4227 lines
240 KiB
Plaintext
4227 lines
240 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
|||
|
|
NODE$AZABUA ESC: INV
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
CONNECTED
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
ENTER AUTHORIZATION CODE: vx1w3~bda
|
|||
|
|
ENTER AUTHORIZATION PASS: _________
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
WELCOME TO THE VIRTUAL NOISE EXCHANGE. YOUR MANTRA IS ESC.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
SYSTEM _COWSENGINE__________________ USE EXISTING? N
|
|||
|
|
USER _GUESSED_____________________ VERIFY? N
|
|||
|
|
MANTRA NONE VOL VI SYS$TERM: VT314 SYS$EXT: 159
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
CONTINUE (Y/N) ? Y
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
===============
|
|||
|
|
the undisc. ct.
|
|||
|
|
===============
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
editors: sven ("cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu") prozak &&
|
|||
|
|
l.b. ("rm09216@academia.swt.edu") noire
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
%ls -bfd
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
total 33
|
|||
|
|
drwx--x--x 4 abraxas 512 May 29 19:21 ./
|
|||
|
|
drwxr-xr-x 7 other 512 Mar 15 14:39 ../
|
|||
|
|
-rw-r--r-- 1 abraxas 0 Aug 16 19:09 .link
|
|||
|
|
-rw-r--r-- 1 abraxas 512 Jun 6 00:31 .cshrc
|
|||
|
|
lrw-r--r-- 1 lbnoire 111 Jan 28 19:21 push
|
|||
|
|
lrw-r--r-- 1 chaos 113 Feb 4 11:02 poets
|
|||
|
|
lrw-r--r-x 1 mstutz 131 Apr 11 05:31 fav_comics
|
|||
|
|
drwx------ 11 pazuzu 512 Jun 6 04:11 death_metal
|
|||
|
|
lrw-r--r-- 1 bambrose 121 Mar 5 04:12 mantra
|
|||
|
|
lrwx-----x 1 srprozak 132 Jun 6 04:06 stoner_adventures
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
% push
|
|||
|
|
[l.b. noire]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
The burning in my quadriceps tells me that my legs are
|
|||
|
|
nearing exhaustion but I have to keep pumping the pedals to
|
|||
|
|
reach the crest of the hill. I've always prided myself on
|
|||
|
|
using that bit of long-suppressed rage to carry me through
|
|||
|
|
situations that require extending yourself beyond your
|
|||
|
|
capabilities. This time, I'm not sure if I can summon the
|
|||
|
|
anger to surpass my physical limits. The anger is no longer
|
|||
|
|
there. I feel as if my best friend since I was ten has now
|
|||
|
|
betrayed me and left me at the time I need him most. My
|
|||
|
|
limit is reached and my leg muscles withdraw in terror from
|
|||
|
|
the imminent pain. My mountain bike slows to a crawl during
|
|||
|
|
the climb and I shift to the lowest gear. This does nothing
|
|||
|
|
to help the situation because I am now just spinning the
|
|||
|
|
pedals while inching forward at an intolerable rate.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I jump from my saddle without even bothering to use
|
|||
|
|
the brakes. Gravity is enough to bring the bike to a stop.
|
|||
|
|
As usual, I didn't think about the consequences of my actions
|
|||
|
|
so my now-useless legs give out when I put my full weight on
|
|||
|
|
them. I fall first to my backside. This undignified
|
|||
|
|
position is made worse when my bike, lacking a kickstand,
|
|||
|
|
cannot stand on its own and sprawls across me sending me to
|
|||
|
|
the ground on my back.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I lie there for a few seconds wondering if my heart,
|
|||
|
|
now pumping at 180 beats per minute, is going to rupture. I
|
|||
|
|
usually take my heart for granted and barely give it a second
|
|||
|
|
thought. However, right now I can feel it as another aching
|
|||
|
|
muscle in my body simply wanting more oxygen and a brief
|
|||
|
|
rest. I look down at my bike before I push it off my chest
|
|||
|
|
and to the side. Then I put my hands behind my head and
|
|||
|
|
decide to rest here for a few minutes.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I look at the sky and observe the dissipating clouds
|
|||
|
|
dancing through the setting sunlight which gives them colors
|
|||
|
|
ranging from a light hue of purple on their western sides to
|
|||
|
|
a bright shade of orange on their eastern sides. I can feel
|
|||
|
|
the sunlight on my face which makes me look over to the
|
|||
|
|
setting sun on my right. I suddenly realize I had reached
|
|||
|
|
the crest of the hill and start laughing out loud. For once,
|
|||
|
|
I had actually accomplished something without having to rely
|
|||
|
|
on a spirit I dread to summon. Adolescent energy has
|
|||
|
|
dissolved into the past taking with it naivete, innocence,
|
|||
|
|
ignorance, and haste. Emerging in its place is a maturity
|
|||
|
|
bringing with it wisdom, experience, awareness, and patience.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
After resting, I move my bike to the side and stand
|
|||
|
|
up, brushing the grass and dirt off my shorts. I look around
|
|||
|
|
to assess my situation: The sun is beginning to set; I am
|
|||
|
|
almost fifteen miles from town on a ranch road in the middle
|
|||
|
|
of the hill country; the temperature is starting to fall from
|
|||
|
|
sixty-five degrees to Dog-only-knows what in the thirties
|
|||
|
|
with a slight southwestern wind adding to the drop; and, it
|
|||
|
|
doesn't matter that I am nowhere near a phone because I have
|
|||
|
|
no money. I decide to continue to my destination instead of
|
|||
|
|
turning home because I am so close. Although it would be
|
|||
|
|
easier at this point to turn back, I need to finish this
|
|||
|
|
ride.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I lift my bike and straddle the seat. One more look
|
|||
|
|
around reinforces the fact that I'm in the middle of
|
|||
|
|
somewhere: Trees, hills, rocks, shrubs and cacti stretch to
|
|||
|
|
the horizon in every direction. The only synthetic
|
|||
|
|
interruption to this blanket of green and brown is the
|
|||
|
|
solitary ranch road waving over the hills until it disappears
|
|||
|
|
in a valley between two large hills which actually resemble
|
|||
|
|
small mountains. I shiver at the temperature and the thought
|
|||
|
|
of having to cross this distance to get to my destination,
|
|||
|
|
but it is something that simply has to be done if I want to
|
|||
|
|
get there.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
The thought of using the full potential of my mountain
|
|||
|
|
bike crosses my mind. I had recently become more skilled at
|
|||
|
|
off-road riding when a friend had to teach me the vast
|
|||
|
|
difference between road cycling and off-road cycling. It
|
|||
|
|
took me several weeks (and numerous cuts and bruises from
|
|||
|
|
falls) before I learned the basics of crossing rough terrain.
|
|||
|
|
However, since it is getting dark I decide not to do this
|
|||
|
|
right now. I'm not too familiar with the countryside of the
|
|||
|
|
Devil's Backbone to attempt its crossing in the dark. There
|
|||
|
|
are a few of ravines and cliffs that could put a quick end to
|
|||
|
|
my ride if I didn't see them in time. Also, the idea of
|
|||
|
|
hitting a rock and being thrown onto a cactus isn't very
|
|||
|
|
thrilling. This trip will have to be finished along the
|
|||
|
|
road.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I push off with my right foot and begin coasting down
|
|||
|
|
the hill. Acceleration. Within seconds I have reached the
|
|||
|
|
bottom of the hill and must begin another climb on another
|
|||
|
|
hill. However, the climb is made much easier by using the
|
|||
|
|
momentum from the previous hill. The funny thing I
|
|||
|
|
discovered about myself and cycling is circles. The word
|
|||
|
|
"cycling" alone holds much meaning. If I were to look at the
|
|||
|
|
long distance of a ride I was about to make, I wouldn't even
|
|||
|
|
start. However, I simply start without worrying about the
|
|||
|
|
distance. It's not an ignorance of the distance for I have
|
|||
|
|
to know my own limits. Instead, it's a way of not becoming
|
|||
|
|
overwhelmed with the trip ahead. I simply look down at the
|
|||
|
|
ground and concentrate on where I am with an awareness of my
|
|||
|
|
destination. Concentration. Concentration on little
|
|||
|
|
circles. I look at my feet and concentrate on the little
|
|||
|
|
circles I'm making with the peddles. They seem to be moving
|
|||
|
|
in a continuous cycle never moving anywhere and never
|
|||
|
|
accomplishing anything.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
A large dualie pick-up truck passes inches from my
|
|||
|
|
left side at a speed which is surely much higher than the
|
|||
|
|
posted speed limit. The suction of the passing truck nearly
|
|||
|
|
rips me from the bike and onto the road. I momentarily
|
|||
|
|
consider shouting some form of obscenities at the shrinking
|
|||
|
|
truck, but restrain myself because it won't accomplish much
|
|||
|
|
more than emptying my lungs of much needed oxygen. Besides,
|
|||
|
|
I'm not adequately armed to fend off an attack from Joe Bob
|
|||
|
|
and Bubba who are probably carrying an ax handle and a
|
|||
|
|
shotgun.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Cycles. My feet continue to circle endlessly like
|
|||
|
|
gerbils on exercise wheels. They seem to never move more
|
|||
|
|
than the few inches back and forth, but it is this motion
|
|||
|
|
that drives me forward. The motion of the cycle that gets me
|
|||
|
|
to my destination. It's at this destination that I look up
|
|||
|
|
and realize that I have passed between twin hills and into a
|
|||
|
|
large valley. The sun has completely set by now and I'm
|
|||
|
|
following the road partially through feel and partially
|
|||
|
|
through the faint moonlight illuminating the center line.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I cross the bridge over the river. I can't see the
|
|||
|
|
river since it is too dark, but I can hear the water flowing
|
|||
|
|
over the rocks below. I coast for another two hundred yards
|
|||
|
|
before stopping at the only light along the main street of
|
|||
|
|
this small town of a few hundred people. I pull up to the
|
|||
|
|
small gas station and get off my bike. I lean it against the
|
|||
|
|
wall near the door and bend over with my hands on my knees to
|
|||
|
|
catch my breath. After a minute, I stand up straight and
|
|||
|
|
walk inside. An elderly couple are running the place
|
|||
|
|
tonight. The man is sitting at an old wooden desk going
|
|||
|
|
through receipts. The woman had been reading a magazine but
|
|||
|
|
came over to the counter when I walked in. I ask her if
|
|||
|
|
there is a phone I could use. She tells me of the payphone
|
|||
|
|
right outside the door. I thank her and walk out feeling
|
|||
|
|
foolish because I now realize I had leaned my bike against
|
|||
|
|
the wall right under the payphone. I pick up the handset,
|
|||
|
|
punch in a carrier access code, a telephone number, and my
|
|||
|
|
calling card number (which I had memorized after repeated
|
|||
|
|
uses).
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Ring once.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Ring twice.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"Hello?" my fiance answers with a sleepy voice.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"Hey, I'm sorry to bother you. Were you asleep?"
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"No," she lies, "I had just laid down."
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"I'm sorry. I was wondering if you could do me a
|
|||
|
|
favor."
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"Yeah."
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"I'm kind of stranded twenty-five miles from my
|
|||
|
|
apartment. I was wondering if you could pick me up."
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"Where are you?"
