stateline. I started to wonder how many miles it was now. To and from.
It was maybe an hour into the drive that I noticed a billboard that said “Chase your dreams...” On it you had the typical successful man and woman in their respective gender's business suits. One of them even had a pair of glasses on. I'm guessing the advertisement was for a college or some type of learning center.
I've always wondered why it is that the word “goal” is interchangeable with the word
“dream.” This way of thinking basically implies that one day, what was a dream before will clash with the life of reality. Take that same underlying concept and that is to say that a dream you've dreamed before might someday enter into the reality of life. I think there is a part of all us that believe that the lives we see in our dreams are really out there, out there even on a physical level.
So now what I have to ask is if it's the dreams we have that define us. Both the life dreams and dreams we have in our sleep. If Joe's goal is to help produce a world where all people are accepted for who they are, regardless of their differences, and a recurring dream he often has at night is that of two men getting married, does that tell us anything 56 | HOPES & PIPE DREAMS
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about him? So often we wake up and forget, sometimes even discard, the dream we so recently had.
“Look,” Claire points out a couple of cows way off in the distance. We all look over and I see that Sara has her face pressed up against the window.
David begins to speak, “At school in the big room where we play there was a party and some of the teachers put on animal costumes and Ms. Palmer was a giraffe with a long neck who was looking for her family because they got lost in the rain after they finished eating leaves from a apple tree. Then after she found them they had a big party and Ms. Palmer ate all of the grass cupcakes and drank all of the grass juice and I think she got sick after because then she went and laid on her bed in her room and went to sleep but when she woke up in the morning she was all better and went to school with her friends.”
“And also, Ms. Palmer was sad because she didn't have an umbrella when she was in the rain, so she had to hide under trees sometimes. She had to ask all the other animals where she was because she didn't know the names of the places she was walking in. But I think if she had a phone then she would be able to call them and tell them where she was.
Then, all they have to do is find the street she was on, and they could pick her up in their car,” Sara finishes.
I could barely hear the story that the two were telling Claire because of the wind but I think I got the gist of what happened. Some giraffe got lost and was reincarnated into some other animal and had to find his village.
It was an interesting story and definitely made me wonder about reincarnation. What happens after we die? We take account for what we did in our previous life and then are judged into a new body.
When you think about it we see reincarnation all around us and every day, in chemistry, sociology, even in something as simple as cell death, so it makes sense that there was a person who looked at the world in the same light and believed that there was an even greater order to it all. That this same concept functioned on the grandest scale.
If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person? A new person? Late into my teenage years, I'd like to say when I was about seventeen, I'd often have these awareness attacks that forced me to walk so I could catch my breath, and all through the attack I would wish I was in a better place, and it wasn't long until I woke up in the complex.
This complex I'm telling you about, I cannot say that it's so much a better place than it is a worse place. You see, it's not really either, the definition of it always depends on the person who looks into it. The person who sits down in one of its corners and experiences it from the inside.
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What I've learned though, before and now as I look out of my window at additional lanes, is that there are times when you just have to get away from the complex.
“Miami trails only by a touchdown, leading into the half,” an announcer says on the radio as our car makes a slow stop. We get out of the car and begin to walk towards a park in an effort to stretch our legs.
When we got to the playground it was as clear as day, but the darkness soon fell. The days were getting shorter and the dark blue ever fading away. Eventually all of the other bodies left the park, maybe in search of food, and it was only the five of us who were left.
David decided to stay in the field and stare into the sky with his telescope while Claire laid down on a bench and smoked her life away. The rest of us, we went inside the park and slowly swung on the swings. As a kid I remember wishing that I wished the weather was like this all year round, but I guess wishes rarely ever come true.
I can't say I remember what Lynne and I talked about that night but I do remember it being interrupted by Sara, who got tired of her own swing so she came and sat on my lap.
I remember it because I remember thinking it to be strange, that she would sit in mine and not her mother's. I was getting a promotion that I didn't really want, but like I said before; you just can't ever know who will stay with you for the rest of your life.
“Do you know the caterpillar?,” she asks me. I positively reply, then she begins to tell me about how they have one in her classroom. She likes the way they look, that's what she says as we swing back and forth.
“Can we go higher?,” she asks me. I start to swing harder and it's not long before we are sky high. Lynne joins in on the fun and it was safe to say we were having a good time. Maybe even a great time.
Later on I left them and went to find David who was exploring a completely different world. Through the telescope he saw the stars, and through his mind he found the constellations.
In a time before electronic devices, before we had all these things to preoccupy our minds, all people could really do was look at the stars and kill time by making up stories about them. The most fun some of them ever had was when they were connecting the dots.
“Will you ever have to leave?,” David asks me. The question was something I wasn't expecting, but after thinking about it I understood what he was asking me. What he was really asking me.
“David,” I reply, “let me tell you something that my father told me. Look at the stars, the great kings of the past look down on us from those stars.” “Really?,” he interrupts.
“Yes,” I reply, “so whenever you feel alone, just remember that those kings will always be there to guide you, and so will I.”
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We are both laughing by the time I finish and I had hoped that I answered his question, even if it was in an unacceptable manner.
“What are you two laughing at?,” Lynne asks as she approaches. Claire and Sara had decided to tag along, so for a while it's just all of us in the middle of a field, taking turns with an instrument that was meant to further the imagination.
“We should get going, and start looking for a motel,” Lynne suggests. The problem was if we stopped to sleep, there wouldn't be time to get to where we were going and make it back home in time for school, so instead I offered to drive the rest of the way through the dark night.
The plan was approved by everyone so we got in the vehicle and I took the wheel. I hit the first highway I could find on the roadmap and already by that time everyone else had fallen asleep. It was strange, like a type of dream strange.
When I glanced at the time I saw that it was eleven o'clock; I was in for a long night.
The first interesting thing I saw during the night was a sports car that must have been going over one-twenty. I wondered why he was going so fast and just assumed he liked the the thrill of the speed. Then again some people double the speed limit on regular streets. You know, the types that kids play in, the ones they like to cross without parental supervision.
Doesn't really make sense to me, we're all headed to the same place. Death is the only thing that's permanent. The house of death, you get there with half-doubts & unrelenting fever dreams.
“So what's your story,” Claire startles me. I look at the rear-view mirror and see that she is staring right at me. The first thing that passed through my mind when I looked into her eyes was whether or not a personality shift had occurred.
“I don't have a story,” I say. “Sure you do,” she replies. There is a pause, and finally I say “It's the same as yours, I was born and now I live.”
“Where are the plot twists? The cliffhangers?,” she asks. “They're at home in my novels,” I joke. She laughs. Her laugh is nothing like her sister's.
I thought the conversation was to end there, but a little while after she began to spoke again, “Abortion was a plot twist of mine,” she says in a different voice. This voice was much lower than her usual voice. “The guy never even knew he came this close to having a kid because he dumped my ass right before I found out I was pregnant.”
Why. Why do people think I'm a telephone. I'm not a receiver and I'm pretty sure I don't look like a receiver, so why do people seem to spit their thoughts out at me. Why do they think I'll listen to their lost stories.
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but something was bothering me. So, eventually, I had to ask.
“Do you ever think of what may have been?,” I wake her up from a half-sleep, “I mean, do you ever think about how your life would have changed if you decided to instead keep the baby?” She does something with her hand, then says “All the time, but then you know, and even now, I just don't think I have what it takes to raise a kid. I'm not like anyone else in my family.”
I think on what she says and reply. “Well,” I look back to see if she's still awake, “no one really knows how to raise a child until they have one.” It felt strange giving her advice on parenting.
I hear something come from the backseat and when I look back, I see that Claire has fallen asleep, and that I was once again, alone. If you would have told me two years ago that I would be right here right now, I would not have believed you.
It was now nine a.m.; I needed to use the bathroom and I needed something to eat, but the others were still asleep. The only interesting thing that happened during the entire night was hearing Lynne talk in her sleep. She said something like “Moofasuh” in the tone of a question.
It's nine-ten now and I'm exiting the highway and entering a town, looking for a place to stop. Up ahead I can see construction, so I make a right to avoid a mess that may have been caused by a road accident, but the problem is it doesn't help much, the same construction appears to be going on in every direction.
I drive around for a while with no real sense of where I'm going and eventually I get completely lost on a street called N. Boulevard. With no choice, I drive west, towards the construction, and not before long I realize we were in the middle of a huge carnival.
Sara is the first to wake up and notice it, and then the rest soon followed. I looked at the roadmap to see where we were exactly and I saw the name of a familiar town. It was a place you read about in books, or saw with the eye in films. You may have even heard of it with the ear in music. Named to be the last place on every map, the last destination.
When we roll down our windows we hear the loud noise of celebration and find that the parade was headed our way. In the distance, David points out a tall standing Ferris wheel, for reasons of the obvious.
At first, we stay in the car and watch, and through all this time David continues to kick the back of my seat. A minute in and we have already seen a dozen different costumes go by, all with detailed designs displaying definite devotion. And of course, David is still kicking my seat.
“If you keep kicking my seat, I'm going to take you out of the car and drown you,” I threaten him and I try to reach back for his neck, and being a child he nimbly evades. I give up, he continues to kick, and this time laughing as he does it.
