[This one's inspired by a bunch of puns from work today, and the ridiculousness of the anxiety that manifests itself in Pittsburgh this time of year. Enjoy!]
Bananarchy in the Bowl of Winds
It was third down in the final minutes of the third quarter, and Jerry was on the edge of his seat. C’mon, he screamed, just catch the ball! I can’t believe that call, he was clearly across the line… I couldn’t tell how Jerry knew; it was almost impossible to see the field from as high up as we were in the stands. But the seats were cheap, even if in this terrible weather the wind just whipped down into the bowl of the arena and froze our faces off, even though the group of fans in bright yellow suits right below us seemed jovially unconcerned.
Touchdown! No it’s not, Jerry howled, wringing his towel and jumping up and down. One of the fans cast an odd glance up our way, but his friends were occupied, huddled around something I couldn’t see, probably watching a replay on the Net as the JumboTron screen was having a hard time staying focused. The fan’s face was inexplicably painted like a clown’s, in a yellow as garish as his suit. Jerry had warned me the fans often dressed quite strange to show their team spirit. I’ve never understood football myself, being more of a story man. What’s the entertainment value of watching large men you can’t even see tumbling all over each other? But Jerry’s enthusiasm was contagious, so when he begged me to come along with him to the game I agreed, not realizing how miserably wretched the weather would be, even in the chintzy team windbreaker Jerry leant me that did nothing to keep out the wind. Those thick yellow suits were starting to look appealing right now.
The game wore on, Pittsburgh falling behind as Dallas caught a second wind, and then a third. Unable to make out the ant-like players below, my attention kept wandering, returning to the yellow-suited fans who seemed to be having a lot more fun. It looked like they were busy constructing some apparatus, what after a moment my brain told me was a catapult. A catapult? I wanted to ask Jerry if this was for some post-game ritual, but he was too busy chewing his mittens to shreds over the last foul to listen, so I sat back again to watch, finally a little curious.
Third down in the final minutes of the last quarter, and the Steelers had just used their last timeout, hopefully planning how to turn their game around before poor Jerry threw himself from the bleachers in despair. The whole crowd was on the edge of their seats, except for me, unable to see why this was so important, and the yellow suits, who’d finished building their contraption and all leaned back, opening their jackets despite the chill. Suddenly, just as one of the Cowboys was about to claim another first down (I think that’s what it’s called), a small flapping object went whirling out of the stands, landing right in front of the runner, whose feet flew out from under him in an inglorious pratfall.
The crowd went wild as the cameras zoomed in to reveal a banana peel on the jittery JumboTron screen. The announcers all mumbled, uncertain where it had come from. The crowd was actually aghast, but they couldn’t keep from laughing at the absurdity of it, the yellow-suited fans most of all. Finally the field calmed down again so the Cowboy could redo his play without interruptions. But no! This time with an audible thwang another yellow whirl went sailing, and another. Suddenly the arena’s cold air was filled with banana peels, all landing whichever way the winds blew them! Looking around I realized that the top rows of the stands were dotted with yellow-suited individuals, each group of them busy at their own little catapult. They must have planned this whole caper in case the Steelers began to loose, unless it was a political statement, hiding the bananas in their jackets to keep them from freezing.
No one else seemed to notice the characters depart, all eyes intent on the field, where the game carried on now despite the rain of peels, the players slipping and tumbling all over the place, the ball slick with juice and a fruity reek wafting up to the stands. It was chaos, sheer bananarchy! Jerry could only shake his head as his cherished pastime was reduced to the buffoonery I’d always told him it looked like, while I laughed and laughed, entirely forgetting about the cold. Eventually the game was called on account of the mushy sabotage, and as we were walking to the lot I turned to Jerry and said, you know what, that was a lot more fun then I expected, you wanna go get a smoothie? For some reason he only grumbled and kept walking.
Showing posts with label flashes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flashes. Show all posts
12.06.2009
A Yarn: The Burden of Proof (Unlimited Story #1)
[This is the first story generated by the now finished Unlimited Story Deck (beta version). The underlined words refer to the cards played.]
I was at the bar writing when I was approached by a girl who didn’t look old enough to get in, but she was dressed like a hipster, so maybe that’s the style of the week. We got into a debate about oppression, from parental to existential lacks of personal control, and I told her that a girl once told me that sometimes you have to wait, or ask, for help from outside the situation, like from a god in the machine of our world.
Who are you, the hip chick quarried, some outcast from the middle ages? No one believes in God anymore. Or maybe you’re just one of those androids who believes whatever they’ve been told enough times. I just smiled, and she for some reason followed, and later as we were walking toward the carnival through the milling crowds, a turn of fate showed her why.
The turn was that some eco-hackers had forced a viral attack on the nearby zoo’s computer system, hoping to liberate the animals; but they had accidentally released the creatures in a disastrous stampede! In order to escape the war-zone of terrified pedestrians we ducked into the closest café, but even there could not escape the TV’s blaring noise, advertising the doom and dying of the latest war. But just when all seemed hopeless, and she didn’t believe any help could come, out from a hidden lair beneath the kitchen hearth flew a whole mythic pantheon, turning all the rules of logic on their head as they saved the day!
Celebrating this miracle afterward with drinks and dancing back at the bar, the girl apologized for calling me names, and said that I must actually be some angelic messenger to have been so certain the gods would come. But what would really be convincing, she said, would be to next time catch it all on camera.
After just this one play, I am really pleased with how the deck works. The story, though randomly constrained, manages to convey the same kind of aesthetic, tone, pacing, etc. that I would usually put into a story of this length, but managed to be written in about a quarter of the time. Even more intriguing is that where I usually plot out the turn and ending hook of my flash stories, I was not able to here (since who knew what cards would later come up), and yet they happened to work with a fair amount of continuity. Part of this I suspect is foreshadowing: the otherwise arbitrary debate about oppression resolved through a deus ex machina became, as I constructed the tale, something of a goal or end state, the conflict to be resolved, which I continually kept in mind as I drew and played cards. Of course, with just one narrator, I knew what kinds of cards could possibly be played from my hand, and could group certain ones for later scenes or resolutions. At the same time though there were definitely several points when the story could have spiraled out of control; with so many ways of using any of the cards there is an over-determination of imaginative possibility. But I think that is only part of this deck's beauty: anything truly can happen!
Now to play it with more than one person...
I was at the bar writing when I was approached by a girl who didn’t look old enough to get in, but she was dressed like a hipster, so maybe that’s the style of the week. We got into a debate about oppression, from parental to existential lacks of personal control, and I told her that a girl once told me that sometimes you have to wait, or ask, for help from outside the situation, like from a god in the machine of our world.
Who are you, the hip chick quarried, some outcast from the middle ages? No one believes in God anymore. Or maybe you’re just one of those androids who believes whatever they’ve been told enough times. I just smiled, and she for some reason followed, and later as we were walking toward the carnival through the milling crowds, a turn of fate showed her why.
The turn was that some eco-hackers had forced a viral attack on the nearby zoo’s computer system, hoping to liberate the animals; but they had accidentally released the creatures in a disastrous stampede! In order to escape the war-zone of terrified pedestrians we ducked into the closest café, but even there could not escape the TV’s blaring noise, advertising the doom and dying of the latest war. But just when all seemed hopeless, and she didn’t believe any help could come, out from a hidden lair beneath the kitchen hearth flew a whole mythic pantheon, turning all the rules of logic on their head as they saved the day!
Celebrating this miracle afterward with drinks and dancing back at the bar, the girl apologized for calling me names, and said that I must actually be some angelic messenger to have been so certain the gods would come. But what would really be convincing, she said, would be to next time catch it all on camera.
