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

Hipsters in the Mist

Hipsterus Williamsburgia in his natural element

An Ohio native, Thomas McKenzie, is inspired by anthropologist Dian Fossey’s work with Rwandan mountain gorillas, and decides to devote his life to the study of hipsters.  Relocating to deepest, darkest Brooklyn, New York, McKenzie becomes fascinated with the lives and habits of the rare urban hipsters of the Williamsburg jungle.

Appalled by the poaching of the hipsters by locals for their ironic attire, scrawny tattooed hides and novelty sunglasses, McKenzie complains to the city council. They dismiss him, claiming that poaching hipsters is the only means by which some of the Brooklyn natives can survive in a stifled economy.  McKenzie rejects this stance, and dedicates himself to saving the rare Williamsburg Brooklyn hipster from illegal poaching and likely extinction.

He mysteriously vanished one weekend shortly after his arrival. What follows are the only remaining fragments of his research journals, rescued from a fire.

May 7, 2010 – I shall never forget my first encounter with hipsters. Sound preceded sight. Odor preceded sound in the form of an overwhelming musky-barnyard, humanlike scent. Peeking through the vegetation-like display of a Slim-Jim rack in a Korean-owned convenience store, I spied a curious phalanx of black clad, tattooed hipsters peering back at me, their eyes darting nervously from behind heavy black-rimmed glasses and the brims of their respective trucker and snap-brim hats as though trying to identify me as familiar friend or potential foe. I was fascinated with the expanse and expense of their tattoos, and wondered how they could possibly afford what appeared to be thousands of dollars of old-school flash which adorned their arms, hands and necks, while wearing what appeared to be common bungee cords through the belt loops of their three-dollar thrift store corduroy slacks. After establishing that I was not a threat, the males went back to a series of actions that included chest-beating, scratching, yawning, and texting each other. The females stood to one side while the males glared at the ground and nudged rocks with the toes of their Chuck Taylor’s, fidgeting with the excessively long chains of their biker wallets, and sharing what I can only assume were skateboard tips and the general lameness of the local music scene.

Research notes: The term “hipster” is cross-applied from the 1930s Beatniks. Hipsters rejects “mainstream” culture while embracing and contributing to an independent culture all their own. They typically live in young, artsy neighborhoods of a major city such as Wicker Park in Chicago; Greenwich Village in Manhattan; or Williamsburg in Brooklyn. A hipster ideally possesses no more than 2% body fat. Yet, they rely on reusable earth friendly Whole Foods bags for carrying their overpriced organic food. Must have no reliable monetary income, and rely on their parents to shoulder the cost of living in expensive metropolitan areas. Hipsters work (or want to work) in music, art, or fashion. They are known for “elitist” musical tastes and listens to nu-rave (i.e. The Klaxons, Cut Copy, Hercules and Love Affair), minimalist techno, independent rap (i.e. Spank Rock, Talib Kweli, Aesop Rock), nerdcore (i.e. YT Cracker, MC Lars, MC Chris), Elephant 6 (i.e. of Montreal, Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples in Stereo), garage rock and punk rock, in addition to all manners of independent rock, the more obscure the better.

June 20th, 2010 – Spotted an unusual specimen today crossing Humboldt Avenue. Far from dominant, this male was attired in crusty canvas shoes, pencil thin jeans, a worn t-shirt emblazoned with a slogan I was not familiar with, multi-colored plastic novelty sunglasses, and a coonskin hat perched jauntily upon his greasy mane, despite the raging summer heat. He seemed entirely oblivious to the oncoming traffic, dragging his feet slightly as he crossed the street, his shoulders slumped forward. Not wanting to spook this magnificent specimen, I averted my gaze but continued scribbling in my notebook as he slumped away down the sidewalk sipping a cup of Starbucks coffee.

And now, a documentary on the athletic habits of the Williamsburg hipster:

Putting “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” to shame, it’s

TWM

Blue Pills and Microscopic Terrorists

16MAY09 – Heavy weather today. A fresh patch meant I’d spent much of it drugged in my rack, twisted sheets and feverish dreams. Woke in the night, thirsty. Ventured out on deck to write my head down:

“Writing in the dark, uncertain of my letters or their placement upon the page, more words lost in the nothingness. Cyalume sticks bob like tiny suns in the dark.  The ocean began as handfuls of emeralds and beer foam.  By dinner, it’d become a million wheelbarrow loads of smashed automotive safety glass.  Just before sundown, fine streaks of Italian marble could be seen in every heaving silken wave…

Feels like I’m sailing to the New World; spilled stars from heaven’s jar skittering across the floor of the sky.  The ship is trimmed in soft blues and reds to preserve night vision.  Think of those who first learned to create the ancient ships. Probably the Phoenicians thought it up, but it took a Greek to work out the math.  Sailing across the sea is part science, part sorcery.  You’ve never heard anything so beautiful as the story of Polynesian Astral Navigation.  Will I read these words in the morning and remember how it all felt?  Will the garish light of day drive the True Meaning from my head like a half-remembered song?  Something about ‘bouncing light’… dream journal is a Blue Pill, fading.  Frantically jotted instructions to my waking self: “Must find secret entrance back to Lost World!”  Microscopic terrorists glow in bursts along the bow, soft green lightning bug martyrs for Allah.  Do fish believe in God?  Neptune, perhaps?

Look up through skeletal yards and hog-tied sails at the stars beyond; drunken careening through space, such majesty I may never describe!  I half expect we’ll do a barrel roll any minute; revealing for a moment the stars below us, the suns of another dimension.  Only those with split-second timing and balls of steel would make the decision to jump into the unknown, into so much possibility, to risk it all on a hunch.  Would they survive their own courage or suffocate in the freezing darkness, lost now to both worlds? Impaled on the second hand of the Great Clock, a st-st-st-stutter of time.  Our own ocean roars in once again, and the gate is sealed forever.

I may never see this place again.  “Well then, it’s probably important that you pay close attention.”