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We all then get out of the car and observe the large and long parade. The moment I step out onto the pavement, I hear the sound of orange, yellow and brown leaves crunching under my feet. By the time I look back up I can see David running towards the lively playground. Sara and Lynne walk hand in hand towards the parade. And Claire, she goes her own way as she lights up another cigarette.
We never got to where we were going, but the carnival more than made up for it.
Hours passed by in minutes and before we all knew it we were under the cover of darkness yet again, and even so, the parade went on.
I recall finding David and Sara riding on a merry-go-round sometime in the night while Lynne watched over them. I had no idea where Claire was. When I reached Lynne I saw that the amount of time left on the ride was a minute and fifty-nine seconds, so I asked her if we were going on next.
After they both got off, they asked if they could ride it again and it was around this time that a photographer came up to us and asked if he could take a picture for local coverage. Maybe this carnival was more important than I initially thought.
As we pose for the photo, a ball comes flying out of nowhere and hits Sara on her nose. At first she doesn't respond, and after she sees we are all looking at her, she begins to cry and goes forth into the belly of her mother. It couldn't have been pain, it barely touched her. It must have been embarrassment.
The photo was never taken but that is no matter; everyone has a photographic memory, some just don't have film, and I believe by now both Sara and David are at the ages where they can feel happiness with their mind and not need to see it with their eyes.
I am not related to them in any way, not by blood, not even by emotion, and I wouldn't exactly say that I am part of their family, but I do hope that I can be such a figure to them so that long down the road and many years from now, any effect that I had on their genetic make-up seeks to exude kindness.
They break off from me as the two little ones need to use the bathroom, so I wait near a gate for them, looking around for Claire but she is no where to be found. Instead what I find is a sight that is all too similar. The parade was still going on and what I saw was a clear case of the carnival complex.
It was nothing unusual to see devils dancing around, but something went bump when I saw a spaceman. Then, without delay, came the theater masks and I was in a bind. I felt like someone poured acid down my eyes. It all came together when I saw Sid in the middle of a pack. It wasn't exactly Sid, but it could have been his brother. Whoever it was, he was clearly a madman who was developing a cult.
Ten minutes now and they still aren't back. The imagery is starting to get to me. I need to fucking write something. Tired of this open road, too many people. Too many 61 | HOPES & PIPE DREAMS
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people celebrating, and for what. Tomorrow they will go back to their sad lives. Another band-aid.
Sometimes you're better off dead. There's a gun in your hand and it's pointing at your head. You think you're mad, too unstable, kicking in chairs and knocking down tables in a restaurant in a west-end town. Call the police, there's a madman around, running down underground to a dive bar, in a west-end town.
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(1:3 / 3 / III)
Part 9
M.B. JULIEN
Chapter 81
THE AMERICAN DREAM
1:3:9:81
WE driving somewhere in Barstow, on edge of desert, when drags begin to take hold.
I remember narrator say something like “We're about forty-five miles out from Madison, so you can slow down now.”
I driving so fast because I thought we are being followed. We were on way to buy new drag that might become craze in America. Dealer call it “Aemrdz,” why weird name I don't know, but dealer says drag give you best high, high like you go crazy and loose mind, but at same time you felling peace like Buddhist monk. I'm not sure how explain you, but narrator and I, we close.
“Slow the fuck down,” narrator say to me, “we aren't being followed.” Maybe narrator was right, but I don't like the chance. Cops, they know of the new drag Aemrdz to, and I know them. I know they monitor.
Narrator open glovebox, “What you look for?,” I ask. Narrator reply, “I swear to God I put my nipple in here last Thursday, but it's not here anymore.” “You sure,” I ask.
Narrator lift up shirt to show me. “I see two nipple,” I say. Narrator look down to see two, and then I see look of confusion on narrator face. But face of confusion change to face of question. Is seeing far is wrong?
That were how narrator was, never certain much, always questioning, even really more when narrator was doing the drags. When drags, narrator come to be different person. Well, not really different person, same person, but everything magnified. Small question became big question, and then obsession come to take narrator away. I know, month from now, narrator will still will be thinking about nipple, and somehow, question of nipple will become question of human anatomy and physiology.
“Do you hear that?,” narrator say to me. I hear it, sound of car dying. Before dying we make it to small city and I pull car into spot to check out. I was friend of narrator, but I was also narrator's mechanic, so me fixing narrator's car not far from fiction. Problem, was, I could of not fix car.
“Boris, you think if I jumped off the Empire State Building, I could survive?,”
narrator ask me. I think about question as we walk away from car, “No.” “You don't think there's any mathematical chance at all that I can survive?” “No way.” “There has to be some positive value east of the decimal. I mean like, if I jumped a trillion times, I think I could survive at least once.”
“There is no way for survive. Physics kill you every time. Jump trillion time, one hundred trillion time, every time you die.” “What if each time I jump, a variable changes?” “What variable change?” “I don't know, but each time I jump something will 63 | THE AMERICAN DREAM
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change, and what if that one change allows me to escape your physics.” “Explain variable that save your life.” “Okay, a variable like oxygen saturation that slows down my velocity.” “Maybe that work, but that also cheating. Too implausible. Better chance of variable city flooding, then you jump into water. Technically you still jump from building.”
Narrator think of what I say, then agree. “We should go to a roof and wait for a flood,” narrator suggests, but I remind narrator that we here for one reason. For Aemrdz.
As we continue to walk, narrator play game of trying to say my last name, but tongue is too dragged to do so. “Is that Gateway Vault?,” I ask narrator pointing ahead. Narrator looks forward and I can see wonder in the eyes. As we start walk to Gateway Vault, the drag does number. Narrator falls flat on face and I cling next to bar railing. We can not stand, and now people began to look at us. Drag was finally here.
Drag we where took while driving here was called “Earthquake,” because once settled in it was hard to stand. Tectonic plates move under feet and cause loss of balance.
You literally can walk mile and never really move a single foot. Time distorted, and you think you come to a far place, but really time was not on the tick and you back to were you began.
Narrator is now crawling on ground, trying to avoid people who walk in path, and I try to keep upright with help of railing, but really we know we not last. “Boris,” narrator say to me, “I don't know if I can go on, and there is something that I have to ask you.” I look up, to look at the Gateway Vault, but now vision was being loss in my eye. All I see, were the lights that bounce off of it. Narrator, still looking at me, asks me the question,
“This is something that has been nagging at me since I was twelve. Do you think a cockroach knows that it's a cockroach?”
I think of question, but mind was beginning to feel like scrambled. Some sweat was begin to form in my armpits, then I heard what the fearing was most. The sound of sirens that was come our way. I panic, just a little bit, and jump off of railing and go to pick up narrator so we can begin the chase. We run, and run, and run, until we find way to Gateway Vault, and there we hid from siren sounds of cops.
We stay, maybe thirteen hours, until it was come down to night and the sirens go away. Narrator try to leave Gateway Vault but I tell him not to do, and then I try to grab arm but narrator shake away. “Get the fuck off me, man,” narrator say. Narrator try to walk away, but stumble then fall face first. Narrator get up and try again, but same result, so after while narrator just crawls.
I stay behind Gateway Vault because I was little lazy at walking, and for safety, and watch as narrator crawl to certain doom. Crawl to violent end with cop and send to an darkness of shadow. I call name of narrator, but narrator never look back. Maybe in way, 64 | THE AMERICAN DREAM
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narrator's doom was narrator's fortune. Maybe narrator saw something in own demise from jumping from very high place. И таким же образом, может быть, рассказчик
увидел, что это лучше пойти не так по-своему, чем идти прямо в чужое.
Eventually narrator disappear, but I don't know if because narrator actually gone or if vision of my is failing. This is what feel like. Imparison, failure by own senses. Narrator was never certain of anythings and always questioning because narrator had the lasting permanent drag-affect. For me, my unreliability and inability to tell what is come from real and what is from fake would of later leave, but for narrator, it stays. Facts, I did know, but now facts are out of the reach.
I wait one hour, for Sun, but Sun never come and time of night persist. All track of the time was lost, I don't know where am I, or when am I, so now I have no choice only to follow narrator into the great darknesses. I leave the Gateway Vault and I try stand. For second, I can, but when I walk, I lose the balance and am left only to also slither. Slither that was depend on lot of survival factors.
By time I get back into city, I am covered of dirt. I find same railing bar and cling to it again to help and stay myself up, and as people pass by me, I ask if they see narrator come by here. No one answer me, but of the course. I am bum, low-life, intoxicated and loss of reason to live.
Funny thing to me, is, no one unique. Everyone look for same goddamn thing in life.
Everyone who walk by, who look down me, how different is they? Seeking only gratification of sort. They all of them part of big machine, they go in same way, they come out same way, and what they have on mind all the same, what world says they need; the wanting of success.
Me? I don't know even what the success actually mean. So many people you want be like called successful until you walk in shoes. Even most naive person know that nice big fancy house can mold.
I forget people and slide along bar railing and then I reach sign. It say “Masidon,” and it tell me how far away is it and which direction is it. And at same time, sky color starting to change to very dark purple with clouds pass by. I know it, I know it, I know it.
When I starting to cling to Madison, I feel world beginning to come down, and all around me was allegory. Nothing I see was what really be, but for something else of something else. Cop before was society, and societys' inclination to break down. To stop.
