Have you ever seen page five?

20MAY2012 – Concept: a human life is fully-realized within five weathered pages of a paperback novel, one pressed between many on a shelf near the back of an old bookstore, just to the left of a hand-lettered cardboard sign: FICTION.

Background characters in a novel are summoned forth from the No Thing and brought to life with such mastery, such clarity and depth of definition that the Reader can’t help but identify with these imaginary beings, understanding and identifying with them in a sudden flash of entirety. The Devil lives in the details. These fictional lives brush up against the Reader’s own with unexpected force, jarred into creation by vivid descriptions of spilled drink, flowing tears, clever plans, the rasp of whiskers or raucous laughter, such that the Reader can’t help but cheer them on.

Don’t get cocky. They used to cheer for lions, too.

But then the thumb is licked and the fourth page is turned and somewhere near the bottom of page five, the character is killed off. Is this cruel? Not particularly, that’s just how the story needed to be told.

“We are stories telling stories.” We have control over our own story right up until the moment when it collides with the storyline of another character. (Either we happen to them, or they happen to us. Depends on your perspective, really.)

These fictional characters live so completely on these yellowed plains, covered from head to toe in every aspect of what makes them real, existing behind and between each and every single letter on the page. The postcards, the tickets stubs, the dryer lint, the bar tabs, the take-out containers, the music collections, the book collections, the love letters, the grocery lists – all of the debris and mementos of their imaginary lives – are just dust trapped in the cracks and crevices of every foot of serif of every word of every sentence of every paragraph of the few pages they’re given, compacted by years of fucking and fighting and fear of failure, French fries and Friday nights, the whole thing rusted over with sweat like the pocketknife of an old man. Every word breathes, every letter hums. The characters aspire to learn everything there is to learn about the pages on which they exist; the height, the width and the location of the strange indentation at the upper edge of the third page where a worm ate its way into their falsified reality…

We can tell ourselves what free and wonderful beings we are and insist that everything is one big gorgeous goddamn pageantry. But you and I both know that we can’t travel beyond our own sixth page, and we can’t escape what’s coming up fast from the bottom of the fifth one.

Our destiny, too, is to be fed feet-first and screaming into the Great Grinder of Storytelling; we are brought to life so that the Reader may identify with us and we are killed off in such a way as to propel the story along and make the survival of the remaining characters that much more dear.

“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.” – Chuck Palahniuk

We are trapped like dolphins in a round tank, pinging ourselves into madness. (I think, therefore I am/very sad) We burn brightly while we can, but in the end we simply aren’t equipped to make it to the epilogue.

##

The above (crudely) illustrates a nagging sensation I’ve had for many years, that I left the factory incomplete, minus some very important pages from my owner’s manual, that I’m not a fully fleshed-out character in my own right. I don’t mean that I lack experience – hell, no. I’ve been a-many places and I’ve seen a-many things, and I’m just as impressed by life as you are.

But the miles aren’t long enough, and the dreams aren’t bright enough. I feel like a simulation, a placeholder, the storekeeper in an early Nintendo game, a character on the Holodeck — something programmed with a limited number of responses despite being part of a greater complexity. A one-act play in five pages. Trapped on the stage, unable to see past the lights…

(I can’t give you tomorrow.)

TWM

The Phone Call of Cthulhu

Deployment of World Ocean Circulation Experiment buoy, one each.

27JAN2012 – I’m in an office on the second floor of a shoebox-shaped building on the southern tip of Manhattan. It’s raining; the background hiss is partially clouding my thinking. I can’t help but wonder if the static-based sound of falling water impacting like gentle ordinance on filthy concrete might have the same effect on the human brain as noise-cancelling headphones; impeding one’s overall ability to think or act clearly.

I wonder about a lot of things. I’m not saying any of the questions I ask are valid, or even that important in the greater scheme. In this day and age you can ask all the questions you want; the answers are probably out there somewhere. But what you do with the result is up to you.

There’s no one else here at the moment, so I’m listening to Pigface (rather loudly) and packing for my trip. I’ll catch a train to New London, Conn., and then a military C-130J south to Elizabeth City, N.C., before heading north again to St. John’s, Newfoundland, where I’ll be flying further still out over the North Atlantic with a crew whose job is to spot icebergs orphaned from Mother Greenland and translate this information into assorted charts and helpful warnings. I’ll be taking photos, handling the media who’ve signed up to fly with us, re-reading Neal Stephenson’s fucking awes*me work of maximum geekery, Cryptonomicon, and fighting to stay awake whilst the vibrating tremors from mighty engines work themselves under my skin.

Camera bodies, batteries, cables, lenses, chargers and a MacBook Pro are shoved into my camera bag with all the enthusiasm of the “gear-up” scene from a Rambo movie. All that’s missing is a fuck-off big hunting knife in the sheath at my hip, a red headband made fast around my brow and some heavy-lidded mumbling about war, weapons and drawing first blood. I’ve got enough equipment in this bag to document a revolution and I’ve planned my trip to the nth degree. Nothing to it but to do it, and hope my planning reveals no signs of potroasticus cerebellum.

29JAN2012 – Amtrak 160 headed northeast, easy like Sunday morning. The shifting perspective of the countryside as viewed through the horizontal arrow slit of this shiny metal worm reveals a large-scale zoetrope of naked trees and pulsing bursts of sunlight. It’s giving me a fucking Japanese seizure is what’s it doing. That, and allowing me the rare opportunity to experience e-ink properties in my actually-analog book which I can’t seem to concentrate on, so I close my eyes.

Blood-red shockwaves inspired by the flashing sunlight pulse violently against my lowered eyelids, which keeps perfect time with the dated sounds of Ministry’s ‘Jesus Built My Hotrod’. My ear goggles are flooded with the warm honey of crashing bass. Turns out I can’t sleep either, so I open my eyes and look around; first at the slumbering Asian girl with the British accent and gentle overbite sitting across the aisle from me, then back out the window again, and finally down to the much-abused notebook on my lap. The rocking motion of the train has transmogrified my commonly-careful cuneiform into a document prophesying the coming of what appears to be multiple earthquakes.

The landscape rolls and yaws like a fighter jet alongside our forward surging inchworm, affording the passengers on the right side of the car with fleeting glimpses of backyard wealth and modest prosperity; seasonally-stranded fishing boats, multiple modes of muddied transportation and sprawling houses with oversized windows, each overlooking bodies of water — no matter how insignificant. These are the outward symptoms of a fortunate soul in an uncertain economy. And where there is stability such as this, there is typically found the Bounty of Favor and the unspoken Marital Return On Investment.

What I’m trying to say here is that the MILF of a rich man probably fucks like she owns the place. She knows from whence her bread is buttered. With her primal needs and American dreams of food, shelter and matching drapes fully realized, her nesting instincts rev right into the red faster than a NASCAR Napoleon on nuptial night. She’s met a man she can depend upon; a steadfast sumbitch who can help to unclench her ovaries, change her flat tire, slap her up a spice rack from leftover floor shims and drive her to the hospital with one calloused hand tied behind his L.L. Bean red plaid shirt…

–

Where the passing riverbeds are revealed, the smoothed earth echo of mental mud is exposed as the individual folds of a great brain. This section of the Earthbrain’s purpose is to do x. A few miles over, that dry winter lakebed’s folds are designed to execute function y. The Earth is alive, its cognitive abilities spread out over its entire body like skin. (If someone cuts off your hand, you can’t think clearly. Follow?) People still wave at passing trains, swaying their limbs overhead like friendly flags of surrender, a gesture one doesn’t see much of inside the 11216 zip code.

30JAN2012 – I haven’t flown aboard a C-130 since my days in Alaska, but the sensation comes flooding back; I’m buckled into a row of surplus theater seats (my luggage is strapped to the deck about where the orchestra pit would be) and I’m facing a wall of tool chests that would make the eyes of any self-respecting hillbilly gearhead turn green with envy. The seats are bolted to a large slab of aluminum locked partway between a series of rollers, further attached to the floor of what appears to be an immaculate but highly complicated basement workshop during a long and gentle earthquake. You’d need a plane this big just to cart around the instruction manuals that go with it. There’s likely to be a jargon-rich chapter for each and every screw, bolt and wingnut aboard.

Warm wind blowing across my face from an overhead vent makes my eyes heavy for a time, and I remember nothing until our overfed tires punch the earth in the face and I am jolted from my slumber. Presently the engines wind down; the rear ramp of the plane performs a complex raising and lowering procedure and fresh North Carolina night air boards the aircraft, chasing away the sand of sleep. I blink myself awake and assist with the offload process inasmuch as it involves helping the other personnel with their luggage before jumping down to the tarmac for a look-see. The tail of the aircraft towers above me, lit in false moonlight generated by the white lights from the hangar. I can see the stars and you have no idea how happy this makes me… I gather my bags and we head for the gate, we head for the hotel, we head for dinner. Later, I head for a bed.

–

01FEB2012 – We stop off at a Food Lion for sandwiches and lunch supplies enroute to the airfield. The store is full of nourishing foodstuffs but my needs are specific, bordering on demanding.

The item must be small in size, marginally ruggedized and reinforced against accidental mashing. It must require minimal preparation (i.e. unwrap it), and offer maximum protein output when weighed against the aforementioned size and weight guidelines. After a considerable amount of clinical analysis, I select a turkey and cheese sub from the deli, although somewhat wary of biting into moist bread later…

Now for the important stuff. I carefully select my fuel cells; a pair of 355ml aluminum cylinders containing a highly-caffeinated and sugar-free substance, the packaging of which features a duel of blood-red bovine engaged in violent conniptions at the center of a burning star. (Red Bull doesn’t give me wings so much as it allows me to vibrate my way into other dimensions.) Just tell them, “I wanted to go higher.”

