Welcome back to Wednesday

Welcome back to Wednesday.  It hasn’t changed much since your last visit.

The Earth is getting steadily closer to the Sun, but things are pretty much on course for Spring, same as last year.  You might have noticed your fingernails growing faster as of late, and there’ll be fewer emails in your inbox when you get to work, and yes, those *are* the same sad-shaped entities you see riding the PTT and the Metro every weekday.  But all in all, nothing’s changed.  Wednesday has been Wednesday since someone thought to give it a name.

You probably woke up this morning as you often do, by bumping into your own consciousness in a dark room; running into your brain like an old friend at a party and being too drunk to remember you’ve known them for years.  That half-awake state is mighty slippery, and rumored to be the consistency of mercury.

The experience of waking up is like sitting at a desk in the showroom of your personal dream factory as you dutifully review the feed from the previous rest period.  According to these proofs, you were busy designing a weapon of sorts; a chunky, cartoonish pistol that fires lead-colored spheres designed to whip wildly about, gathering speed before colliding with the target, rendering them momentarily stupid.  The effects are momentary, laughable, and totally harmless.

Eventually, curiosity forced you to open your eyes…

VERIFY nothing changed in the night.  Still no super powers, unfortunately.  Check your phone for the time.  Count to thirty, listening to the sounds of your apartment, the sounds of your neighbors showering, making coffee and… hanging pictures, apparently?  You counted backwards from thirty again, then you got up, showered, shaved, brushed your teeth and dressed.  Bag over one shoulder, headphones in, you sat on the couch for a few moments experiencing that same strange flutter in your stomach as you did while attending school as a child.  Then you walked up the block and waited for the Public Troop Transport in the pearly wet X,Y of 0745, in what history would come to know as January 20, 2010.

Pentagram Metro.  Again, that stench of robot sex ozone awaited you in the tunnel.  Crowded together with the huddled masses, you waited your turn to board.  Suddenly, you detect a new smell, chlorine.  Are they hiding a swimming pool along one of these tunnels?  For a moment, you picture it; bright and shimmering like an subterranean mirage, soft gold griffins and immaculate white tiles, clear blue water reflecting the light from a sewer drain somewhere far above.

10 BOARD TRAIN
20 CLEAR PATH FOR OTHERS
30 GRAB SAFETY RAIL
40 RIDE TRAIN
50 WHEN/IF DOORS OPEN?
60 EXIT TRAIN
70 REPEAT TOMORROW

Open the doors, launch the Machines.  “We’re like poorly paid nanites, plunged suddenly into the bloodstream of the city from a mobile hypodermic, programmed to infect, inspect, detect, erect, expect, neglect and reject, etc..” You fall through the converging crowd as is your custom, inwardly pleased at your lifelong ability to pass through a dense throng of commuters without touching a single person.  You bound up the escalator, cross over the tracks and come down the far side before the Old Beast starts up with a hiss and a snort, lumbering slowly back through the tunnel in search of your hidden swimming pool.

Next, you board a shuttle at Elephant Plaza that takes you to your office building.  Use your fancy ID to scan into your glass front office and change into your work clothes; a dark blue uniform complete with boots.

Seven more years of this.  You still haven’t decided if this gig is a Trojan blessing or a soul-sucking curse.  Maybe it’s both.  Every coin has two sides. Balance is part of the game.  It’s unwise to bite the hand that feeds you.  Hey, whatever gets you through the night…

YOU WILL: drink your coffee, eat your breakfast, and shove email around for half an hour before scanning the internet for newsclips related to the Project.  On your first break, you’ll harvest your own interests; Wired, Wikipedia, io9, Popular Science, CNN, and Gizmodo.  Anything for your ‘feed.  There was nothing of interest today.

Enviously, you read the reports of your peers and their brave actions in Haiti.  Some part of you is jealous.  THEY are doing something useful.  THEY are making their lives count for something.  THEY are helping other HU-MANS.

Email is helpful, right?  Taking ‘graphs of awards earned for fiscal responsibility is helpful, right?  Writing speeches can be helpful, right?  Slap-boxing an unwieldy and sluggish database in search of current SAR figures in active Sectors for Congressional reports is helpful, right?

Yeah.  And you’re a motherfucking Chinese jet pilot.

You’ve been thinking more and more about Saturn-9.  You heard it gives you focus, which you sorely lack.  You feel as though you’re just spinning your wheels, waving your arms, taking whacks at saplings, when you’re meant to be chopping down trees.  In short, you feel as though you’re failing on every level.  “Fake it till you make it,” as the saying goes.  But what if you’re really a fake, and you never really make it?

Congratulations!  It’s now noon:fifteen.  Too early for lunch?  Maybe you’ll walk over to the other building and pick up a spare uniform from the dry cleaners, or bum a F@rsi from a fellow encephalographer who works there.  Although, entering that other building means you might come into contact with your peers, people you don’t necessarily enjoy talking to.  So much in common, yet so little to say.

Walking into that office makes your skin crawl.  Typically, wisdom falls from your mouth with all the fast ease of a race horse pissing on a flat rock, but somehow the uniform negates all sense of clever.  WHEN IN BLUE / YOU AREN’T YOU.  No one gets your jokes, no one gives a shit, and no one cares.  To the techs in the lab, you’re just a Big Friendly Giant in Buddy Holly glasses and jailhouse tattoos.  The tattoo jokes make you feel one dimensional; sadly, it appears to be the only gag they know.  There are times when you’d like to ditch your polite veneer and explode in frustration, but you know all too well that a bell once rung cannot be unrung.  End result: slack jaws, slow blinks, hurt feelings, pointless acts. Then where would you be? Consider this the pickles on your shit sandwich. Keep chewing, keep choking it down. Smile, dab mouth with napkin. “Yes, ha. Very funny.”

Mid-afternoon caffeine crash sounds like a gunfight in a symbol factory and you sit waiting for the credits, watching the clock; the grains of another day slipping away, wasted.