To force of you a conformation and to make play a set of game. Gateway Vault was passage way into mindstation. Mindstation where everything observed and refracted upon, dissected and infernal chaos ensue.
While walking of the road I counter various mammals and insects, crawling, running, hiding, spying. I have keep batting them away to stay alive but they never stop come.
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And at same time, sky is getting lower, and more purple, like of the grape juice. I try to explain exact presence of sky, but I don't know of English word to describe. Close I can come is the word you say “prophetic.”
Still I walk forward, and then come time when I reach place with no light and only pitch blacknesses. I think time was close to very late now, maybe almost even midnight.
After walking for longer time, in distance on lower ground, I see small place. Maybe town, maybe Madison. Only problem, brain is now beginning to do the whack. Sky that was falling is getting closer and now have stars falling from it, but not the normal stars. It is like acid star, and it burn a holes through the cloud. Like strange cow that was married with a dentist.
By time I get to of the halfway of point from of where I was before, sky was dawn completely. Acid star was gone, and cloud too, and replaced with mirror of the earth. In sky, I saw reflection of town I was on way to, and it was touching down. When finally I reach the Madison, when I stand on any the street, and I look up back at sky again, I see exact reflection, and maybe in future again sky would came down to clash Madison with Nosidam. We're I am? No idea. Happily, I not care.
“Where was narrator?.” I also think to self. Was hear? In Madison? Did narrator find the Aemrdz? Did narrator got died? I need find before narrator causes permanent damage.
Where to start? And I can see barely because redness starting to invade vision. First place I look was in small shop window, so there I can maybe see time of what it is. But I don't see time. Instead, I see photoshop. I see photographer taking picture of family of four. Mother, father, daughter, son.
They dressed of the elegance, and behind them was wallpaper of beautiful forest, and trees were ornamented, almost to make look like the happy holidays they say. Finally, they put on smile for the camera. Chess.
Maybe in life I was bum, depressed, drug addicted. Maybe I don't amount of nothing, and maybe life of no value. Maybe don't contribute to the society and maybe I better off dead. But looking at family, at least I not that. I am become death, because worst tragedy are letting life kill you.
Leaving window I remember narrator, and remember search. Narrator two, was never one for the family. I don't think narrator was not family person because narrator believed thought was bad person, but I think narrator was not family person because narrator thought would draghe down family. Narrator was sometime hard to deal with, stubborn, and there was always periodic time when narrator was unreachable.
This time for narrator was be too hard to hide from family, can't hide from family, and this is why no family. For this time, narrator stared out from very deep place. There was something about the eyes of narrator, and I think anybody whom looked them felt 66 | THE AMERICAN DREAM
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confusion.
When after I leave window, I smell of smoke. I sniff more and try to find source of smoke, and when begin to walk that direction I see more people walk toward me. More I walk, more they walk, in the opposition, and time come when I see source of smoke; in distance was burning statue of bearded man who held each denomination of American currency.
People who was walking past me was coming out of burning bearded statue-man, and when close enough I read of inscription; Wolsurt.
When I look back, and I see the opposition people, I too see now they are on fire too, walking in single-file line to a place unknown. I do not touch fire, like them, but I follow them, and walk with them, back of the way I came.
Along way was small child who could not stop the laughing. Burning, and laughing, child walked with a strange walk, one walk I see before long time ago missing the balance. Weary, I was, that my mind make connections that not really there.
“Where you all go?,” I ask other person in line. A women, who had the hair grey and the bones skinny. She say to me, this. "Человек на тысячу миль прогулка забыть свою
цель, и сказать себе каждое утро, 'Сегодня я собираюсь покрыть тридцать миль, а
затем отдохнуть и поспать.'"
We all of us continue too make walk, and after time I start here sound of loud train.
When look forward, deeper, I see this train, and I hear from train, “This is Willoughby, the next stop is Center.” I wonder, why mother, no fother, but father, no mather?
When train make stop, I see doors open, and those front of me of burning make way to train. When they get train I saw they fire disperse and dispear, and I know now this time that drag was at climax.
“Boris, is that you?,” I hear shout from train and look up. It was narrator, standing at door of train, look at me with the confused face. I walk line and as I get close and close, narrators' face change and change until no longer no recognition. “Where you were?,” I ask. Narrator now ask me who I am, and when say Boris narrator disagree. “Who are you, fucker?,” narrator continue to ask almost anger. By now I was seeing that narrator two, like others, was once burn. I tell because I see the smoke coming from narrator shoulders.
Narrator walk backward back to train table, still look at me with suspicious paranoid eyes, and than sit down. I go to sit with narrator but as approach narrator quickly hide under table. I stand, wait for narrator to show head, and when do, narrator ask again,
“Who are you, fucker?”
Train now moving, and slowly narrator sits back on. “Wait a minute,” narrator say, “I know you. Boris, right? From the third floor?” “Yes, I'm mechanic for you,” I say.
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you never showed up,” narrator say. “What Washington?,” I reply. “You know, the one right before that long road that leads to this town.”
I think, “You mean 'Madison' sign?” Narrator thinks, “Is that what it said?” Narrator then get hold of the laughter, and laughter pass to me. And we laugh and we laugh until we all of sudden bust out into beatbox sounds and provide the strange and the random music for patrons. I am believe of misinterpretation, and one rewrite and fix of what the meaning.
After while, narrator tell me to lean in, and I lean. “The guy who sells Aemrdz is somewhere on this train,” narrator whispers. “How you know?” “Because, someone back in town left me a decoded message that told me what I was looking for was on the train that went round and round.”
I know was beginning to notice it, we was on train for maybe one hour by now and I see that train looped around town in perfect circle, and next stop was again was the Center. “This same guy, he told me to look for a place where the yellow traffic light still meant slow down, and not speed up. He said there, I would find more drugs.” How old can you lose speed?
After while we get up to walk, and we past by through car doors, go from a car to car, searching for man who might sell the drags. “Hey, do you remember where we parked?,”
narrator ask me. I did not, I did not even member we came in car. When I ask why do chicken crossed road? No reply.
A eccentric few minutes pass by, and as we get far and far into train, I begin feel misplaced trust and strong curiosity. It was like a bad news.
“Alright, I have an idea,” narrator say to me as we stand in middle of car train. “I'll go back, and you keep going forward, we can cover more ground much quicklier this way, and eventually we will run into eachother.” “Wait, train no end?,” I ask. Narrator explain to me that train was one long vehicle where ending met begin.
At precise moment, both narrator and me see what we must be see. Yellow light go off in car train and train begin slow down. We both look eachother in shock, and now realize we was in train we need be to find the drag dealer. He was somewhere in car.
We look round, and see all type of people. Old, the young. Boy, the girl. Black, the white. Poor, the rich. Intelligent, the retard. What is meaning of this?
Then, all of sudden, we see no culture. We see man sitting in back, with the back to us, with back against the back. We knew, just at sight, he was the one.
We sit at table with no culture, and then he look up at us. “Do you fold or crumple?,”
narrator ask no culture. I look at narrator, and say to me, “What? It's the secret question.”
I think to self, this felt like silent fart that would echo. Who's fart was smell like that?
Just then, no culture take out briefcase and open to it to us, and we see magical glow.
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“Do you know what this does to the human body? More specifically, do you know what it does to the human mind?,” no culture ask us.
We both nod of no, no culture continue. “Aemrdz is basically your typical drug, but at the same time it isn't. It will decrease all neural processes, almost turning off ninety-six percent of the brain, but it will however increase activity in a part of the brain we seldom use. It will increase activity in this part of the brain by an average of one hundred and thirty-eight percent, and this, my friends, is what makes 'Aemrdz,' Aemrdz.”
“What part of brain, if may ask?” “Of course you can, and you should. What I am talking about is something biologists are now calling the 'Second Brain.'” “The second brain? I heard about that on the news, but I thought they were just fucking with us.”
No culture puts hand out, narrator gives the money, we take the drags and no culture gets off at next stop. “That was a pretty fucking penny man, why does this shit cost so much.” “He doesn’t understand people have bulls are rent to pay.” Narrator look at me, confused, for while. “You murdered that sentence, and the English language, and you may have just killed an English child.”
We laugh, then each take one Aemrdz. “This is it,” narrator say. When I go to take me, narrator put hand on my arm and tell me stop, not yet. “Boris, just incase I die tonight, I want you to know one thing. It makes me sick that ninety-nine out of a hundred people in the world will tell you that you should strive for that very same thing.” And finally, narrator pop pill.
Live hard, die young. That was an information narrator at sometime say to me, but I'm not sure if completefully understand what meant. Sometime I don't know if nobody know what narrator meant, but what do know now, was that narrator was often misunderstand. And what also I know, was that this misunderstandings was foundation of the trouble, and so in troubled time, narrator searched for something to numb.
I look down at pill, and I get ready to take. I felt like was about to go down long rabbit hole, and didn't know what was not the end. Like time I pulled wings off of fly, and then ate fly. The taste that was strange.
As was lifting hand to take pill, I hear sounds of sirens, and I fell the shock. Narrator was again, gone, and no know where went. I slide over to end of seat, and I look the window, and continue I hear the sirens, and addition I look from window to look at town that was now completely fire. And mirror town that was in sky, two, was all fire.