I score a Skor bar and a pack of gum while waiting in line. The man ahead of me is buying a case of Coors and a generous supply of Sparks. It is not quite 8:30 a.m. Shine on, you crazy diamond…

–

One hour later, our baggage and equipment is aboard and we’re at last preparing for our departure to St. John’s, Newfoundland. I’m seated closest to the door. It’s not by choice. It was the only pair of seats left available, and my camera bag requires a crush-free zone of its own. My legs are longer than Beowulf so I have to sit sidesaddle in order to keep my giraffe knees clear of the narrow aisle as the air crew rush back and forth shining their lights into overhead spaces and checking things off their lists. That’s what aviators do.

The engines kick in and the lonely patch of tarmac still visible outside the open hatch begins to flicker and blur as the props gain speed, turning faster and faster until their shadows fall away, dissolving to nothingness, evaporating in the sunlight. Suddenly the ground becomes crystal clear again. Wheels up at 1007. Time to read.

Welcome to Gander. Abandon warmth ye who enter here.

1700: Welcome to Gander, Canada. We’re here for a quick “how-do-you-do” with the local aviation authorities and a perfunctory conversation with customs officials, who give us the once-over for cash, knives and guns. (Fuck! I left my passport on the plane. I really wanted a new stamp…) We’re waved through regardless. The airport is deserted – and I mean literally. It feels like the setting for a video game. I pretend we’re being watched. It helps pass the time.

I ducked away from the group to use the restroom and as I stood there, imminently vulnerable, ejecting five degrees of my core temperature into a ready-made sculpture, the following thought crossed my mind: “This is it – this is the scene where the Red Shirt wanders away from the landing party and gets his face chewed open by a toilet-squatting zombie.” Figures it’d be the photographer who gets it first. The others will no doubt pilfer my supplies and reach the objective without me.

The waiting lounge, however, was sumptuous; a full-sized pool table, a full-sized coffee maker, a big screen TeeVee and a generous selection of video games, none of which we had time to enjoy–

“Say, how much time do we have?” One person answered five minutes; another replied with half an hour. Weighing the difference, I plopped down in a leather chair by the window and called AT&T to request a Canadian phone plan. (Or maybe it was a firing plan. Sometimes I have these unfortunate moments where I black out and ask Santa for what I really want:

“Come on, lady. The code is Almighty, coordinates 090264712. It’s all in here!”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t do that! I’m going to need to speak to my supervisor…”

The air traffic control center was a bit more populated; grizzled old men in tucked shirts with carefully trimmed beards and the look of church about them sat in glad adoration of enormous monitors bursting with crisscrossing neon lines. They spoke strings of alphanumeric incantations into headsets, pronouncing the magic spells necessary to guide multiple aircraft safely toward their destinations: “Alpha Charlie one Tango, I have you at two-six-seven, request you two-seven-five northwest at five-thousand…”

We were wheels up an hour later.

–

The runway at St. John’s, Newfoundland, was under attack by a squadron of tiny tornadoes of dry white snow reminiscent of hourglass sand, and the wind gnashed blindly at our props. Once we’d come to a complete stop and the hatches were open, I grabbed my camera and hustled to the hangar hoping to catch some shots of the plane being towed to shelter.

“This is the worst part of the trip,” said the pilot. He’d appeared behind me undetected while I was framing images in my viewfinder.

“Oh? Because you’re not in control?” I asked, turning to face him, realizing this might have been a presumptuous thing to say, and regretting it immediately. Sometimes I clear leather before I check the safety on my mouth.

“Exactly.” He either didn’t hear me or he ignored it. Or I was right about something for a change. “Last time we were here, a jet blew past us on the runway and the wash almost knocked an empty box into the side of the plane. The nose cone is where all the radar equipment lives and it’s worth at least $500,000. I love to fly, but this is really the only part that makes me nervous.”

St. John’s appears mostly deserted. Minimal traffic, fewer lights. A skewed yellow trapezoid announcing the Best place to Buy electronics burns bright like molten gold against the swirling mass of starry ice. Apparently Bryan Adams is playing a show here this week. Somehow this makes sense.

Once I’d checked into my room and changed into clean clothes, I headed for the hotel bar for a salad and a pint. I was tired and stretched a little thin but genuinely happy to be on the move again.

The waitress was wicked cute as waitresses go, but I think she hates Americans. (Hates. Present tense. Pay attention. She’s still out there… waiting.) I say this because I was the only person in the room she didn’t smile at. She smiled at the dopey guy with matching hair, a gold chain and no chin who was drinking white wine and reading a book at the next table. She smiled at the old codgers in ball caps talking about tractor parts. She smiled at the two older ladies in — I mean, she literally stopped smiling when she saw me! If she remembered me from a past life, I had no idea what I might have done to piss her off.

“Hello! I’d like a beer, please.” I placed my hands palms down on the table where she could see them. No sudden movements. She could probably smell fear.

“Well, we have sixteen of them on tap.” Her voice was frosty, her body language clear: Take your pick, fuckstick. I’ll personally pee in whichever pint you choose. Hesitantly, I glanced over at the bar. There’s no way I could read the labels from here and she didn’t appear to be forthcoming with name brands, so…

“Okay, I guess I’ll just wander over and pick one out…?” I was preparing to slide out the booth and review the selection myself if only it meant we could end this uncomfortable standoff. I was hungry and my brain was being unusual.

She repeated her previous statement but slower this time, as though she were addressing a partially-deaf dog rapist who suffered from a terrible learning disorder, and she couldn’t decide between abject hate, or burning pity. How could the number of beers on tap possibly apply to my inability to visually discern between the labels? On a whim, I asked for Guinness. The fates smiled upon me.

Presently my food and drink arrived. I sipped at my (pee-free) stout and devoured my salad, jotting impressions in my notebook and humming quietly along to The Clash’s “London Calling” when it came up on the jukebox.

–

02FEB2012 – Next Bat-night, same hotel Bat-bar. Today was all about gym, pale, and laundry. Clean clothes, quick workout. Read a lot, wrote more.

Somewhere to my left, the synthetic blue thunderbolt of a camera flash erupts in the brown wood darkness of the room. Morrissey howls piteously from the stereo. Just doesn’t fit the vibe of the room.

Spent all day alone. It felt good, like when your doctor and your priest and your boss and everyone else tells you the next drink is going to kill you, but you drink it anyway because what the fuck do they know? Solitude only hates you when you’re new to the game.

You know what’s weird? Accepting that a place like St. John’s is populated. It’s the edge of the world. I mean, sure it’s the year 2012 — people have to be born somewhere and I bet it’s drop dead gorgeous in the summer — but it feels small in a way I can’t properly describe. And it’s back-dated somehow, like maybe the city was founded by visiting aliens who’d gleaned all they could about Western Civilization from television signals they’d intercepted on the way here and thought it’d be a hoot to build their own ant farm, so they placed a sizable credit card order with some sort of aliens-only, Wile E. Coyote-based Acme City Store in order to bring their creation into lockstep with the 21^st century:

“Oh, look! It’s finally here! Let’s open it!”
“Wait — do you think we should maybe do this outside?”
“Good idea!”

These far-born city planners eased their giant wooden baby onto a dolly and together they cart it to a nearby clearing, eventually dropping the handles with a joint huff of exertion. One of them slits opens a document pouch on the side of the crate with a trusty penknife, dons a pair of reading glasses, licks a thumb and begins reading the first page of instructions:

“Congratulations on your new future, it will bring you years of enjoyment… all new, lifetime guarantee… let’s see here… yeah, it says here we get a Best Buy, 2-for-1 pitchers of Budweiser and something called… Sirius XM radio?” He peers over the top of his reading glasses and licks his bottom lip, eyes full of question. “Does that mean it’s big?”

“No, dear. You’re thinking of XL.”
“Huh.” Reads some more, rubs hands together. “Well, here goes nothing!”

On the count of three, they tug hard on the bright red handle marked PULL ME and take a few careful steps back as the gossamer gold balloon begins to expand at a terrific rate… highway off-ramps, strip malls, strip joints, breakfast shops, lunch specials, fine dining, small businesses and hotel chains—all of it begins somersaulting its way free of the confines of the box and sliding into position, clicking and whirring and turning this way and that with a terrific amount of rushing wind and noise, finally locking into place with the imperfect click of casual Chinese craftsmanship, bristling mazes of big screen TeeVees, and clone-grown actors destined to run screaming for New York City just as soon as their legs finish cooling—

“Did you want to order something, sir?” I’m jolted from my reverie by the earnest expression of the winner of the 2012 Cutest High-School Senior competition (Runner-up: Best Rack). I have no idea how long she’s been standing there and I’m taken aback by her display of sudden ninja trickery, but I manage to stammer out something that sounds an awful lot like ‘chicken garden salad with no dressing and black coffee with one sugar, please,’ but it could have been – well, it could have been anything, really…

I glance up at the TeeVee screen while I await my repast: a sporting team consisting of giant people from the newer city of York are scheduled to engage in a mock land war across a mighty lawn with a group of patriots in the name of lucrative contracts. The winner of this contest shall be eligible to have their likeness displayed on cereal boxes across the land. Apparently these contests take place annually…

Huh.

–

03FEB2012 – Flew today. Somewhere along the line the plane became 250-plus-pounds lighter; minus the weight of a current-tracking WOCE buoy; minus the weight of foodstuffs and sandwiches purchased from the local Sobe needed to feed thirteen people; minus the amount of fuel burned; minus the amount of engine heat and carbon dioxide lost to the *fuck-you-cold of the North Atlantic (*that’s metric, by the way), but plus the infinitesimal weight gained across three flash drives by taking photos and videos of the aircraft. In another lifetime, I’d kick the shit out of pure math. Not this one. Next time, maybe.