What does any of this mean?  Is it a test?  Voices in your head represent the Feeding Hand, you one you must be careful not to bite.  A tut-tut of the finger and a disapproving glare: “Well, you’d better just buckle down and put those thoughts out of your mind, we’re not paying you to think.” They’re not here to help, nor are they here to care.  Give him the speech, show him the manual, read him the paragraph, and let the record show that we did our part.  “Frankly, we expect more from someone at your level!”

Am you crazy?  Am you stupid? What the fuck am wrong with you?  Why can’t you just decide to be happy, and then… be happy?  Oh, that’s right.  Because you still think such axioms are a trick, a virus initiated by the rich and powerful to keep the poor and common from storming the True Bastille.  The same goes for  organized religion, professional sports, and decaffeinated coffee.

Secretly, you think you’re poorly suited to be a human being; you see yourself as a half-developed character in someone else’s novel.  Two paragraphs of background history.  Don’t dive too deep, the pool only goes down so far.

//

The windshield wipers on your homeward jaunt look like two underfed pterodactyls trying to tunnel out of a diamond mine.

“The Machine is too big, our mouths too many,” you’ll type, hunched over the tiny keyboard of your phone.  “We’re way out of balance; too many people are screaming for more.  Entitlement is our battle cry.  We take and take, and we don’t particularly care where it comes from or who has to do without, so long as we GET OURS NOW.  Once upon a time, it was a point of civic pride to be a part of a community, to give something back.” You don’t want to become ugly inside, so you compartmentalize every dark instant as a separate occurrence.  If you didn’t, you’d drown.

Off the Public Troop Transport, into the local Sandwich Chain.  You’re hungry, thought you might like a change.  The old homeless woman you spoke of earlier is back:

X,Y: coffee house, a roughshod elderly woman rocks to and fro, rubbing her legs and making sounds like VHF radio static. Transmission sent. 5:00 PM Jan 6th

She’s slumped and slumbering across a table, breathing slow and low like a suspension bridge in high wind.  Her tattered shoes are off, exposing her bare feet.  You glimpse her toenails, long and jagged, predatory, as though nature had intended her to spear chickens with her feet for her dinner.  Her skin looks like something that left to dangle in the Potomac River for two or three hundred years.

Ahead of you in line, a husky 8-year-old with a Gluetooth headset and a cookie in his hand stands transfixed, gawking at the woman. It’s hard to believe she was ever a snoring pink bundle in a warm blanket, her future stretching out before her like a highway of pearls.

Maybe she’s happier this way.  Or shit, maybe she’s just heavily medicated.

Once home, you’ll sit in front of your computer downloading BirdB®ain episodes and making clever comments on your ‘feed until you decide you’ve had enough of Wednesday.  You used to devote this time to writing, but you haven’t written anything in awhile.  Can’t really call yourself a writer if you don’t write, can you?  You used to lift in the evenings, go for walks, take pictures.  Nowadays, you devote too much of your time to the ‘Tubes and all the social crap that goes with it.  It’s come to be your prime source of interaction and validation, and that’s not good.

You’re getting older, and friends are getting scarce.  You’ve forgotten how to be a friend.  In fact, you’re turning into a bit of an asshole.  You thrive on movement, adventure and change but anymore you’re like a brain damaged shark; alternately forgetting and remembering how to swim, moving through the water in stops and starts.

Soon you’ll go to bed and close your eyes.  When you wake up, it will be Thursday.

That hasn’t changed much, either.

Control.

It really *is* just out of your grasp.

“Waiting for the beat to kick in, but it never does.”

Dear Frank,

Thank you for your earlier letter, but I’m not Santa Claus. I hope you get the Sharpies and the new software that you asked for, but I wouldn’t hold out for the you-know-what; I sincerely doubt that Santa’s elves have much experience working in latex.

So how are you? I hope things are going well. Just think, we’re a few days away from the dawn of a new decade. A blank page to doodle upon.

 There must be a word for the feeling of frustration that comes with having one’s brain “on” all the time. Nonstop dialog, nonstop chatter — except when one sits down to harvest the expected results. Then, the cookie jar is empty. There’s nothing there. And some doubtful voice in the back of one’s head is saying, “I told you, that was just a dumb little crumby idea, and not really worth putting down on paper. Now go fix me a turkey pot pie.”  Never listen to that voice, Frank. You’re a fucking genius. We’re all just waiting for you to figure this out.

 Everywhere I go in this town I witness tiny jewels of dialog, flashes of moments in time; I present to you the angry staccato pop of high heels marching across a tile floor; an echoing metronome to the self-important song of an older Barbie doll wearing absurd levels of gold and perfume (desperate subluminal message: “I’M STILL PRETTY! I’M ONLY 39! I’M STILL A VIABLE OPTION!”), except barbie says terse, hurried things like, “Well, we need to language that out.” Or, “The figures from last quarter don’t reflect that.” Or, “It’s an opportunity to build synergy with their team,” or my personal fave, “What’s your throughput on this?” This last line must be delivered with the appropriately-shaped head and hand motions.

 Equally baffling is the exchange of emotionless pleasantries among my fellow robots: “Hi, how are you. Fine, thanks. How are you. Fine, thanks.” Sometimes I imagine crowds of office drones marching between meetings in this fashion; lab rats scurrying through the maze of Veal Fattening Pens, muttering and squeaking a slew of official phrases. Just remember Bob Dobalina.

 The city of Disco Charlie is a majestic ego library filled with dust jackets of insecurity, where casual quips are met with an over abundance of false knee-slappery. It’s important to understand that no one will question your “value” to the project if you laugh a lot and pepper your conversation with statements like, “Well, I’m truly blessed.” But you have to pronounce it as “bless-ed.” This makes you sound extra holy. No one DARES to question the project value of anyone with pronounced religious beliefs. Not here. Not in this town. So long as your god is white.