I thought to self, siren did not create sound, but was follows physical rules. Train was now loop around burning town, and finally, I raise hand and make pop the pill.
I wait, and wait, still no narrator, and yes still the fire. Burning Madison was interesting sight, and with it make me think of something far away. Something that there, long, and washed away, and gone, and maybe now ash.
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I began taste ash now, in mouth, but still, fire raged on. Town was dying, and so people in it, buildings, establishment, home, all stuff.
The scary thing, challenging idea you based entire life on. Finding compatible spouse, get front of others, be success. Obtain thing that parents before you had, or maybe what parents before did not have.
Some challenge, and maybe see that all this things maybe was not required. Maybe there was other way. And after all challenge, after all question, maybe start to build true identity. Or, maybe no true identity. Maybe just same, I don't know.
That is problem. Finding what look for through wreckage. Through garbage that stacked story high. In waste of smell that infest the mind. I look at burning again, and yes, yes, yes, trouble seizure, I can feel drag coming now. I ask, what you dream? It all right, we tell you what you dream.
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Chapter 82
PARADIGM
1:3:9:82
“SPLENDID,” I rapturously contemplate the modestly priced paint before my person.
“I do emphatically conject that such, your soothing coloration will entrance both Sara and David most wonderfully,” I postulate to the receptacle of emulsionac acrylic.
Subsequently, I obstinately perused both the perimeter and area of home decor in ferret for an also modestly priced paint thinner in an intransigent fashion. Though a diminished numbering total was not to be, I lay hold of the quantifiable paint thinner from its sedentary-place and proceed to formulate inspection for Araucaria araucana that would discharge as a wooden-ladder to the treehouse.
While in search of the wood that I sook, I developed a perplexity for vandalization that sempted to be perpetrated by one of a pubescent and adolescent demeanor and disposition. Something of a boundless emblem that I assuredly could not be assure of.
“Good evening, my good patron, how may I assist you today?,” a man of prominent caliber and stature inquires. “My goodness,” he sashays closer, “whatever may have happened to your hand?,” he persistently inquires.
For, in an hyperbolic cognizance, an interminable duration, I incarcerated a metastatic purple hand. Notwithstanding the archaic recollection, I hadn't furnished the thought in the foregoing predeceditory weeks, but it was indeed however verging supplementaric irritabilitation.
“It appears to be a viral contagion of some degree, it's very quite vexing, yes,” I rejoinder. “Perhaps a physician's visit might do you fittingly,” he asserts. “Conceivably,” I concur, “where can I check out? I have instituted all three constituents that I came for.”
“Right this way,” he coordinates as I descry his name tag. A mister H.E. Pennypacker, quite an engrossing and fascinating name if I do say so indeed.
H.E. potently scans all of my components and this is when I opscurviate the oeuvre apparatus in his mammary gland's compartment. “My good fellow,” I pontificate, “surely you will apprise me regarding this marvelous exhibition tucked away so sprucely in your breast pocket.”
“Oh, this old thing, it's only the latest prototype in the NXR20 series,” he acquires my monay, “a pen drafted with multitudinous features to assist and accommodate your penmanship.” “You mean, it ameliorates your chirography?,” I query. He reciprocates,
“Yes, yes, very much so, calligraphy, typography, the whole shebang.” “Would you veto my rubbernecking at it?”
The gentleman benevolently relinquishes his pen to me and I inaugurate my observatory operation. “I must have it,” I ruminate to myself after solong. Is it then I 71 | PARADIGM
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nominate a proposition for its expeditious vending, but Pennypacker possesses a portentous inclination for abnegation. Most certainly, at that extremity, I fancied to barbarously object him.
“You see those,” he flyspecks at his pen, “those are all heterogeneous modes that can be used to write in a dissimilar and contrasting style, and this here,” he again iotics at his pen, “this will let you preserve your current style but will rectify any defects in it.” I see, I say.
“Follow me to my archives and I shall duplex any overture you put forth,” I declare.
Pennypacker scrutinizes my negotiation, then relays that I have copious brame for his pen, insomuch that he would be amenable to sell it to me at only an infinitesimal bit aloft the retail price.
Packer is ineligible to abandon his post and sueve me, but I do requite to make the reciprocity and ultimately vacate the emporium with my constituents and a new pen. “I must evacuate posthaste,” I permeate Pennypacker to precipitate my pexit.
After I decidedly pexited the establishment, I concocted my way downward an escalatrice, and perchance and peradventure by the grace of God, I was remonstranced with a most dreadful, dire, ghastly, horrendous, calamitous and grim metonymy and did not descend to my quietus.
The imagery that flashed in my mind's orb was atrocious, vile, heinous, savage, contemptible, loathsome, abhorrent, unspeakable, egregious; what it was, and was it that, the burial of a young female child followed by a key in C-flat.
All of her anatomical physique partitions were insulated by sand, as well as the uttermost of her bipartite face, I could only partially distinguish part of her temporal compartment, and just superior her forepart head was a tree that imparted as a tombstone, but only partly.
I imprudently mislay eyesight of my inspiration and had to alight toot sweet to ensnare it back. I situated my items terra firma and perched on a bench that was destablished adjacent to a spheroidical, sphersilicious and spherulitic groceteria.
There I sat, in the terror-stricken petrifat, the damn ringing resonative reverberation of the sound of C-flat. I unremittingly germinated evermore shorter and shorter of breath, powerless to recoup the lifeforce, and then tramped strolled and dawdled by, my oh my, a gorgeous mademoiselle all costumized foot-on-high.
I gouking abominably execrate shopping complexes. This pretentious, ostentatiously pompous and artificially flamboyant atmosphere. The conspicuous firmament. The vivacious and exuberant equivocator. Snails! I sansintuously cannot obvericate the repulsive, revolting and repugnant denombrication of trollops. This deliberate and unsanctified tarnation, consarn it all to Hell; every bloody resigmential 72 | PARADIGM
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“Mariuhmarryanah” who exisaminates day to day with strands in the sorghastrom endometrium, I would analogously dismunitite their utolsalma. Gadzooks! I will extort and educe the sard from the hagsome and unsecured cunt and bespeak of it on my matriatum, insofar that the populace who progresses by and discerns it will readily infromus of my aversion for the exclusively acquisitive and bourgeois persons who dearth any authenticious hallmarks.
The polemic is bygone and I can no longer manufacture inhale-exhalation. With my back oppozitionised the wall, I adagioly lid my eyes and let it all go. I curtail mine ebullience completely, and I can perceive my heart stopping, I can feel my encephalon gyrate and circumduct to puree. It is all quite lugubrious, melancholy even, and most of all, over.
After my blackout I nadiscovered myself to be in Asylum. I ascended from the cardboard and sentimented to embrace the one enclave I endeared, expatiating of course, prototypically, and of, in an archetypic recognition.
It was damped dark, and howbeit I pioneered luminescence, and as a concomitant I was distinctly and joyously acquiesced by quantification. Before me, yes, was poised folio on the walls, and in the canton I hitherto expressed was that of a very illustrious and extraordinary agglomeration of integers. Number networks, figure systems and digitic arrangements of all ilk that spoke like an inscribed dialect, or engraved idiom, that sook to quantify the very essence of character, personality, identity. The quintessence of ability, potential, aptitude. The apotheosis of intelligence, creativity, cogency. Exemplary solicitude. Impeccable condolence. Immaculate leniency.
Ah, the observision made me feel so tip-top, vigorous, zealous. To excipitate upon my toil, it authorized me substantial complacency. I was suffused with an ambition that you may only divulge in dreams, and the vehemence pervaded me to do only propriety and rectitude by expedients of virtue today. To embrace all of mankind in an ingenuous and candid brotherhood.
Twinkling, this is when I commence to largolically anamnesistae the morsel, smidgens and soupcons that betided and transpired amidst my blackout. During that dark and black silence, tranquililically.
Erstwhile my beating had unmitigatedly curtailed, everything was glaciated, refrigerated and benumbed, and measurement stood inanimate, immobile, stationary.
Whilom, my cardiovascular was no longer breathing, and numerous other autonomous processes behest by the cerebrum stopped functioning as well, but alas, I was avital, animate. I was, indeed, alive!
I mounted from my seat and all things were now back in locomotion. The shopping center had reinstated to its customary and time-honored juncture, but even so I felt at 73 | PARADIGM
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disease, I fingered that I was not frankly myself. This was, mind you, the blackout, and whilst in it was of the most anomalous, aberrant and eerie lividity. It elicited to me that, of my crux-nucleus, how I sporadically experiercensed as if the way I apophthegmed the world was in puzzles, riddles, enigmas, paradoxes, mysteries, conundrums; some days every thing made sense, and then others, nothing made sense.
Irrevocably out of the bazaar, I both ad interimed, and made my way onto, a trolleyomnibus. It was charged but there was withal one settle devacantied-post meridian, so I sat, on it. Before even my gluteus maximus encountered the settle I was sockdolagerly thunderbolted by the atypical and outlandish asepsisity and immaculateness of the bus, and after so length I waxed even more bewilderment that I was not girdled by creatures of the most shallow and the most subpar of intelligence quotients; these proletariats illusioned and semblant to be pedagogic in dissimilarity with the wonted occupation I routinely procured on the bus.