After just this one play, I am really pleased with how the deck works. The story, though randomly constrained, manages to convey the same kind of aesthetic, tone, pacing, etc. that I would usually put into a story of this length, but managed to be written in about a quarter of the time. Even more intriguing is that where I usually plot out the turn and ending hook of my flash stories, I was not able to here (since who knew what cards would later come up), and yet they happened to work with a fair amount of continuity. Part of this I suspect is foreshadowing: the otherwise arbitrary debate about oppression resolved through a deus ex machina became, as I constructed the tale, something of a goal or end state, the conflict to be resolved, which I continually kept in mind as I drew and played cards. Of course, with just one narrator, I knew what kinds of cards could possibly be played from my hand, and could group certain ones for later scenes or resolutions. At the same time though there were definitely several points when the story could have spiraled out of control; with so many ways of using any of the cards there is an over-determination of imaginative possibility. But I think that is only part of this deck's beauty: anything truly can happen!
Now to play it with more than one person...
11.20.2009
Heavens and Alchemy (fiction)
It was Love at first light, the interconnection of subatomics leaping across the solar winds and the vast gulfs between star systems, our photons rejoicing in that immediate recognition. It was always this way, since the People first flew the Cradle of Worlds into these wider Heavens, replacing the primitive Einsteinian relativities with bonds that knew no bounds or bodies in too small space-time. Strife was vanquished with the false god Physics, and Love reigned supreme.
Or it had, while the People sailed out on Love’s fast fields, connecting the Cosmos as She saw fit. And wherever they alit, greeting the beings they found there as they would greet themselves: in joyous recognition. For they too were One and All, as we, my Beloved, should have been One and All, when the waves we reflected first lit each other’s senses. We sailed across the ecliptic and the trajectory of meteor showers, in search of that Dark Flow, the path that still leads to other Verses, which each god-to-be must traverse in our youth, in order to shower all the Verses with Love’s light, or so our stories go. We were still mortals then, little sparks, foolish as we raced across the terminator, your wings shimmering in Orion’s rays, each of us trying to sail ahead, to stay abreast the revolving darkness, but knowing that no matter how far apart we spanned the aether, our subtle bodies would always be in communication.
Oh Heavens and alchemy, I would have caught the stars for you that rained like angels on our orbits, I would have voiced whole new worlds, with their strange uncertain histories, I would say yes, as you reached the Event Horizon first, and leapt into the dark heart of the Cosmos, all giddy and aglow. As the People have done since we left that cradle Gaia, our split across the interstellar divide should have set a new Verse spinning, should have began the Creation anew. And yet, as I traversed, only moments after your wings brushed the Eternal, I felt you slip away. I know not where or to what Verse you fell, for as I alit in this one I felt all the celestial orbits tremble, and the suns race away as if they were afraid. For the connection to your presence, my Beloved, was nowhere to be found. No, not any beings here to recognize as ourselves in the joyous bonds of Love, no, not any One and All, only myself, particled in the scattering dark. And the stars fly apart, faster and faster than you could have imagined, than any of the stories say. Perhaps Love has been vanquished too in this here-now, for without your connection there is no force powerful enough to hold the worlds together, nothing to reflect and no light left to leap between us.
Yet perhaps this too is story, our secret untold chapter, that in each new Verse, Love must begin anew, alone, in search of its Beloved. That somewhere in these vasts and gulfs you still await, or not yet popped back into existence, specks of stardust accumulating in the warps, gathering into stars and planets that some day may birth beings to reflect Love’s light. And so I must wait, and search, and connect the One and All in the rays beyond space-time, until space and time are born anew, and so are you, and Strife is vanquished, and we fly the worlds and finally meet, in joyous recognition, beyond the edges of everything we are yet to imagine.
7.28.2009
6.02.2009
Published in Colored Chalk
Also, my flash story, "The Instant Engine" is now online at Colored Chalk #8. Enjoy it and the other pieces therein!
5.15.2009
The Arch Nemeses
Red Arrow looked out over the Metropolis, his cape languid in the stale boardroom air. Through the dirty ninety-ninth story window he couldn’t see anyone on the street below, but he knew they were out there, the bustling crowds, the criminal element. For every happy, law-abiding citizen walking the well-lit streets there was a nefarious opposite, like a shadowy doppelganger already out stealing purses, raping, murdering, heedless of the police lounging ineffectually around the corner. What were the statistics this year? It made him shiver. Back home, in his small Michigan town, Red Arrow knew all his neighbors by name; it was enough to catch the ne’er-do-wells just to appear in a flash, your mask and gauntlets shimmering in the righteous streetlights. He didn’t know how they did it, Fox Fire, Green Scorpion, the Queen of Hearts, these big city superheroes, who were only just as human, justice chained to the costume. But that’s why, he supposed, they founded the World Superhero Registry, so that the various local crime-fighting networks and justice societies could work together, patrol all the turf, make the world a safer place for everyone.
And safe the world they did. That’s why the whole Registry was gathered here in Doktor D’s penthouse lair, to celebrate a hundredth capture, Black Arrow busting up an illegal dumping operation down in the bay. The room was decked in her colors, black and purple streamers draped over the Dok’s criminal watch charts and armory, Nix and Nostrum slow dancing like black cats or ninjas, Geist Green Scorpion, and The Eye comparing the cut of their trench coats, swapping tips on not getting caught in elevator doors. Red Arrow it seemed was the only hero not enjoying himself – maybe Black Arrow too, collapsed tipsy in the corner singing old Wobbly songs in her self-congratulation – wondering, what evil deeds are being performed in our absence tonight?
But wait, Doktor DiscorD is also discontent, scrolling through data on his Disconsole computer system as if it were about to catch fire, and then leaping up! Do you ever wonder, he captures the room, red and blue goggles especially piercing the arrow on Red Arrow’s forehead, why none of us has an arch nemesis? Everyone shifts gazes. Captain Jackson looks queasy (that fake public service motherfucker).
It’s simple really, Geist begins, the government told us not to pry into torture, piracy, or the subprime market if we wanted to get licensed… Tothian adds: I’m after Bin Laden.
Wrong answer! The Doktor, sewing his casual chaos. No one’s threatened us yet, our existence, you see? Any nemesis must be opposed to the very supernature of our being. Take these guys, for instance, these mad scientists. Wait, what’s up Dok? Everyone rushes in closer.
No, it’s just a bunch of professors and respected physicists deary, the Queen of Hearts titters. But look, they’re studying paranormal phenomena: precognition, remote viewing, telekinesis. I tell you it’s the White Visitation all over again, Darpa spending four million on “neural-signal” communications research.
Silent Talk? What’s this, some telepathic Pynchonian phantasia? Fox Fire furious behind his faux fur mask. Amazonia growls. We’re superheroes God damn it, not ghost hunters!
They’re about to turn on each other, the party collapsed to a superbrawl, when Red Arrow yells Stop! and flashes the team with a red-gelled flashlight beam – a neat trick, he’s found, the advantage to get a solid punch in, like to sock the Captain right now for that one time… but hold it! – The Doktor’s right. Listen, if they develop mind-reading soldiers, Johnny Law who can stop bullets with his bare hands… we’ll be out of business!
It’s worse than that, Doktor DiscorD dons a maniacal smile, if mankind can learn to tap into the powers of the cosmos then we will no longer have the right to call ourselves superheroes. We will be no more special than any man or woman, glitzing up in costume to perform a citizen’s arrest. We must strike first, our arch nemeses await. Who’s with me?
And safe the world they did. That’s why the whole Registry was gathered here in Doktor D’s penthouse lair, to celebrate a hundredth capture, Black Arrow busting up an illegal dumping operation down in the bay. The room was decked in her colors, black and purple streamers draped over the Dok’s criminal watch charts and armory, Nix and Nostrum slow dancing like black cats or ninjas, Geist Green Scorpion, and The Eye comparing the cut of their trench coats, swapping tips on not getting caught in elevator doors. Red Arrow it seemed was the only hero not enjoying himself – maybe Black Arrow too, collapsed tipsy in the corner singing old Wobbly songs in her self-congratulation – wondering, what evil deeds are being performed in our absence tonight?
But wait, Doktor DiscorD is also discontent, scrolling through data on his Disconsole computer system as if it were about to catch fire, and then leaping up! Do you ever wonder, he captures the room, red and blue goggles especially piercing the arrow on Red Arrow’s forehead, why none of us has an arch nemesis? Everyone shifts gazes. Captain Jackson looks queasy (that fake public service motherfucker).