So. Today. What a weird state of affairs. Three or so hours into the flight, the tail of the plane yawned awake with a high-pitched whine. One section raised, the other lowered and between them the cold air of the North Atlantic bum-rushed our show. I was about six feet back behind the buoy crate, one arm wrapped through a loop of cargo net, crouched low and braced for stability whilst trying not to fall against the leg of the CBC cameraman I’d positioned front and center of the action.

Seconds later, two members of the aircrew shoved the box into the wild blue yonder. A peppermint parachute snapped open and the box disappeared into the frigid waters below. A successful launch.

An estimated eighty percent of an iceberg is below the water line and, much like a sailboat, they are pushed along by ocean currents. These buoys, part of the World Ocean Current Experiment, will allow scientists to track said currents in the areas where icebergs are typically found, giving them a better idea of where to look and thereby keep mariners safe. But you probably knew that already.

–

04FEB2012 – There are no flights today. In fact, nothing is happening today. St. John’s is being audited by a blizzard. Or maybe it’s more of a snow transfusion; out with the old, in with more of the same shit. Knowing in advance that this was going to happen, I stayed awake till 5 a.m., writing and consuming Red Bull like it was my job. This morning, as I sat in the hotel restaurant, someone brought me a Denver omelet and a pot of black coffee.

Minus 24-hour access to the pool and an unlimited supply of fresh Alaskan halibut, brown rice and steamed spinach, this, my friends, is my American dream!

There’s a young boy sitting at a table across the restaurant with two older men. I can remember what it was like to be that kid; I’d rather have been outside playing tag until dark, riding my bike, reading a book or dreaming up reasons why a salt shaker would make an awesome spaceship (figure out the propulsion system, locate the bridge, decide upon a classification and determine if it was built on Earth or in orbit), versus wasting a perfectly good snow day being held captive to the natural ebb and flow of boring adult conversation. The nearer of the men appears to be the boy’s father, as he is looking down at the child with an unmistakable love and pride. The shortest member of the three is busy sipping different liquids through his straw, oblivious to the gaze of admiration.

I watch as a young girl loads a spearful of prostrated chicken bodies into Hell’s Ferris wheel. She performs a last rite of sprinkled herbs and spices before sealing the door of the inferno. Immediately, the tiny cube is filled with hot light and every aspect of the birds’ bodies is revealed. The slow orbit begins. In ten minutes time, the tender pink of their skin will turn a lazy golden brown, like the tan of a college girl with time on her hands and too much rum in her system…

To Be Continued…

Welcome to the Now.

28SEP2011 – Advancing the film while I still have a camera. The back of my head feels like freshly mown velour; the inside contains high-speed footage of plant tendrils whipping outward in ever-widening circles and tender leaves unfolding from careful storage with tiny clicks, tracking the sunlight across the mottled sky like ancient satellite arrays hidden deep in the jungle. (Thank you, David Attenborough, but just once I wish you’d swear…)

Magic is dead. That’s just my opinion. That was always the divider for me; the left hand versus right hand trade off in fiction between dragons and death stars. “One was, one will be.”

Welcome to the Now.

Somewhere in the distance a herd of wild motorcycles gallops down some temporary straightaway, tearing the air with a mighty roar, passage granted by a sequence of swaying green orbs, aligned like tumblers in the lock of the night.

There’s a church outside my window. It’s just across the yard, beyond the dead limbs, rasping leaves and sprawling web of ivy that provides this area with soft green silence. And through the doors of that church comes the voice of a kindly man with a winning smile and purple robes, professing his love for strangers from the safety of a TV screen. Syndicated salvation, savior songs and collection plates have paid for his designer eyeglass frames, the lenses of which are barely thick enough to physically restrain his eyes, which appear capable of growing teeth and gnashing hard at your face like a rabid weasel were the laws of physics not there to prevent such a thing. In between songs of praise, jokes are told. I’m too far away to hear them.

Saturday night: Operation “Explore Massive Overgrown Graveyard” was a wash. Razor wire encircles barbed wire which tops wrought iron spikes guarding three sides of the city block it occupies; the black windows of residential living rooms stare back from the full four like a panopticon for the dead. Plenty of gaps in the fence, but not enough opportunity for an unobserved entrance and I can’t say I was properly dressed to wade through brush and bramble.

A good assassin is always pregnant with another version of himself. In the event of fatality or termination, this second self will tear free of its protective shell and finish the mission.

Now on a train to Coney Island, watching the jagged shapes and shadows of the landscape rush past the car window, each tooth ripping another chunk of flesh from the prone form of summer.

Sometimes I can almost feel what Brooklyn must have been like twenty years ago, or thirty, or even forty. Light flashes through the trellis of a bridge and the red brick tenements float past. Flashes of fire escapes, rooftop hideaways and rusted graffiti tags. The moment is a yellowed zoetrope of crumbling memories and faded dreams, like radio signals expanding outward into the blackness of space. That was. This is.

Nothing stands still.

Nothing. Stand still.

Nothing stands. Still.

Welcome to the now.

Mind and Purpose

Approximately 345,125 days have passed since the Battle of Hastings…

Summer is officially over.  Earlier this hour I sat on the back deck of a nearby ice cream and confection shop and enjoyed the last double cone of the season.  Thirty-two minutes after the hour smelled like a lit match, and passed through my body like a lingering acid trip, casting echoes of anti-reality across the yard like ripples on a still pond.

As is my habit, I attempted to put the moment into words: a helicopter circles low overhead, fucking the humidity with five swords in a rough approximation of gunfire…  Navigation lights keep time with 80s era Depeche Mode leaking from a window above the shop where twin Caribbean accents clink and click away behind the dishes, chatting softly about the washing up…   Multicolored pendant lamps hang condemned from the underside of the deck umbrella…  Beyond them, rusted iron straps bolt across the back wall, supporting sagging sections of the aged brick structure and –

Yeah.  Okay.  Great.  “I marveled at the complexity of eternity and the invisible quantum orgy, and I reveled in the giddiness of the moment” — whoop-di-freaking-do! — before my euphoria was crushed by an avalanche of sad realization: I didn’t really know how to capture this.  I didn’t know how to make it stay.

I could give away my worldly possessions and forward my mail to a high mountain monastery, surrendering the remainder of my days to the relentless pursuit of truthful description and worshipping the holy fucking glory of the written word and still I wouldn’t be able to drive a nail deep enough to make this moment or any other linger longer, despite all my longing.

I sat in a Juneau bar one night many nights ago, teetering on the edge of fall-down-drunkenness and thinking carefully about what makes women beautiful (like you do), struggling to capture an ever-elusive essence in a haiku or some such shorthand measure.

What a fucking load of noise!  I might as well have tried to work out why light is bright or why it hurts when I fall down.  But I have no academic training, I (still) don’t know what beauty really means, and to make matters worse I suck at haiku.  Plus I was blind drunk and getting dumber by the shot.

Notes salvaged from that night: “Something about the eyes, some measurement of the face, some mystical number or secret formula.  Sometimes a rock climber’s fingers or the strong jawline like a bow across the strings (and the hips) of a cello, but now and again and again it’s the neck but it’s not always the body and usually the soul but frequently it’s just the way they carry themselves.  Is it this way for everyone?  Do others see them as I do? Am I crazy or just retarded?”

There are writers, and then there are writers.  Me, I’m just a guy who takes notes.  I try.  I really do.  Ultimately, my doctor says I suffer from a curious affliction experienced by a tiny selection of monkeys doomed to live out their brief and answerless lives anchored to a spinning speck at the ass end of an endless universe.

I’ve been given a pen, he says, but there is no ink.

It’s difficult to resist committing each and every mortal monkey moment to paper, documenting them in some electronic manner.  I want to show that I lived.  I want to demonstrate that I felt, that I saw, and that yes, I bought the ticket.  But I realized on that drunken night, and tonight — and probably I’ll discover it again tomorrow — how completely futile it is to try, but how addictive it is to keep going any damn way.

Not only am I shouting into a wind tunnel against the rest of human expression, but memories tend to fit the shape of our hands.  We scoop them to our perspective.  They are never as we remember them.  Flashes of unspeakable beauty happen like a gunshot.  They are vivid once and then they begin to heal as a puckered scar, closing the portal behind them.  (A captured memory would most likely rot like fruit in that well-intentioned bowl you placed on your kitchen table.)

Where is the proof of yesterday?  It survives as a dry cleaning stub in my wallet, right next to the the Metrocard I purchased from an underground kiosk twelve hours ago; close to the rats and upwind from the piss.  Yesterday is the delicious meal I recently shat into the sewer.

(Sometimes when a meal is really good, I laugh.  At least I used to.)

We inhale these spectral seconds in order to keep them close to us, refusing to let the flame flicker out, straining to hold onto important occurrences just a little while longer before coughing in to the basic need for air.  An explosive exhalation precedes an involuntary gasp for fresh O2 and then the moment is lost to the wind and the second hand ticks once like a bomb, never to return.  So many such seconds will fade like photographs on the wall, polished mute like the rocks I’ve gathered on walks without remembering why, or when, much less where they began.

(Morale of the story: Stop playing the movie.  The ending never changes, and the film gets warped the longer you leave it on the bulb.)

From Wikipedia: “The Finnish have an expression for the will to push forward.  Sisu, loosely translated, is defined as strength of will, determination, perseverance and acting rationally in the face of adversity. However, the word is widely considered to lack a proper translation into any language.  Sisu has been described as being integral to understanding Finnish culture.  The literal meaning is equivalent in English to ‘having guts’, and the word derives from sisus, which means something inner or interior.  However sisu is defined by a long-term element in it; it is not momentary courage, but the ability to sustain an action against the odds.  Deciding on a course of action and then sticking to that decision against repeated failures is sisu.  It is similar to equanimity, except the forbearance of sisu has a grimmer quality of stress management than the latter.  The noun sisu is related to the adjective sisukas, one having the quality of sisu.”