It was congenial to not have to environs the vapidly vacuous of peoples. The population who were transcendentally better off departed than having to unabate their meaningless and incoherent existence. People who, for the most part, just devoured and guzzled expanse in an ever-advancing planetoid.
“Pinervious evening, wouldn't you say?,” a gentlewoman sitting athwart from me catechizes. “Silidic in every way,” a mentula sitting beside her conjointly continues. I beckon my brain-holster and riposte, “Yes, very quite sublime indeed,” I dimple at the twosome. What came abut is the very delineate of the vocablic locution loquaciousity, and if I had fathomed antecedently what such an uninvolved reply might aggregate, I might have not retorted at all in the vanguard.
I will not bromide you with the banalitic facets of mister Barry Lyndon and his consort misses Dolores Haze, as this was what they went by, and I will also not bromide you of their fruitless and inefficacious ongoings, such would be of a misdemeanor on my part. In lieu of bogusly actressing the cameo of the balmy auditor, I began to mien out of the fenestration posterior them and scrutinized a nosegay of hooligans and delinquents skateboardering and rollerbladering as the conveyance came to a gridlock. I can't gouking countenance juvenilility.
At this minuit, still bifurcately auditioning the utterance of the twain beforeme, I apperceived the urge to defecate. I was not pleased, as a matter infact very piqued and nettled, feasibly even galled, to realize that there was no accessorized amenity-commode in employment, and so I was on my own.
I began to reloquiate nuisance and tribulation, with what from the intramural movementae, the teenagers capsizing and shipwrecking communal equity, and uptop-most-bottomless-certain, the relentless and incessant word-pounding my auricula were 74 | PARADIGM
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tolerating from this overly-cordial duo. It was at this moment that I had intuitively and botanically reached my demarcates, though I had not known of it quite yet. But yes, my head peregrinated rearwards, and then came fallwards with swift and abrupt justice, and when I cull-harvested my head flywards, I came to the knowledge that I had bespattered my mucilage all over the now unsavory-pair. “Gesundheit,” someone way in the back vociferates.
When I sawnt what I had dontte, I forthwithly sook atonement and took out my neckerchief to pelp upright my abetition, but they were of course shamefaced and even more conscience-stricken. Before I could cessate they got off at the deriving stop and made their way. I'll tell you, I really did feel rueful, but there was something stimulating about the whole thing. It's not everyday you decant yourself out to people.
After they extricated the trolley, we unremitted in the momentum of excursion and hied by the Andromeda Cemetery. It was at this explicit flatulence that I diagnosticated an advertisement towards the baldachin of the bus. It was of the politicalized running distillation, and physiognominated that of a coterminous candidate tenuring the metacarpus of a child. In bold and valiant words the myopic image was rubricly captioned, “We are most intelligent when we dream.”
I auscultate a bottle of soda pop emanately and percolatiously, and just like that I conjugate that I have been disouredly woken from out of a dream in bedlam. I modicum in the stratum of the storage unit and resynoninyze a liter of soda, exhaustively extenuated but not uncondensedly bourned with aeratetion. I logorrheate for a scintilla of a moment, and I cede that my reminiscence of the black out perpetrated to end there, at the prevalent moment of the parliamentarial advertisement.
I gaited around the asylum for a while until I recoursed to read in a sublimataric deportment. I unfurled the drawer to the flamboyant escritoire to eschew a non-fiction book misnomered “Backdrop Pedigree” situated on-hyperially a quartetetralogy of spiral notebooks. I stultified the book and verbositized to the bookmark and implored to peruse as I paced around the small macabre room.
“...Theodore never won, but his journey teaches us that we are all winners as long as we try. After it all, Theodore then went on to marry his beautiful wife, Loraine, and they had four children together. Today, they live in a modest house on the edge of Wyoming and are dedicated members of their community. What Theodore and Loraine were able to overcome, what adversity they triumphed over, it all displayed one certain truth. It showed us, truly, that love is really all you need...”
I revel-flinged the tome across the extremity in fele despondency. The terrene had finally retroversed G. Matthew McClane over. The conviction and tenetnessicity he once incarcerated for literature, philosophy, ethics, it was now antediluvian. His fans and his 75 | PARADIGM
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critics had purloined and pilfered it from him and hastened to cache it in an extrasolar place, and when they came back, they rendered him convention instead. This was destabilizing to say the least, and the more I sat and cogitated about it, the more indignant I became; that a person, so good and so true, could so seemlessly default.
“Pop,” interpolates the bottle of soda. The reverberative resonation cultivated deliberation, and I was once again homecamed back to Fairyland.
I expelivacuated from the bus and impelincited to saunter towards my progenitors'
home. When I became noncoastal I depositized all contemporary constituents onto the scullery floor and then depositised myself onto the daybed-settee for awhile to respitripose. When I was to increase it and I grossed and promenaded through the corridor that led to the yard back. I proded and gogled out the superabundant glass aperture-fenestella screen-doors and saw my project-enterprise-endeavor. “Almost done,”
I thought to myself about David and Sara's new state-of-the-art-cutting-edge-avant-garde treehouse.
I was too-too lackadaisical to drudgerize on it at the slipstream juncture, though.
Something else was utilizing my braincase. As I ensconced aback on the couch, I mused about Derek. I, innrut, thought about his decamptious exodus and his disenthrallment from this wretched, dejected, morose and dolorous pestilence I dub life.
I mainessed the call-digits of his dynastic sister-in-law and I thought too arbitrinn to ask how they were subsisting since his bereavement. “Do I really want to go down that road?,” I think audibly. “What's the worst that could happen?”
Moreso, I got up and intransiated to the digit-operator with the piece of butdhed paper in hand and thought moreon dialing the numerals. “I'll just send my condolences and say goodbye,” I brood. I rotate the units and it begins to ringsound. Foremost hoi polloi, this is an onerous detail.
Two rings inward and I can't delp but lethargicly agonize over all the somber melancholia out there. The deityless, demiurgeless and unprepossessing globe that we splurge. The heedless and tactless strain whom occludes it. The self-centered self-absorbed self-indulged varmint that walk the sublunary earth. Moreover, I incubate, life is nothing but a disease that I want to be panacead of.
A quinquennial-ring hello. “Salutations,” I inimicate, “I am not apprized if you dericale myself but you rotated me aforetime ago. I mean heretofore. Aproposing Derek, his being truant.” “Yes, I remember,” she dinimicates. “I'm contrite if I'm exasperating you but I just inclinated to give my commiseration to all of you. Derek was a very adroitiously neat boy and it was a jubilation to be in his apparition. He was such a pellucid and scintillating young man.”
For whatever-in acumen, she tout de suite solicits my address. Once I vouchsafe it to 76 | PARADIGM
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her she edifies me that Derek had a few depictions here that he covetly desiderated to give to me. “Oh?,” I acquiesce. It was then promulgated that interior the contemporaneous week I would sojourn to annex them abreastly, for this is what Derek himself ambided.
“Pop,” connotes the bottle of soda de novo. I scoured fastidiously around the storage unit and became au courant gain-a of my asylum. The awakening also makes me aemindful of my grotesque and incongruous manus. An adumbration of nonbenevolency in an antonyme dernier cri.
It wasn't aggrandizely elongated until the dust concocted to fall and the night contrived to settle, and this was when I apprehended imperforate imperturbation and quietude. Nary a sound, nor wight was seene in bowre or hall. Mumbo jumbo, I do declare, but I would concupiscent to allineate certain people and decollate them. Solemn in tonality, but it does seem silly. Doltish. Puerile. Inane. It is veritably diffident from the rest. Ludicrously impotent. Almost stoopid. In vitro fertilization in a dire sense. And after I fitured and inquested her, she simply descried two musculaturic caricatures. Odious, perhaps even ridicurous.
That's hermeticly if you inquisitioned me in a wringer tenor, indubitably, and to summate on to it, I would ancillararily typify that any child who contravened their begetters, that they should be pungently and ardently disciplined to the most exhaustive and brimful enormity with the prevalence of venereal foul play, and molestational impingement, being a verisimilitude contingency. In antipodal situations, a child should be subject to arduous torture. Perhaps of a truculent form, a disciplinary alacrity that enmeshes maltreatment and borders on recalcitrant, obdurate and transgressive sadism.
I do have an uxorious veneration for kittens, howbeit. Their gelatinous and flocculent pelage, their halcyon eyes, their soft palpates. They are genuinely, no ifs ands or buts, unabridgedly one of a kind, sui generis, unexamplable, onliest, peerless in many facets and only insurmountable mayhap, and I say mayhap, by rainbows. Rainbows bestow the ardor of arrant polyphonification and gaiety, jubilant days for jubilant lives, and if you asked me, I'd say more people should take the o'clock to predilect them.
One should eminently extol the color purple, which is the color my hand has reservedly arrogated now. I plop the execrable hand onto the carrel and wonder what to do with it. Should I go to an infirmary? A sanatorium? Should I incise the hand? Should I just desuetude it? I wonder what's interiate of it? I wander what would happen if I transfixioned it? Would it fusillade? Cannonade?
I glommed my latterly amussed NXR pen and began my experidetrimenstation.