It’s simple really, Geist begins, the government told us not to pry into torture, piracy, or the subprime market if we wanted to get licensed… Tothian adds: I’m after Bin Laden.
Wrong answer! The Doktor, sewing his casual chaos. No one’s threatened us yet, our existence, you see? Any nemesis must be opposed to the very supernature of our being. Take these guys, for instance, these mad scientists. Wait, what’s up Dok? Everyone rushes in closer.
No, it’s just a bunch of professors and respected physicists deary, the Queen of Hearts titters. But look, they’re studying paranormal phenomena: precognition, remote viewing, telekinesis. I tell you it’s the White Visitation all over again, Darpa spending four million on “neural-signal” communications research.
Silent Talk? What’s this, some telepathic Pynchonian phantasia? Fox Fire furious behind his faux fur mask. Amazonia growls. We’re superheroes God damn it, not ghost hunters!
They’re about to turn on each other, the party collapsed to a superbrawl, when Red Arrow yells Stop! and flashes the team with a red-gelled flashlight beam – a neat trick, he’s found, the advantage to get a solid punch in, like to sock the Captain right now for that one time… but hold it! – The Doktor’s right. Listen, if they develop mind-reading soldiers, Johnny Law who can stop bullets with his bare hands… we’ll be out of business!
It’s worse than that, Doktor DiscorD dons a maniacal smile, if mankind can learn to tap into the powers of the cosmos then we will no longer have the right to call ourselves superheroes. We will be no more special than any man or woman, glitzing up in costume to perform a citizen’s arrest. We must strike first, our arch nemeses await. Who’s with me?
5.08.2009
The Bird Watchers (for Renée)
Little black eyes tremble nervously in the grass, always nervous, always trembling, always prey to the above – blinking – on a tall branch hooded eyes scan the ground, spot the vole, prey, predate, a tension in the claw and feather, to strike – blinking – beyond the camera, a falcon web cam, blue eyes barely catch the peregrine in flight, the beauty of nature’s butchery for the beholder, turn to their companions – blinking – did you catch that? No, we were watching the bald eagles, did she catch that mouse? It wasn’t a, let me play it again so you can see – blinking – eyeless, roving, the camera catches the bird watchers, zooms from street view to aerial, ascending geo-synchronous orbits (we know where you live) – blinking – all the data trapped by satellite, coalesced in a thousand retinaless, searching, sending, the visions of a lifetime in digital format – blinking – spiderbots serving the servers, into the empty iris of the IRS, FBI, tax companies, social networks, Google, empty neural tubes, crawling, webworks, who’s – blinking – watching – blinking – in a back room of the Audubon Society, attentions are measured like Big Brother or reality TV, to monitor which species no one might miss, the prey, the forgotten – blinking –
5.06.2009
The Pandemic
By the time Rosita and I got to the Recovery Room the Pandemic had already begun: all the hip young bods dancing in their tightlegged latex, the girls sporting the new antimicrobial kid gloves, in varying shades of neon like floral radiation warnings, clapping and waving in the sterile blue lights. DJ Grippe was spinning the latest off N1H1 Records, Afro-Iberian dance beats that’d make your heart skip, the club the perfect vessel to blend all the strains of young international health into one rollicking party. You can see it in the eyes, every one of us still living, not like the alleys full of victims we had to pass on our ride here, choking and swelling in the endless dry winter, spreading the disease molecules with even one careless breath.
We got drinks – thin-necked bottles sipped through straws like delicate proboscises – and found a table with an empty table on either side of it so we could breathe freely within the current World Health Organization regulations. Rosita made sure to swipe each surface with a sanitary napkin before she sat down. Without actually touching anything I gave the appearance of leaning against the wallpaper, velvety winged pigs this month, the design sported by all the bartenders. It would all be burnt tomorrow and decontaminated for next month anyway. The owners of the Recovery Room tried to keep up with the latest fashions, since the first club to host the Pandemic fell into quarantine for hosting what would have been an ironic barbecue, except everyone fell sick. You couldn’t get kicked out of here for anything faster than an errant cough or sneeze. And everyone was watching, because the latest fashions were swathed around our faces.
I pointed them out to Rosita: The Japanese folkpunks in their austere Kabuki and Kami prints, several clowns and mock-stars (famous politicians, actors, etc… the Barack wasn’t so popular this season after a failure to provide national healthcare), it seemed the abstract contingent had done away with representing the mouth altogether in favor of Mandrian-like lines. There was even some old rocker sporting the Rolling Stones lips over his own, everyone with their projected desires plastered like smiles across their plastic faces. Rosita sipped discreetly through the side of her mask while I explained how the first international influenza pandemic wasn’t nearly so colorful, at least, you didn’t get your vaccine in a shot glass at the door. It’s all a big blast, don’t you think? Not as contagious like the Red Death, now that would be some gala!
What about her? Rosita asked, pointing a violet trembling glove across the room. Wandering through the crowd, stumbling as if actually ill, and leaving a wide empty void around her as she moved, was a girl clearly breaking some taboo or illusion of sanitary. We could hear it in the whispers behind the masks around us. Look at that shaved head, so last century, so chemo-chic. And those eyes, gaunt, horrific, what does she think she’s carrying? And then she turned our way and we saw what was causing the stir. Of everyone in the Recovery Room, this girl alone was not wearing a protective facemask. But no, it was something else, a thick scar running along the exposed collarbone as if some vital gland had been removed, and there, at the base of her thin-necked throat, a growth like a rotting blossom, dead set on consuming the otherwise unblemished skin from within.
Does she want to catch the flu? Rosita asked as the girl moved away, her delicate ungloved hands trailing on every dirty countertop, a pariah in this land of hermetically sealed emotions and collisions. She couldn’t go home like the rest of us and wash away the germs and be well again. I couldn’t get my mind off that tumescent flesh, so real, so malignant. I’ve never seen a neck so smooth and sorrowful. A reminder of the anarchy trembling at the cell walls of each of us, an endemic that can’t be hidden or held off by any pretty face. No, I sighed, that’s cancer. Don’t worry it’s not contagious. Ugh, Rosita shuddered, I wish they’d kick her out anyway. You ready to dance yet? Hold on, I said, and then brazenly pulled off my mask to drain the rest of the bottle, even though people stared at my own naked uplifted cheeks, pallid from months without sunlight or fresh air.
We got drinks – thin-necked bottles sipped through straws like delicate proboscises – and found a table with an empty table on either side of it so we could breathe freely within the current World Health Organization regulations. Rosita made sure to swipe each surface with a sanitary napkin before she sat down. Without actually touching anything I gave the appearance of leaning against the wallpaper, velvety winged pigs this month, the design sported by all the bartenders. It would all be burnt tomorrow and decontaminated for next month anyway. The owners of the Recovery Room tried to keep up with the latest fashions, since the first club to host the Pandemic fell into quarantine for hosting what would have been an ironic barbecue, except everyone fell sick. You couldn’t get kicked out of here for anything faster than an errant cough or sneeze. And everyone was watching, because the latest fashions were swathed around our faces.
I pointed them out to Rosita: The Japanese folkpunks in their austere Kabuki and Kami prints, several clowns and mock-stars (famous politicians, actors, etc… the Barack wasn’t so popular this season after a failure to provide national healthcare), it seemed the abstract contingent had done away with representing the mouth altogether in favor of Mandrian-like lines. There was even some old rocker sporting the Rolling Stones lips over his own, everyone with their projected desires plastered like smiles across their plastic faces. Rosita sipped discreetly through the side of her mask while I explained how the first international influenza pandemic wasn’t nearly so colorful, at least, you didn’t get your vaccine in a shot glass at the door. It’s all a big blast, don’t you think? Not as contagious like the Red Death, now that would be some gala!