…

Hours later in the darkness, sitting in a large orange dish chair near an open window in my living room.  Cool air files in and takes a quiet seat.  A short glass of chilled apple moonshine rests in my left hand.  A man walks down the near side of the street repeatedly muttering something about real estate.  As you do.

Tomorrow I will write a letter to a friend and talk about the fire virus in the trees, and how Brooklyn is beginning to burn…

Tonight I am imagining things; a dark spot on the floorboards near my foot has crawled toward me, twice.  Each time I pin it down with my eyes, it reverts to being just a dark stain on the floorboard, the 78 of an old conversation trapped beneath the varnish.  When I turn my eyes to the laptop screen, it becomes a mouse again, or a roach, or something larger.

I’m not afraid.  I just wish it would make up its mind.

TWM

12FL/OZ 355ML

Home: It's where you keep your stuff.

Pause from a sip of Belhaven on this hot September night in Brooklyn while the ghost party rages next door…

For three days they’ve been at it; Latino pop, an unfortunate backside selection of lesser known Motown hits, shoddy R&B and cheap reggae covers of even worse songs and now — for some entirely unholy reason — they’ve jammed the dial on “dance music of the late 90s” and abandoned responsibility for the jukebox entirely.  A giant treble clef in white rope lights adorns the chain link fence at the back of a yard filled with tables, a tent and a hit squad of ubiquitous white plastic chairs, probably hot stamped into existence by some vapor damaged 12-year-old in a far away factory where clean water is a fairy tale and Zouzou always needs more medicine. But until tonight, there were no guests!

Suddenly this end of the block has become a swirling stew of double-parked cars and unusual food smells.  People are eating potato chips and laughing at jokes.  Here and there, a sibilant ”s” slips out from behind a hand, denoting a polite aside or perhaps some private concern.  Crackling murders of teenage crows hop and cock on the steps, arguing listlessly about nothing essential, puncturing the dead night with shrill howls of o-shaped disbelief and “No, you didn’t!”  Staccato bursts of “um-hm” and “I was like…” dominate the front stoop.  Whiffs of this harmless patter force their way through the dusty grid of my windscreen and stain the floorboards below; layer upon layer of audio memories forever trapped in the varnish like insects in the amber, to be later extracted by an avuncular but well-meaning scientist figure and turned first into a theme park, then into a movie and perhaps, Hollywood willing, a sequel.

My previous apartment, the Fortress of Solitude, was surgically clean and hermetically sealed against all enemies, foreign and domestic.  It was a great granite haven, a solid silent place to make a stand, a posh pillbox in which to bivouac myself away during my initial year in New York City.  It was the ultimate shelter, designed to keep zombies out and my paranoia in.  It could even sustain a direct hit should the pigs ever lose their grip on the wheel of the nation.

The air conditioning always worked, the counters were pristine and easy to clean.  My landlord held all my packages.  My grocery store was just around the corner.  My local bar was one block over and five blocks down.  My favorite coffee hole was two blocks over and four blocks down.  The L, two blocks over and five blocks down, would take me anywhere I wanted to go and there was always eye candy on the train.

I was the first person to live in that apartment since the building was remodeled and I found it reassuring; no matter what happened, no matter where I roamed, I could count on coming home to immaculate granite surfaces, freshly laundered towels and thick walls designed to keep out the peals of wicked laughter and unexplained shrieks of the city until I eventually learned what was what and allowed them to drown in the background of the sea.  I don’t do so good with crowds.

Entering my incense-laden sanctuary at the end of any long day, I could drop my bags to the floor and breathe deeply of my governed space.  The clothes in my closet were always pressed, hanging on identical IKEA hangars and spaced exactly one finger apart.  The towels were folded boot camp style on a gleaming metal rack in a spotless bathroom complete with heated floors.  The kitchen sink was devoid of both dirty dishes and water spots.  The desk was exactly black.  The books were arranged first according to subject and then by alphabetical order.

I could hide here from the filth and noise.  I could do my laundry in peace.  I could do chin-ups while my dinner bubbled away in various pots and pans on a five-burner range.  I had room to pace.  The middle of the living floor was completely bare; I could swing a cat without hitting a wall and stretch my long-limbed frame in all cardinal directions.  My altar, a stack of military ordinance crates layered in incense ash and dried flowers, was adorned with candle stubs, sentimental rocks, statues of obscure deities, dog tags, spent rounds of ammunition and assorted skulls.  It held a place of honor at the center of the room beneath the main window.

Clearly, I had the freedom to express myself.  And I should’ve been churning out volumes of new material, but oddly there was nothing forthcoming.

I was too safe.

A ship isn’t designed to stay in the harbor and the Fortress wasn’t meant to last.  The rent was costing me an entire check each month.  I was hemorrhaging money and plugging the holes with sticky rice and red beans.  Poor is only sexy when you’re young.

I knew couldn’t stay there forever.

So I decided to move.  Moreover, I decided to get a roommate, someone with whom I could split the bills and the groceries and spend some time being human.  I genuinely love being alone but to tell the truth I was maybe getting kinda weird…

I weighed the pros against the cons and I tried hard to find a fault with my plan but it was just too good of an idea to fail.

First came the apartment hunt, then the logistical scramble followed by twelve hours of slave labor which took place on one of the hottest days of the year.  My new roommate and I first emptied her tiny fourth-floor Flatbush apartment before tackling the Fortress.  (Thankfully we were assisted part of the way by my boss and his always-smiling girlfriend.)  We finished the move, returned the piece of shit, graffiti-covered meat wagon at around eleven that night and ached like zombies for the next three days.

 

My new apartment is on one end of a shady street just three long, loping blocks from Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.  The interior of this 1901 railroad-style Huxtable hideaway has been painted over so many times it’s probably lost an inch of actual real estate from the doors and walls.  The outlets, when and where they exist, are all two prong.  There are no outlets in the bathroom.  The honey-colored floors warp and creak like a fat man’s belt when you walk on them.  I need a road flare to navigate my tiny all-black closet.  There’s a three-foot patched-and-painted depression on one wall of the back room, as though something large from another dimension stopped by for tea one Sunday and left a crater-shaped ripple in its wake.  I drop my laundry off at an establishment on the corner; it comes back folded.  I’d need to clone myself and stand on my own shoulders in order to change the light bulbs in the living room, the double doors of which stick and drag against the friction caused by decades of paint and varnish.  There are bars on all the windows (though I’m not sure whom they’re meant to protect.)  The books are on the shelf with no particular care to their order…

But I like it.  There is life here.  This apartment requires me to relax.  I cannot control it.

Reading Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer on this hot September night in Brooklyn while the ghost party rages next door…  New York is practically built for writers and artists too (and I suppose even that poor, miserable, disgusting wretched subspecies of worm human, the fashion photographer).  All you have to do is close your eyes and listen.

Capture.  Import.  Decipher.  Interpret.  Express.  Repeat.

What one might first dismiss as the mindless chatter of ignorant gossip or uneducated bleating is actually the complex interpretation of the new battlefield translated by the secret medium that cannot and will not go away.  At every second, we stand on the gentle arc of the present tense and we talk about what Is.  As much as I hate gossip, it’s a fucking necessity.

In order to write about people, you have to put yourself out there in the biomass.  Find the words, capture the No Thing.  Get involved.  Stick your dick in the mashed potatoes.

William S. Burroughs referred to something called the restless word, a silent power that ebbed and ached and yearned to be described.  “Close your eyes for ten seconds and try to think of nothing,” he said.  “The word will still be there.”

Scott Adams wrote, [SIC] “We are the slowly reforming nervous system of a suicidal god.”  When we speak we convey information in rough tree shapes that, properly diagrammed, resemble a map of the human nervous system.  This is an offshoot of this, which relates to this, which is part of this larger branch…  We build roads and rail systems that branch like the human nervous system.  We should know better than to build mega weapons and super gases and ultra guns, but we do it anyway.  We give in to fear.  We cannot leave well enough alone.  It’s as though we were programmed to do these things.  As if we were not only marching determinedly toward the destruction of our species, but through it.  Beyond it, even.

We want to believe we were designed for something.  We’d like to think we happened for a purpose.  We can spend our lives guessing at why we’re really here, but I don’t think those answers will come for a long, long time and when they do we may not even recognize them for what they are.  We come, we do, we go.

We are only stories telling stories,

In The Future We Will All Have A Chance…

12JUN2011 – The last of the great mindships had sailed from sight and his shoulders were sore from waving goodbye when he noticed the blank sheet of paper lying on the patch of sunlit grass at his feet.  Reality gathered like a cold grapefruit in his gut; the visitors were gone, but the page was still there.  One was a dream.  The other was very much a fact.  Days after the incident, he still couldn’t write.  Nothing made sense anymore and the ideas he’d birthed a decade ago were useless children to him now.  Meatland technology had caught up to his imagination rendering him null, if not void…

2004 – That late night December flight to Dutch Harbor really did it for me.  In the weeks preceding the wreck of the Selendang Ayu, I’d been reading a Ray Kurzweil book, one I own but cannot remember the name of.  It prophesied the impending Singularity and spoke of a fantastic host of futuristic possibilities that set my hungry brain spinning in more directions than I could count.  It was the right tool at the right time.

During that skeleton era I was writing for pure escapism; my boss wanted me dead and I was experiencing my first Alaskan winter on the poor.  The credit wolves were sniffing constantly around our door, although the use of the word ‘our’ in this sentence is questionable.  My already-troubled union was falling further and faster apart and, adding insult to injury, the fridge was always empty.  I was down to my high school weight.  (There was always milk and peanut butter for the young John Connor but Sarah and Reese were left to fend for themselves.  Once close friends, they now hid behind library books, reading an odd or amusing passage aloud now and again from opposite ends of the room.   There was no Internet, no television and nothing resembling a social life to distract them from the awful glare of silence.)