 Some days I feel like a post-modern anthropologist: “Mutual of Omaha’s Office Kingdom.” For some of these wind-ups, the Office is a confidence game, a high-powered extension of Fraternity Row, a further extension of High School which points all the way back to the primordial proving playground. These drones aren’t real. None of this is real. They’ve been encouraged to believe they’re real, they’ve been given authority, and shown how to tie a double-Windsor. “The evidence points to the facts.” They remind me of primitive man, clinging close to his fading fire when the winter sun disappears, puffing up his importance to keep the wolves at bay.

 Furthermore, Disco Charlie etiquette dictates that you speak in acronyms, carry a clipboard and consult your watch often. Also, when you’re going to invade someone’s personal space, possibly interrupt their lunch, and definitely ask them to do something you were tasked with in order to take the credit, DON’T politely rap on the edge of the cubicle and wait to be invited in. Hell, no. That would be too considerate. Instead, say something clever like “knock-knock” as you’re STRIDING IN. First, stand there blinking as if you’re expecting something. Then, proceed to squint at their monitor to see what they’re working on before glancing around at their personal effects, touching, pawing and commenting as your little rat brain doth bade you. No one will question your burgeoning authority if you’re a reedy little mouth-breather who favors pastel-colored sweaters. Once you’ve confirmed the obvious and asked all the stupid question you can think of, make your welcomed exit and bid a much-anticipated adieu in two or three languages. But not the interesting ones. “Aloha, ciao, adios!” (“Wow,” says Leadership from the invisible boardroom inside your tiny mind. “Clearly this person is intelligent. We need to add more complex titles to their email signature!”)

 I’ve noticed, also, that the more obscure and complex the title in your email signature, the more of a hurry you can appear to be in. Feel free to make jokes about your weekend drywall installation project, but make sure to clarify “it’s just your weekend residence.”

 You must master the “Disco Charlie Hang Up”, a bizarre communications ritual in which party “A”, attempting to cast themselves in an air of perceived importance over party “B”, will interrupt the conversation by smiling dentist big and nodding in agreement as they walk away from party “B”. Party “A” may also make a series of mysterious noises like, “Mmm-kay, umm-hum, all right, take care” as they walk away from party “B”. This is done to clearly illustrate that party “A” is a “mover” and a “shaker” involved in far more “important” things, and that they were doing party “B”, the little person, a favor by even talking to them. Understand, party “A” doesn’t have a meeting to go to, not at that moment. It’s just that they just can’t afford to be seen talking to someone who doesn’t have a drywall installation project of their own. Other useful phrases with which to pepper ones conversations with include: “I drive a Mercedes,” “I have a double Masters from Yale,” “I’ve got a briefing with leadership at the White House next Tuesday,” and of course, “I’ve got a dry wall installation project.” All of them delivered casually.

*sigh*

 Maybe I’M the idiot here. Maybe things would go smoother if I learned to play the game. Well, I can’t do that. I can’t even fake an orgasm, let alone fake The Game. (Your one-line reply to this entire missive will no doubt be: “Dude, you can’t fake an orgasm? Pft.”)

“The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.” Sometimes I feel like shaking these people; grabbing them, directing their faces to the heavens and shouting, “VAST REACHES OF SPACE! MOLECULES! SPACE DONUTS! WE ARE LOST IN TIME!” I wish that was my super power; to show them the molecules in their hands, the secret workings of plants, the blackness of space, the lights of distant quasars, the birth and death of stars, and the rings of Saturn. Then I’d step back in a hurry to avoid getting their melting brains on my freshly polished boots.  

Also Typed Zarathustra,

Re: ply

Dear Dave,

I enjoyed your review.

My only argument is that, as kids, we had the chance to see Kirk, Bones and Spock in all those early episodes, and in all those *unique* situations (the first inter-racial TV kiss: Kirk and Uhuru! So many plotlines torn from the pages of a tumultuous era of history!*), visiting all those worlds, getting with all those lovely ladies (and on a shoestring effects budget no less), over the life of the first series. We invited those pivotal characters into our homes week after week, and got to know them slowly, over a number of profound conversations.

Scientifically smooth.

You can’t really judge one movie against the dawn of a new universe. Besides, those early years, man, that was a time when “Star Trek” as an idea was coming almost completely out of left field. “What the hell is this, ‘Wagon Trail for the Stars’?” It was all acting, and very little FX.

So they’ve rescued the franchise. Fine. I’m in favor of it, I guess. (Though I much preferred “Enterprise” with Scott Bakula at the helm. “Deep Space 9″, not so much. “Voyager”, no thanks.)

I’m in favor of “Casino Royale” for the same reasons you are, I think: please, stop threatening-slash-saving the Earth, stop with the gadgets, and take us back to the days of strong heroes; a close shave, a strong drink and a good left hook. Give us back our Connery, our Lazenby (you can keep Moore and that Other Fellow. Brosnan was OK, I suppose. Cold War, and all that.) Put fedoras on our spies and cut back on the CGI. Give the world some much-needed CLASS. Not everything needs to be brought back BIGGER AND BETTER.

Does it?

There’s an endless list of ‘meh’ movies coming out now (“Knowing”, I’m looking in your direction) that, had they debuted when we were still young enough to consider Donkey Kong cereal as a balanced breakfast, would have blown our pre-pubescent minds and shaped our culture in countless ways. As Chuck Klosterman wrote in “Sex, Drug and Cocoa Puffs”, “In a roundabout way, Boba Fett created Pearl Jam.”

Think about releasing something like “Close Encounters” now: Wouldn’t happen. Couldn’t happen! We’re too jaded. And that’s a shame. Movie-wise, we’ve had naughty limo-time with so many coked-up Hollywood starlets that the sweet, caring girl next door doesn’t do it for us anymore. There’s no way we’re gonna be able to get off properly because we’re over stimulated. We expect everything from our movies these days. If, in the next Die Hard movie (because you know it’s gonna happen), Bruce Willis doesn’t engage in a 128-clip gun battle aboard a burning QE2 which just HAPPENS to be on a high-speed collision course with Alcatraz Island, against a crack squad of martial arts-trained leather clad cyber-baddies hell bent on “ruling the world”, we’ll walk out of that theater bored, Tweeting and craving Starbucks. We’re spoiled. We’ve had it all handed to us.