What about her? Rosita asked, pointing a violet trembling glove across the room. Wandering through the crowd, stumbling as if actually ill, and leaving a wide empty void around her as she moved, was a girl clearly breaking some taboo or illusion of sanitary. We could hear it in the whispers behind the masks around us. Look at that shaved head, so last century, so chemo-chic. And those eyes, gaunt, horrific, what does she think she’s carrying? And then she turned our way and we saw what was causing the stir. Of everyone in the Recovery Room, this girl alone was not wearing a protective facemask. But no, it was something else, a thick scar running along the exposed collarbone as if some vital gland had been removed, and there, at the base of her thin-necked throat, a growth like a rotting blossom, dead set on consuming the otherwise unblemished skin from within.
Does she want to catch the flu? Rosita asked as the girl moved away, her delicate ungloved hands trailing on every dirty countertop, a pariah in this land of hermetically sealed emotions and collisions. She couldn’t go home like the rest of us and wash away the germs and be well again. I couldn’t get my mind off that tumescent flesh, so real, so malignant. I’ve never seen a neck so smooth and sorrowful. A reminder of the anarchy trembling at the cell walls of each of us, an endemic that can’t be hidden or held off by any pretty face. No, I sighed, that’s cancer. Don’t worry it’s not contagious. Ugh, Rosita shuddered, I wish they’d kick her out anyway. You ready to dance yet? Hold on, I said, and then brazenly pulled off my mask to drain the rest of the bottle, even though people stared at my own naked uplifted cheeks, pallid from months without sunlight or fresh air.
3.13.2009
The Circles (in the style of Faulkner)
We laid ‘em low. Pa said to grab the scythe an the lantern, an head out to the am’ranth, e’en of itn so dark it scares me. He grabbed the bundle an when he done buryin it Pa come out ta help me cut. I ask him why’rd it gottena be circles if they was commin out anyways, an he jus’ slap me an say ta keep on cutting ‘em. Aftern hour or so we’d gotten three circles down an half the lines, an he finally say cause thatn what Snopes did when they’da come out for them horses he stolen. Snopes jus’ cut the circles an when the goverm’t come out they jus’ paid him off ta hushn it up. Never asked about no horses. Why’d they do that, I say, an Pa jus’ give me that look, liken what he gave me when he found me still holden the shotgun in ma hands, an he say keepn cuttin. Ifn only yarn brother was here to help, we’da get these crops laid low afore morn.
Well, when we’sa finally done, an the sun start to dis’pate the witchin’ lights of the fog offna highway, Pa, he took a deep sigh, leanin thar on the handle the scythe like he’n a skinny grey shadow, when finally he ses it: alyens. Whatn ya mean alyens, I ses, like the ‘drigez family thatn come up narth an you ses a stealin all the jobs atn the plant? Nome, he cuffed me agan, an stared up trembling atn the silent orange dawn. I don’t mean no man asa come across a natchel border. I mean alyens, from upn stars. Goverm’t don’ like ‘em none. An I nodded, an I knew then whatn he meant, cause Jed’d read them stories to me at night and say theys a comin and it scaren me so bad that I… So I’sa started runnin, lookin up at ‘em fadin night an them hostile stars as ifn some fant’sy ship is gonna come sail’n outna ma nightmares.
So when they foun me, hidin in the hedges, I hollered good, them flashin lights an beams I thoughtn was some space monster, an I started holler’n real good then. We did it, I ses, cause’n me ‘at shot Jed, an so we made ‘em crop circles, but we’s did it, not yarn, I swear. Please don’ taken me up in yar mothernship or noth’n. Son, they ses, watchu holler’n ‘bout, an then I don’ know whetherna laugh orn cry, cause’n it was only the goverm’t an’ I scared it was some bug-eyed alyen!
Well, when we’sa finally done, an the sun start to dis’pate the witchin’ lights of the fog offna highway, Pa, he took a deep sigh, leanin thar on the handle the scythe like he’n a skinny grey shadow, when finally he ses it: alyens. Whatn ya mean alyens, I ses, like the ‘drigez family thatn come up narth an you ses a stealin all the jobs atn the plant? Nome, he cuffed me agan, an stared up trembling atn the silent orange dawn. I don’t mean no man asa come across a natchel border. I mean alyens, from upn stars. Goverm’t don’ like ‘em none. An I nodded, an I knew then whatn he meant, cause Jed’d read them stories to me at night and say theys a comin and it scaren me so bad that I… So I’sa started runnin, lookin up at ‘em fadin night an them hostile stars as ifn some fant’sy ship is gonna come sail’n outna ma nightmares.
So when they foun me, hidin in the hedges, I hollered good, them flashin lights an beams I thoughtn was some space monster, an I started holler’n real good then. We did it, I ses, cause’n me ‘at shot Jed, an so we made ‘em crop circles, but we’s did it, not yarn, I swear. Please don’ taken me up in yar mothernship or noth’n. Son, they ses, watchu holler’n ‘bout, an then I don’ know whetherna laugh orn cry, cause’n it was only the goverm’t an’ I scared it was some bug-eyed alyen!
3.12.2009
The Small Storm
How disappointing, she thought as she strode down the hall of the National Museum, where Lincoln’s gold pocket watch had just been opened up to reveal a message engraved inside by an erstwhile jeweler on the first day of the Civil War. The miniscule words were not nearly as exciting as the apocryphal version, but then again, she tweeted, kicking her long legs into the shoebox-sized taxi, most of what people say nowadays is drivel too. It was like some anachronistic twitter, a linguistic Kilroy that had taken 150 years to upload. And besides, what gadget was still large enough to engrave something on its surface?
Everything was getting smaller. She blinked in the article on her thumbnail-sized cell phone while checking her bags. Cars, microchips, certain species of mammals, even the lines at the airport were microsized, she smiled, whisking through security, now that the economy’s shrinking. Of course, so are the airplanes. She scrunched up her legs, trying to get comfortable in the clownishly small seat, graciously accepting a complementary peanut and thimbleful of ginger ale. It’s a good thing I’m on a diet, though these bones won’t start shrinking for another few decades yet!
But then, just before they reached Boston, where the technological conference was to be held and she hoped to find something smarmy to tweet about, a tremendous thwomping noise resounded through the cabin. Why, she thought, just before everything went black, maybe it’s one of those mysterious sonic booms that have been occurring up and down the Eastern Seaboard all week I was just reading about on my RSS feed.
Miraculously, she found when she woke up, everyone had survived the crash landing. They were in a deserted grassy field with no civilization in sight, perhaps one of the last places in the country, she speculated, without at least power lines. At least she could stretch her legs now, but just as she stood up and threw back her hair another loud boom sounded, and then another, knocking her over, flattening small patches of grass about the field. It’s like the Tunguska Event, she wanted to report, that whole Russian forest flattened in one fell whoomp, except much smaller, as if the electrons in the air were suddenly all speeding up, popping into and out of existence. It was almost magical, except that she had no wi-fi to share it with the rest of the world.
But then, what should appear, but a team of the new emergency response microcopters, little dust mote sized hotspots battling against the small storm of booming electromagnetic chaos to establish for one moment a local network of internet connectivity. She danced up and down, she could tweet at last, but then she stopped, uncertain and trembling, for how was she going to describe this to anyone, this patently absurd series of events, in 140 words or less?
Everything was getting smaller. She blinked in the article on her thumbnail-sized cell phone while checking her bags. Cars, microchips, certain species of mammals, even the lines at the airport were microsized, she smiled, whisking through security, now that the economy’s shrinking. Of course, so are the airplanes. She scrunched up her legs, trying to get comfortable in the clownishly small seat, graciously accepting a complementary peanut and thimbleful of ginger ale. It’s a good thing I’m on a diet, though these bones won’t start shrinking for another few decades yet!
But then, just before they reached Boston, where the technological conference was to be held and she hoped to find something smarmy to tweet about, a tremendous thwomping noise resounded through the cabin. Why, she thought, just before everything went black, maybe it’s one of those mysterious sonic booms that have been occurring up and down the Eastern Seaboard all week I was just reading about on my RSS feed.