I looked forward to Friday nights; I’d put the Padawan to bed, fix myself a cup of heavy fuel and descend into the dusty black of the basement to a red-lined writing room in the bowels of the House That Drunk Built, armed with a stack of burned CDs, a piece of shit IBM ThinkPad and what was left of my imagination and I wouldn’t leave my desk until the morning sun insisted upon it.

It was during this time that KnoWare Man was born.  I genuinely believe that book saved me.  I put everything I had left into it and it made for a good read.  It began as a short story in 2001; the dialog took a few years to focus and the plot was streamlined over the course of a hard winter or two or three.  Or four.  I finally released it in November of 2010 while working a case in Grand Isle, La.  There were no trumpet calls or angelic choirs when I hit the ‘send’ button.  Instead, I watched this video and took a moment to imagine I’d be rich someday.  Then I took a healthy slug from a box of wine, made myself a bologna and mustard sandwich and began writing cutlines for work photos I’d taken earlier that day during a trip upriver in an aluminum boat.  I’d already outlined my next novel so I thought I could just “whip another bottle into fire” while the crowd was still laughing, shocked by the explosion of breaking glass.

Not so fast.  It turns out I’m too comfortable to write now.  I live in a nice apartment on a nice street in a nice neighborhood in Brooklyn and my bills are paid in full each month.  My boss is only half kidding when he says he wants to kill me, and my credit score is good.  Really good.  I drink coconut water like it’s my fucking job and when I get antsy I do chin-ups on the bar above my bedroom door. (Sarah and John are taken care of to the best of my ability.  She wisely decided we should part ways for the continued preservation of our little tribe…)

“Caterpillar to Agent Monday.” – A man spoke those words into the cuff of his jacket one afternoon last month during my subway ride home.  He was standing about five feet away from me and just to my right.  Maybe he was crazy, or maybe I misunderstood what he’d said.  I misunderstand a lot of what I see, hear or read.  That’s not a flaw.  It’s a goddamn gift…

//

The sign on the truck said Green Renovations:  An old man with wild eyebrows wearing a painters cap and a work shirt that’d seen better days stepped down from the cab of the truck and blinked for awhile, double-checking the address.  After a smoke break, he supervised the offload of a cumbersome grey box and an industrial-strength tripod from the back of the truck  as it was carried up two flights of stairs to a room at the back.  The gear took a little time to set up; measurements were taken and calculations were made, switches were flicked and dials were turned.  The warming machine reeked of hot ozone.  Goggles were donned.  When all was ready, the tech took a remote in his hand and depressed a single button with a gnarled thumb.  A pointed apparatus at the business end of the device flashed once, twice, three times before a bright red line leapt horizontally across the top of the wall, leaving a hint of shadow across the paint.  More adjustments were made and more dials were turned.  Another trilogy of flashes filled the room before a second vertical line was scored across the left edge of the wall at a right angle, intersecting with the first.  This careful procedure would be repeated for the baseboards, ceiling and remaining edges of every wall in each of the empty rooms, wrapping around doorframes, windows and outlets. 

Across this burn line, the nanites would not venture.  This was important.  Once they were let loose, they’d eat everything up to the line and down to the treated plaster — nails, scraps and all, smooth as good whiskey.  Renovation without the fuss, dust or noise.  Care must be taken, however.  If the box of lines weren’t properly closed off — if the lines didn’t intersect, if they didn’t go deep enough – well, there’d be almost no stopping a swarm of nanites.  Accidents were common in the beginning.  An inexperienced tech was responsible for an entire block being consumed by nanites thanks to a tiny gap, a simple miscalculation.  Fortunately, the lifespan of a nanite is less than twelve hours so the other side of the street was spared.  There are very few businesses in this city permitted to practice Green Renovation but their reputations are gold…

In an apartment down the block, a child strokes and plays with her seedCat in the triangle of sunlight pouring in through the open window of her bedroom.  As the animal purrs and arches contentedly beneath her hand, small puffs of dander are released on the breeze, clinging to the splinters on the windowsill and the burrs of the brick wall beyond but not taking root.  Not here.  It isn’t safe.  The stronger seeds will drift out to the buildings and rooftops below where they’ll begin to germinate.  In just five months, a squat thorn bush with dazzling green flowers will produce five small pods the size of walnuts.  Two months later, those pods will erupt with a slight pop and a crop of seedCats will tumble to the ground, blinking, mewling and ravenous for flies, leaves and twigs…

Sign on the walk: “Grand Ma Seizure’s Chicken Shack.”  A line of ambulances as far as the eye can see….

Ben-wa Albuquerque, the exquisitely spoiled teenage daughter of a mega-wealthy businessman saunters down Fifth Avenue wearing little more than a smile, led along by a pair of Bengal tigers adorned in matching diamond collars.  She rents them by the hour from the estate of the deposed Queen of England, who packed her bags and boarded a fast freighter for Brazil in the dark of night with nothing more than the clothes on her back and the Royal Pool Boy in tow when the shit got too real.

Ben-wa gestures and points at every object she desires in a dreamlike, languid manner, every detail of her experience having been addressed to the nth degree.  Ben-wa doesn’t look at price tags, she doesn’t speak to a sales-anyone and she damn sure doesn’t want to damage her two-thousand-dollar manicure by carrying fucking parcels.

This week’s hot item: sex slaves built from salvaged vagabonds and rehabilitated paste junkies.  Hose ‘em down, clean ‘em up, give ‘em their shots, get ‘em to a gym and feed ‘em a steak now and again.  They’ll gladly withstand the excruciating pain of the gold-leafing sessions on a steady diet of Betty Ford’s Ashes.  Frequent use turns the pupils of the user a soft, milky white.

Ben-wa’s purchases will be airlifted by silk dirigible to the roof of her enormous handcrafted Manhattan loft and arranged to perfection by temperamental interior decorators with one-word names; prepubescent protégé’s who panic and flail like windmills in a hurricane if they’re not served a brand of Swiss mineral water so exclusive it doesn’t even have a fucking name.  Each portion is filtered through Natalie Portman’s twat and served in a one-of-a-kind crystal decanter made by a blind French designer whose name is far too A-list to be listed here, and chilled with icy blue shavings from an endangered Alaskan glacier…

It’s raining outside.  I’m waiting for a friend in an oxygen and blood boutique on the Upper East Side.  The room is populated by three scowling androgynous bicycle messengers, two Greek housewives and one trans-gendered DJ with LED sub dermal implants that jump and flash like eels in a fish tank.  A nice girl-from-next-door type serves mood-enhancing ice cream behind the counter while hololamps alter the decor to match the mood of the music, pouring forth from liquid glass speakers painted across the ceiling.  From where I’m sitting, I can see an old woman exiting her luxury apartment.  She’s wearing the pelt of a freshly-slaughtered hipster; the empty eye sockets, the intricately tattooed flesh and magnificently waxed moustache perched high on her left shoulder as his draining irony gland weeps down the back of her dress like the trail of a snail.  She’s assisted into a white stretch hansom drawn by a team of black supermodels…

R.E.S.C.U.E comes to the aid of an advertising executive who finds himself pinned down in a daytime firefight between warring cabdrivers while he’s enroute to a planning meeting.  Seeking cover behind a rusting dumpster, he winces at every ricochet, emptying the contents of his regulation-issue stainless-steel briefcase onto the filthy pavement and cowering beneath it while frantically pressing a small red button on the handle, praying to fuck that his recent work on the SupraTec account has been up to par.  (Employers reserve the right to discontinue their employees’ Esc@pe accounts without prior notification.)  “Welcome to R.E.S.C.U.E.  Please wait while I triangulate your position and plot your escape route.  If you are presently in a situation which threatens your safety, please seek suitable cover…”

15JUL2011 – Good morning from 42nd gear.  I am:

Listening to: Iron Maiden, Fugazi and KISS, three of the four basic food groups.  Speaking of the fourth, I’m:

Drinking: Venti iced coffee (black-eye, sweetened) made with average care by some cute little barista who slaves away at the corner Starbucks.  She’s got big brown eyes, perfect teeth and the good graces to laugh at my dumb jokes when I’m in the mood to make them.  I like my coffee like I like my women: way too young to interest me.  (I am to 4 p.m. what 3:30 is to 1:15.)  And I’m:

Functioning: But barely.  This week has been an experiment in sleep deprivation.  I’ve been awakened every morning at 3 a.m. by the chirp of the Batphone.  Sometimes every half hour.  And each time I’d settle back into the soothing syrup of slumber, the motherfucker’d chirp with news of an oil sheen or a vessel collision, a swimmer lost to the appetite of a rogue wave, a jet skier grounded on a sand bar, a report of a bridge jumper or a body in the water.  The lines between sleep and awake have begun to blur…

Outside my window, sunlight-dappled Battery Park is full of well-rested tourists going on about their happy affairs, expensive cameras slung around meaty Midwest necks as they pause to take snapshots of the first skyscrapers they encounter when they step off the Staten Island Ferry — which is weird, because there’s nothing on Staten Island to draw them away from Manhattan in the first place except mafia housing, sandwich shops, a methadone clinic and a boat rental agency.  The once-idyllic fishing village has earned a bad reputation for being the Island of Misfit Toys and brother, when those Toys come a-charging out of the ferry tunnel like B-Boy baby bullets with bad attitudes, you don’t want to be standing in their way.  A parade of used-up harpies, strung-out scarecrows and burned-down buildings of human beings trickle into the heat of the morning sun like blood from a gut wound, searching for a free cigarette and a park bench to snuggle up to, squawking at each other across the busy pavement about nothing you’d ever want to hear once you’ve washed your face and hands…

In the future, we will all have a chance to bite the hand that feeds us,

TWM

An Explanation of Subway Stickers and Additional Information

Please refrain from A) the use of a phantom fetus-conjuring blunderbuss B) the levitation of more than three novelty-themed Rubik’s cubes during a single séance, and C) the piloting of a square-wheeled tank boasting ineffective armaments in public places.