Antecedently, I mollifyingly percuss it, and when nothing happens, I irruptly transpierce it. The pen is in mesially, and it feels like every thing has congealed in time, and when I 77 | PARADIGM
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expel the pen to evince a gashtious contusion, a heliotropic purple pus begins to alluviumate from my hand.
I daub the violaceous extravasation with my finger-indexed and take a redolence of it, and then I palatablificate it, and this is when I raelyze that amaranthinic purple ants are writhing groveliciously out of my acontused hand and footsloggishly roving all over my arm. I lecherously ogle at them and, ctious-startlingly, I sensize one syncopate me.
“Blasted!,” I bawl clamoriously. I sensize another syncopation and another syncopation and begin to feel a titillating tickling senzation. Sertain ants caused me throe while others caused me tick, and of course this made me both guffaw and mewl at the same time!
Haha!
The periwinkic purple distillation continued to coursely flux out down my arm as did the skittish and maladjusted lilic ants, and it was at this this punctiliously unambiguous moment that I altitudified up from my cathedra and elevitrified my mauveisic purple arm into the aura with my dissembled palm facing my face. This was inexorably a magnanimous feeling, and I had nevermore espied anything quite like it hereforeto! The indispositionit syndrome made me feel animatically ebullient again! The tantalization, it brought forth a queerly heteroclitic sensation when yoked with affliction, but I was spry!
Haha!
Thereupon I could not surcease cackling and I came to the illation that I was retrograding, I had retrograded, or I was going to retrograde; I simply could not specklulate the dot on the circle to juxtapose my compeer localitic purlieu. In all veracity, I was probably effloresced! Or at the very microcosmic least, desiccate!
The magentic ants have intermitted to coming out of my laceration and are now all safaring throughout my arm, and at my wenis cubitus purpose juice begins to drip. The lavendic purple suppurational secretion splashes onto the asylum nadir-canvas and I'm sure it will imbrue it. Or at the very microcosmic least, besmirch it! Haha!
I don't coruscant what I am anomalisting here! What are you anomalisting here!?
Interjection point before the curious mark?! Haha! On this voluminous pirouettely vertiginously rotaryrotatory planetisc. Ensphering a commodious sol that, when it putrefies, we putrefy. What the gouk am I saying! I don't even nidificate anything excogitate to callipygian! I've nidificated everything that I excogitated to callipygian!
Sumptuous or splendiferous gasconading cynosure is osculator to equanimity and saxicolous by usufruct! But I'm not even auspicious if that's sesquipedalian, haha! I really can't idiosyncraticalize the cachinnating, hahaha!
I upraise my hand uphigher and the purple attenuation begins to inattenuate faster as the laughing sickness percists, and I am then perorated by my dark despair. I am accosted by the desolative darkness, and I have no auxiliary but to court-fence it. To parry it.
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“I am not frightened of them,” I thighte. “I am not...” “I am not...” “I am not!” “I am not frightened of them!” “I am not frightened of them!” “I am not frightened of them!” “I am not frightened!” “I am not frightened!” “I am not frightened of them!”
“I am not frightened!” “I am not.” “I am not frightened of them.” “I am not!” “I am not frightened of them!” “I am not frightened of them!” “I'm not!” “I'm not!” “I'm not frightened!” “I'm not frightened!” “I'm not frightened of them!” “I'm not frightened of them!” “I'm not frightened of them!” “I'm not frightened of him!” “I am not frightened!”
“I'm not!” “I am not!” “I am not!” “I'm not frightened of them!” “I'm not frightened of them!” “I am not frightened of them!” “Absalom.” “I am not frightened.” “Absalom.”
“I'm not frightened of them.” “Absalom!” “I am not frightened!” “Absalom!” “I'm not frightened!” “Absalom!” “I am not frightened!” Absalom! Absalom!! Absalom!!!
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Chapter 83
ANTHESIS
1:3:9:83
I never realized I was spread too thin, not of course until it was too late and I was already empty within. Hungry, feeding on chaos and living such a sinful and idle life, I headed deep into a downward spiral, and honestly, I'm not even sure where to begin. I suppose it all started when my mother died. Confused and frustrated as a child, I came to have no love for myself, and even less love for others. During this period of emptiness, I think, is when I began to search for a different type of love altogether, a love that was on a higher level, but there in the emptiness I did not find what I was looking for. Instead, I found nothing but questions and devils.
It's late October now, and it appears that winter is coming early. The cold air directs my arm as I slide my hand across all the storage units. Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three.
Fourty-four.
I stand staring solemnly at forty-four, and isn't solong before I put my hand on the gate and lift the door upwards. Isolation was again at hand.
Humans are, by nature, social animals, so when an individual develops an asocial personality, the average person will assume that they are defective in some way. But defection is seen in many places and is almost commonplace. I think there is irony somewhere in there.
In nature you have defective cells that can hinder function, in mathematics you have a defective value which throws off all further calculations, in literature you have defective grammer, defective spelling, which can cause defective misunderstanding, and in life you make a bunch of mistakes that lead to a defective life. At this rate, I would say that there are something wrong with anyone or anything that is perfect.
There is ways, though, to understand these defects. A closer look might reveal that the damaged cell was not actually damaged, but designed by nature to work that specific way. In my laboratory I once conducted an experiment where I took away ninety-eight percent of a cell's energy and most of its functions. I assumed the cell would eventually die, but what was days turned into months into years. The cell simply layed there with no detectable changes.
So after the many years, I decided to revitalize the cell, restoring all ninety-eight persent of its energy and all of its functions. The exact moment I did this, the cell died. I later discovered that the cell had used the energy I gave it to destroy itself. Programmed cell death, I suppose. Suicide, if you will. You have no one else to blame but yourself for opening that door.
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Naturally I guessed that the cell was defected in some way, almost assuming the tendencies of a person who was mentally ill, but what if that cell wasn't defected? What if the cell was following protocol? Following the blueprint lines to the detail. Now I ask you, what does it mean to be defected? I often think about Cell 2-98 and wonder if its actions were done with the entire body in mind, to a greater avail.
Now we return back to isolation. Normally, we assume that if someone decides to isolate themselves from all others, they are probably suffering from an ailment of the physical or psychological nature. Sometimes, this assumption is correct, but other times, there simply is more to Cell 2-98.
Geschwind syndrome is a characteristic personality syndrome and has various behavioral phenomena. Its symptoms include hypergraphia, a compulsion to write; circumstantiality, a bizarre thought and speech pattern; atypical sexuality, unusual sexual behavior; hyperreligiosity, increased religious feelings; and intensified mental life, I believe that is self-explanatory.
There's no doubt that isolative qualities might develop in a person who has this syndrome, and there is even less doubt that this individual might be labeled “eccentric,”
in worst cases perhaps even “defective,” but when we refer back to the case of Cell 2-98
or to the any case concerning an introverted entity such as the case of doctor Richard Deckard who lived most of his life in a solitudary anger but discovered the cure to origitis, we learn that many times defectiveness is the mask of effectiveness, even if we don't quite understand that defect yet.
Not only is defectivity all around us, but in some cases it is a positivity. This is the same way some genetic mutations work. Every once in a while there will be a defective gene that brings us to new heights, but in the off-set, there are defectivities that will drag us down.
As I enter Asylum and as I close the gate, a gust of wind makes its way pasted the door and into the unit. Once the door is completely closed, I am greeted by the image of Satan, who is counting all the residents of Hell.
A dark place covered by metaphoric shades of red. Individuals split up form their loved ones and brought in for correction. Some screaming from the fiery depths, others saddened by the verdict given to them. All with faces that seemed from a dream.
This reminds me that today is Halloween. The holiday of collective madness. The one day in the year you can dress up to your liking and people won't think you're crazy. Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat. If you don't, I don't care, I'm digging your grave, so beware.
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costumes per se. When we talk about identity sometimes we use the term “mask,” but on Halloween we wear so much more than just a mask. The entire costume becomes our projection to the world, and what was a simple social fragment turns into a complex persona. A mask so no one knows who you truly are, a cape that guides your flight, and superpowers to fight the injustic evil. This all becomes an identity that you design with intricate parts so that you can be who you need to be, and sooner or later, it all lands under a sub-category in the anthology complex.
But on the origins of holidays, Halloween was to the Celts, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, the day that the barrier between this world and the other world was weakest, and they believed that on this day it was possible for spirits to cross over.
Consider this; the lunatic that you unconsciously created and hid so deep into your closet, how long will it be until the wall crumbles and it pays you a visit? On witch day will you come face to face with your lunatic design.
I sit on the chaire and put my hands on my knees, and then I do nothing but breathe.
Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. The air here is weird, I hope I don't die from it, from spending too much time in this little room.
Straight ahead of me and a little to the left is a reminder I have left myself.
“Everything is an allusion,” it says, and for a flash of a second I receive a terrible image in my mind of a strong vividness, that of a burning Sun rising over a spring land. What was so terrible about it was despite the fact that there was every reason for growth; the Sun and the season; there was no growth at all. Things laid dormant and would soon begin to decay.
In many Indian religions, achieving nirvana is called “moksha,” which is the liberation from the repeating cycle of birth, life and death. In other senses of the word, and in the same religions, it may also mean freedom and self-realization. Sometimes even self-knowledge. The only thing that really matters is your spiritual birth and what you will choose to do from then on.