Miraculously, she found when she woke up, everyone had survived the crash landing. They were in a deserted grassy field with no civilization in sight, perhaps one of the last places in the country, she speculated, without at least power lines. At least she could stretch her legs now, but just as she stood up and threw back her hair another loud boom sounded, and then another, knocking her over, flattening small patches of grass about the field. It’s like the Tunguska Event, she wanted to report, that whole Russian forest flattened in one fell whoomp, except much smaller, as if the electrons in the air were suddenly all speeding up, popping into and out of existence. It was almost magical, except that she had no wi-fi to share it with the rest of the world.
But then, what should appear, but a team of the new emergency response microcopters, little dust mote sized hotspots battling against the small storm of booming electromagnetic chaos to establish for one moment a local network of internet connectivity. She danced up and down, she could tweet at last, but then she stopped, uncertain and trembling, for how was she going to describe this to anyone, this patently absurd series of events, in 140 words or less?
3.09.2009
The Big Hunt
They say there’s no rest for the wicked, but perhaps it’s more apt to say there’s no explanation for the rational minded. At least there’s funding, even if it comes from eccentric billionaires.
“We’re cryptoxenologists,” I told him as I slid into the booth, shaking the last of the rain off my trench coat, “trained professionals in the scientific methods. Not ghost hunters.” Despite the expensive felt hat pulled low over his face, which was shadowed in the flashing light show of the Vegas club, I could still see a mad gleam in his eyes, like a kid setting his targets on the Holy Grail. So this was Robert Bigelow, I thought, of Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, and my new patron.
“Don’t worry,” he smiled, the quivering of his fat jowls sending a shiver down my replaced spine, “I’m still talking aliens, UFOs, what have you. I need someone I can trust independent from the Mutual UFO Network to head a special division of my Star Impact Project: we’re after the big one, the biggest alien of them all.”
“Bigger than Roswell? Than the Vogans, than Xenu?”
“Very.”
“Hmm. You’ve got me intrigued, but I don’t come cheap. Is this supposed to be a Category Two or Three, physical traces, physiological effects in the witnesses?”
“Yes.” He smiled again; gesturing at the drink which a peculiarly androgynous waiter had set on the dark table. “Traces and effects of every imaginable kind. I didn’t believe it myself first either. This one’s beyond old Vallee’s categorizations. You want the run down?”
“Don’t you have a spec sheet? I’d like to get started before another bug hunter gets the goods.”
“No, I want you to understand the scope of what we’re dealing with here. Humor me.”
I shrugged back in the booth and took the drink, the first of many he’d be paying for I imagined. Its taste was impossible to pin down. While Bigelow talked I wondered what kind of alien we were hunting here, where it fit in Card’s Hierarchy of Foreignness, as varelse or raman: the other-as-enemy or other-as-self. I hoped the later; friendly aliens are always easier to negotiate with, and cover up after they leave town. But as the fat billionaire talked I began to think he was referring to the last function of foreignness, that ghost in the machine: the other as wholly and in-fucking-effably other.
“Wait, wait,” I stammered, sloshing the last of the weird blue drink on the tabletop, “did you just list as traces certain international monuments, text, rituals, and as physiological effects specific systems of belief and social codification, including the whole of our cultural value system?”
He smiled again, and this time the fear it caused me was almost enough to make me jump up and run screaming from the club, from the whole cursed city of Las Vegas, lit up like a giant welcoming beacon in the deserted night. “I told you I’m after that most alien of aliens…”
I gripped the table; the spilled drink sticky and surreal under my fingers. “You… you’re talking about God aren’t you?”
“We’re cryptoxenologists,” I told him as I slid into the booth, shaking the last of the rain off my trench coat, “trained professionals in the scientific methods. Not ghost hunters.” Despite the expensive felt hat pulled low over his face, which was shadowed in the flashing light show of the Vegas club, I could still see a mad gleam in his eyes, like a kid setting his targets on the Holy Grail. So this was Robert Bigelow, I thought, of Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, and my new patron.
“Don’t worry,” he smiled, the quivering of his fat jowls sending a shiver down my replaced spine, “I’m still talking aliens, UFOs, what have you. I need someone I can trust independent from the Mutual UFO Network to head a special division of my Star Impact Project: we’re after the big one, the biggest alien of them all.”
“Bigger than Roswell? Than the Vogans, than Xenu?”
“Very.”
“Hmm. You’ve got me intrigued, but I don’t come cheap. Is this supposed to be a Category Two or Three, physical traces, physiological effects in the witnesses?”
“Yes.” He smiled again; gesturing at the drink which a peculiarly androgynous waiter had set on the dark table. “Traces and effects of every imaginable kind. I didn’t believe it myself first either. This one’s beyond old Vallee’s categorizations. You want the run down?”
“Don’t you have a spec sheet? I’d like to get started before another bug hunter gets the goods.”
“No, I want you to understand the scope of what we’re dealing with here. Humor me.”
I shrugged back in the booth and took the drink, the first of many he’d be paying for I imagined. Its taste was impossible to pin down. While Bigelow talked I wondered what kind of alien we were hunting here, where it fit in Card’s Hierarchy of Foreignness, as varelse or raman: the other-as-enemy or other-as-self. I hoped the later; friendly aliens are always easier to negotiate with, and cover up after they leave town. But as the fat billionaire talked I began to think he was referring to the last function of foreignness, that ghost in the machine: the other as wholly and in-fucking-effably other.
“Wait, wait,” I stammered, sloshing the last of the weird blue drink on the tabletop, “did you just list as traces certain international monuments, text, rituals, and as physiological effects specific systems of belief and social codification, including the whole of our cultural value system?”
He smiled again, and this time the fear it caused me was almost enough to make me jump up and run screaming from the club, from the whole cursed city of Las Vegas, lit up like a giant welcoming beacon in the deserted night. “I told you I’m after that most alien of aliens…”
I gripped the table; the spilled drink sticky and surreal under my fingers. “You… you’re talking about God aren’t you?”
3.08.2009
The Automata
Dexter Nyamainashe was having trouble starting his automata. For years he had been collecting scrap metal from the wasteland deserts and the ruined streets, which he welded together into little worlds of people, animals, buildings. When he stepped behind the contraption and turned the crank, these tiny, mechanical beings would spring to life: eating, loving, killing (for verisimilitude); a whole microcosmic reproduction of the world he saw around him. He called them the Global Villages of Peace. And yet, despite the infinite and infinitesimal care with which he crafted and operated his machines, Dexter’s Zimbabwean countrymen wanted nothing to do with them. The government called them charlatanry; the poor called them witchcraft, and fled with dark backwards glances as soon as he touched the crank. Those who might have understood, who could afford an education, could also unfortunately afford televisions, and preferred to spend their time watching reproductions of such a distant, sensational life that Dexter’s Global Villages seemed little more than the scraps they were made out of.
Eventually one of his friends, who owned a junk shop in town, suggested that Dexter set up his automata in the store window, where he could crank to his heart’s content without fear of persecution or misunderstanding, even if the purpose of his art had been reduced to selling the occasional shoddy good. When his arm got tired he would stop cranking and turn bitterly to the television that also blared behind the storefront’s glass, tuned often to the peculiar cartoons of the Fox Network. Stupid box that needed no human turning to bring it to life, that was witchcraft, he thought, an automaton of the finest and yet pernicious make. For who turned the crank? He couldn’t figure it out.
One day however, when he was taking such a break, Dexter was startled by an interruption of the moving, speaking drawings in the box. There for once was a real man, named Rupert Murdoch, the head fox himself, the Zimbabwean thought. After several minutes of hemming and hawing, Rupert sighed, and then admitted that he had been slyly using the content of his shows to brainwash the North American people (and, by extension of the technology, the rest of the world): his cartoons would cleverly contradict the immediacy of global warming, or spout the political rhetoric with which the last North American President had been trying to take over the world. Ah, Dexter smiled sadly when the old fox had finished, so they were just automata, but what a shame that they were used to such evil ends, especially as anyone and everyone can see them. Witchcraft indeed. With that, he turned off the television, and began cranking his Global Village of Peace to life, even though no one was on the street to watch.