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"I'm at the first gas station in Wimberly. I rode
|
|||
|
|
here on my bicycle, but I'm too tired to ride back and it's
|
|||
|
|
getting cold and . . ." I trail off.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
She giggles. "Okay. Let me get dressed and I can be
|
|||
|
|
there in about thirty minutes."
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"Thanks. I can't tell you how much I appreciate
|
|||
|
|
this."
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"It's okay."
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"All right. I'll see you in a little bit." I'm
|
|||
|
|
getting ready to hang up the handset.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"Hey!"
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I managed to hear her yell before I hung up. "What?"
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"I love you."
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I laugh a little at my forgetfulness and say, "I love
|
|||
|
|
you, too."
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"I'll see you soon."
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"Bye."
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I hang up the phone with a smile on my face. I look
|
|||
|
|
up at the moon. It has risen to its zenith and is throwing
|
|||
|
|
its full light on the ground. I smile again and walk inside
|
|||
|
|
to the warmth to wait.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
% bolgia of poetry
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"I do not know myself and God forbid that I should."
|
|||
|
|
J.W. von Goethe.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I am
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I am what I am
|
|||
|
|
a man(iac)
|
|||
|
|
Am I evil?
|
|||
|
|
yes I am
|
|||
|
|
because I am man
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
What am I?
|
|||
|
|
A(n)
|
|||
|
|
Philosopher
|
|||
|
|
Mathematician
|
|||
|
|
Artist
|
|||
|
|
Poet
|
|||
|
|
Lover
|
|||
|
|
Monster
|
|||
|
|
None of the above
|
|||
|
|
I am what?
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I
|
|||
|
|
my eyes, my eyes
|
|||
|
|
the burning in my inseyedes
|
|||
|
|
pebble on a shorelessea
|
|||
|
|
rocked to and fro
|
|||
|
|
for all to see
|
|||
|
|
I
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
CrI ng
|
|||
|
|
the tears from my eyes
|
|||
|
|
_. . ._
|
|||
|
|
lost the motherland
|
|||
|
|
waif
|
|||
|
|
forever despeyesed
|
|||
|
|
dI ng
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
i
|
|||
|
|
AM
|
|||
|
|
soldier of fortune
|
|||
|
|
student of wisdom
|
|||
|
|
vampire in the night
|
|||
|
|
cloaked from vision
|
|||
|
|
shade
|
|||
|
|
shadow
|
|||
|
|
am
|
|||
|
|
I
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[-thumper: kkim@pomona.claremont.edu]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"what a foolish mailer"
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
then they lie
|
|||
|
|
it's the truth
|
|||
|
|
in the skin
|
|||
|
|
paradise
|
|||
|
|
it's the lie
|
|||
|
|
in the skin
|
|||
|
|
subvert the soul
|
|||
|
|
denied
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
forty shrikes and leeches clawed
|
|||
|
|
out the soul of the misbegotten man
|
|||
|
|
blasted by the sand of the dunes
|
|||
|
|
and the sun of the lie,
|
|||
|
|
finally screamed fuck it and shot
|
|||
|
|
sixty grams of pure street smack
|
|||
|
|
into his aorta.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
somewhere in chicago,
|
|||
|
|
an E string broke on a secondhand guitar.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
label the guilty
|
|||
|
|
forgive the label
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
thymotic sense denied
|
|||
|
|
decision which deride
|
|||
|
|
in turn confusion at the thought
|
|||
|
|
a choice is isolation
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[-sven: cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"clay figurines"
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
While clawing my way through this maze
|
|||
|
|
I find myself in a daze
|
|||
|
|
The man without a heart
|
|||
|
|
Clay figurines blown apart
|
|||
|
|
The twilight mercenaries grind on
|
|||
|
|
Eliciting an undulating cry by dawn
|
|||
|
|
The dream ends the night gone
|
|||
|
|
Yet the cry persists to echo on
|
|||
|
|
Oh-how I live a secluded life
|
|||
|
|
Striving to break free of all this strife
|
|||
|
|
Let the masquerade end
|
|||
|
|
The masks torn off, the smiling faces descend
|
|||
|
|
Spiraling downward into the madness, never to mend
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[-thumper: kkim@pomona.claremont.edu]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"line tension"
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
ahhhh damnit gotta go atm.
|
|||
|
|
just had 40 eating out too much
|
|||
|
|
where're my keys? desk no dresser
|
|||
|
|
no pocket
|
|||
|
|
light lock it lts go.
|
|||
|
|
sunglasses! forget it
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
ahh no ticket sweeeet
|
|||
|
|
twenty thousand! god
|
|||
|
|
getting old new oil
|
|||
|
|
shit that's 20.
|
|||
|
|
maybe 60 new sonic youth
|
|||
|
|
newyork dark shades
|
|||
|
|
black old vans jeans t
|
|||
|
|
go! please go!
|
|||
|
|
the trees! spring grass
|
|||
|
|
orange poppies more ya
|
|||
|
|
roses? na daisies
|
|||
|
|
thats 12 ahh hell
|
|||
|
|
gotta get a
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
job
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[-altars of madness:dsaltarelli@alphie.claremont.edu]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"ground", A.Y.8
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I put my face to the ground and scream
|
|||
|
|
there is no sound echoed back but what originates with me
|
|||
|
|
the ground is silent
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I climb on a rock and scream at the ground
|
|||
|
|
the sound flies free for a moment before the ground swallows the vibe
|
|||
|
|
the ground is silent
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I climb to the top of the tree and scream
|
|||
|
|
there is nothing to see, but the absence of vibrations is startling
|
|||
|
|
the ground is silent
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I climb a hill and lay on my back
|
|||
|
|
the sky observes my rest and reflects my nature; it carries it downward
|
|||
|
|
the ground is silent
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I remove myself from the earth
|
|||
|
|
there was no one to talk to, no one to converse
|
|||
|
|
the ground was silent.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[-lbnoire:rm09216@academia.swt.edu]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"unknown"
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
What am I?
|
|||
|
|
I am the fuel
|
|||
|
|
I am the fire
|
|||
|
|
I am the burning desire
|
|||
|
|
I am the nightmare of your life
|
|||
|
|
I am the fear that keeps you up all night
|
|||
|
|
I am the shadow that you cannot see
|
|||
|
|
I am all there is, you are me.
|
|||
|
|
What am I?. . . a dream I
|
|||
|
|
Dream into reality I
|
|||
|
|
Become the basis for morality
|
|||
|
|
Actions become words
|
|||
|
|
Mimes make sense
|
|||
|
|
Acting out the silent pain of death
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[-thumper:kkim@pomona.claremont.edu]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"suffer"
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Pyrogenesis
|
|||
|
|
Cleansed by your clarion call
|
|||
|
|
I breathe and I scream
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[-bambrose@pomona.claremont.edu]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"nocturne"
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
beet poetry at its best
|
|||
|
|
poq whoq whaq slaq smaq
|
|||
|
|
wow--way-0, man, that's
|
|||
|
|
sofuckingheavyyonder...
|
|||
|
|
scary like a bogeyman's
|
|||
|
|
abandoned gauntlet in a
|
|||
|
|
small car by a side rd.
|
|||
|
|
scareful like children-
|
|||
|
|
unleashed from adultish
|
|||
|
|
thinking. scary again
|
|||
|
|
like all them out there
|
|||
|
|
a million eyes waiting,
|
|||
|
|
watching, whispering, &
|
|||
|
|
scorning us of distant-
|
|||
|
|
minded absentness.orare
|
|||
|
|
we all them moons? left
|
|||
|
|
skyward, eyesome, alone
|
|||
|
|
monolithicrantingpraise
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
"signal noise"
|
|||
|
|
(wave)
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
sort of like
|
|||
|
|
in the morn of it all
|
|||
|
|
my hand is wrinkled beneath salt water
|
|||
|
|
waves pass smoothly over skin
|
|||
|
|
eyes pass slowly down the beachline
|
|||
|
|
horizon moving like a slow nun.
|
|||
|
|
and then the breeze
|
|||
|
|
soft slapping wind
|
|||
|
|
water stops to brush the shore
|
|||
|
|
people turn to stare and stare
|
|||
|
|
water curses those who live
|
|||
|
|
youthful in the stunning sun
|
|||
|
|
in the ocean of my latent birth
|
|||
|
|
my hand once more passes through a wave
|
|||
|
|
catching single golden hairs
|
|||
|
|
passing through the growing wrinkles
|
|||
|
|
the aging of the sun
|
|||
|
|
defies the day
|
|||
|
|
begin again insurgent thing
|
|||
|
|
cleft leave me
|
|||
|
|
dawning shimmering
|
|||
|
|
riplets like wrinkles
|
|||
|
|
scar the sky.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[-sven:cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
% favorite comics
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I hear somebody. I guess that there's someone else on the
|
|||
|
|
line; Mitch had said that the lines were open, and so I called, and
|
|||
|
|
I didn't expect anybody because I'd never really done this before,
|
|||
|
|
but somebody was talking.
|
|||
|
|
I did this a couple times, calling this shit late at night,
|
|||
|
|
and it was real cool -- this night, there's a voice, a guy, talking
|
|||
|
|
to someone else, a whisper. The whisper kept saying, "Yeah," and
|
|||
|
|
"Okay," and not much else, like it was trying to avoid waking
|
|||
|
|
someone.
|
|||
|
|
So I said, "Hello?"
|
|||
|
|
And the voice talked. He said, "Hello?"
|
|||
|
|
So I said, "What's up?"
|
|||
|
|
And the voice said, "Not much. Listening to Mitch's show."
|
|||
|
|
Mitch had put some music on, and I didn't like it all that
|
|||
|
|
much -- I thought that the talk show was better, so I turned down
|
|||
|
|
the volume a little. Then the voice said, "So what are you doing?"
|
|||
|
|
"Me?"
|
|||
|
|
"Yeah."
|
|||
|
|
"Listening to the show."
|
|||
|
|
"Yeah. I don't really like this shit."
|
|||
|
|
"This music?"
|
|||
|
|
"Yeah."
|
|||
|
|
"Me neither."
|
|||
|
|
So we both listened to the silence on the telephone for a
|
|||
|
|
while. The whisper was even quiet.
|
|||
|
|
"My neighbors are asleep," the voice said.
|
|||
|
|
"Shouldn't they be?" I asked. "It's three a.m."
|
|||
|
|
"Yeah, but they're kind of weird."
|
|||
|
|
"Why? Where do you live?"
|
|||
|
|
"Euclid. Where are _you_ calling from?"
|
|||
|
|
"North Royalton. I've never been to Euclid."
|
|||
|
|
"I've never been to Royalton. I don't even know where that
|
|||
|
|
_is_."
|
|||
|
|
I couldn't imagine anyone who lived in Cleveland and who
|
|||
|
|
hadn't been to North Royalton. I mean, sure, there's East siders
|
|||
|
|
and West siders, but North Royalton? I mean, come _on_!
|
|||
|
|
"Yeah, but I have weird neighbors."
|
|||
|
|
"How so?"
|
|||
|
|
"This guy next to me worked for the post office. He sold
|
|||
|
|
cocaine and he got busted, now all he does is sit around and play
|
|||
|
|
loud music -- loud soul music.
|
|||
|
|
"He likes it that he's suspended -- he likes to sit around and
|
|||
|
|
play music. When the weather's cold he invites everyone over that
|
|||
|
|
he knows and has a barbeque -- with like sixty people."
|
|||
|
|
I turn down the music on the radio a little more; I can't hear
|
|||
|
|
him all that well. But he's still talking: "Then you know it's
|
|||
|
|
time to leave -- you hear the thumping."