We’ll have more news of this at eleven. And now, tonight’s top story:

There’s something living behind the walls of this Brooklyn-time summer moment that paws, sniffs and stamps restlessly at the scattered ground, sifting through the raped and littered soil with a decidedly pointed hoof for telltale signs of a missing future.  And as it just so happens, this creature and I are hunting the same mouse; a secret stashed safely below the surface of the immediate past and cleverly camouflaged by the present tense.

Imagine if the universe worked differently; suppose every minute in history is essentially a separate world which must be built, maintained and torn down once the world finishes with it. And further contemplate that somewhere, someone decided that this particular instance, one containing a living photograph of alien world, needed to archived and viewed again for whatever reason. Okay, but why? What was so important about that moment, that planet and that dimension? Was it worth saving because it wasn’t ours? Was the archivist hoping to somehow rescue this civilization and provide a how-to or an example of how different life could be if it were DIY’d in another part of the universe?  Was this about “art”? Perhaps it was the archivist’s job to catalog civilizations and somehow this fragment was inappropriately absorbed by the bandwidth of my dreams. I have no fucking clue.

What I do know is this: I’m attempting to reverse-engineer a fragment of a memory using the mnemonic equivalent of a gasoline-scented scratch-n-sniff sticker, an oft-folded illustration torn from a science-fiction magazine and a die-cast metal toy.  And someone off-camera is demanding that I use these items to return a forgotten city to its former glory. The simplified instruction manual provided to me was downloaded as a zip file and stored somewhere in my skull but the link is 404’d, and now I’ve got this… thing bumping around in my not-so-big upstairs with a case of amnesia, creating unwanted bulges in my reality.

Anything I attempt to do while in this state becomes ten times more difficult; everything gets sped up and pinched, as though one were fishing for a shell fragment in a bowl of yolk. Time (yolk) is distorted, flowing faster between the outer shell of this 404′d object (thumb) and the walls of my perceived reality (bowl); images of some mysterious and misplaced Martian market become momentarily visible, projected against the ghostly flicker of heat waves of this New York Minute, brought to you in part by Friday, June 10, 2011, the letter thirteen, and viewers like you.

The good news is that I can almost feel what it was like to live in this place, but I can’t put the experience into words. Not yet. The bad news is that it has to come out.

The key to unlocking this thing’s got something to do with the way that Kanji seems at once ancient and futuristic (likewise Arabic, likewise the art of Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest), so I try to focus on that.  It also smacks roundly of the early issues of Heavy Metal magazine I devoured as a teen, the art of Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius), selected writings of William Gibson and the feel of films like Fifth Element and Blade Runner, where the overt alien undertones are just part of the experience:

- a Bodega cat seeks relief from the summer heat on the lid of an ice-cream freezer.

- a matronly Ugnaught of a woman, with cast-iron breasts like matching Civil War cannons, stomps and sneers and stabs at her sequined-pink cellphone with the gold-painted nails of a velociraptor, talkin’ ‘bout how she gonna “fuck that dumb bitch up!”

- a hovering trade ship from some dusty distant world waits patiently above the East River for permission to land.

… and it’s all part of the Mise-en-scène.

Primarily, it’s got something to do with that fucking sticker.

I scratch at it furiously and press my nose against it, breathing deep. It works, albeit feebly. Something churns in my stomach and my field of vision becomes momentarily faded and narrow.  Encouraged, I scratch and huff at it some more. This goes on for about ten minutes. Beads of sweat begin to form along my arms and a rising sense of vertigo develops in my stomach. Now I’ve got the half-summoned memory of a lost alien world caught like a cat hair at the back of my throat and I’m desperate to cough it loose.

I cram my fingers down my throat and after a moment’s salivation I begin spewing forth watery chunks of buildings and backgrounds which slap at the pavement like horse piss on a flat rock before standing up slowly on their own, like a prizefighter ready to talk serious business at the end of the seventh round. Slumped against a wall with one hand on my knee, the sensation rises up again, coursing through me like a tidal wave as a half-completed grid of city streets soaked in stomach acid snakes forth like umbilical ropes from the enraged space between my lips, anchoring themselves to the soil like plant tendrils and immediately taking root, unfolding like ugly flowers. My jaws are pried open against miles of sewer lines and buried electrical cables and in a brief reprieve I take a few breaths in through my nose. Soon, my abdominal muscles are convulsing and contracting again as the five o’clock skyline of a world I’ve only imagined rockets the wrong way up my esophagus and my mouth gives birth to an alien sunset. It splatters first on the sidewalk before instinct drives it to its feet on doddering legs and it takes its place at the top of the page.

I gasp air for few minutes, wiping the puke from my lips and spitting out the taste of concrete and anodized metal, surveying the half-formed thing that I’ve made.

I’m obviously not done yet, but it’s a start.

TWM

110,410

(Apparently I have not accepted that it *is* in fact 2011. Written today.)

Take Me To Your Leader – An Alien in New York

03JUN2010 – On the train to NYC, slowed to a near-predatory crawl beneath a railroad overpass somewhere south of Pennsylvania. If this train had a long furry tail and a thing for yarn, we could expect to come bursting from this tunnel within seconds in hot pursuit of fuck only knows.

Speaking of improbability, if you’d told me six months ago that I’d be moving to New York City and furthermore, that I’d be excited about it, I’d have recommended you for a straight jacket and a cameo in a Quiet Riot video. And yet, here I am; packed, racked and rolling north on a true blue summer morning. Our ETA is approximately 1040, and I plan to be in my new apartment by noon.

The movers came yesterday; it felt rather strange being on the other side of the paperwork. I saw myself as a fresh out of high-school kid in a bland grey t-shirt with a truck on the front, the sweat wrung from my body by the gallons and the doomed feeling of being completely spent before discovering the pool table in the basement, which won’t fit on the truck. I think being a mover was what drove me to a life of minimalism. I mean, who needs all this shit?! Just ‘cos they sell it doesn’t mean you gotta buy it.

Time passes, and I sit watching the scenery rush past. My thoughts are an indistinguishable roar. I feel like a blind man at a cocktail party, unable to draw one voice from the multitude. Sometimes words fail me. I could live for a thousand years and still never reach the mastery of language that life and experience deserve. “Sometimes,” it has been written, “a hundred thousand volumes of knowledge aren’t enough, and sometimes one word is too much.” Yeah, I get that. Holding the cosmic unfathomable in one hand, and the Oxford English dictionary in the other doesn’t quite weigh out. It’s a like hunting for fireflies with a bear trap. I stare out the window some more, watching the graffiti evolve as we near the cradle of Krylon.

LT: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds “Abattoir Blues”. Sudden hunger and a craving for caffeine propel me from my seat and I hum a little tune as I amble toward the cafeteria car. “I went to bed last night and my moral code got jammed/ I woke up this morning with a frappuccino in my hand.” The lurching and bumping of the train reminds me of being at sea; taking three weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean on a three-masted barque. You’ve not properly lived until you’ve spent hours vomiting over the side of a confiscated war prize in heaving seas; strapped into a safety harness and clutching the rail for dear life, shivering uncontrollably in the freezing wind with the salty taste of ocean water on your lips. Eventually I got my sea legs (and some rather strong medication), but like the man said: “The future’s uncertain, and the end is always near.” He also said, “Never vomit into the wind.” That’s good advice, too.

Moving forward along the train now, counting up the number of doors as they spring open like the jaws of a hungry thing until I arrive at the dining car. One Alexander Hamilton later, I’m the proud owner of a breakfast sandwich, a can of Red Bull and, ha ha, a frappuccino; this in addition to the large cup of black coffee purchased at Union Station about an hour ago. A writer’s mind must remain limber. It’s not my fault that Amtrak doesn’t offer quality speed at a fair market price. I work to maintain balance with a flimsy cardboard tray in my hands, contemplating the rushing ground and churning steel going clickety-clack just beneath my feet as I move between cars. Headed aft and aware of the math, I make way back to my seat with my precious breakfast treasure, counting back down the doors and checking off the human landmarks as I pass them by: Sleeping Girl in Bright Blue… check. Grown Man Watching “Garfield” On His Laptop… check.

Fresh off the train, I was following the herd across the platform, thinking that very soon this city would become second nature and muscle memory, when my leg experienced a mild earthquake. I fished my vibrating phone from the thigh pocket of my cargo shorts and read the message; a rather random text from my old friend Katie Orlando welcoming me – sort of – to NYC: You’ve got to go to Au Bon Pain! she insists.

Me: Why? (I text back) Are you there?
Katie: No. They have the best food. Seriously.
Me: (stunned.) You so crazy. I just rolled into town, and you want me to try out a chain restaurant??
Katie: See if that contortionist guy is down at South Street Seaport. He performs daily in a neon tiger print outfit, ha, ha.

Forty-five minutes later, I’ve picked up my keys and turned them in the lock for the first time. I put my bags down in the middle of the room and wander through the apartment, turning on the lights, turning on the water, opening cabinets. Time to work: I set up shop on the granite countertop. Open my laptop (free signal from somewhere!), take out a pad of paper and find a pen. I call the electric company, the gas company, the internet company, and set up new accounts with each. I play “Simon Says” with FedEx and my bank; they blame each other during my attempt to locate a certified check for $1,000 I’d sent to my broker several days earlier.