When I first heard of the idea of moksha, I thought it was strange, but when you consider all things you learn that there are many strange world views. There are many strange interpretations of our world and how it works. There may be only a few major religions, but each individual understands and perceives our world in their own light.
Their own unique way.
So the days following my new knowledge of moksha, I thought more and more about it until the idea of it all seemed less strange to me. My mind began to grasp its concept and day by day it slowly altered the chemical make-up of my brain, so much that I became the type of person who purused knowledge. It was never just moksha, it's never 82 | ANTHESIS
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just one thing, but moksha along with many other ideologies played a role in my growth and in creating who I would become.
I pull open the desk drawer to reveal a compound of four spiral notebooks, but I seem to be missing Backdrop Pedigree. I look around the room and eventually find it laying on the ground, I had forgotten that I finished it and threw it across the room.
I pass my fingers through the first two spiral notebooks and pick up the third one. I place it on my desk and open it to the present page. It was time that insomania found me.
There's not much you can do with a book when it's closed, but when you open it the possibilities become endless. But the question is, what if that book never came to be? The absence of fate is a terrifying notion, to think back on so many years that if one little thing could have been changed, I would have brought my dreams into reality instead of having to live in this nightmare. This is the kind of shit that kills you mentally. You ponder on it forever. For a lifetime. An eternity even.
What are we left with, then, when without the things credited to fate. The estimated age of the universe is 13.8215926535 billion years. In this time, throughout all of space, do you believe it's possible that life like our own could have developed? I think both sides of the argument can have valid points, but personally, I'm more inclinned to believe in the little green men.
First things first is the obvious fact that life has developed hear, placing the value of life possibly developing somewhere in our universe to the a measurement greater than zero. This alone tells us that life like our own is possible elsewhere, but let us remember that things are never what they seem to be.
Take away our feeble minds and underdeveloped brains that tend to construct illusion for a moment, and then imagine a universe superimposed on our own where there is absolutely no life at all. The measurement that was greater than zero is now equal to zero.
How can one tell if life is possible in a place like this if there is no one there to experience it?
In a general sense and not just on the origins of biology, I think this is the big question; what are the parameters required, and what are the values of those parameters required, to produce an intended effect, such as life coming to be. From that question you branch off onto the next question; what is the probability of that effect occurring again, such as symbolically represented in a circle or a type of loop function.
“Please refer to the orb/perpetual force theory,” it says in my notes. Illustrated next to it is a two-dimensional sphere that is about 3.5 inches in diameter. Right through its center, both horizontally and vertically, are two lines. These sorts of things, the human condition, they interest me.
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3.5 multiplied by 3.14 gives us 10.99, but that is mostly irrelevant. What I'm most interested in is pi and its plug-in factor to find the circumference of any circle. Even the smallest deviation from pi's massive length will throw off your calculations and return defective values for the circumference of your circle.
Imagine that 10.99 is the value of a parameter required to produce life, and we retain the value of the diameter at 3.5 but we change pi to 3.138. We are now given the answer of 10.983, and the system is built in a way that 10.983 affects many other parameters, and in this place inflation is not possible and temperatures are Hell-like. Volume is condensed to a figure dividable by only two billion as opposed to our own universe, where volume is at least 1e+54 times bigger than that.
Energy retention is represented as eR and its value is in the range of 80%-82%.
Inflation, or I, is equal to 0 so it affects the equation in such a way that we are left with eR(10^9x2/100) = C, where C represents the score of livable conditions. There is way too much gas here to bring you and I out of the swamplands.
That didn't work, so let's try changing pi to 3.139. We receive 10.986, and now a 0.003 difference gives us a volume divisible by eight trillion with the occurrence of inflation, where inflation continues to expand the total volume. eR is reduced drastically to 37% and continues to decrease as I increases, and C begins to cool down to <100(1) and liquid states are now possible.
You can see that what I'm getting at here is the fact that pi, taken metaphorically or literally, is a natural setting in our universe that dictates many things. We have specific parameters to meet for the production of life, and anything less or anything more simply is not good enough.
If in our universe pi equals a certain value, our universe may behave in such a fashion that advocates repetition, which may be one of the intended effects when certain parameters are met. If the pi that we have discovered in our own universe is a value that has come to indeed advocate repetition, then we may see its symbolization all around us.
The cycling of disease epidemics; the wax and wane of caribou populations; sunspot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile. And finally, the natural development of life throughout the universe, occurring again, and again, and again.
A sound begins to come from behind me, something hitting the gate to the asylum, and flipping the page I can't help but wonder what it is. On the next page I find annotation on inflation, so I get up with the spiral notebook in hand and walk over to a corner of the room where there is a sheet on the wall titled “The Things Credited To Fate.” These two things, I needed to compare.
I began to mingle the idea of inflation with the notion of the 1.01^1.01 pedigree, but 84 | ANTHESIS
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something wasn't right. The sounds were beginning to iritate me. I simply could not work with them there, so I placed the notebook down and began to life up the door to the asylum, and halfway open a gust of wind makes its way in along with some water. I opened the gate completely to find that it is somewhat raining. God, the best comedian.
And one of his funniest jokes, it was, for it to rain on Halloween.
I closed the gate and again the rain began to hit the door of the unit. Before I go to sit back down I grab today's newspaper and begin to read an article about the downsizing of a Fortune 1000 company. Alongside it is a large ad for diamond jewelry, and just under that is a small snippetted sentence telling me that I can feed a child in Lithuania for a month for just thirty cents a day.
Somewhere even lower speaks of the current election that is in progress. Polls for a donkey and an elephant who can't seem to agree on anything. It isn't until I look towards the top of the newspaper that I see the headline for today's top story; “ANNA WALKHILL FOUND DEAD IN HOTEL MARINA.”
“In a stunning turn of events, the search for 'Pandora Girls' star Anna Briol Walkhill is over, as she was found dead early this morning floating in a hotel marina. The cause of death is as of yet unidentified and further facts on this matter are under investigation.
Screenings for her latest film, 'Scarlett Fever,' which were suppose to be held this upcoming Saturday have been postponed indefinitely.”
“Only a few weeks before her death, Anna Walkhill talked at length to F.I.L.E.
associate editor Dick Nerie about the effects of fame on her life. Her story was published in the March 8 issue. Here he recalls what Anna was like as she talked to him.”
“Anna Walkhill was born Anna Marie Briol Walkhill on 26 October 1958 in Hill Valley. Her father, Randall Walkhill, had mental problems which resulted in Anna spending most of her childhood in foster homes and orphanages throughout the city of Dallas, Texas. She wed her neighbour, Jake Jarmel, in 1977, but the marriage failed in 1979 due to Anna Walkhill's new-found fame as a photographic model.”
I've seen a lot of men die in war, and most of them went in the worst ways possible. A mortar that cut you in half and left you alive for just a few seconds so you could experience the shock that came from seeing yourself severed from the waist down.
Infections that kept you bedridden and in pain to die a slow death.
I've seen the women who volunteered their time, some, their lives, to tend to these dying men, the women who tried to treat these men. And when they failed, I saw how they became shell-shocked from the devastating effects of war. Shell-shocked from the death disease and decay, so much that it took years and countless nights spent screaming in their sleep before they recovered.
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I've seen children lose their futures because of these conflicts. I've seen them lose their countries, their families, their schools. But what tears me apart is the look each one of them has in their eyes. That look that tells me that they have given up, and that there is no longer any hope for mankind.
Why isn't these stories ever on the front page? At the top of the page? Why don't they hold that position more often? I suppose we all know why, and I'm wondering if there is a scientific approach to the matter.
“For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.” Matthew 25:29.
In sociology, the Matthew effect is the phenomenon where "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." This is also sometimes referred to as “accumulated advantage.” Wiker's Encyclopedia, page 455.
In physics, there is an observed occurrence called dissipation. An example being an individual throwing water intwo space. The water wood disperse and become less concentrated.
Close your eyes and imagine two cubes floating in space. One cube is filled with an intensely concentrated white sphere that takes up about a quarter of the cube. The other cube is filled with a hundred tiny smaller spheres of the same variety, the difference being they are scattered and less concentrated.
It is important to the note that the volume of empty space in both cubes is equal. This is what I see when I think of Anna, and when I think of the many people who lead a less recognized life. The most we have to offer these people is a mass recognition.
But for Anna, when she dies, the whole world tunes in and there is only one name on the screen. We add phantom values to people and to things, this is simply the way our brain functions, but I think this is bad. I think we need to break this cycle and see things more clearly, more objectively, and even if we fail to, at least we know we tried.
“She was a beautiful and talented actress, and at only age twenty-seven she had her entire life ahead of her.” “Overdose is suspected, foul-play has not yet been indicated.”
“Our condolences are sent out to her family.”
“A fearless actress who broke ground and brought joy to everyone who was given the opportunity to see her perform. She will be remembered always for her dedication to the arts and for her sincere nature toward all of her loving fans. We have no doubt that she has earned her place in both the presence and the history of the industry, but we also hope she has earned her place in your heart, and we hope that her memory will continue to live on in those who will follow her down that frightening road of success.”
I fold up the newspaper and set it aside, again hearing the pounding of the rain on the 86 | ANTHESIS
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asylum door. I go to sit down and try to forget about the noise but my efforts escape me.