|
|||
|
|
I hear a busy signal in the background, behind his voice.
|
|||
|
|
He says, "Do you hear a busy signal?"
|
|||
|
|
"Yeah," I say. Then, I say, "Hey -- is there someone else on
|
|||
|
|
here, someone who was whispering?"
|
|||
|
|
"Yeah," says the whisper.
|
|||
|
|
"Oh."
|
|||
|
|
The voice says, "I have to take off my socks -- hold on."
|
|||
|
|
I hold on. I have nothing better to do.
|
|||
|
|
Sockless, he says, "I want to go ice skating. I only went
|
|||
|
|
once, but I want to go."
|
|||
|
|
I say, "I went once. It didn't work out very well. I fell
|
|||
|
|
all over. I was in Boy Scouts."
|
|||
|
|
The voice is quiet to that.
|
|||
|
|
I listen to the music; it's still pretty lousy.
|
|||
|
|
"My neighbor asked me if I believe in God, and I said, 'No.'"
|
|||
|
|
This is what the voice says, out of nowhere.
|
|||
|
|
I wait a second, and then I say, "Oh."
|
|||
|
|
I say, "So, tell me about your crazy neighbors."
|
|||
|
|
He starts to talk. "There's two old people, the post office
|
|||
|
|
guy and this old lady across the street. They're the only old
|
|||
|
|
people in the neighborhood. Everyone else is young suburbanites:
|
|||
|
|
'Hi, I work at Tower City during the day and watch rented movies at
|
|||
|
|
night.' The old people are the interesting ones. They're the ones
|
|||
|
|
on the medication.
|
|||
|
|
"The old Alzheimer's woman is crazy."
|
|||
|
|
"Why?"
|
|||
|
|
"She's this old lady across the street and down a couple
|
|||
|
|
houses. My window's on the side of the house and when she turns
|
|||
|
|
her porch light on it hits my wall and it keeps me up -- you know
|
|||
|
|
how a little light at night keeps you up? Well, she does this all
|
|||
|
|
the time . . . I wish I knew her phone number because I'd call her
|
|||
|
|
up and say, 'What are you doing?'"
|
|||
|
|
He sounds like he doesn't believe that she's got her light on,
|
|||
|
|
like he sees it but he just doesn't believe it. He's quiet for a
|
|||
|
|
second, like he's reviewing what he just said, like he's talking to
|
|||
|
|
himself. He says, "She'd probably say, 'Is it 1930 again?'
|
|||
|
|
"She's crazy . . . she'll turn it off and on all night, at
|
|||
|
|
weird times. I really wonder what she's doing."
|
|||
|
|
"It's the disease," I say.
|
|||
|
|
He is quiet to that.
|
|||
|
|
Once, I wondered about that disease. I wondered what it would
|
|||
|
|
be like, to not remember the things that you want to remember. To
|
|||
|
|
have to have everything, all your good memories and all the noise,
|
|||
|
|
the stuff you filter out, all go together. I think it would drive
|
|||
|
|
me nuts.
|
|||
|
|
He is talking again. "I saw these pictures -- it's for a
|
|||
|
|
little kid's coloring contest . . . most of these things were
|
|||
|
|
supposed to be red and green, you know?"
|
|||
|
|
"Christmas stuff?"
|
|||
|
|
"Yeah. Well, most of them were okay, except this kid's, who
|
|||
|
|
was color blind -- Santa was green, his nose was green -- it was
|
|||
|
|
pretty funny.
|
|||
|
|
"I like the coloring contests. I always like to turn them in
|
|||
|
|
and falsify my age . . . then they come and verify it."
|
|||
|
|
We both laugh, and we hear the whisper laughing a little.
|
|||
|
|
The voice says, "Family Circus has never been funny. I saw
|
|||
|
|
this thing in the bookstore, they had all the Family Circuses ever,
|
|||
|
|
these thick books. If you add up all the space he's been in
|
|||
|
|
newspapers, for the past sixty years, it would probably fill up the
|
|||
|
|
space of the earth. _Marmaduke_'s funnier than that.
|
|||
|
|
"And Ziggy -- for a week, the guy that does it just does those
|
|||
|
|
vending machines, and you wouldn't see Ziggy for a week."
|
|||
|
|
The voice sounds really irritated, so I keep quiet, and
|
|||
|
|
listen.
|
|||
|
|
"And B.C. -- _that_'s not funny.
|
|||
|
|
"Calvin & Hobbes is strange: Calvin sends his pet _mail_ -- it
|
|||
|
|
shows how schizophrenic he is.
|
|||
|
|
"Born Loser -- I think there's a _computer_ that makes it. He
|
|||
|
|
draws so bad, I don't think _anyone_ could draw so bad."
|
|||
|
|
I laugh, but the voice sounds really pissed, and the whisper
|
|||
|
|
is quiet.
|
|||
|
|
"Not many people put work into their things," the voice says.
|
|||
|
|
"I don't know about Shoe. I think the guy's got _arthritis_ from
|
|||
|
|
the way he draws. Herrman's okay sometimes. Kinda that sadistic
|
|||
|
|
humor. And Bizarro is okay once in a while.
|
|||
|
|
"Cathy: you have to be a forty-year-old person to like it.
|
|||
|
|
And I guess the real person is just like this -- she depicts her
|
|||
|
|
life in it.
|
|||
|
|
"Beetle Baily is bad too -- I think the same computer draws
|
|||
|
|
that that draws Born Loser. One box: 'Hey Sarge, what's going on?'
|
|||
|
|
and on the next one: 'ZZZZ'"
|
|||
|
|
"Yeah," I say, and I'm laughing.
|
|||
|
|
"He's dead," says the whisper, and it suprises me.
|
|||
|
|
"What?" asks the voice.
|
|||
|
|
"He's dead -- the guy who does that comic."
|
|||
|
|
"Oh, so then it _must_ be a computer that does it. Far Side
|
|||
|
|
is good but it's too hard to find. They put it like in the Arts
|
|||
|
|
section or something, away from the other comics. You have to look
|
|||
|
|
for it.
|
|||
|
|
"Every publicized comic -- there's like two hundred of them in
|
|||
|
|
this paper -- it would be okay to see, but most of them would are
|
|||
|
|
like Family Circus -- the computer drew it, and they just put in
|
|||
|
|
different words.
|
|||
|
|
"I cut out these stupid things, bad comics, just to remember
|
|||
|
|
these stupid things. I thought they used to be funny, but they're
|
|||
|
|
not anymore -- they're not! After fifty years, it's not funny! I
|
|||
|
|
think the Family Circus guy just turns in the same things."
|
|||
|
|
I never read comics anymore, but I know exactly what he is
|
|||
|
|
talking about. I mean, I read all that stuff before.
|
|||
|
|
He says, "I'm thinking of writing to this newspaper and
|
|||
|
|
complaining."
|
|||
|
|
"Do it," I say. He probably won't.
|
|||
|
|
"They should have a comic that makes fun of other comics."
|
|||
|
|
We're both quiet for a while, and then I ask him about his
|
|||
|
|
neighborhood, if the crazy lady turned her light on again.
|
|||
|
|
"No," he says, "but there's this other crazy lady about five
|
|||
|
|
houses down that has an alarm on her house, but it's not a normal
|
|||
|
|
alarm -- it's like a buzzer from twenty years ago. And she's got
|
|||
|
|
one that when you touch the house or anything it goes off . . . she
|
|||
|
|
sets it off by mistake all the time -- but she hasn't done it
|
|||
|
|
lately.
|
|||
|
|
"Once she locked herself out of the house and she called the
|
|||
|
|
fire department to let her in. They were pissed when they got
|
|||
|
|
there and there was no fire.
|
|||
|
|
"She's crazy."
|
|||
|
|
"Old people are crazy," I say. I once had this old man who
|
|||
|
|
lived next door to me when I was a kid. He used to steal candy
|
|||
|
|
bars from the store and give them to me. Then he would steal tools
|
|||
|
|
from our garage. His fingers got cut off from his lawnmower once.
|
|||
|
|
"I wonder if this lady sleeps during the day so she can turn
|
|||
|
|
the light on all night."
|
|||
|
|
The whisper says, "Send her a letter in the mail."
|
|||
|
|
"Yeah -- maybe I will."
|
|||
|
|
I put down the phone for a minute and go to the bathroom. In
|
|||
|
|
the hallway, I'm extra quiet, so that I don't wake up my parents.
|
|||
|
|
I use the downstairs bathroom for good measure.
|
|||
|
|
"Okay, I'm back," I say, when I get back.
|
|||
|
|
The voice says, "I got a Skippy jar full of urine, and another
|
|||
|
|
time I got four pairs of women's underwear, menstruated -- all in
|
|||
|
|
the mail."
|
|||
|
|
"_What_," I say.
|
|||
|
|
"I got it in the mail. I sent about five thousand catalogs to
|
|||
|
|
my friend's P.O. box at his dorm. They couldn't even fit it all in
|
|||
|
|
his box, so he sent that shit to me."
|
|||
|
|
"Why did you send him all those catalogs?"
|
|||
|
|
"I was bored, and my mom has all these catalogs, and from the
|
|||
|
|
back of mags like Cosmo I sent away for shit for him -- a free
|
|||
|
|
contact lens cleaning kit (he just got arrested for trying to steal
|
|||
|
|
it) and a pair Depend underwear."
|
|||
|
|
"He got arrested?"
|
|||
|
|
"He got arrested because he needed it and he didn't have any
|
|||
|
|
money. And the place he got it from only prosecutes if you steal
|
|||
|
|
over $4, and it turned out to be $4.06. He got pissed . . . he got
|
|||
|
|
so pissed that he sent me underwear in the mail that his roomate
|
|||
|
|
found in the garbage."
|
|||
|
|
"Oh."
|
|||
|
|
"His mom hates me -- she thinks I degraded her son . . . she
|
|||
|
|
just _hates_ me . . . he goes to Kent -- what other college would
|
|||
|
|
people have no work, and they get so bored that they send shit in
|
|||
|
|
the mail?"
|
|||
|
|
"I don't know. Do you go to college?"
|
|||
|
|
"No," he says. "I did -- once. Whenever I go back, I'll
|
|||
|
|
probably major in Art. There's all sorts of things I could do but
|
|||
|
|
probably never get a job in, unless I come up with a bad cartoon
|
|||
|
|
and put it in the paper -- but there's no room for anyone who does
|
|||
|
|
anything interesting."
|
|||
|
|
"Yeah." It's hard to find work in the field you want. There
|
|||
|
|
just doesn't seem to be as many opportunities as there once was,
|
|||
|
|
like on television, on old t.v. shows where everyone has cool jobs.
|
|||
|
|
"My neighbor just got home. There's this guy, his name's Nuna, he
|
|||
|
|
sells cars for a living -- but at night, he'll leave at 3 a.m. and
|
|||
|
|
come back around 4 -- I think he joyrides the cars. I've never
|
|||
|
|
seen him during the day; I think he sleeps or works or something."
|
|||
|
|
"Bye," says the whisper. He hung up; went to bed, probably.
|
|||
|
|
I'm tired of all this -- the music is the same crap, so I shut
|
|||
|
|
the radio off. Until next week; same time, same station.
|
|||
|
|
"I'm tired, too," I say. "I think I'm gonna go."