Eventually one of his friends, who owned a junk shop in town, suggested that Dexter set up his automata in the store window, where he could crank to his heart’s content without fear of persecution or misunderstanding, even if the purpose of his art had been reduced to selling the occasional shoddy good. When his arm got tired he would stop cranking and turn bitterly to the television that also blared behind the storefront’s glass, tuned often to the peculiar cartoons of the Fox Network. Stupid box that needed no human turning to bring it to life, that was witchcraft, he thought, an automaton of the finest and yet pernicious make. For who turned the crank? He couldn’t figure it out.
One day however, when he was taking such a break, Dexter was startled by an interruption of the moving, speaking drawings in the box. There for once was a real man, named Rupert Murdoch, the head fox himself, the Zimbabwean thought. After several minutes of hemming and hawing, Rupert sighed, and then admitted that he had been slyly using the content of his shows to brainwash the North American people (and, by extension of the technology, the rest of the world): his cartoons would cleverly contradict the immediacy of global warming, or spout the political rhetoric with which the last North American President had been trying to take over the world. Ah, Dexter smiled sadly when the old fox had finished, so they were just automata, but what a shame that they were used to such evil ends, especially as anyone and everyone can see them. Witchcraft indeed. With that, he turned off the television, and began cranking his Global Village of Peace to life, even though no one was on the street to watch.
3.05.2009
The Instant Engine
Struggling to reconstruct the speculative technologies lost when the Great Singularity had collapsed all centuries into one interpenetrating pan-spacetime, they had first succeeded in reimagining the now whimsical Faster-Than-Light and Faster-Than-Dark drives. But it was patently clear in this hyper-connected agelessness that though one couldn’t go faster than discrete energy fields, one, or many, could easily outrace light by already being in the temporality in which the pre-probability waves would shortly quantize. And so the Faster-Than-Now drive was born, called in popular parlance the Instant Engine, or by the retro-fantasists a time travel machine: a small plastic torus set spinning in the belly of a large plastic torus, which was the vessel, and looked like nothing except a large plastic donut, without wings, or any other evident aerodynamic or propulsionary devices.
The team had been assembled with great care and the exaggeratedly patient expediency with which everything was done now that time had been abolished. Scientists of the highest caliber, archeologists, linguists and interpreters, and technicians in case of the inevitable breakdown all stood trembling in the hanger bay, for this was to be (and immediately should already have been) the first attempt to connect the everlasting present with one of the disparate moments in history with which humanity had always been plagued before, an event that would itself be historical if it didn’t already exist outside of such temporally-absurd, arbitrary perspectives. But to be on the safe side, they had decided not to risk all the bugaboos and paradoxes of the extant prophecies – the few remaining pre-collapse science-fictions – and instantize in a somewhere, a somewhen, that would not unduly traumatize the pre-atemporal mentalities of those they might encounter. To this end, a young and already ancient ahistorian suggested they leap to a less unwieldy and potentially awkward moment then say, Hitler’s bunker at the end of the second great war, or Roswell in the late ‘40s, and appear instead somewhere out of the way, but no less rich in historical data. So they picked the Archives of Cologne, just prior to their collapse in what had been considered in the old frameworks early 2009. As all of the Archive’s records and artifacts had been demolished when the bunker, which had been designed to outlast the apocalypse, clearly didn’t outlast much of anything, it would be an easy thing to jump in, pick up some noteworthy pieces of time, and jump back out without causing much of a rift or reversal.
After the brief but interminable speeches by each member of the planetary congress, the crew boarded and began spooling up the FTN drive. There was a pause, a blink of the eye, an almost miniscule yet monstrous gap, on the other side of which the crew might have wondered if they’d gone anywhen at all, except for the epic tearing noises and cascading rustles caused as the Archive’s massive concrete walls and towering stacks of old newspapers and estate files all fell around and on top of them at once, in that one momentous instant when they did indeed intersect history by causing the Archives of Cologne to collapse, through their arrival, half an hour earlier than it had collapsed in all previous spacetimes. From the limited, one-way perspective of most in-timers however, there was nothing odd about this at all: it was simply when this event happened. As for the crew of the timeship, in order to forestall the embarrassment of discovery, they made one last sudden and uncalculated jump, to some distant and farflung spacetime from which they have not yet been heard from again.
The team had been assembled with great care and the exaggeratedly patient expediency with which everything was done now that time had been abolished. Scientists of the highest caliber, archeologists, linguists and interpreters, and technicians in case of the inevitable breakdown all stood trembling in the hanger bay, for this was to be (and immediately should already have been) the first attempt to connect the everlasting present with one of the disparate moments in history with which humanity had always been plagued before, an event that would itself be historical if it didn’t already exist outside of such temporally-absurd, arbitrary perspectives. But to be on the safe side, they had decided not to risk all the bugaboos and paradoxes of the extant prophecies – the few remaining pre-collapse science-fictions – and instantize in a somewhere, a somewhen, that would not unduly traumatize the pre-atemporal mentalities of those they might encounter. To this end, a young and already ancient ahistorian suggested they leap to a less unwieldy and potentially awkward moment then say, Hitler’s bunker at the end of the second great war, or Roswell in the late ‘40s, and appear instead somewhere out of the way, but no less rich in historical data. So they picked the Archives of Cologne, just prior to their collapse in what had been considered in the old frameworks early 2009. As all of the Archive’s records and artifacts had been demolished when the bunker, which had been designed to outlast the apocalypse, clearly didn’t outlast much of anything, it would be an easy thing to jump in, pick up some noteworthy pieces of time, and jump back out without causing much of a rift or reversal.
After the brief but interminable speeches by each member of the planetary congress, the crew boarded and began spooling up the FTN drive. There was a pause, a blink of the eye, an almost miniscule yet monstrous gap, on the other side of which the crew might have wondered if they’d gone anywhen at all, except for the epic tearing noises and cascading rustles caused as the Archive’s massive concrete walls and towering stacks of old newspapers and estate files all fell around and on top of them at once, in that one momentous instant when they did indeed intersect history by causing the Archives of Cologne to collapse, through their arrival, half an hour earlier than it had collapsed in all previous spacetimes. From the limited, one-way perspective of most in-timers however, there was nothing odd about this at all: it was simply when this event happened. As for the crew of the timeship, in order to forestall the embarrassment of discovery, they made one last sudden and uncalculated jump, to some distant and farflung spacetime from which they have not yet been heard from again.
3.04.2009
The Greatest Discovery
If only he'd found them first: the twin black holes, spinning around each other like crushing dynamos, abysmal toy tops of the Universe. But no, that honor belonged to the astronomical team at _____ University, undoubtedly now basking in the fame of every major scientific journal, along with the guaranteed grants to continue their research. He had not even discovered the massive black hole twirling at the core of our own galaxy, and that had been his pet project for years, bound by the no longer seemingly foolish conviction that there was some connection between such imposing gravity and the energy fields of star systems. It had not been his name on the article. No, instead he'd gone out and gotten drunk with the molecular biologists, one of their experiential experiments on cell decay, and on his way home he had been jumped by a pair of hoodlums, they could have been twins in their identical skull masks, their cloth teeth chattering at his absolute inability to defend himself. It had taken the better part of the week to cancel and renew his credit card, replace his license and security badge. In fact, all that he had really lost, beyond the time in which he should have been the one to discover the black holes, was his wallet, a worn leather thing it'd been about time to replace anyway.
And so there he was, at Wal-Mart, or Target, with a new wallet in one hand and his new MasterCard in the other. After the cashier rang him out he opened the wallet to put the card inside, and found there, in one of the black pockets, ten teeth, ten human teeth. One of them had a filling. He was horrified, and despite the profuse apologies of the clerk, he hurried out, not taking the wallet or even the teeth he had paid for, and without giving his name to the reporter who had suddenly materialized, as if through matter transference, and tried to assure him that finding these teeth might prove to be the greatest discovery since Galileo found the moons of Jupiter.