I say start taking things away, but that’s just me…

TWM

*What “firsts” are left for us? Full frontal male nudity on the evening news? As if Bush wasn’t enough of a dickhead. Every day in every way we’re pushing back the boundaries set by the FCC, but it’s kind of a hollow victory. If you think about it. What purpose does it serve? And please, don’t tell me freedom of expression.

Samsonite, Wandering

November 26, 2009 – Room 234, The Cavalier Hotel, Virginia Beach

Good news! The streets are largely deserted in the off season, and there is no shortage of parking. I caution, however, against relying on satellites and gadgetry to feed you during the late months, as this will lead to fits of impatience and angry hunger. (Divided technological thought process: “There should be an app for that” = a wild lunge toward Problem Reaction Solution. I don’t believe %95 of what Icke says, but this part kinda makes sense. Twenty years ago, we were all afraid of Big Brother. Today, through FB, Twitter and some sexy rebranding, we’re pretty much doing BB’s work for him.)

More good news; when you finally discover an open establishment, they’ll wait on you hand and foot, if you’re into that kind of thing.

Which, I suspect you are.

My room appears to have been decorated by a grandmother on a mescaline trip; brain-pink trim laced with orderly floral arrangements and conch shells interwoven with strings of pearls. The beds are high and firm like the breasts of a prom queen, and the blankets are made from a substance first discovered at the Roswell incident of 1947, a lightweight textile nightmare that slides off the bed in the night and leaves you shivering against the icy rampage of the air conditioner from hell. (Two settings. One of them: John Carpenter’s “The Thing.”)

None of that mattered when I threw back the curtains and opened the sliding door.

After a few deep breaths, I dragged a chair from my room out onto the balcony in order to take in the midnight ocean breeze and the steady hiss of the surf.  There’s something majestic and stupefying about the heaving saline muscle of the ocean that fills me with a childlike sense of awe and wonder, and generally chills me the fuck out.  Each time I lay eyes on my mistress, I’m reminded of the first time we met.

It was the week of Thanksgiving, November 1987, at the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. It was dark, and I could smell her before I could see her. I’m not sure how you’ll take that.  Anyway, I took a tentative step down a set of wooden stairs and she rushed into the light, slapping me in the face before she ran away laughing. I was left standing there, dripping wet and very much in love.

Three things I love about travel:

1. Living out of a suitcase.
1a. Luggage and travel gear.
2. Fresh towels daily.
3. Sometimes a Great Ocean.

Life lived out of a suitcase is a teaching tool. For the duration of the assignment/gig/vacation/visit, you are only what you bring with you, existing in a neutral environment, painting from a transparent pallet, standing before a blank canvas. A reduced footprint searching for WiFi, craving decent coffee.

I fantasize about roaming the Earth in this manner; wandering from place to place with a duffel bag of clothes, a camera, and a quality laptop capable of withstanding a few knocks. Your mission: move to the weird part of town, take up temporary residence in some poorly furnished shit-hole of an apartment or worn-down motel, photograph the buskers, capture the local color, and move on in the night when the time is right.

The gear is unimportant, and best left to personal taste.

Fresh towels daily. No-brainer. Good name for a punk band, or perhaps a t-shirt. The ocean part I’ve already mentioned. Moving on.

Jittery rivers
flow from magic silver urns.
Can’t sleep, can’t shut up.

The next day: wandering the aisles of a war toy trade show, beset on all sides by card tables laden with “find ‘em, bag ‘em, and tag ‘em toys.” If I didn’t know better, I’d say the threat of terrorism was largely non-existant, a money-making scheme concocted in the secret squirrel boardrooms of big corporations and further disseminated by middle-weight, middle-aged Aqua-Velva  motherfuckers in brown loafers and embroidered polo shirts. Armed with vocabularies full of power verbs, these strange specters get paid handsome sums to prey upon the fearful and law-abiding.

White man speak with forked tongue: “The bogeyman is out there waiting, but for a few billion dollars, we’ll help you bring him to justice!” There is money to be made here. Flight simulators, giant gun turrets, gas masks, gyro-stabilized death spitters, and every manner of catalog system are present. Know your enemy, test tomorrow.

Blessed is he who, in the name of common fucking sense, shepherds his own way through the valley of the merchandise of darkness, leaving the ink pens, mousepads and logo-ridden plastic crap where he finds it. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and minor annoyance those who attempt to poison and defile my luggage with free coffee mugs, advertising campaigns masquerading as art, and assorted plastic malarkey best left to rot on a pier somewhere in Korea.

“Hey, didja get over to the Armed & Hammered booth? Lots of free stuff!”
“No, thanks. Not really my thing.”
“”Well, don’t you want some? It’s free! Give them as gifts!”

Color me stupid, but nothing says, “I place less than zero value upon our friendship” quite like the gift of a light bulb-shaped foam toy emblazoned with the logo of a consulting firm. Maybe I’m wrong here.

Skipping ahead through the week: as it turns out, Hotel Fail had no pool, and no laundry facilities on the premises. This made me sad, but the WiFi was free. The empty streets of this typically topless town are laced with “No Swearing” signs (Q-Berty grumbles and the International No), and shops of teen rebellion, the same old song and dance: butterfly knives, pot plant belt buckles, and tasteless t-shirts. (“Swallow or I’ll shoot it in your eye.” Clever!) News update: she sells sea shells by the sea shore.  The sticker on the bottom, however, reads ‘Product of Philippines.’

When the curtains came down and the show was over, I packed my things and left. A few hours later, I was standing twenty-five feet from Amanda Fucking Palmer, giving a polite back massage to a beautiful girl who makes everything seem okay.