|
|||
|
|
"Yeah," the voice says, with no inflection. He just says the
|
|||
|
|
word, and then says this one: "Bye."
|
|||
|
|
"I'll talk to you later," I say, no knowing what else to.
|
|||
|
|
"Yeah," he says, this time with a smirk.
|
|||
|
|
"Bye," I say, and hang up. It's still dark out, but it won't
|
|||
|
|
last for long. I get ready for bed: shut off the lights, pile in
|
|||
|
|
with my shirt and pants still on, and let whatever's left of the
|
|||
|
|
dark hang over me.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[-michael stutz:mstutz@rs6000.baldwinw.edu]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
% interment in measured tones
|
|||
|
|
[death metal reviews]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
In the name of the father, of the son...from the
|
|||
|
|
parallelograms of heat muted to light I modulated into the darkened
|
|||
|
|
room smelling of stale bread and eroded grease odors. Above the
|
|||
|
|
thick skin of checkerboarded red and white tablecloth the face of
|
|||
|
|
my friend Ed caught the fractured triangle of reflection, closing
|
|||
|
|
his eye to a squint. "Barf christ," he scowled.
|
|||
|
|
"Hasn't been a great day." These were the days when we could
|
|||
|
|
view days individually, before they began to integrate into
|
|||
|
|
patterns, progressions, marriages, jobs, or various cycles of decay
|
|||
|
|
that we learned to dread our way through. Right then it was
|
|||
|
|
finding a place, staying, finding a job, moving on. "So what's new
|
|||
|
|
on your mind?" The flies clustered like broken petrified logs in
|
|||
|
|
a corner, odd angulars into a society.
|
|||
|
|
"Not that much. Some crisis at the radio station, transmitter
|
|||
|
|
melted or something under the force of our air conditioner, they
|
|||
|
|
finally fixed it. With the condition of most of that stuff I'm
|
|||
|
|
just glad nothing blew up on us. Almost got a ticket, but - I saw
|
|||
|
|
this in the cop's eye - he saw a black Mercedes pull an illegal U,
|
|||
|
|
and damn, I was off free and he was turning, a bulking steel shark,
|
|||
|
|
off down the street after him."
|
|||
|
|
"Lucky." My experiences had been less pleasantly resolved in
|
|||
|
|
recent memories of that area. Through the suffocating static
|
|||
|
|
smother of the store speakers a hard bluesrock tune came on under
|
|||
|
|
the enthusiastic voice of the female DJ, who had trouble
|
|||
|
|
pronouncing the phrase "coming in concert" over the sound. Ed
|
|||
|
|
looked up annoyedly at the speakers. The front of a woman ducked
|
|||
|
|
in front of us to put a couple glasses of ice tea on the table, and
|
|||
|
|
then, folding back the battered paper of her pad, asked us to give
|
|||
|
|
her orders to write down on green and white thick bond.
|
|||
|
|
Ed looked at me a bit quizzically. "Chile relleno," I said
|
|||
|
|
starkly. More silence for Ed to read the bareprinted words above
|
|||
|
|
his finger. "Two enchilada, dos equis," he said, folding the menus
|
|||
|
|
into her hands.
|
|||
|
|
In her absence of sudden: "So what's new on your end?"
|
|||
|
|
I separated the four-ply napkin by twisting a corner with some
|
|||
|
|
sweat from my thumb. "Um, not much. Sending in some reviews of
|
|||
|
|
the past three months or so in death metal." Took in some ice tea,
|
|||
|
|
remembering someone telling me that's it's good for the throat when
|
|||
|
|
you do the hoarse distorted shout most of the death vocalists
|
|||
|
|
prefer. Ed drank from his as well.
|
|||
|
|
"It hasn't been a bad few months, actually. The problem with
|
|||
|
|
death metal is the same thing that initially protected it: the
|
|||
|
|
extremity of it. When you listen to something where the guy is
|
|||
|
|
vomiting on the mike and the music is all extreme, disconnected,
|
|||
|
|
nihilistic, everywhere, you're initially pulling back somewhat.
|
|||
|
|
That's what most of the world did. But at the same time that began
|
|||
|
|
as a mark of death metal's exclusivity, that also became its
|
|||
|
|
primary point of recognition, leading to a generation of fans who
|
|||
|
|
went for anything that followed some rhythmic and vocal elements,
|
|||
|
|
namely percussive and low, respectively."
|
|||
|
|
Ed nodded. I didn't sense that he cared any more that day
|
|||
|
|
than normal about death metal, but he gets into it sometimes, and
|
|||
|
|
besides, I was rolling steady. Also, he had just taken a large
|
|||
|
|
mouthful of enchilada and couldn't protest. I love a captive
|
|||
|
|
audience.
|
|||
|
|
"For a while there, as a result, it was all the same goo, guys
|
|||
|
|
meeting those qualifications and adding some gimmick, whether name
|
|||
|
|
or appearance. It got pretty gross, and I was about to throw in
|
|||
|
|
the towel, but couldn't give up my show, couldn't give up Morbid
|
|||
|
|
Angel." Ed knows how much I like Morbid Angel myself and seems to
|
|||
|
|
enjoy it thoroughly when I play it in his presence, and has also
|
|||
|
|
been a supporter of my show from the beginning.
|
|||
|
|
"But two things happened: the fan base got huge, but also
|
|||
|
|
spread out the available resources, leaving the smaller labels that
|
|||
|
|
signed crap bands heading for financial consumption, and labels
|
|||
|
|
began getting choosier. The smarter edge of the fan base got much
|
|||
|
|
more careful about what they bought. For a while it looked good
|
|||
|
|
again, but soon more of the commercial element came in, with bands
|
|||
|
|
like Sepultura and Entombed selling out, and big bands like
|
|||
|
|
Cannibal Corpse making it big in the mainstream United States.
|
|||
|
|
The only thing that saves us from these people is that their
|
|||
|
|
music remains fairly insipid and unsatisfying. Too many fans are
|
|||
|
|
buying tons of music, really digging the aesthetic but unable to
|
|||
|
|
deal with the simplicity and uninventiveness of the music. A whole
|
|||
|
|
lot of them bailed the scene. But at the same time the older bands
|
|||
|
|
began to get acquainted with their instruments and starting putting
|
|||
|
|
out better metal. And the newer crew looks pretty good.
|
|||
|
|
Originally, death was concept music, of brutality and a
|
|||
|
|
heaviness nothing else could touch. The philosophy's expanded, and
|
|||
|
|
a lot of stuff has come in, but not much from the dangerous side of
|
|||
|
|
things, the so-called 'alternative' scene. When bands want to sell
|
|||
|
|
out they tell us how they're putting in some 'alternative'
|
|||
|
|
influences." I gulped ice tea with an expulsion of air.
|
|||
|
|
"But most of the stuff has just gotten more serious on the
|
|||
|
|
musical end, which is fine by me. For a while there, it was
|
|||
|
|
getting as bad as the punk bands: we play with more 'feel,' etc.
|
|||
|
|
I think there's feel in music, but I think that feel comes from the
|
|||
|
|
odd collusion of intellect and emotion in a discipline, like making
|
|||
|
|
music. It's rock, sure, but it's art too if it's serious.
|
|||
|
|
Varathron was the band that first impressed me. It's pure
|
|||
|
|
black metal, but the older kind, which is more musical and more
|
|||
|
|
like older heavy metal. It's harmonic in nature; they play chords
|
|||
|
|
and don't just stream notes at high speed. It still has the death
|
|||
|
|
vocals, and uses some modern metal elements, but at heart it's
|
|||
|
|
tonal rock, pretty basic but not simple at all. There's a lot of
|
|||
|
|
variation in riff structure and in song layout, as well as some
|
|||
|
|
interesting experimentation with harmonics, and an ability to
|
|||
|
|
harmonize riffs without them sounding cheesy (a lot of this black
|
|||
|
|
metal stuff makes me think of giant lumps of Swiss cheese
|
|||
|
|
descending on a block of fresh asphalt in a New York summer).
|
|||
|
|
This is one of the first black metal releases I've been really
|
|||
|
|
enthusiastic about. It's not Scandinavian at all, from Greece
|
|||
|
|
actually, but it's well-played, not messy, and comes across as
|
|||
|
|
having real thought and intent behind it. They don't try to be
|
|||
|
|
scary, but the cheesiness comes in the names: Necroabyssious,
|
|||
|
|
Wolfen, Mutilator, and Necroslaughter. Whatever. At least they
|
|||
|
|
kept it out of the music." I lifted my glass and got a brief wisp
|
|||
|
|
of sip of ice tea, and then felt ice cubes against my upper lip.
|
|||
|
|
I put the glass down.
|
|||
|
|
"Next thing that I thought was hot shit was Mortuary, from
|
|||
|
|
Mexico. Really unique stuff, really powerful and fast, an earlier
|
|||
|
|
style of speed metal. I don't think this is new, but I don't know.
|
|||
|
|
Got it from J.L. America as they folded into decay. There's an
|
|||
|
|
obvious Slayer influence in this stuff, but it doesn't sound like
|
|||
|
|
Slayer. Just sometimes a similar way of thinking about things,
|
|||
|
|
although the approach ends up different in the end. Playing is
|
|||
|
|
pretty competent for underground metal, and the album overall is
|
|||
|
|
great. Moves quickly, songs vary, quite a bit of musical
|
|||
|
|
experimentation. This is far from the norm and the second release
|
|||
|
|
from Mexico to impress me, the first being Cenotaph.
|
|||
|
|
Another band that blew me away was Doomstone. I played you
|
|||
|
|
Deceased, right? The drummer for that band, King Fowley, started
|
|||
|
|
up a side project called Doomstone that recorded this album about
|
|||
|
|
a year ago. It's called "Those Whom Satan Hath Joined" or
|
|||
|
|
something along those lines. Pretty pro-Satan overall, but I don't
|
|||
|
|
think it's serious, that is, it's mainly to have some fun with the
|
|||
|
|
lyrics. There's some serious bagging on the black metal people in
|
|||
|
|
the liner notes. Fowley's always been a nut, though. Deceased is
|
|||
|
|
great stuff that makes its way by being tight and musical,
|
|||
|
|
technically challenging while not forgetting the idea of the
|
|||
|
|
listener, of making cool music.
|
|||
|
|
Half of the problem with death metal comes in that label,
|
|||
|
|
technical. For one thing, it doesn't mean jack, since 'technical'
|
|||
|
|
means music lessons to most of these people, and since underground
|
|||
|
|
metal isn't known for musicality anyway. For another thing, the
|
|||
|
|
bands that are spend most of their time trying to prove that they
|
|||
|
|
are because they're so used to people considering them inferior
|
|||
|
|
players and because, un-amazing as they are, they're better than
|
|||
|
|
most of the crowd. A few stand out ahead, starting with Morbid
|
|||
|
|
Angel and Atheist, but stuff like Deceased really belongs in the
|
|||
|
|
same category, that is, being reasonably competent or better
|
|||
|
|
musicality without being braindead. Playing songs to make great
|
|||
|
|
songs and to make them artistically challenging, but not just to
|
|||
|
|
try to prove that in a pond full of nobodies you're the best-
|
|||
|
|
trained nobody. Almost as bad as glam metal in the late eighties,
|
|||
|
|
when the guitar solos started getting long.
|
|||
|
|
But Doomstone is 'technical,' if we have to use that term,
|
|||
|
|
getting most of its influences from older metal while bringing a
|
|||
|
|
new style of noise- and atonality-influenced music into the mezcla.