And so there he was, at Wal-Mart, or Target, with a new wallet in one hand and his new MasterCard in the other. After the cashier rang him out he opened the wallet to put the card inside, and found there, in one of the black pockets, ten teeth, ten human teeth. One of them had a filling. He was horrified, and despite the profuse apologies of the clerk, he hurried out, not taking the wallet or even the teeth he had paid for, and without giving his name to the reporter who had suddenly materialized, as if through matter transference, and tried to assure him that finding these teeth might prove to be the greatest discovery since Galileo found the moons of Jupiter.
3.02.2009
The Operating Manual
Worried over the global economic crises and wondering where he was going to get the budget to balance the lot, Obama was invited on a personal space tour (which was also looking for funding). Pondering if the ship had an operating manual as they alit up the gravity well, or at least an abort button, he turned to the window and soon money lost its weight. There was Earth, a little cloudier and muddied than he imagined. But, Obama smiled, that’s what made it real. The planet was breathtaking, all sun soaked amidst the embering stars, if not a little on the small side.
I apologize for the lack of posting in the last several months. I have been inordinately busy with school and going through what is most likely my Saturn Returns, attempting to find new perspectives on reality and how I can best approach it in the coming decades without giving up, getting jaded, or going crazy. On the other hand I have become obsessed with the concise narratives of flash or short short fiction, and so hopefully I will post more like the above here in the future as I work out some aesthetic and global theories. I have been particularly distraught over the news that the increased rate of expansion of the Universe will one day mean the vanishing of all the stars from the sky. Of most use in formulating more hopeful positions on life today has been R. Buckminster Fuller's Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (full text online).
In the mean time, I posted a new story called In the Moment on my Goodreads account, a sort of absurdist tour diary of my rock and roll days in which a stolen book of censored songs precipitates the end of the world as we know it. Enjoy!
I apologize for the lack of posting in the last several months. I have been inordinately busy with school and going through what is most likely my Saturn Returns, attempting to find new perspectives on reality and how I can best approach it in the coming decades without giving up, getting jaded, or going crazy. On the other hand I have become obsessed with the concise narratives of flash or short short fiction, and so hopefully I will post more like the above here in the future as I work out some aesthetic and global theories. I have been particularly distraught over the news that the increased rate of expansion of the Universe will one day mean the vanishing of all the stars from the sky. Of most use in formulating more hopeful positions on life today has been R. Buckminster Fuller's Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (full text online).
In the mean time, I posted a new story called In the Moment on my Goodreads account, a sort of absurdist tour diary of my rock and roll days in which a stolen book of censored songs precipitates the end of the world as we know it. Enjoy!
9.02.2008
Last 20 Moments
Time does strange things when you’re locked in a room, when even that window near the ceiling ceases to illuminate. It has been dark for years, or it’s just the same interminable night. They used to bring a pack of Marlboro’s daily, and seafood on the weekends, but that tapered off some point ago. Thankfully there’s this crust of bread I can nibble till kingdom come.
I like to think I did something wrong, trespassing maybe, or murder, that would be a reason. I like to think that Eleanor is waiting; when I get out we’ll go to the Dollar Theatre, camp at Treasure Lake, even take the kids like we used to. But maybe I’m just making that up, a story to keep my mind off this darkness. I don’t remember if I have kids, what Eleanor’s face looks like.
As long as I’m writing I know I’m at least alive, though I wish my neighbor were still here. He was a man like myself, that is, trapped, who up till Time stopped used to chat through the hole in the wall, my ear against the immobile stone, whispering his inconsistent fables. I’m afraid he’s rubbed off on me.
Now he’s back. He tried to break out. I asked why he returned. Well, there’s nothing left out there. What do you mean, has there been a war? No, unless a rather big one, I mean, there’s nothing left, no ground, no sun, just an immense whiteness, I was so scared to turn around that this room would be gone, at least these walls are safe. I found a pack of smokes though. Are you sure, I lit one of our last twenty moments, this is it then? That’s my story, he said, and this time I’m sticking to it.
(Some flash for an assignment for my advanced fiction class.)
I like to think I did something wrong, trespassing maybe, or murder, that would be a reason. I like to think that Eleanor is waiting; when I get out we’ll go to the Dollar Theatre, camp at Treasure Lake, even take the kids like we used to. But maybe I’m just making that up, a story to keep my mind off this darkness. I don’t remember if I have kids, what Eleanor’s face looks like.
As long as I’m writing I know I’m at least alive, though I wish my neighbor were still here. He was a man like myself, that is, trapped, who up till Time stopped used to chat through the hole in the wall, my ear against the immobile stone, whispering his inconsistent fables. I’m afraid he’s rubbed off on me.
Now he’s back. He tried to break out. I asked why he returned. Well, there’s nothing left out there. What do you mean, has there been a war? No, unless a rather big one, I mean, there’s nothing left, no ground, no sun, just an immense whiteness, I was so scared to turn around that this room would be gone, at least these walls are safe. I found a pack of smokes though. Are you sure, I lit one of our last twenty moments, this is it then? That’s my story, he said, and this time I’m sticking to it.
(Some flash for an assignment for my advanced fiction class.)
12.18.2007
Nothing but Annihilation
Over the summer, Sophie encouraged me to try a writing exercise of typing free-association images for a given number of minutes each day, and then putting them away unread to be used for a poem later on. I forgot all about them with the advent of school, and found them today while going through my boxes and files during the process of moving. I immediately had to write a poem, which I realized I haven't done in at least a year now.
Nothing but Annihilation
A dark wolf stalks the forest of tin cans and wire,
Slouching over the guardrail and wood-grain of the night.
A solemn golem hunting the hawk-winged angel; Poisoned
Primroses pinned to his suit jacket, shotgun slung over one clay shoulder,
His howls darkling the streetlamps in this tar-pool rain.
Leopard skin bankbook glistening with the fat sweat of his pleated palms,
His tie a hangman’s noose, a serpent woven from liquid gold and ashes
Poised for flight on an arrow of wooden slats and silver dollars.
The lions of greed drink from these dark labyrinths of blood and roses,
An abyss of birds and buildings, clocks falling into the river.
A small dog in a trashcan sinking into the night’s warmth, trailing
The riverbed sewn with hatchets and revolvers, buttons and petrified sinew.
Language is a body dying in the window of the beast called mouth,
Tongues of flame and honey, a shoe forgotten in the gutter’s memory.
She sleeps on a bed of crushed velvet and scavenged newspapers,
A ladder made of bones, the morbid sacrality of moist lungs and halos.
The angel’s thigh, draped in white garments stained a pale rose.
She dreams of dollar-fled fields and pounds of corpulent text,
A child’s face of pure joy, illuminated by the subtlest matrices,
A destroyer of time as her hair sweeps the prismatic streets clean.
Stars fall bleeding to the pavement, crying softly at night to go home,
Small lightning bugs of molten metal and mutilated machinery
Dance like jeweled scarves and cinnamon sticks under the half-eaten moon,
Beneath the weight of a thousand plastic worlds twirling on tilted poles.
The beast weeps at his own reflection, falters the gun into the wasteland,
The sky askew and smoke smiting the city with razor-wire clouds,
He weeps alone, binding the hours till sunrise, presents for a time
When the whole feathered mechanism bursts into flames and hosannas.
Nothing but Annihilation
A dark wolf stalks the forest of tin cans and wire,
Slouching over the guardrail and wood-grain of the night.
A solemn golem hunting the hawk-winged angel; Poisoned
Primroses pinned to his suit jacket, shotgun slung over one clay shoulder,
His howls darkling the streetlamps in this tar-pool rain.
Leopard skin bankbook glistening with the fat sweat of his pleated palms,
His tie a hangman’s noose, a serpent woven from liquid gold and ashes
Poised for flight on an arrow of wooden slats and silver dollars.
The lions of greed drink from these dark labyrinths of blood and roses,
An abyss of birds and buildings, clocks falling into the river.
A small dog in a trashcan sinking into the night’s warmth, trailing
The riverbed sewn with hatchets and revolvers, buttons and petrified sinew.
Language is a body dying in the window of the beast called mouth,
Tongues of flame and honey, a shoe forgotten in the gutter’s memory.
She sleeps on a bed of crushed velvet and scavenged newspapers,
A ladder made of bones, the morbid sacrality of moist lungs and halos.