One day, Schrondinger’s Cat will die for real…

I Didn’t Know What to Call It, So I Did.

09NOV08 – Pieces of madness from last night’s dream.  Our Hero, locked inside a dusty voodoo mansion crowded with dying candles, unpurposed flowers and empty bottles.  Chalk drawings and macabre masks, scattered alters and borrowed bones.  “Be careful what gets into your heads, Little Ones, for it may never come out again.”

And so I hid my eyes beneath a threadbare blanket while various horrors took place around me.  I didn’t see any of it and don’t remember it, understanding somehow that if I peeked or acknowledged what was happening on the other side of that blanket, I’d be instantly set upon by angry men with long knives and a language barrier incapable of interpreting my cries for mercy.

“You can gaze upon the lords, but looking at the shogun will make you blind, and the emperor cannot be seen at all.” This is important, somehow.

Sitting in a coffee house listening to Also Spake Zarathustra and attempting to write up to that triumphant sound.  (It’s probably gonna take more than a shitty netbook and a $4.95 coffee, but I think we can all agree that it’s good to dream.)

Just a few strands of crystalline fiber sticking out the physical access port.  I pinch one gossamer thread between the thumb and index finger of my left hand and pull it outward, inserting it carefully into my eye, feeling nothing as the mechanism within squirms toward and copulates with my optic nerve…

First there is a mountain,
then there is no mountain,
then there is.

My hands fall limp into my lap, and my thoughts begin walking around on their own:

Quote in memory: “I don’t give a stack of tits what anyone says about rehashed ideas.  If you can scour the graveyard of rock n’ roll and build something new from the rusted hulks you find there you’re onto something good, because it’s harder to create than it is to destroy.”

In-flight moment: “Yeah, like a moist toilette is gonna do it.  As if breathing in that faint antiseptic steam is gonna chase away the bleary eyes, the stiff shoulders, the compacted spine, and the terrible suspicion that someone slathered the dregs of a deep fat fryer across my sleeping face, dabbing the brush in my mouth for good measure.  Still, the Sky Ninja’s got enough shit to worry about; slamming, shuffling, stumbling, sorting and smiling.  Not only does a Sky Ninja have to look their best at all times, but they have to serve you hot coffee in high turbulence, make change for a $50, and still be able to herd your panicking, cattle-stampeding ass off this burning dick in the event that shit suddenly goes sideways.  So thank you, Sky Ninja.  This pre-moistened towelette will do just fine.”

July 21, 2006:  The assassin in freefall, his parachute failed.  Got to make his bones regardless; draws both pistols and does his best to draw a bead while plummeting ever closer to the ground.  Target exits the building, maybe twenty paces to the waiting limo. “If I can’t take him out with a bullet, maybe I can break him with my fall.” Target looks up at the last second.  Look on the target’s face was priceless.  Never saw it comming.

Found in journal: “And in those final moments, when our entire lives flash before our eyes, we will concentrate upon this instant in futility, as though we could lift the needle from the record and pause the song, as though we could skip this unpleasant paragraph and leave the story incomplete.  But when you die, make sure all you gotta do is die, and that Jeff Goldblum is doing tai chi.”

The minutes keep on walking; a colorful and irreplaceable parade of precious cruelties and unspeakable magic broken into short intervals.  And sometimes, people throw candy…

In the park, near a statue:

Robber barons use
their ill-gotten wealth to
create public zen.

Speak all languages: the planet’s personal mediator, sitting at an intersection of life and death, watching armies march in all directions.  Turn your cell phone off, and ignore every text the End Man sends you, as the sky grows dark with circling birds.

The next day was Sunday.  I sat in a cafe watching the snowflakes tumble down fast and fat as the waitress brings me coffee.  A man with a Mohawk cooked my breakfast.

“The rest is easy, because Henry Miller made it look easy.”

I live for the moments when the music and the mood unite, when the planets groan into position like a clock of immeasurable proportion and suddenly I’m walking down the street with my head on fire, trailing tongues of trickling blue.  Suddenly, time grinds to a squeaking halt.  And not just around me, or on this block, or in this city state, but in all places, and at all times: fish frozen in the rivers, birds halted in mid-flight, sunlight with the parking brake on, and the light of distant stars idling like cars at an intersection.

I understood long ago that I will never die.  That’s right.  I… will… never… die… I will grow old, and I will eventually shit my last, but the ‘me’ that makes up ‘me’ will be recycled.  I’ll be back again.  I am not, as the man said, ” a beautiful and unique snowflake.”  My thoughts have been thought before, and will occur to others again.  I get it.  And I’m okay with that.

That’s the lowest form of truth, the baseline.  We are born, we live, and we die.  Everything takes place in this dimension, and on this planet.  Nobody really knows anything, and everything will surprise you if you let it.  Nothing lasts forever, except nothing and forever, and in the end, there are no odds to beat.

Either it will or it won’t,

Price Check on Joey Lawrence

091105 – Yesterday.

Seventh floor, somewhere in Chocolate City, just down the street from the Big White Building, where all the troubles of the world are born. Wringing an existence from this town means elevator speeches, and learning when to nod your head and just say “Yeah…”

Listening to: Clutch, Killing Joke and Nick Cave, amped off my face on a cup of heavy fuel – Colombian, black, two sugars.  Waiting for: assignment feedback.

My task, photograph a roomful sullen adults attending what must be the single most boring event on the planet; a teleconference, in which a wisened figure in enormous glasses drones on about contractual requirements, and the proper formating thereof: “Now when I… started doing this in nineteen seventy… five, we didn’t have… the same template… that you see on the screen.  We had something… different.”

I can geek out on most anything. Add this to my ‘except’ list.

I enter quietly and wait against the back wall, waiting, thinking it through.  How to shoot this? Low light, and the room looks empty, uninteresting.  Lining them up against a wall won’t work, and whatever interest they have in the subject matter must be preserved in order to look real.