|
|||
|
|
The end result is great. You can't really sing along, but the
|
|||
|
|
songs move, each is distinctive, and the whole album doesn't have
|
|||
|
|
a bad track. There's a Grim Reaper cover on here, but I never knew
|
|||
|
|
that band anyway. A lot of goofy references to cheesy movies about
|
|||
|
|
the occult, including one tune called "Rosemary's Baby." I have no
|
|||
|
|
idea who the other band members are, but they all have stupid names
|
|||
|
|
like "Urinator of the Holy Graveyards." I like this one a lot but
|
|||
|
|
most people have no clue it exists.
|
|||
|
|
Some of the stuff from the Midwest just blows me away. I
|
|||
|
|
heard about their scene a year or two ago when stuff like
|
|||
|
|
Accidental Suicide, Morgue, and Afterlife was coming out, all of it
|
|||
|
|
pretty musically interesting and technically evolved. The new
|
|||
|
|
stuff takes this further, with more technical detail (nothing
|
|||
|
|
amazing, but impressive for underground) and power coming in, and
|
|||
|
|
more advanced song structures. Lyrics have gotten away from the
|
|||
|
|
once-dominant American ideal of proving something, whether anger or
|
|||
|
|
sickness, in the lyrics. They're demented in their own right, but
|
|||
|
|
with a self-aware humor that's refreshing. The main act leading
|
|||
|
|
this scene is Oppressor, whose demo I really liked when I received
|
|||
|
|
it about a year ago, for my show. The power of this music isn't
|
|||
|
|
whatever technical standards it hails to, but the ability to
|
|||
|
|
integrate disparate elements into a working and interesting format.
|
|||
|
|
There's heaviness in here to compare with the most extreme American
|
|||
|
|
acts, but there's also cool musical workings and internal
|
|||
|
|
structures that support themselves well, producing an aesthetic of
|
|||
|
|
complexity with a percussive speed grind that smears you against a
|
|||
|
|
wall if you catch it at volume.
|
|||
|
|
Gutted impress me as much but in an entirely different vector.
|
|||
|
|
The obvious technicality of Oppressor isn't here; this is a
|
|||
|
|
straight-up rock format with stuff well-encoded into it. This
|
|||
|
|
isn't even death metal, but speed metal with a death voice. The
|
|||
|
|
songs aren't as catchy as the more mainstream stuff, but they have
|
|||
|
|
a grasping appeal that's not so much easily understandable as
|
|||
|
|
reflective of coherent assembly. Some stuff makes your ear listen,
|
|||
|
|
but this stuff gets you involved and then takes you with it.
|
|||
|
|
There's heaviness to spare here, and some goofiness in the lyrics,
|
|||
|
|
with songs such as "Kickin' the Corpse" leaving me to laugh. But
|
|||
|
|
it's self-aware, and not stupid, so I have no complaints. This is
|
|||
|
|
one of my favorites of the year.
|
|||
|
|
Not from the midwest but from Florida come two of my other
|
|||
|
|
finds. Neither are that new, or new at all, in the case of Ripping
|
|||
|
|
Corpse, who are one of the few metal bands who could legitimately
|
|||
|
|
wear the label progressive - interesting musical ideas expanded
|
|||
|
|
interestingly, not necessarily as intricate in their song structure
|
|||
|
|
as most bands but exceptionally coherent, in that songs are
|
|||
|
|
completed works and not streams of riffs. Lead guitar is not often
|
|||
|
|
this well done; for pure musicality this is one of my favorite
|
|||
|
|
works. Resurrection have a similar approach, taking Florida metal
|
|||
|
|
and making it technically-challenging, rather than just adding
|
|||
|
|
technicalities. The songs work and are enjoyable on several
|
|||
|
|
levels, leaving the technical work to be assumed and not be the
|
|||
|
|
focus of the entire album. The only band even close to this is
|
|||
|
|
Monstrosity. Both of these albums, Ripping Corpse's "In the Forest
|
|||
|
|
of the Dreaming Dead" and Resurrection's "Embalmed Existence," are
|
|||
|
|
first-class death metal. The former is probably out of print,
|
|||
|
|
Kraze records being defunct in a serious manner.
|
|||
|
|
From Britain come Malediction, one of the few death metal
|
|||
|
|
bands to legitimately remind me of Morbid Angel, and not through
|
|||
|
|
aping, as their sound is far from the atonal masterpieces of
|
|||
|
|
Azagthoth. Malediction play intense, not necessarily super-
|
|||
|
|
technically powered, but well-assembled and intriguing death metal.
|
|||
|
|
The album I have is a live EP, "Chronicles of Dissension," which is
|
|||
|
|
exceptionally well-produced for a live album, with the only clues
|
|||
|
|
to it being live being the pauses before each song where a drunken
|
|||
|
|
British voice talks. The music is fast, but slows when
|
|||
|
|
strategically necessary; it has a voice that encompasses the song,
|
|||
|
|
and doesn't restrict itself to occasional exposure during a riff or
|
|||
|
|
a solo. There is a full-length album that I don't have, but if
|
|||
|
|
it's of the same caliber of this material, it should be incredible.
|
|||
|
|
This is the only British band that's really brought my respect
|
|||
|
|
since Carcass or Repulsion (not forgetting the classic gods Black
|
|||
|
|
Sabbath and Judas Priest, but gods of a previous era, although
|
|||
|
|
timeless in their musical vision).
|
|||
|
|
Sweden has for the last few generations of death metal bands
|
|||
|
|
lead with innovative and potent metal. Seance and Fleshcrawl have
|
|||
|
|
released the best albums in recent memory from that area, with the
|
|||
|
|
notable exception of Therion, who, although technically brilliant
|
|||
|
|
and musically exceptional are nowhere in the same league of
|
|||
|
|
heaviness: both of these bands deliver impact power and suffusing
|
|||
|
|
brutality. Seance produced a guttural, mechanical and distorted
|
|||
|
|
masterpiece in "Saltrubbed Eyes," in which they learned to drop the
|
|||
|
|
many dissonant riffs approach of their first album in favor of a
|
|||
|
|
cohesive approach to song structures which emphasizes bringing out
|
|||
|
|
what is put into the song, instead of stringing it in linearly. On
|
|||
|
|
their first release they reminded me of a Swedish Malevolent
|
|||
|
|
Creation, but here the sound is much more Seance's own. The final
|
|||
|
|
track, an instrumental, gets special mention. The primary work
|
|||
|
|
here is the guitar tracks, which are experimental for death metal,
|
|||
|
|
especially eurometal. There's a lot of work with shorter but more
|
|||
|
|
definite riffs, and some experimentation in the noise of the lead
|
|||
|
|
guitars, which seem competent although they often choose to be
|
|||
|
|
content with half-noise solos. Smearing notes and all of that
|
|||
|
|
work. The distortion on this album is grating to a maximum, a new
|
|||
|
|
height of abrasiveness in guitar. This is one of my current
|
|||
|
|
favorites from Sweden.
|
|||
|
|
Fleshcrawl have always impressed me, but "Impurity" outdoes
|
|||
|
|
itself. Where their first was slow this has achieved a balance,
|
|||
|
|
realizing an aptitude for tempos in different components of the
|
|||
|
|
songs. Song structures are spread out and varied, although they
|
|||
|
|
don't seek to emphasize these varieties but an overall impression.
|
|||
|
|
There is a track from Finnish gods Demigod (Slumber of Sullen Eyes,
|
|||
|
|
their one album, is one of my favorites from Scandinavia: heavy but
|
|||
|
|
harmonic stuff, a unique sound that builds itself from out of the
|
|||
|
|
songs, instead of carping songs to follow an aesthetic) covered on
|
|||
|
|
this album, but more innarestin' in the track which isn't a cover,
|
|||
|
|
Inevitable End, which seems to be right out of the book of Bolt
|
|||
|
|
Thrower, albeit speeded up. The remaining songs are heavy and
|
|||
|
|
satisfying, excepting an instrumental by Dan Swano of Edge of
|
|||
|
|
Sanity. You can't sing along but who needs to? this is the
|
|||
|
|
descending blade of heavy metal that's not afraid to be technically
|
|||
|
|
competent, compositionally intriguing, or image deficient - it's
|
|||
|
|
the hardline straight up with no gimmick, and consequently both of
|
|||
|
|
these albums seem to be overlooked in the United States. (Possibly
|
|||
|
|
in favor of Entombed's terrible "Wolverine Blues," which would be
|
|||
|
|
a travesty of the first order.)"
|
|||
|
|
Ed put down his empty glass, and flipped two fingers toward
|
|||
|
|
his palm to gesture for more. With it came our food. I dug in,
|
|||
|
|
heavily, starving and aggressive. Ed ate more carefully but with
|
|||
|
|
equal rapidity. Surprisingly, he wasn't intimidated by my spew
|
|||
|
|
about a genre he could care less about, but was sort of interested.
|
|||
|
|
Through the corner of a mouth: "So things are looking up except for
|
|||
|
|
the sellouts? I remember you ranting about that some time ago,
|
|||
|
|
that and Christian metal" (Christian metal being my favorite
|
|||
|
|
oxymoron to pick on, as metal is beyond Christianity and really
|
|||
|
|
should have nothing to do with it - not saying, however, as every
|
|||
|
|
Christian misinterprets this argument, that it needs to go running
|
|||
|
|
to Papa Satan - it just was founded and designed outside of
|
|||
|
|
Christianity and doesn't work with it) " - are there more of
|
|||
|
|
those?"
|
|||
|
|
I poked more chile relleno into my mouth. "Well," chewing, "I
|
|||
|
|
think more are coming, as it gets easier to throw a little Alice in
|
|||
|
|
Chains into your music. And that's the band they'll all ape, that
|
|||
|
|
or Helmet, maybe. Alice is easy because it's one of the heavier
|
|||
|
|
bands in the so-called 'alternative' range, and because with the
|
|||
|
|
complexity of that sound, a band can work a lot in without being
|
|||
|
|
seen as what they'd otherwise be: a metal band suddenly going heavy
|
|||
|
|
bluesrock on us. Plus, they share a lot of roots, Alice in Chains
|
|||
|
|
and death metal; those people heard Black Sabbath and Motorhead,
|
|||
|
|
too. Entombed tried the Alice in Chains thing with Wolverine, and
|
|||
|
|
it sucked, but it wasn't a bad shot for a first, from the eyes of
|
|||
|
|
the mainstream, who seem to buy suck music any chance they can get.
|
|||
|
|
It's a safe sound to assume. I haven't seen too much of that
|
|||
|
|
lately. But I've been staying far away.
|
|||
|
|
It's amazing how sometimes the most obscure stuff is the best.
|
|||
|
|
You'd think more people would catch on, but it doesn't seem so -
|
|||
|
|
take Obliveon as a case in point. If you can get past the dumb
|
|||
|
|
name, this is spectacular progressive death metal from Canada. For
|
|||
|
|
once the bass is used as a lead instrument in metal without
|
|||
|
|
becoming cheesy - it makes its presence felt, but without being
|
|||
|
|
either a leading pop element or an attachment for the sake of
|
|||
|
|
additional hooks. Integrated structurally, the bass-guitar
|
|||
|
|
interaction of this band is incredible, nailed to a precision drum
|
|||
|
|
track to make this a tight setup, with incredibly players lending
|
|||
|
|
to the tightness with the right-on instrumentation that any fan of
|
|||
|
|
speed metal would love. But this is death metal, albeit a very
|
|||
|
|
unique interpretation of the genre musically. It's not
|
|||
|
|
particularly heavy in the original sense, but cool - in the way
|
|||
|
|
that a jazz or progressive band would be. But it's heavy, and it's
|
|||
|
|
amazing, and not effete like "progressive metal" acts like Dream
|
|||
|
|
Theatre. It stays true to the core of metal.