Simon Says I sent the check from the bank’s website. Simon Says FedEx neglected to give the bank a tracking number. Simon Says someone at FedEx couldn’t find the very visible Madison Avenue address it was intended to be delivered to. It’s being sent back to me and then back to my broker. Oops! You didn’t say, “Simon Says!”

Next, I empty my backpack and head out the door. Objective: Find a local coffee house (check), a deli (check), a proper grocery store (check). A shopkeeper with one leg, glittering eyes and a grip like cast iron gives me a free pint of Manhattan espresso coffee cola because I had no cash — only plastic — and his ATM is down. I’m about to put the bottle back in the reefer when he smiles, bags the bottle, and hands it over. “I’m Timmy,” he says with a thick Brooklyn accent while pumping my hand vigorously. “You look like a decent guy. Just come back some other time.” True story! At this point, I’d been in New York exactly three hours. I think I’m gonna dig this place.

SATURDAY – Boneshakers for breakfast; coffee, and a vegan sandwich named after a bicycle. (Stopped off at the deli and gave Timmy the three bucks I owed him, promising to return for my butcher needs.) The day is getting sticky and the streets are full of trucks. Some of them are bringing new things, and some are hauling the spent remains of other things away. A cool breeze flutters down from the ceiling fan and sits on my shoulder like a small bird as I sip my coffee. My apartment is bone empty at present; a wooden wasteland populated only by what I carried in on my back. I’ve been sleeping on the hardwood floor, eating on the floor, pacing and washing the floor, dusting the counter tops, polishing the chrome…

Went into the office yesterday to see what all the fuss was about. It’s strange to see my name outside the door. (Just means they’ll know who to throw against the wall first when the revolution comes to town!) My desk looks out over a quiet park of oak trees, a colorful playground and beyond that, the towering fingers of the financial district. I can hear the mournful bellow of the Staten Island ferry as it departs the pier, and there’s a place less than a block away that serves ethnic food and strong coffee. Slowly, the pieces come together…

Seated now at a weathered wooden table, looking at the bicycling paraphernalia that lines the walls, and an outdated exhibit flier affixed to the window with loops of yellowed tape. Good sandwich! I chew slowly, gazing out the window at the ink-saturated street urchins passing by. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I’m not on vacation, and this isn’t another travel gig. I live here now. For the moment, this is everything. On the plus side, Boneshakers has tons of electrical outlets and strong, cheap coffee. I’m told it’s important to establish ones haunts early on.

Observations and eavesdropping: I read somewhere recently that 90 percent of conversation is gossip, the passing of memes and the transmission of vital information which affects ones social status and therefore their ability to survive and provide.

I wander the streets of Planet Will-burg for several hours, taking lefts and rights as they seem relevant and scouring the walls, doorways and other vertical surface areas for stencils and graffiti. It’s powerful fucking hot. I’m glad I chose a neighborhood with shade trees! By accident, I happen to meet one of Boneshakers’ owners. She was sitting alone on the wide steps of a church a few blocks away from the café with an empty drink cup at her feet, taking a break from a challenging morning. Turns out the refrigerator had come unplugged in the night, and all the milk had spoiled. Apparently this Yelp-approved café was originally designed as a bike repair shop that served coffee, but customers wanted a place to sit down and surf the internet. Same as they do anywhere else, I guess.  We shake hands, and she goes back to work.

Will-burg appears to be putting on a city-wide production of some sort, which calls for the cast of thousands to be adorned in old school tattoo flash, facial piercings, thrift store clothes and ironic t-shirts as they crisscross Brooklyn astride their duct-taped ten-speed bicycles. The only other explanation would mean such items were a prerequisite for citizenship, and that’s too just silly to be true.

Later, I sit on a random bench with a bag full of coconut juice and fresh oranges, jotting observations in my notebook and getting a feel for my neighborhood. Makes me wish I could draw. “Well, why don’t you start?” No thanks. That’s why photography was invented. Took a ton of pictures today, although all of them have been with my cell phone as I’m leery of waving my G-10 around. Maybe later. I look forward to cracking open my camera like an oyster on the rocks and prizing the treats from within.

Birds sing. Trees sway. I sit, I look, and I write. I think about the places I’ve been and the sights I’ve seen. I think about the here and now. When I get tired of sitting, looking, writing, and thinking, I find my way to Barcade. Fifteen dollars and several stouts later, I feel nicely disjointed from the present tense. It’s a nice place. Well lit, cheap drinks, and two long walls of my childhood friends, although none of the ones I was really good at.

Apparently the world record holder on Donkey Kong hangs out here on the regular. Dr. Hank Chien, 35, is a Queens-based plastic surgeon who, on February 27, after a 2 ½ hour marathon session, racked up a score of 1,061, 700 on the classic arcade game, besting the previous record by 10,000 points. I plan to make it a point to meet the legend.

At this moment, I can’t see very far. I’m butted hard against the plate glass of the Now, with no idea of what the future will bring. This is it. This is as far ahead as I’d planned ahead for. I feel a piece of machinery vibrating somewhere below my feet, and I take another sip of my stout. I should go soon, since I don’t have the funds to make this an all-nighter, but I don’t want to go back to my empty apartment. (No internet after the first few hours. The Wi-fi well’s run dry, boys…) The situation is hopeless, but not serious. At least I have the job needed to generate the dollars to fill my pockets to allow me to sit on this torn-to-shit barstool in a refurbished warehouse space in Brooklyn getting ripped to the tits on powerful stout. And yet, the voice of financial responsibility nags at me from the back of my mind. I really wish it would shut the fuck up. I’ve paid all the bills, I’ve drafted to-do lists, I got a haircut, I set up the utilities, and I’m TCOB as the King used to say. I’m taking care of me and mine. “Would it spoil some vast eternal plan/ if I were a drunken man?”

I wrestle with new ways to describe the silvery ping of quarters striking the polished steel diaphragm of the change machine. They make a scraping rasp as they’re scooped out and forced between the narrow red lips of the nearest game just a few feet away by a barrel-bodied man of an indeterminate age dressed in – wait for it – an ironic t-shirt. (Don’t get me wrong, I really like this bar.)

I can’t wait to get back to some serious writing! I’m way overdue for a maniacal burst of pure genius, a go-to-hell story cranked out in the darkest hours of the night; my eyes redder than the Communist threat and my brain fueled by hot water and xanthine alkaloids (see also: C8H10N402.)

MONDAY – Woke up. Turned on laptop to write while I waited for the movers to show. Found that I had just enough signal strength to post this! It’s not quite done, but it’s better than nothing.  Gonna rush up the block and grab an Americano.  Can’t wait for my stuff.  At last, something to sit down on!

Down to my last $500,

TWM

100507/08

IN WHICH I have less than 48 hours to get to New York City, find a place to live, seal the deal, and return home, victorious. Period. This is my account of my housing reconnaissance, May 7 – 8.

I’ve always had this thing about New York City. Ever since I can remember, it seemed to me a terrifying mixture of too much concrete, too much hype and too many people hell bent on doing each other too much harm. Obviously, I have entire storehouses of negative New York memes running rampant through my already imaginative mind. I pictured NYC as a cruel and uncaring place; a wretched empire for the young, the rich, the jaded and the exceptionally greedy, where being pick-pocketed, mugged, and robbed was just something that happened while you stood in line for coffee.

And then I learned I was being transferred there.

Once I stopped hyperventilating, I began pouring through the history of the city; spending hours hunched over Google Earth, memorizing subway maps, bus schedules, and generally reading everything there was to know about this mecca of perpetual insomnia. I imagined that IF I found a place to live, it’d be an overpriced cubbyhole beneath creaking stairs in a condemned building. I imagined that crackheads, pimps, thieves and junkies would take turns breaking into my apartment while I slept, stealing everything that I owned, over and over, until I went mad. I further imagined that if I went to my employers and complained, they’d somehow blame me for negligence. (I pride myself on being a law-abiding person, but I’ve had some bad experiences with authority figures in the past, instances which I’ll not expound upon here, but which have nonetheless left me permanently mistrustful of bureaucracy of any sort. Die, trust. Die.)

Two pieces of information did wonders for my mood: One, NYCScout, a production location specialist I follow on Twitter, revealed that there were only three “real” New York alleys left in the whole city.  The odds of me being dragged into one of them by a gang of vicious 6th graders and beaten within an inch of my life was officially slim to none. And two, there was the legacy of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani; a blitzkrieg on the underbelly of New York of old, which many say resulted directly in the dwindling crime rate.

Your predicted response: “But I miss the whores in Times Square!” I realize that NYC means different things to different people, and there are some of you who probably love it. Awesome. I’d like to point out that you already have fond memories and experiences on which to base your opinions. I, at the time of writing this, do not. So please, allow me the opportunity to be wrong.

Housing: I knew I was going to need a place as close to the subway line as possible. There is such a thing as a real estate triangle in NYC; SPACE, LOCATION, and PRICE. You can have two. Unless you’re a household name, you probably won’t get all three. There was no way I could afford anything in Lower Manhattan or Greenwich Village, which was a straight shot uptown on the 1 Red line. My secondary was Brooklyn; specifically, the quiet, tree-lined neighborhoods of Williamsburg.

The subway and bus routes were like colorful rivers that cut through the city, flowing straight toward the mouth of the Staten Island Ferry, and without a better source of info, I based my apartment-hunting strategy on this. A stroke of good luck: a fellow photographer and good friend introduced me to his brother Anthony; an up-and-coming real estate broker who just happened to work for the largest firm in NYC. This made all the difference in the world. I contacted Anthony; we agreed on a time and a place to meet, and he advised me as to what forms I would need to bring along. There was nothing left to do but go.

I caught the 0635 train departing Union Station on Friday, May 7. Next stop: facing my fears.