The instructor calls for a break and I spring into action, explaining myself and my purpose as I begin rearranging some of the furniture, visually reducing the size of the room. Moving with certainty and speaking authoritatively will take you far in this world.

“Uh, excuse me? Why is this photo being taken?”  The demanding voice of dissent belonged to a dumpy, dour-faced thing toward the back, a half-empty bottle of Diet Product Placement on the table before her.

“Just doing my job, ma’am.”

“Well, I don’t want to be in it.”  Arms crossed over her chest, disapproval written across her forehead. Good luck, wild horses. “Why can’t you just do a group photo or have us stand in front of the screen?”

“That takes you out of context, ma’am.” We are nothing without our manners. Thumbs are good, too. “I was assigned to capture a certain shot a certain way. Putting you in front of the projector means you get a bright light in your eyes, resulting in an even funnier face.”  Oops. I’d taken my mouth off of the ’safety’ setting again.

“Who do you work for?” The rest of the room were subtly ignoring her, or helping me move furniture. I remained motionless, meeting the glare of her tired eyes. I could have been an ass about it, but I calmly fed her a string of department numbers, and name-dropped my supervisor, who sits pretty far up on the food chain.  I ended the sentence with “ma’am.”

“Well…” Her response was non-commital, as she thought this through. I hadn’t really won, and she hadn’t really lost. I got my shots, left.  The rest of the day crawled by like a bowl of unhappy oatmeal.

Last night: my train to Maryland smelled like a lion had taken a crap in the air ducts. I tried to picture this taking place.

Later, another coffee house, another page filled, another pen spitting its last.  The never-ending quest to capture the blitzkrieg butterfly of the brain. Feel the bright red burn of an idea, the resulting smell of smoke and burning tissue, the urge to capture a concept - seal it in a jar, paste it in a book, put it on display, cup it in the hands, take a picture of it, sketch it in pen: “There is something else in here with me, something staring back from behind the curtain!”

Listening to an older couple discuss the unsexy mechanics of relationships: household chores, bank accounts, wills.  Use the following words in a sentence to your loved one: “Well, when you die…”

Watching a new relationship take hold and bloom is like watching two massive spherical computers, each bristling with spikes and amature.  At the end of those arms are various ports and devices; plugs, nodes, hardware, software.  These represent likes and dislikes, concerns, needs, skills, and must-haves:

“Does your port/need #11,345 mesh with my port/need 12,345?  If  it’s at least a v.2, we can discuss. If not, it’s a mark against. Conversely, I shall strive to meet your expectation for cleanliness, #556.  My own port is a #400 series, but I make up for it with my grandmother’s recipes, represented here by nodes #223 – 470.”  The sound of servos whirring, sphere rotating on their X,Y in an effort to be compatible.

“Reptiles. Yeah, now see, they’ve got scales and stuff. They have their babies in eggs.  Sure, like birds. Now mammals, they have their babies live, kicking and screaming, already worrying about college, playground heartbreak, and the child’s 21st birthday hangover. Do alien species ever have to sweat this kind of shit? ‘Dragnor supped of the brew of the Lathgor, and suffered from an excess of chuth’lah.’”

There will be sandwiches,

Prolonged Nuclear Explosion

Monday Morning March of the Ants, golden glow of sunrise fills the bus and makes me sneeze as we merge with traffic. Light shifts the spectrum like fingers on a slide rule, shadows sway…

The tired eyes of a hard-nose detective hang in the glare of a lamp in the interrogation room, the brightest bulb on the shelf. He strikes a match across my cheek, a move designed to break my confidence. Lights a cigarette. Drag, hold. Spins the chair, exhales the blue plume in my face. Let’s take this again from the top. “Talk! Where were you on the night of the 23rd? Explain that weird contraption we found in your apartment! We know you’re in cahoots with Aces Malone. You really wanna do time for that lunatic? We can offer you protection from his Mind Ray…”

“No, you can’t…” I snap awake. Damn. Talking out loud again. Suit across the aisle stares back at me.

I’ve heard it said that suits, respectable, pressed and upstanding, are the ones you really need to watch out for. Smug, the facial expression we can live without. Makes me wish I carried Mace on the regular, douse his sneer, paint his fine motorcar, his French counter top, his unfortunate tendency to reward his trophy wife with a bitter pimp hand for overspending. Gotta make tough talk when he’s with the guys, you know. The New Adventures of Smug At The Bottom: his brother calls from jail three times a week, pleading for money and begging for a job. “You’re a con, Ritchie. No one’s gonna hire you.” Smug’s 18-year-old malcontent gets sent home for fighting again, barely a man and flunking the 10th grade. Again. Smug lives on a steady diet of Hooters and a king-size syringe of Diet Cola, lips blood-flecked from missing his mouth. Smug comes home one day, finds the trophy took it all, emptied their savings and ran off with the gardener:

“You’ll love me, won’t you Paulo?”
“Si.”

Later, quitting time on the Metro. A snow globe of evil savages, scowling, sad-faced, pie-eyed, but determined. Remember to feed the animals with an open hand, lest you lose a finger. Times like this fill me with the kind of numb I thought I’d left behind in my 20s. There’s a limited supply of sandwiches on the lunch truck, so you gotta be hungrier than the vacuum seated next to you if’n you wanna eat.

The only solution is to do well enough to earn that quiet cabin in the middle of nowhere, and let the beasts devour one another in a peculiar barrage of flashing teeth and gunfire. News at eleven, twelve, and thirteen. Fifty-seven channels and nothing on.

Weird dream last night, something about “the numbers of the sun being wrong.” Perceive the sustained nuclear explosion in the sky as an engine needing calibration. Mechanic slides out on a wheeled solar flare, skin burned and smoking, pushes goggle up on his head, eyes white like boiled eggs. “Yep, here’s your problem. Gonna take me at least a week to fix, gotta order the part from Alpha Centauri. Have yourself a nice cold product placement while you wait.”