|
|||
|
|
More obscurity in the form of Alastis, one of the few "doom
|
|||
|
|
metal" bands worthy of the title. There is real musicality to
|
|||
|
|
this, good tempo variation, impressive drumming and cool riffs to
|
|||
|
|
package a slowing majesty of falling darkness. Vocals are a
|
|||
|
|
subdued version of the death/black metal voice, and fit well into
|
|||
|
|
this music, which has elements of both the modern and the older
|
|||
|
|
styles of metal. Impressive at the least. With an entirely
|
|||
|
|
different sound but a musically impressive output is Demilich, who
|
|||
|
|
are Finns playing harmonically-intricate death metal; it reminds me
|
|||
|
|
of the sounds of a funk band without the annoying elements in the
|
|||
|
|
way Demilich slide and cycle through the castles of tones they
|
|||
|
|
build on "Nespithe." It's not musicianship showing off, either,
|
|||
|
|
but a unique look at metal with a real experimental eye to it.
|
|||
|
|
This is one of my favorite releases of this year.
|
|||
|
|
But the core of metal remains the heaviness, and the emphasis
|
|||
|
|
that places through its rhythm and timbre. Loudblast fulfill this
|
|||
|
|
with the musicality quotient that any lover of the above will
|
|||
|
|
enjoy. Heavy, with real death and speed metal elements
|
|||
|
|
demonstrating the band's superb songwriting. Not superb judgement:
|
|||
|
|
this album has a fourth track of some of the most annoying female
|
|||
|
|
vocals ever to hit vinyl. But the music is outstanding. Another
|
|||
|
|
harder to find but brilliant band is Goreaphobia, who despite the
|
|||
|
|
stupid name create impressive death metal, with intense variation
|
|||
|
|
and a preservation of well-conceptualized mood and vision pervading
|
|||
|
|
throughout all three tracks on this album, "Omen of Masochism" (one
|
|||
|
|
of the nicely cheap Relapse underground releases). The cover
|
|||
|
|
illustration is a bit annoying (half-clothed woman consorting with
|
|||
|
|
devil) but the music is phenomenal, and heavy, having a lot of the
|
|||
|
|
better elements of death and grindcore musically while remaining
|
|||
|
|
so. A good sense of energy to this as well.
|
|||
|
|
Stupidity has always been a part of metal, and the silliness
|
|||
|
|
continues. Demented Ted caught my ear despite misgivings about the
|
|||
|
|
stupid name; this is good stuff, solidly heavy and technically
|
|||
|
|
intricate, although not as progressive and experimental as it could
|
|||
|
|
be musically. That would be the greatest failing of this album,
|
|||
|
|
but it survives it as good speed/death metal. The greatest area of
|
|||
|
|
foolishness, while we're on the topic, would have to be black
|
|||
|
|
metal, and one of my current favorites, Sacramentum, is a proud
|
|||
|
|
member of that arena. Yet it's phenomenal music, with a good
|
|||
|
|
melodic sense (this is modern black metal in its stream of notes
|
|||
|
|
incarnation) and a more conventional than usual adherence to sound,
|
|||
|
|
although without being cliche or uninventive. Highly recommended
|
|||
|
|
to black metal fans. Actually," I said, wiping my upper lip on
|
|||
|
|
disposable napkin, "all of this stuff is, and I'd have trouble
|
|||
|
|
deciding what to leave behind, but that's just because this is what
|
|||
|
|
I've found after listening to tons and tons of this stuff.
|
|||
|
|
We're not out of the deep water yet. There's a lot of crappy
|
|||
|
|
metal out there, as there always will be. But I think a lot of the
|
|||
|
|
stuff I see coming up is great, especially as bands learn that
|
|||
|
|
learning instrumentalism doesn't mean they've sold out, or that
|
|||
|
|
they suck. The greatest underground today is in the growing
|
|||
|
|
category of progressive or near-progressive metal, as it's too out
|
|||
|
|
there for most of the mainstream death metal fans and too musically
|
|||
|
|
subversive to ignore." Ed wiped his mouth on a similar napkin.
|
|||
|
|
The sun had set and the air hung almost liquid in through the cold
|
|||
|
|
glass. The stillness of daysend and the fullness of our stomachs
|
|||
|
|
slowed our thoughts, but soon we paid, and left to wander between
|
|||
|
|
pedestrian and building alike, stretching our thoughts through the
|
|||
|
|
networks of modern life without particularly attaching to anything.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[-sven:cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
% mantra
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Past the small hamlet of Gnihton, across the orderly layers of
|
|||
|
|
gently nodding fields, there lay, well, yet another field. This
|
|||
|
|
particular field was quite like its surrounding brethren in most
|
|||
|
|
aspects, complete with dirt, weeds, corn, and of course loud, noisy,
|
|||
|
|
wheezing monster-thingie (apparently cornfields tend to attract to an
|
|||
|
|
alarming degree the likes of such). However unlike the other fields
|
|||
|
|
around it, each too having its own wretchedly belching blob-creature,
|
|||
|
|
this field was singular for its location. Admittedly the other fields
|
|||
|
|
had locations too, but they unfortunately were not located in the
|
|||
|
|
correct place. To put it simply, the field lay next to a path. Like the
|
|||
|
|
field that squatted next to it, this path was rather unremarkable in
|
|||
|
|
most aspects in comparison to those of its kind, and although it did
|
|||
|
|
not have its own personal monstrosity, it did have large tangles of
|
|||
|
|
briars and an absurd-looking strain of mutant cauliflower that it
|
|||
|
|
could call its own. Reportedly, the cauliflower in the aforementioned
|
|||
|
|
region has been known to bluster and babble quite indignantly when
|
|||
|
|
called absurd, but the fact remained, and even the cauliflower knew
|
|||
|
|
this deep inside, that it was pretty funny looking. The exact origins
|
|||
|
|
of the plant have indeed never been pinpointed by historians or
|
|||
|
|
biologists, but the current theory en vogue proposes that the thing
|
|||
|
|
was the result of an asteroid strike. Nothing that ridiculous could
|
|||
|
|
ever have developed on earth, or so ran the argument as originally
|
|||
|
|
published in Modern Botany. The species apparently spent the next
|
|||
|
|
thousand or so years entrenching itself in an area measuring fifteen
|
|||
|
|
feet across and eighty or so miles long. The natives, being a practical
|
|||
|
|
lot, had simply marked off their fields around the ground in which
|
|||
|
|
sprouted the cauliflower, and so the path was born.
|
|||
|
|
When scientists first discovered the strange phenomenon, they
|
|||
|
|
found to their utter astonishment that no one in the memory of the
|
|||
|
|
natives had ever attempted to taste or even pick the vegetable. "No
|
|||
|
|
chap in their right mind would ever think of mussing with one of the
|
|||
|
|
bloody things. Anything that silly lookin can't be good for anything
|
|||
|
|
now can it?" said Henry Blankenship, a ninety year resident of
|
|||
|
|
Gnihton's successor, Cornwall, when questioned by dumfounded Men
|
|||
|
|
and Women of Science. Even more surprising were the results of the
|
|||
|
|
scientific community's endeavors to excavate the now beleaguered
|
|||
|
|
plant. Despite its wobbly, lopsided and shockingly pink appearance,
|
|||
|
|
the Cornwallian Cauliflower (as it soon became known worldwide)
|
|||
|
|
was resistant to all attempts to uproot it from its favorite locale, even
|
|||
|
|
the heavy and persistent use of a bulldozer was to no avail. Neither
|
|||
|
|
could anyone discover any sort of seeds, so in the end one
|
|||
|
|
exasperated biologist brandished a pocket knife and proceeded to
|
|||
|
|
saw off and consume a small portion of the Cornwallian Cauliflower.
|
|||
|
|
To no one's astonishment he dropped dead on the spot, but not
|
|||
|
|
before uttering the now immortal phrase, "Mother of God, but that's a
|
|||
|
|
foul taste." Needless to say, from then on the plant was left alone,
|
|||
|
|
which was a bit of tragedy considering that though the plant did
|
|||
|
|
contain a deadly poison, it also cured cancer, AIDS, herpes, and tasted
|
|||
|
|
quite yummy when served steaming hot with a light cheese sauce
|
|||
|
|
(all in all an interesting tradeoff). The foul taste that the doomed
|
|||
|
|
biologist found so repugnant was not a property of the cauliflower
|
|||
|
|
itself; it most likely had to do with the fat, aging wampus that had
|
|||
|
|
used that particular cauliflower as a urinal just several hours earlier.
|
|||
|
|
Through all of this the poor plant endure in a most noble
|
|||
|
|
manner, hoping that somehow evolution would translate its
|
|||
|
|
phentoype in future generations to one with a smidgen of dignity
|
|||
|
|
here and there. Nature had a bit of a sadistic streak in it though, and
|
|||
|
|
so the Cornwallian Cauliflower would go on being brazenly pink,
|
|||
|
|
lopsided, and bloated until it was the last thing left alive on the
|
|||
|
|
earth, waiting patiently for evolution even as the superheated gases
|
|||
|
|
of a sun that had gone nova engulfed the planet Earth, leaving
|
|||
|
|
behind only a thin and decidedly pink plasma. As a result, even
|
|||
|
|
more sobering than the passing of the earth, the Seattle Mariners
|
|||
|
|
would never win a pennant, let alone a World Series. Celestial
|
|||
|
|
historians reply to this by saying that despite the lack of a pennant,
|
|||
|
|
on the plus side the team would finish over .500 three times during
|
|||
|
|
its four billion year life span. We digress, however.
|
|||
|
|
What is most important about this path that was refuge to a
|
|||
|
|
strange strain of cauliflower was not the hubbub surrounding its
|
|||
|
|
flora, but rather a single event that took place there around one
|
|||
|
|
thousand years before the Great Cauliflower Catastrophe (as the
|
|||
|
|
incident became known). When considering this event, one must
|
|||
|
|
think hard to discern the proper scope of what is being discussed.
|
|||
|
|
Forget the Big Bang; forget the emergence of Homo Sapiens; forget
|
|||
|
|
Hitler; and realize deep down inside that what happened on a small
|
|||
|
|
dusty track outside of the peasant village of Gnihton that day in 998
|
|||
|
|
AD was the single most important event in the History Of The
|
|||
|
|
Universe. Admittedly, the incident itself eventually panned out in a
|
|||
|
|
semi-swell manner, but simply the enormously terrifying, mind-
|
|||
|
|
boggling, spine-chilling, skin-shivering, vomit-releasing possibilities
|
|||
|
|
that it offered were so tremendous, so namelessly deep and primal,
|
|||
|
|
that even God was so startled that he let out a rather loud belch
|
|||
|
|
while napping near the Deneb system. The electromagnetic radiation
|
|||
|
|
from God's Belch would later be received by Earthbound dishes and
|
|||
|
|
interpreted by puzzled scientists as "Greetings Earthlings. Have you
|
|||
|
|
any cheeseburgers?" Nothing much could be made of this enigmatic
|
|||
|
|
statement and so astronomers dismissed it as chance, though to the
|
|||
|
|
public's chagrin, the interpretation of God's Belch spawned a whole
|
|||
|
|
new series of "Where's the Beef?" commercials. Back to the path,
|
|||
|
|
though.