HOUSTON WE HAVE LANDED. 10:26 AM May 7th via Tweetie

Friday, 10:36 – Climbing up out of Penn Station, I was immediately overwhelmed by the mass, movement, meat, and metal around me. If I were an asthmatic, I’d have been sucking on my inhaler like it was my job. Truth be told, I’m not a big city guy. I like small towns, quiet neighborhoods, and lots of silence. An ideal afternoon is spent hiking along in the woods, or exploring abandoned buildings. I can’t really explain the tightness in my chest brought on by my first glimpse of the city.

Time to focus. I moved east toward my hotel until I looked at my watch — holy fucking fish fingers! I had less than 25 minutes to find the subway, make my way to Brooklyn, and meet my broker! Fortunately, I believe in redundancy and prior planning. I’d already downloaded HopStop and plotted out my course in the event that I ran late, and everything I needed for the weekend was on my back. I tightened the straps and turned South along 6th, making a beeline for Herald Square. After a few wrong turns, I descended into the subway. (I’m going to miss the swipe card technology of Disco Charlie’s Metro system.)

AWAY TEAMS: DEPLOYED, NAVIGATION SWEEP: ACTIVE. SUBWAY: CONQUERED. Good morning, New Yorkers. A tattooed giraffe walks among you… 11:09 AM May 7th via Tweetie

Friday, 11:59 – Now in a rental property office somewhere in Brooklyn. Arrived just minutes before my broker. (Go, me!) I’d dressed sharp for a change; new brown shoes, khaki trousers and a respectable navy blue button down. I lost all sense of “with it” in the restroom when I sprayed room freshener on my hands after mistaking it for hand soap. The upside? I smelled like flowers. The bathroom mirror had fallen from its mounting brackets some time ago and was propped in place with bricks of Styrofoam and blocks of concrete. At least I could see that my shoes were tied properly.

Friday, 1:30 - I found a place! (*sigh of relief*) MAYBE. The property hadn’t even been listed yet. One bedroom, gas stove, new appliances, wood floors, fresh paint, great view, plenty of floor space, tile bathroom, NNE-facing windows with a balcony, and plenty of storage space. Third floor, steel doors, secured building, good locks. I’d have rooftop space with a view of Manhattan, AND it’s in a tree-lined neighborhood just a few blocks from a Lego-simple train ride to the office, AND and it’s within my price range. It even included a giant wardrobe that matched my writing desk and bookshelf. I thought about how great it would be to move in.., clean the place from top to bottom, stock the fridge, arrange my bookshelf, open the windows, light some incense and wait for the rains to fall…

Conflict: I wanted to get my hopes up. / I couldn’t afford to get my hopes up.

Even as we were viewing the apartment, I was told that the top floor apartment had *just* been taken. I immediately staked my claim on 3R, and hoped for the best.

Later: Turns out my broker has a similar interest in pulp sci-fi, and he’s been working on an “old time” radio show, but hasn’t had time to get it off the ground. We talked time travel, wormholes and exchanged globe-hopping experiences over beer and tacos in a Mexican place nearby.

Later still: Man, they aren’t kidding about Williamsburg being the capital of hipsters. I think I’ve seen Beck about thirty-five times in the past 6 hours. Painfully thin and bearded is where it’s at, apparently.

Q: How many hipsters does it take to change a light bulb?
A: It’s a very obscure number, you’ve probably never heard of it.

Friday, 5:00 – I checked into my hotel on 6th and 37th. Unpack, unwind. I laid out my gear in an orderly manner, everything spaced evenly along the counter from largest to smallest and in order of use or importance. (Yeah, I’ve got a little problem…) Ventured out to get some food, returned to my room. “Oh, but you should have explored! I would have looked around! I’d want to see everythin –” Yeah, I’m sure you would. I wasn’t in town to spend money or explore. I needed every penny for tomorrow. There’d be time for that later. Hopefully.

Not surprised, I couldn’t get a signal in my room after 9 p.m. Watched TV, once again reminded of why I haven’t had cable in over a decade: because it sucks.

Saturday, 1230: Once the application forms were signed, I walked around my (hopefully) new neighborhood, figuring the best thing to do with all this nervous energy was learn the lay of the land. I found a grocer at the mouth of the Graham Street subway stop with all my favorite things on the shelves. (see also: Guinness, Naked, fresh fruit and vegetables.) I was so optimistic about my apartment and a new life in this neighborhood that I must have wished ten little old ladies a happy Mother’s Day. (Kind words from a 6-foot boy scout in Buddy Holly glasses makes old ladies smile.) I found a Thai restaurant, a coffee house, AND they’ve got a little something called Barcade; a happy marriage of beer and electronic nostalgia. Galaga and Guinness, here I come!

From their Twitter page:  2 new games just arrived: Satan’s Hollow and Paperboy. 3:41 PM Mar 24th via web

I walked back to the Frost Street apartment and stood across the street, visualizing myself living there, establishing a routine, and becoming familiar with my surroundings, a fixture in the neighborhood.  If this didn’t happen the way I hoped it would, I had no idea what I would do. I wouldn’t have the time and money to make another trip north. This was all or nothing…

Grafitti from Williamsburg, Brooklyn: http://twitpic.com/1m62gn about 21 hours ago via Tweetie

More from Frost Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn: http://twitpic.com/1m66xw about 21 hours ago via Tweetie

Next objective: I took the subway to my new office and timed the route. Thirty minutes later, I was standing at the front door of the southernmost building on Manhattan Island, buffeted by the wind and squinting from the dust being blown up around me. Easy! I’d be up and out the door no later than 0655 every weekday. Plus, I could work as late as I wanted and still catch a ride home. Checked my watch again. My train pulled out of the station in four hours.

After I left Battery Park, I walked north along Church St to Sixth, to the Avenue of The Americas to Greenwich to 11th the whole way to 35th. I reasoned that with all the tourist traffic this town had, it’d probably worked out the transportation bugs long ago. And if 8,363,710 could live here then I could, too.

Presently on foot moving up Ave of the Americas toward Penn Station, eyes peeled for grafitti… about 20 hours ago via Tweetie

And now, my two-word review of New York City: SHUT! UP! http://twitpic.com/1m6fko about 20 hours ago via Tweetie

Apparently the economy is having an adverse effect on everyone.

Once I got over the vertigo and the overwhelming amount of concrete, craziness and carbon-based lifeforms, I was OK. I tried hard not to get my hopes up about the apartment, but I had to have something positive to focus on. Without a home to call my own, I’d be in dire straits. Imagining that I would have a place to call home in this busy biomass did wonders for my mood. Lately, I’d had the feeling of being backed into a corner. I just needed an even break, and I began to feel that NYC might just be what I was looking for.

I felt as though my perception of the world had just grown from a two-lane dirt road in a school zone to an eight-lane superhighway complete with triple-cloverleaf overpass. Sort of.

7:00 – Saturday evening. Now in Penn Station, waiting for my 9:00 train home. Sipping at an iced coffee with two shots and enjoying a cold Guinness while I recharge my physical batteries, and attempt to replenish my iPhone’s power supply.

BASTARD! My 167 Regional ride home is :35 min late. “…as if millions of voices cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.” about 16 hours ago via Tweetie

I talked to a DeNiro look-alike while I waited, another soul hoping to make it as an actor: “So I finish my head shots, ” he says, “and I’m on H street, walking along, minding my own business, right? I put a cigarette out and this guy says to me, ‘Hey, gimme a cigarette.’ I says to him, ‘I got no cigarettes, and I ain’t tryin’ to sell ya one, either!’ And so he says to me, ‘Man, you’re a fucking asshole!’ How the fuck am *I* the asshole, here?” We laughed, then he says, “You’re a pretty big guy, he prolly wouldn’ta said shit to you.” They called Deniro’s train and he walked away.

After a :50 minute wait, I boarded my train back to Disco Charlie. I managed to pick a crap seat. No electricity.

We’re stopped at Newark airport. An express train whips past; a fantastic display of the Doppler effect. WEEEEEEOOOOwwwww…

Moments later, one of the porters comes by and flicks a switch just out of my view. Electricity! “Master Blaster runs Bartertown!” With nothing good to read (William Gibson’s “The Difference Engine” had failed to scratch my itch), I proceeded to Tweet my ass off:

@abitofmybrain I’ve been gassed, shot at, maced, violently ill at sea, divorced, and changed my fair share of diapers. I can take this! about 16 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to abitofmybrain

@myauralfixation He was AWESOME live! He stood with one foot on the rail, poised like a crow, and pointed down at me for “Mercy Seat.” about 15 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to myauralfixation

Thanks to everyone who clapped their hands and cried out, “I DO believe in timely trains!” I am now enroute to Disco Charlie. Later, NYC. about 15 hours ago via Tweetie

Travelling by train is easier than flying, but they should look into installing hammocks – or lining the seats with hippie/gypsy pillows. about 12 hours ago via Tweetie

Apparently May 8 is National Train Day, so if you know any one who’s a train, please show your support and take them to lunch. about 14 hours ago via Tweetie

@myauralfixation Inspired by yr tweet, I’m presently downloading The Cult’s “Fire Woman” while rolling along through the Pennsylvania night. about 13 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to myauralfixation

@troystith “For those about to caffeinate, we salute you!” <– Fact: The original title of the AC/DC classic, it was felt as “lacking”. about 13 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to troystith

Dear @TommyWiseau: while I didn’t grasp the full intensity of your controversial hit “The Room”, I hope you find a home on Twitter. Best! about 13 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to TommyWiseau

L/T: Black Moth Super Rainbow on my way through Baltimore. Can’t sleep, can’t shut up – but you probably know that about me by now. about 12 hours ago via Tweetie

At last, Union Station, Disco Charlie. End of the line. This concludes our programming day. Please stand by for our National Anthem. -30- about 11 hours ago via Tweetie

Home by 3 a.m., up at 7, it’s…

TWM

P.S. I got the apartment.