New day on the bus. Note to self, fall is the season of perish. The Earth is pulling energy back into itself. As hippy-trippy as it sounds, it’s a fact. It’s a system, same as anything else, a living thing God killed himself, and we are his slowly reforming nervous system. The ozone reek of engine exhaust, stench of burning rubber in the Metro. Watching paint strokes flicker in the evening trees, I’m confident that Bob Ross lives on and is hard at work somewhere.

Everyone’s shat, showered, shaved or otherwise steeled themselves to spend several hours in a beige veal-fattening pen, hell bent on keeping the Machine moving. They flow toward the goal like a river of blood, buildings swollen with the influx like concrete erections. Plastic lunches, apples at the ready, steady, go!

Estimate the amount of cardboard packaging transported Northeast along 395 between the hours of 6 and 9 a.m. On any given workday. Divide combined calories by total body mass, subtract fuel.

Wedged between the window and a plump Hindi, a woman fresh from her bath. Her jaw line appears more pronounced, as do the twin cords of muscle which terminate in shadow along her collar bone. The temples of her sunglasses are wide enough for a logo.

In the distance, another plane fingers its way into the wet morning womb of the sky. Later, clouds appear, pregnant with rain. Who’s the father? The pilot sneaks out the room, guilty look on his face, looks back at the camera: “Fucking with nature takes a lot out of a man.”

Plane departs, account for a slight change in Earthweight. Subtract 80,000 gallons of fuel, x luggage, y magazines. Weight of aircraft upon departure differs from weight of arrival.

Overhead, the man in 17A is reading the same article of the same publication as the elderly black receptionist sitting next to me, as is the Ant in the passenger seat of the car in the next lane over.

Later in the www.eek.day, somewhere else in the city. Sweltering gently in a black hoodie, one eye on the clock, both ears full of poetry, crashing symphony of electric guitars and crashing drums.

Lens flare on a parked car explodes like a million shining needles of shining truth. (Most people are consonants; sometimes you meet a vowel.)

Was I really in Morocco this year? Herr Doberman traded his camera for a hooker; couldn’t help it, she was stone beautiful and the only English she spoke were old Dylan lyrics…

Plants, concrete. Hiss of air brakes, dull roar of engines. The rectangles go up faster and faster, but we’ve yet to master the pyramids. Over and over, this same ride, this same loop of time. The same triggers, same memories, mental tendrils seeking out the wet paper fragments of the past. The same thoughts about flying, the same screaming desire to get up and walk from everyone and everything, forever. See ya in St. Louie, screwy! So near, and yet so far away.

“Once the bonds of filial love were loosed, my brother and I went our separate ways. Inevitably, one of us died.”

Can’t get off this planet, no one gets out of here alive. Those are the rules. Leper sores of spent chewing gum cover the sidewalk, oil-stained streets like automotive execution sites… Pennzoil and rusted intestines spill into the sewer. Chewed earth leaks out between mouthfuls of broken glass and wet leaves. Tired brick, faded paint, dead death and dying pride, vitality sapped and youth forgotten.

Beauty is temporary, but ugly lasts forever. Glass and curves for the elite, the promised, the educated, the clean and chosen. Brick shit-houses and bitter slumlords are the eternal reward for being born on the wrong street at the wrong time to the wrong people.

“Hand jobs for the bad luck crowd.” Nearly all of my heroes are dead.

Next day, traffic stretches into the distance. Meat, memorabilia, memories, mp3, m.p.h., methane. Ant Hour again. Creeping heat, stifling exhaust. Plodding, patience-sapped mobs, barely controlled anger, one step from an armed assault. “Have another shit sandwich! Plenty more where that came from. Suck it up, we’re all in this together.”

Buildings look like the artist’s conception of a whore after seven years of bad luck. Runs in the stockings, plays in the street. Sagging flesh, crumbling concrete. Inside each of these buildings is the one office you never want to get called into.

“We’re concerned about these… figures from last fiscal quarter, and well, we’ve concluded that maybe you’re just not a proper fit with our organization. You understand.”

Grab a cat seat at the back of the public troop transport, wedged in someplace where the air runs cool. It’s already five o’clock, and it’ll be close to six before I get home. Time gets a death grip on your ankles and heaves, takes the load like the noose around the neck of a man whose seen better days.

Come one, come all, the angry, the idealistic, the iconoclast and idiotic, we’re all guests in the abattoir sooner or later.

The stories come faster
When the money is tight
And the wolves of debt
Keep you up all night

(Renewed at the atomic level approximately every seven years, it’s)

What Happens in Amber City Stays in Amber City

Sound asleep, midnight plane approaching Amber City. A shadow born in the womb of the moon lands on the wing, shimmies through the porthole, lays a hand along my face:

“Place your seatbacks and tray tables in an upright position, Little One. We’re landing in the place where the Time Machine failed.”

My seat doesn’t recline, and there is no in-flight meal. They fed me with one tube, emptied me with another one later. I’m covered in 9-G foam, and sealed tight inside a rig built from Near-Frictionless Carbon. Got a 40-pound PMI (Passive Magnetic Inhibitor) on my back, controlled by the biteplate in my helmet, which oversees the output of the PMI, putting me in charge of my descent. I vibrate, slightly out of phase with this moment, and it lets me cut through the Soup. Moral of the story: the Soup can’t stop what the Soup can’t touch.

But why?

That most simple of tools, the turning screw that keeps everything from happening at once, has finally crossed a thread. No rhyme, no reason. Just like that, a section of Everything went ka-plooey in a small town. Time stopped in a quarter-mile blob. The closer to Ground Zero, the deeper you sleep. If you’d been playing hooky, headed toward the edge when it happened, you stand a chance of waking up someday. Step across that line, break the bubble, and enter the next century.

The squeals of excited children became silver grapes frozen on the vine, as did hungry mouth’s of star-crossed lovers in the park and the focused fingers of a lonely woman turning the pages of dime store best-sellers in the coffee house across the street. All became still, and have stayed that way since.