|
|||
|
|
The path was dusty. It had no qualms about this, and would go
|
|||
|
|
so far as to get right in a travelers face and jaw with him or her in a
|
|||
|
|
rather ornery and persistent manner if the traveler expressed
|
|||
|
|
verbally any beliefs to the contrary. Combine this fact with that of
|
|||
|
|
the cauliflower, and one might argue that it would be altogether
|
|||
|
|
easier simply to walk through the corn fields. It could quite easily
|
|||
|
|
have been much better going through the towering rows of corn, but
|
|||
|
|
corn on the whole is an intimidating lot, and besides, the lands on
|
|||
|
|
which the corn grew were owned privately by His Majesty Ferdinand
|
|||
|
|
III (often called Ferd III behind his back), and trespassing except by
|
|||
|
|
those peasants assigned to work the fields was a criminal offense.
|
|||
|
|
The punishment for trespassing on the King's lands never became
|
|||
|
|
common knowledge. Ferd III's people were naturally stoic and
|
|||
|
|
accepting, the luckless recipients of the monthly royal beheading
|
|||
|
|
accepted their lot without a fuss or protest, but no one ever observed
|
|||
|
|
a trespasser heading to their fate and not screaming and fighting for
|
|||
|
|
all he or she was worth. Rumors of the name of the exact instrument
|
|||
|
|
of torture floated around hither and thither, but they must have
|
|||
|
|
been some sort of secret code word, for the words "Richard Simmons
|
|||
|
|
Videos" are rather cryptic, and so they must have instead stood for
|
|||
|
|
some terrifying device of pain and suffering no less. In the end,
|
|||
|
|
rather than risking such a nasty penalty or such a tedious and dusty
|
|||
|
|
journey, most people stayed away from Gnihton; it was a lousy
|
|||
|
|
excuse for human habitation anyway.
|
|||
|
|
On the path rested a rock. While there indeed were other rocks
|
|||
|
|
on the path, six to be exact, seven if you count the small pile of
|
|||
|
|
petrified dog excrement, those rocks tended to be sedimentaries for
|
|||
|
|
the most part, all in all a very boring lot. Happily for the pile of dog
|
|||
|
|
excrement, called Herbert by others of its kind, its life purpose was
|
|||
|
|
fulfilled when Baron Horace Von Stepovich accidentally trod on it.
|
|||
|
|
Despite the pile's formidable carapace, it's soft internal consistency
|
|||
|
|
nonetheless forced the legendarily snobbish man to spend several
|
|||
|
|
hours cleaning his very leather, very black, very new boots. Of
|
|||
|
|
course all of this depended on the fact that the standard definition
|
|||
|
|
required a rock to be at least walnut sized and no less.
|
|||
|
|
The rock's name was Bob. Why it was called Bob and not some
|
|||
|
|
other equally impressive name such as Binky, Ferguson, or
|
|||
|
|
Bartholomew, is a mystery. As for appearances, Bob was rather
|
|||
|
|
plain, a dusty gray countenance that only in the best of lights could
|
|||
|
|
be called dull silver and numerous scars and pits from past struggles
|
|||
|
|
with others of his kind as the only distinguishing features. Bob stood
|
|||
|
|
out instead with his intelligence and cunning. Bob disdained the
|
|||
|
|
stupid, boisterous ignites that spent all their time bragging among
|
|||
|
|
themselves about their recent exploits, what volcano they'd been spit
|
|||
|
|
out of, how hot it was, how many other rocks they'd beaten up, how
|
|||
|
|
much they could bench press, and so on. Bob similarly despised the
|
|||
|
|
plodding and ever-stupid sedimentites too. It was always the
|
|||
|
|
sedimentite who didn't get the joke, it was always the sedimentite
|
|||
|
|
who told the most amazingly boring and lengthy stories (some might
|
|||
|
|
argue that the author of this is a sedimentite), it was always the
|
|||
|
|
sedimentite who drank too much spiked punch at a party and ended
|
|||
|
|
up getting pounded into the ground by the ignite whose girlfriend
|
|||
|
|
the tipsy sedimentite had made a slurred comment to. On the whole,
|
|||
|
|
the sedimentites were a rather sorry bunch, but luckily they were
|
|||
|
|
too dull to realize this, and went right on with their plodding,
|
|||
|
|
victimized ways. Bob was a metamorphic, and for the most part
|
|||
|
|
metamorphics did their best to distance themselves from their
|
|||
|
|
"lesser" brethren. Most metamorphics secretly believed that their
|
|||
|
|
race was destined to rule the world someday, but they usually kept
|
|||
|
|
this conviction to themselves, fearing being beaten up by an ignite or
|
|||
|
|
blubbered at by a tortoise-like sedimentite.
|
|||
|
|
Bob's specialty was physics. More precisely, Bob prided
|
|||
|
|
himself in his ability to gauge the gait, stride, and distance away of
|
|||
|
|
an approaching human and use his extraordinary mental powers to
|
|||
|
|
position himself in such a way as to send the offending two-legger
|
|||
|
|
sprawling on its face when the toe of its boot collided with Bob.
|
|||
|
|
Nothing pleased Bob more than a good trip job, and his love for the
|
|||
|
|
sport had made him into one of the world's best. What this all boiled
|
|||
|
|
down to for Bob's situation at the time was unhappiness, plain and
|
|||
|
|
simple. The disheveled path to Gnihton was not frequently traveled,
|
|||
|
|
leaving Bob with few people to trip, and even worse, when someone
|
|||
|
|
did come along, the cursed cauliflower had a tendency to make Bob
|
|||
|
|
burst out laughing and thus lose track of his complicated calculations,
|
|||
|
|
botching the job entirely. "I was much better off back on the King's
|
|||
|
|
Highway where traffic could get so heavy that I sometimes had to be
|
|||
|
|
calculating the results of 47 differential equations simultaneously
|
|||
|
|
just to keep up," Bob reflected bitterly at one time. Without a doubt,
|
|||
|
|
the highlight so far of Bob's rather young life, a few measly million
|
|||
|
|
years, was when through a stroke of pure brilliance he managed to
|
|||
|
|
trip the notoriously watchful Baron of Ebert, one Horace Von
|
|||
|
|
Stepovich by name. By great fortune, the snooty baron's retainers,
|
|||
|
|
toadies, and personal guard had all been following him at a very
|
|||
|
|
small distance, and thus when he fell to the ground, his dimwitted
|
|||
|
|
servants stumbled over him in turn, resulting in many curses,
|
|||
|
|
numerous minor scrapes, four beheadings, and a broken pancreas. It
|
|||
|
|
would go down as one of the greatest coups in rock history; to
|
|||
|
|
humanity it would simply be known as International Toe Jam Day.
|
|||
|
|
The meaning of this day has unfortunately been a bit perverted with
|
|||
|
|
the passage of time.
|
|||
|
|
Unfortunately for Bob, despite his smashing success, he soon
|
|||
|
|
found himself hurtling over the corn fields as propelled by the
|
|||
|
|
strength of the irate baron's left arm. Bob landed not far from one of
|
|||
|
|
the large and bulbous creatures, huffing and wheezing in a most
|
|||
|
|
noxious manner while squatting amongst its cornfield. Only later
|
|||
|
|
was it discovered that the creature was a distant ancestor of Ted
|
|||
|
|
Kennedy.
|
|||
|
|
Now Bob might have simply lain in that cornfield until the end
|
|||
|
|
of time if it hadn't been for a small, grimy, little peasant boy who
|
|||
|
|
had the ill luck to be named Olaf by his unconsciously sadistic
|
|||
|
|
parents. Olaf's parents worked on the field where Bob had the
|
|||
|
|
misfortune of being tossed into, and Olaf, who was rather lazy, spent
|
|||
|
|
most of his time looking the source of the mysterious burbling noises
|
|||
|
|
he often heard emanate from the field just before he drifted off to
|
|||
|
|
sleep. Poor Olaf never did find the source of those strangely
|
|||
|
|
compelling noises, but one day in his searches he quite literally
|
|||
|
|
stumbled over Bob. Not content with just chasing after some unseen
|
|||
|
|
noisemaker, Olaf had recently taken up rock collecting. With the
|
|||
|
|
addition of Bob, Olaf's collection reached three, but unfortunately,
|
|||
|
|
due to lagging attention span and lack of deep-set interest, Olaf's
|
|||
|
|
collection would grow no bigger.
|
|||
|
|
When Bob found himself picked up and stuffed into the dark
|
|||
|
|
and fetid pocket of a dirty sweatshirt he was naturally overcome
|
|||
|
|
with panic. In vain he tried to free himself from his newfound
|
|||
|
|
confinement, but only succeeded in entangling himself with the
|
|||
|
|
loathsome corpse of a hairless rat, a tenant for nearly two months
|
|||
|
|
now, and most probably the cause for much of the pungent aroma
|
|||
|
|
that permeated the air. At this point there was a small thonking
|
|||
|
|
noise, and thus Bob realized that he was not alone in his
|
|||
|
|
imprisonment.
|
|||
|
|
The rock's name was Gerald, and the other one's name, for
|
|||
|
|
there were two others total, was Ophelia. Bob soon discovered that
|
|||
|
|
though Gerald was an ignite, he possessed the worst qualities of both
|
|||
|
|
the ignite and the sedimentite. Not only did Gerald want to discuss
|
|||
|
|
whose volcano was bigger, whose volcano was hotter, and apparently
|
|||
|
|
whose volcano's eruptions had killed the most humans, he also did it
|
|||
|
|
in an annoying, boring, and toneless manner that even the most
|
|||
|
|
diehard sedimentite would envy. Of course the fact that Bob had not
|
|||
|
|
originated from a volcano never even occurred to Gerald. The end
|
|||
|
|
result of this nasal, droning soliloquy was a loud bonking noise as
|
|||
|
|
Bob rapped Gerald quite the nasty blow to the temple in frustration.
|
|||
|
|
Gerald lapsed into a wounded, very short, and very self-righteous
|
|||
|
|
silence, sure that all others of rock-kind would see it his way and
|
|||
|
|
unanimously condemn this rash and violent metamorphic's actions.
|
|||
|
|
However this thought quickly left his mind, and trying a new
|
|||
|
|
approach, he changed the subject to one even more riveting with
|
|||
|
|
excitement if such was possible: that of the aches, pains, and life-
|
|||
|
|
threatening injuries that he had suffered and still continued to suffer
|
|||
|
|
from. Bob's response to this discourse was of course rather
|
|||
|
|
predictable, and so Gerald and his aching noggin gave up, and sulked
|
|||
|
|
off to the side. Through all this the quiet Ophelia had sat rather
|
|||
|
|
wide-eyed, and altogether unsure of what she had gotten herself
|
|||
|
|
into.
|
|||
|
|
Now Gerald did indeed have quite a few aches and pains, 476
|
|||
|
|
to be exact, and though normally very slow to anger, Bob's second
|
|||
|
|
blow to his forehead had pushed Gerald over the proverbial edge,
|
|||
|
|
though this didn't immediately show. In fact it only showed when
|
|||
|
|
Ophelia wacked into Gerald from behind, quite by accident, the
|
|||
|
|
collision actually being the fault of the clumsy little boy who had
|
|||
|
|
very unskillfully tripped over a cunningly camouflaged log that
|
|||
|
|
sprawled shamelessly across the entire breadth of the road the boy
|
|||
|
|
had been running along.