The angel’s thigh, draped in white garments stained a pale rose.
She dreams of dollar-fled fields and pounds of corpulent text,
A child’s face of pure joy, illuminated by the subtlest matrices,
A destroyer of time as her hair sweeps the prismatic streets clean.
Stars fall bleeding to the pavement, crying softly at night to go home,
Small lightning bugs of molten metal and mutilated machinery
Dance like jeweled scarves and cinnamon sticks under the half-eaten moon,
Beneath the weight of a thousand plastic worlds twirling on tilted poles.
The beast weeps at his own reflection, falters the gun into the wasteland,
The sky askew and smoke smiting the city with razor-wire clouds,
He weeps alone, binding the hours till sunrise, presents for a time
When the whole feathered mechanism bursts into flames and hosannas.
9.05.2006
a day in familiar sensations
smell of musty elevators in apartment buildings like the one my grandmother lived in
and checked tableclothes spilled with diner syrup
the rumble and stale subway air echoing melancholy off the platform walls with classical guitar chords well dressed but scruffy fingers wincing as the train announcments sound off beat
jumbled glare of warehouse graffiti only visible from the tracks
smell of ocean salt and expectation, each summer of my youth
crunch of toes in sand and spiraled shells between fingers worn opalescent with waves
colors in the mute gray breeze: sky blue and purple clouded sand drifts edged with red tar waves with green ripples only vibrant when the sun slides out from behind the approaching storm
then the sand is brilliant
a cut of tweed porkpie hat and mother of pearl inlayed accordian, a boy on the T tries to look ambiguous and older than his too smooth cheeks and century
"hello!" shouts an old friend smile not seen for four years
smell of basil grown and ground to pesto by her hands
tang of red wine and bite of whisky, irish clinking on ice
overtone harmonics of musicians tuning and crackle hiss of microphone failure
sore muscles from too much walking
shimmering reflection of moonlight on water and the configuration of the Plaeidies
taste of kisses on rooftop
***
today we wandered into the downtown crossing to browse through musty old used bookstores (and why am i not running one?) where i found a copy of some aldous huxley poems from the 30's and Plath's "Ariel" which i remembered later i had dreamt about buying a copy of in my dreams last night (except that one was enormous and in spanish).
and checked tableclothes spilled with diner syrup
the rumble and stale subway air echoing melancholy off the platform walls with classical guitar chords well dressed but scruffy fingers wincing as the train announcments sound off beat
jumbled glare of warehouse graffiti only visible from the tracks
smell of ocean salt and expectation, each summer of my youth
crunch of toes in sand and spiraled shells between fingers worn opalescent with waves
colors in the mute gray breeze: sky blue and purple clouded sand drifts edged with red tar waves with green ripples only vibrant when the sun slides out from behind the approaching storm
then the sand is brilliant
a cut of tweed porkpie hat and mother of pearl inlayed accordian, a boy on the T tries to look ambiguous and older than his too smooth cheeks and century
"hello!" shouts an old friend smile not seen for four years
smell of basil grown and ground to pesto by her hands
tang of red wine and bite of whisky, irish clinking on ice
overtone harmonics of musicians tuning and crackle hiss of microphone failure
sore muscles from too much walking
shimmering reflection of moonlight on water and the configuration of the Plaeidies
taste of kisses on rooftop
***
today we wandered into the downtown crossing to browse through musty old used bookstores (and why am i not running one?) where i found a copy of some aldous huxley poems from the 30's and Plath's "Ariel" which i remembered later i had dreamt about buying a copy of in my dreams last night (except that one was enormous and in spanish).
3.13.2006
horizontal rain
Gravity's growing giddy again and everything's falling down. coins weaving through pockets and liquids through lips. screws turn loose and wiggle free with a crash of pictures and mechanical parts. I stumble every fourth step and find it near impossible to peal myself from the pillow in the morning. The moon pulling oppressive on personal tides, 80 percent drained. The faucet won't stop leaking, all the buttons stopped working too, the ones marked print, record, wake up, and stand here to teleport are the most finicky. No matter when I set my alarm for I wake to it flashing an untimely midnight and trip several times to get it set straight. It all seems so trivial, a slight technical failure of physical laws, which were never more than hypothetic suggestions to begin with. Could chalk it up to clumsiness or human error, but how many chipped plates fly crumbling from clenched grip does it take before some other force of failure becomes evident?
[edit- oh, the moon is really almost full right now, and huge in the night sky. No wonder]
[edit- oh, the moon is really almost full right now, and huge in the night sky. No wonder]
7.29.2005
somewhere in this cycle is me and you, what are we supposed to do?
Here's the first postable piece of the new writing, writen automatically before the most absurd critical mass bike ride yet. Whose hills? Our hills!
***
Oakland traffic hot stench between buildings crumbling tower of ignorance. Will they build over the vanished parking lot another parking lot? Wind blows cut grass mulberry trees over park. Students, doctors, walk unsuspecting occasional bicycle. Soon will be all bikes, critical mass overflowing grass to streets. Dinosaur machines, fossil fueled crumbling concrete, sit frozen in anticipation of arrival. Two men stalled on a pedestal, wary of small purple flowers creeping in with wheels. Let them tremble in rocky hearts; failing that, let them crumble. Let them drive over world, bumps of road mediated by shocks, cellphone implant ears, and awe-filled isolation. Sun in trees seeps in birdsong citysong, waits trembling for explosions. Where life is no silence lingers. Illusion of calm is breaking, breaking on buildings, breaking on trash-filled roads, breaking on unsuspecting hearts walking on empty, beating empty. Ghosts, patterns of behaviour no imitation of life, paled in comparison machines move tentatively. Where is their meaning? Going somewhere else, haunting homes, leaving lives behind blown away with leaves, first falling leaves: hide in grass, pretend fall is not coming. This falling apart has no end. Fall into it, press your senses up against it, shake them back and forth till falling in next moment together. No stopping it now. Wheels turn, click click gears at rest, for now, made to keep moving. Never was stopping, keep moving, there's everything to see here. Don't stop, smell the flowers as they wilt, taste the sunlight as it sets, breathe, wind, breathe in and let it go its way. Don't hold back, don't hold breathe, let birds go flying in it, angels dancing on metal wheels, feet turn off ground, wings beating, hearts gathering. Soon they too will fly away, into city escape sunset.
All remains falling leaves and buildings.
***
Oakland traffic hot stench between buildings crumbling tower of ignorance. Will they build over the vanished parking lot another parking lot? Wind blows cut grass mulberry trees over park. Students, doctors, walk unsuspecting occasional bicycle. Soon will be all bikes, critical mass overflowing grass to streets. Dinosaur machines, fossil fueled crumbling concrete, sit frozen in anticipation of arrival. Two men stalled on a pedestal, wary of small purple flowers creeping in with wheels. Let them tremble in rocky hearts; failing that, let them crumble. Let them drive over world, bumps of road mediated by shocks, cellphone implant ears, and awe-filled isolation. Sun in trees seeps in birdsong citysong, waits trembling for explosions. Where life is no silence lingers. Illusion of calm is breaking, breaking on buildings, breaking on trash-filled roads, breaking on unsuspecting hearts walking on empty, beating empty. Ghosts, patterns of behaviour no imitation of life, paled in comparison machines move tentatively. Where is their meaning? Going somewhere else, haunting homes, leaving lives behind blown away with leaves, first falling leaves: hide in grass, pretend fall is not coming. This falling apart has no end. Fall into it, press your senses up against it, shake them back and forth till falling in next moment together. No stopping it now. Wheels turn, click click gears at rest, for now, made to keep moving. Never was stopping, keep moving, there's everything to see here. Don't stop, smell the flowers as they wilt, taste the sunlight as it sets, breathe, wind, breathe in and let it go its way. Don't hold back, don't hold breathe, let birds go flying in it, angels dancing on metal wheels, feet turn off ground, wings beating, hearts gathering. Soon they too will fly away, into city escape sunset.
All remains falling leaves and buildings.
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