Believe me when I say they tried everything to get them out.

Attaching anchor lines to the rescue crews seemed a surefire bet, but nothing could tear those human insects free from the Amber without ripping them in two, like ticks in the skin.

High above hangs a recreational skydiver, visible from the staircase that now surrounds the City. They say he fell 700 feet before things began to slow, and the length of his following seconds multiplied by one. (“The flying arrow is at rest…”) His molecules are sound asleep, and his flight may last forever.

They threw money at the problem, but the problem didn’t listen. They tried to destroy the problem, to part it, to tunnel through it. Finally, they gave up. Threw a dome around it, charged admission.

And yet.

Two days ago, a ring of inward-looking sensors situated along the walls picked up a signal, a ripple, a heartbeat. A solitary figure moving freely about the city, normal speed.

That’s where I come in. Got to go in there and find out what’s alive, figure out What’s the Matter, and determine what’s got the strength to move in the Amber.

Check my gear, stand in the mouth, wait for the Word. Like all useful information in this day and age, it comes as light. Green, and the doors hiss open. I leap into the arms of the night, savoring this madman’s elevator. I fall.

How long? Later.

Approach the apex of the Amber, preparing to merge with the Soup. There’s a human diorama below me, hundreds, maybe hundreds of thousands of people on permanent smoke break. Laughter in mid-throat, telephones forever ringing, elevators that’ll never come. Enter the Soup, bite and chomp through the control menus. I puncture the Amber, slide in. It’s pissed, doesn’t want me here. Fights me. Closes its thighs to me. Power levels in the suit surge to compete with the Soup, and my muscles burn.

Hours later, touchdown.

Getting my bearings, preparing to move out when I feel a sudden pressure in my right shoulder. Takes me almost a minute to look down, and I still don’t believe what I’m seeing. An honest-to-fuck bullet from Long Ago, humping the fabric of my suit like a lovesick insect, struggling for a way to mate with the warm wet red and vital stuff buried deep inside. Must have been fired less than thirty minutes ago, and either it’s a million-to-one, or worse.

I go limp, rolling backwards. This takes me seven minutes. I bite down on the ‘plate, coaxing more juice from the PMI, my eyes riveted to the sparkling cone of lead, friction waves cast aside like the scarves of an exotic dancer. The optics in the helmet watch my eyes, changing the visor to amplifying the object of interest. Red light on, cameras rolling. Presently, my field of view is overcome by a macro close-up: hollow-point shell, like the rim of a tiny volcano. It’s turning, albeit slowly.

Panting with exhaustion, sweating bullets, bite down on the ’plate. Warning lights, MAX POWER. One final lunge, breath rattling in my ears, contrasting the high pitch whine of my nervous system. Silent out there.

Seconds passed, nearly clear of the bullet. Twist a little further. The brush of metal catching. The tail begins to rise, and the nose follows – picture a helicopter taking off.

Finally, it crests, heading away. But it won’t stop. It’ll go until it finds something new to dig into, somewhere in this city of 6,500 people frozen in time. Might be hours, maybe weeks. Unless that bullet falls to earth, dreams and purpose unrealized, it’ll likely burrow into another human.

Think on that: you’re walking down the street. Time stops, but not everywhere. Outside, the river flows on. One hundred, two hundred years pass. Inside, you’re still walking, your left foot hovering an inch above the ground. A bullet fired from a weapon in the future seeks you out in your present moment, and slowly carves a tunnel through your entrails while you sleep walk, frozen, helpless. Sucks to be you. (On the plus side, it’s moving, and you aren’t. Meaning, too fast for you to even care. Instant.) Should you ever awake:

“Who the fuck shot me?”
“Some guy a few thousand years ago. (P.S. you’re seriously late for work.)”

The real question – who pulled the trigger? Judging by trajectory, the guilty party exists thirty minutes into my own future.

Radio ops and position, move out…

 

 

Weapons Grade Bath Towel

Few things worse than what happened to the country I knew so well; all glad hands and “yee haw” among friends.  I wait for an again.  That to me is death.  Have left town in this is gonna end badly address.  I don’t sleep, I am a ghost.  

Even now, my night walks beneath the surface of the present tense into scattered drowning men with a photograph and scraps of reading and rereading. In making this pamphlet, all my modest domicile.  The better to help you prepare for this world, lines of threats and the illegal closets spill onto the shelves. Bombs can be constructed, just paper and ink.  Anything can be placed, any number of ways.  They cross the room to a stereo by a pair of sawhorses.

After fixing a sandwich, 12:45 creeps by slowly.  I try to write something horizontal, door supported fanfare.  Fountains bubble, but nothing comes which doubles as my desk. Meekly the sunshine again, studying the document, my place of employment is worn spots in the carpet, nicks in the woodwork and fallen predictable because a cheap tavern room window, which overlooks weeks classic black and the biggest crack bar, but it’s rumored years of so.  I’m exhausted, humming in my legs, rippling like water, I jump start.  Went to a party last night, figured it out on cardboard, I am only nothing observing.

This pamphlet is designed my good moods gone, and without a great deal. Private sectors prepare invincible young man and the small fans whir and hiss, threat of explosives.  Where is love, where are the glass doors of my ideas set forth herein, answer but not receive right and sharp.  I’m information provided is hurry, leaving no forward.  I’ve read it so many of sources, including the anymore.  I spend my Chuck Taylor’s last special agents, street scribbling the white to replace the pair and Firearms (ATF). 

Notebooks crammed full of long ago, like a thousand moments gone forever, and I feel the gentle.  If there is one point the dog-eared volumes that fit my arms and chest, overemphasized, it is the documentation of my time should take a few pills to overemphasize.

Do not allow a bomb, explodes out of surprise.  By developing the floor, suffocate the Harbortown, had a considering, possible meaning of life, physical security plan, space in the room, safe keeps.  Potential for personal space in the room.