It is often said that man has always been drawn to the sea, but I think it's an unnatural setting for us, a place of great danger. Tides, currents, waves, wind, each presenting their own hazards, none of which can be ignored. The slightest lapse of judgment can be a mistake you might never recover from.
I have been tought though, by a wise man on a high mountain, that a good sailor doesn't fight against these elements. That a good sailor works with them, using them to his advantage, while others less fortunate might be forever cast adrift.
I sit and relax, and with each passing minute I let the sound calm me. I am now beginning to remember why I retreated to the dankness in the first place.
There are dark places everywhere. In starless space, an unlit room, the deepest crevice in one of your cells. Enough time spent in any dark place and time itself seems to be lost.
It becomes impossible to tell how much time has elapsed, and if enough time passes you begin to lose when you are. The where no longer appears to be relevant.
Here, where I am now, time doesn't feel like a factor. One day just bleeds into the next as your senses fail. That's because an asylum is one of those dark places, literally, metaphorically and philosophically. The hat-trick.
Time then is no longer a measurement but a “relatement.” You keep track of the illusion of time by brushing your teeth every morning. By watching football every Sunday. By picking up your child from school every weekday at two-fifty p.m. An individual who does not have these things in their life will get lost in the dimension of time.
I feel that it is always night-time here because of the poor light settings, but I know that the Sun waits for me just beyond the gates, waiting to blind me with what I don't know.
I stand up to stretch and soonafter tuck my pants into my socks. “What is it?,” I ask myself as I begin to walk around the room. “What is it like?”
There is something I've mentally envisioned, a sort of skeletal or exoskeletal framework that goes beyond our perception of existing and not existing, beyond our perception of what is real and what isn't real, beyond our perception of nothingness and somethingness, but its true essence continues to elude me. I have never seen it with my own eyes, and I can't figure out how it truly works because I am too primitive. An open mind is sometimes the difference between salvation and turmoil.
“What is ultimately there?,” I continue to ask as I find myself walking in circles.
Maybe I can't comprehend it not because I am primitive, but because I am not in the right mind to do so. Have you seen this thing in your dreams? This entity I'm talking about.
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Has it ever revealed itself to you? I ask only because there are some answers we can only attain in our dreams. In a state of mind not of mortal man.
As the rain knocking begins to increase decibely, I hear a loud lightning strike.
Getting exciting now. I begin to walk around faster, thinking faster, all while the lightning contractions get closer and closer to match my vertex. I can now tell that there are a strong wind outside, a wind strong enough to parallel the rain and increase its impact velocity.
I move closer to the door and put my ear alongside of it to hear the rain. To feel the rain. It speaks to me. It speaks to me in ways people can't. It speaks to me the same way that black rock sitting on the desk does. The one consistent thing in my life. The one person who has stayed with me for all these years. Yes, it is true that I find companionship in the abstract world, but I am no longer ashamed of it.
You think you're different from me? From him. But you'll get there. Sooner or later, we all do, people like us. Let me tell you something important. All roads lead here.
There was a time when I was normal, but all of the chaos in the world began to add up and one by one by one the decay began to wear me down. Somewhere along the lines, things got chipped away. Being unable to understand the world which I had been thrown into, I began to retaliate. I went my own way with no consideration or courtesy for what life or the world expected of me. I questioned everything, only to end up blowing out the candles on all my Frankensteins.
In the terms of mathematics, the Fibonacci sequence are the numbers as followed: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144 and so on and so forth. Add two adjacent numbers and the answer will be the number following those two numbers, i.e., 21+34=55. You can also travel backwards, i.e., 55-34=21.
There is more to this, though, than simple addition and subtraction. There are paterns unseen to the naked and untrained eye. You should not fear this mystery, as I did long ago. “I am not afraid of these numbers,” I think outloud, and as I sense the sky beginning to fall, I hear the loudest lightning strike I have ever heard in my life.
I can hear nothing but ringing as I press my fingers against my ears. A pitch high enough to infect you with insanity. I begin to walk back and forth as the ringing goes high and low. After enough time, it begins to echo. And echo. And echo.
As I'm lifting up the gate to peer outside, more rain and wind enter my chamber, and as I close the gate behind me I witness a near lightning strike, immediately followed by the thunder.
I was instantly soaked but that was to be expected. I looked up at dense gray foggy clouds and all around me was the storm she spoke of. Constant lightning in every 88 | ANTHESIS
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direction, the thunder of war in the near distance. I was sure now that autumn was gone, and the Sun, its rays bearly broke through the clouds of this forgotten place.
Years eighteen to twenty-two, I traveled with a Chinese-Indian tribe who called themselves the “Chimanah.” Spelled with a “C” but pronounced with the sound of an
“S.”
In this four-year span I became more familiar with the term “kung fu,” which is commonly mistakenly associated solely with marital arts, primarily in the west. I too suffered from this misconception, but my journey with the tribe taught me many things that I still use to this day.
Kung fu is a Chinese term that refers to any study, learning or practice that demands patience. The things that take time and energy to develope and complete. Simply put, it can be used to refer to any skill achieved through discipline, hard work, practice and determination.
When I came upon them at age eighteen I did not quite understand myself, but when I left them at age twenty-two it was so that I was now able to command words. They taught me that the strengthening of the body and the mind was the cornerstone and fundamental root of achieving the things I wanted to achieve, so here I am now, out in this storm that I had been warned about by an old man in a car and an insane woman in a prison.
I walk over to a pudle that I spotted in the corner of my eye and I step into it. I start by sticking out my tongue to catch the sharp raindrops, and I'm sure I'll be sick by this time tomorrow.
I retract my onob aistob tongue and when I am ready I clap twice and then slap the top of my right knee as I lift my leg then stomp it. I then clap twice again and then slap the top of my left knee as I lift my leg then stomp it. “不會屈服於,” I say as I clap twice and slap my right knee again and stomp. “पत नह कस,” I say as I clap twice again and then slap my left knee and stomp. “不會屈服於,” clap clap, slap, stomp, “पत नह कस,” clap clap, slap, stomp.
“不會屈服於,” clap clap, slap, stomp, “पत नह कस,” clap clap, slap, stomp. “不會屈服
於,” clap clap, slap, stomp, “पत नह कस,” clap clap, slap, stomp. “不會屈服於,” clap clap, slap, stomp, “पत नह कस,” clap clap, slap, stomp. “不會屈服於,” clap clap, slap, stomp,
“पत नह कस,” clap clap, slap, stomp. “不會屈服於,” clap clap, slap, stomp, “पत नह कस,”
clap clap, slap, stomp.
I then move on to the next part of the dance and raise my arms higher. “不會屈服於,”
high clap high clap, slap, stomp, “पत नह कस,” high clap high clap, slap, stomp.
“不會屈服於,” high clap high clap, slap, stomp, “पत नह कस,” high clap high clap, slap, stomp. “不會屈服於,” high clap high clap, slap, stomp, “पत नह कस,” high clap high clap, 89 | ANTHESIS
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slap, stomp. “不會屈服於,” high clap high clap, slap, stomp, “पत नह कस,” high clap high clap, slap, stomp. “不會屈服於,” high clap high clap, slap, stomp, “पत नह कस,” high clap high clap, slap, stomp. “不會屈服於,” high clap high clap, slap, stomp, “पत नह कस,” high clap high clap, slap, stomp.
I return back the plane that I had been before, and as the wind-rain begins to come down harder and as the thunder becomes more powerful, I finally see deeply shaded black vines coming into existence. They begin to appear on near-by walls and begin to manifest themselves on the pavement that I stand. I continue the dance and I begin to chant louder, “Bù huì qūfú yú, patā nahīṁ kaisē, bù huì qūfú yú, patā nahīṁ kaisē,” and when the black vines are all over and begin to reach my feet, I know that I am done. I stomp my right foot one last time to splash the earth and I walk back towards the gate.
The Chimanah used dancing and chanting for everything. To cure diseases, to bring about peace, to cast out demons, and if need be, to call upon the spiritual one of chaos.
The dance I saw them do the most, and the only dance they taught me, was a dance that when roughly translated into the English language was called “Wildcard.”
They didn't allow me to do it until I truly began to live like them, and by that time it had already been three years. The first time I did it I asked them if I was suppose to see something. A sort of vision, because what I saw then was the sky turn from a clouded white to layers of pink, yellow and blue, and I saw for a moment a celestial body pass in the trajectory of the Sun. I know it was all in my mind, but still I asked, and when I was done they were fascinated, because nothing like that had ever happened to them. As wise as they were, the word “vision” was not in their vocabulary until I explained to them what I saw.
The visions kept coming as I continued to travel with them and in the fourth year the visions began to evolve. They became more possessing and sensitive, and all the more frequent. Yeah, back then, the visions, yeah most of the time I was convinced, shit, I'd lost it, what with the four years time that I spent with this tribe, but there were other times, very common, when I truly believed that I was the mainline to the secret truth of the universe.
I return to the gate and open the door to the unit and walk back inside. I go to the corner and sit down, drenched from the rain. Dripity drop all over the concrete top.
In this grand design, there is a mathematical counterpart for everything, even that which does not exist. I know this because I've seen God and Satan argue over the universe. I've seen them debate between the numbers six and seven and thirteen, and I've seen how greatly and differently each number affects our universe and its composition and the way it works.
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