|
|||
|
|
It was all very unfortunate, all very tragic, a simple case of
|
|||
|
|
accidental bonking, but it happened to happen to the wrong cranium
|
|||
|
|
at the wrong time, for good or for evil the damage had been done
|
|||
|
|
and there was no turning back. For a small moment Gerald lay
|
|||
|
|
stunned, as did the boy, both of their rocky skulls having been
|
|||
|
|
addled by the terrific blows they had received respectively. They
|
|||
|
|
were both of sturdy stock and back to speed quite quickly, but what
|
|||
|
|
this implied was very different for the two beings. For Olaf it simply
|
|||
|
|
meant picking his scrawny body back up, wiping away a few tears,
|
|||
|
|
and resuming his unwieldy gait. For Gerald, though it was
|
|||
|
|
completely different. With a long and acidic string of expletives,
|
|||
|
|
Gerald soared into the air to crash against the cowering Ophelia with
|
|||
|
|
a resounding and extremely solid ker-thwack. Ophelia loosed a yelp
|
|||
|
|
of pain, and quite unlike her normal serene and laid-back self said a
|
|||
|
|
very naughty word and pounced in return upon Gerald.
|
|||
|
|
This went on for quite some time, and Bob watched on with the
|
|||
|
|
smug and self-satisfied air of one who has started a big ruckus yet
|
|||
|
|
has somehow avoided the consequences of such. This couldn't last
|
|||
|
|
forever though, in fact Bob's smirk only lasted until one of Gerald's
|
|||
|
|
wild and uncoordinated leaps went amuck, and resulted in the
|
|||
|
|
bonking of all three combatants. Few things can make one more
|
|||
|
|
angry than when one is just sitting and enjoying a good spat between
|
|||
|
|
others only to be pulled into it. So it was with Bob, and though he
|
|||
|
|
didn't have any feathers to speak of, if he did they would certainly
|
|||
|
|
have been quite ruffled.
|
|||
|
|
Now it was Bob's turn to screech in pain, and in time, jump
|
|||
|
|
with an insane and incomprehensible battle cry that struck fear in
|
|||
|
|
the hearts of all those involved in the fray, unfortunately including
|
|||
|
|
Bob himself. But Bob was already in midair, so all he could really do
|
|||
|
|
was roll his eyes rather nervously in a surprisingly cowlike gesture.
|
|||
|
|
Regardless of eye-rolling or not, the blow turned out to be the last of
|
|||
|
|
the day, for the shoddy and cheap fabric that Olaf's sweatshirt had
|
|||
|
|
been constructed of gave way, and all three combatants plus the
|
|||
|
|
dead rat tumbled towards the hole and the eventually on out as if
|
|||
|
|
devoured by some sort of burlap vortex. All four former tenants of
|
|||
|
|
the sweatshirt landed with a minimum of trouble upon the dirt road
|
|||
|
|
that young Olaf had been racing along.
|
|||
|
|
Meanwhile, the boy Olaf continued his rapid journey over dirt,
|
|||
|
|
gravel, and pink cauliflower. He was quite excited by now, and so he
|
|||
|
|
ran exuberantly, arms flailing at seemingly anatomical impossible
|
|||
|
|
angles, legs firing in comical disarray, and greasy, matted hair
|
|||
|
|
twitching uncomfortably in the wind, all the while oblivious to the
|
|||
|
|
fact that not only had his precious rock collection deserted him, but
|
|||
|
|
also so had Bucky the Rat. And while Olaf would not take the loss of
|
|||
|
|
the rocks too hard, a few sniffles here, new hobbies involving
|
|||
|
|
mummified reptilia there, the loss of Bucky would be one that would
|
|||
|
|
haunt him for the rest of his life, causing him to lose his job, ruin
|
|||
|
|
promising relationships, and eventually drive him to hurl himself off
|
|||
|
|
a cliff and into a roiling pool of toxic goop left by the
|
|||
|
|
environmentally irresponsible aliens from the Sirius system. But
|
|||
|
|
young Olaf could not know the tragic life that lay in store for him, so
|
|||
|
|
for now he ran on.
|
|||
|
|
Back at the point of breakthrough, three dazed rocks, and one
|
|||
|
|
very dead, very ripe rat lay strewn about what the reader has
|
|||
|
|
already recognized as the path that led amongst the cornfields to the
|
|||
|
|
village of Gnihton. Though Bob wasn't sure, he could swear he had
|
|||
|
|
heard the rat emit a very squishy "Oomph" as it had hit the road.
|
|||
|
|
When he finally could bring himself to take a look at his
|
|||
|
|
surroundings, he discovered that Ophelia had already fled, while
|
|||
|
|
Gerald had taken refuge under an exceedingly ugly cauliflower plant.
|
|||
|
|
The rat meanwhile, seemed quite content where it was, and had not
|
|||
|
|
moved one bit. The sun loomed directly overhead, and Bob found
|
|||
|
|
the heat so oppressive that he scurried under the nearest
|
|||
|
|
cauliflower, which unfortunately happened to be the same one that
|
|||
|
|
Gerald was under. Feeling the heat of the day, the humidity in the
|
|||
|
|
air, and the whining of Gerald's nasal voice, Bob slowly found himself
|
|||
|
|
overcome by the oddest sensation. He found himself closing his eyes
|
|||
|
|
and letting it wash over him, wrapping him up, dragging him down
|
|||
|
|
with its hypnotic undertow. His only complaint was the periodic
|
|||
|
|
bonking noise that occasionally cropped up in the background.
|
|||
|
|
When he came to from the most pleasant dreams, he found
|
|||
|
|
himself stooped over a small hole in the ground from which
|
|||
|
|
emanated the occasional yelp. Bob wasn't sure how Gerald had
|
|||
|
|
managed to fall down and become thoroughly wedged in a hole that
|
|||
|
|
hadn't been there just a few hours ago, but not wanting to here the
|
|||
|
|
explanation, Bob used his sharper side to scrape dirt into the hole,
|
|||
|
|
quickly filling it up.
|
|||
|
|
So that in a nutshell was how Bob found himself languishing
|
|||
|
|
along the lonely, nameless road to Gnihton. Bob was determined to
|
|||
|
|
make the best of the situation though, and so nary a traveler passed
|
|||
|
|
the area without tripping and falling face first into a cauliflower at
|
|||
|
|
least once, sometimes more if Bob was especially on top of his game.
|
|||
|
|
After a couple centuries of this, Bob was surprised to find himself
|
|||
|
|
growing quite happy, despite his initial discontent. Maybe he was
|
|||
|
|
just getting old, but nonetheless he no longer felt the compulsion to
|
|||
|
|
trip human beings at all hours of the day, in fact, two or three a
|
|||
|
|
month was all that he seemed to need anymore
|
|||
|
|
The only trouble Bob ever suffered was derived from the
|
|||
|
|
cauliflowers. Several of the foppish things had actually tried to
|
|||
|
|
ingest him for nutrients, of all things, and only quick thinking and a
|
|||
|
|
well timed kick had saved him from a nasty death at the hands of a
|
|||
|
|
particularly lithe and quick plant. Bob's father had been killed that
|
|||
|
|
way, and his mother had lost a chip, all due to a large rosebush that
|
|||
|
|
had sprung up on the side of Bob's childhood mountain home for no
|
|||
|
|
apparent reason. At the time of his father's death Bob had vowed his
|
|||
|
|
revenge upon all of rose-kind. Bob had also vowed never to be
|
|||
|
|
broken up and ingested by a plant, and he certainly wasn't about to
|
|||
|
|
have this done to him by a cauliflower, especially a floppy pink one.
|
|||
|
|
The year 1187 began like any other, cold to be exact. In fact
|
|||
|
|
1187 was so cold, that even the corn-monsters were silent for the
|
|||
|
|
most part, emitting only the occasional snort for warmth. Traffic was
|
|||
|
|
especially light during the winter months, it was only in the spring
|
|||
|
|
and summer, when men and women would venture out to visit their
|
|||
|
|
distant relatives, that the fun really began. However, before this
|
|||
|
|
could happen in the year 1187, Bob had a visitor that would change
|
|||
|
|
him forever. It was early February, and Bob's first glimpse of the
|
|||
|
|
traveler was not a particularly good one. Between the cauliflower
|
|||
|
|
and the light mist, all he caught was an exceedingly long and well-
|
|||
|
|
groomed beard. As the unsuspecting fellow drew closer Bob made
|
|||
|
|
out in addition to the beard, heavy velvet robes, a large conical hat,
|
|||
|
|
bushy eyebrows, and a penetrating stare. There was a staff
|
|||
|
|
somewhere too, but Bob would remember this later only if he was
|
|||
|
|
explicitly reminded of it.
|
|||
|
|
The chap's name was Merlin and he was a wizard by trade.
|
|||
|
|
Why Merlin would ever want to go to Gnihton of all places is a
|
|||
|
|
mystery, perhaps he had had a bit too much to drink. The fact that
|
|||
|
|
he was singing a rather brazen song concerning a saucy barmaid
|
|||
|
|
named Josephine and a handsome satyr name Geoff supported the
|
|||
|
|
theory that he had a few too many mugs of the King's Finest.
|
|||
|
|
Regardless of the reason just why the wizard Merlin was staggering
|
|||
|
|
his way in the general direction of Gnihton, the fact remained that in
|
|||
|
|
his path was a rock named Bob, and Bob wasn't about to let Merlin
|
|||
|
|
off, wizard or not.
|
|||
|
|
Somehow, though, Bob calculated wrong. Instead of a slight
|
|||
|
|
bump, a yell, and a great thumping noise as was the normal
|
|||
|
|
procedure, he found himself suddenly tumbling along the path away
|
|||
|
|
from the advancing wizard. Now nothing annoyed Bob more than
|
|||
|
|
being kicked. He didn't mind being stepped on, didn't care if he was
|
|||
|
|
thrown, polished, or fetched or perhaps swallowed by a slobbering
|
|||
|
|
dog, but when it came to being kicked he drew the line. Snarling in
|
|||
|
|
anger he performed some near-miraculous calculations, dug himself
|
|||
|
|
deep into the earth, and waited.
|
|||
|
|
The results were rather predictable. Merlin may have been the
|
|||
|
|
world's most powerful wizard, but the fact remained that he was
|
|||
|
|
outrageously drunk, and upon contact with the glowering Bob, he
|
|||
|
|
pitched forward, caught himself on his staff, lost his footing again,
|
|||
|
|
and fell backwards quite squarely on his behind. The curses that
|
|||
|
|
followed were by remarkable coincidence the exact incantation for a
|
|||
|
|
rather nasty fire spell that unfortunately incinerated one of the
|
|||
|
|
slobbering, hooting corn-monsters that happened to be sleeping
|
|||
|
|
nearby.
|
|||
|
|
Now a remarkable thing happened when Merlin's boot
|
|||
|
|
connected with the braced form of Bob. Normally, Merlin's boots
|
|||
|
|
were endowed with a protective spell to guard against what had just
|
|||
|
|
occurred, apparently he had a few run-ins with other rocks too.
|
|||
|
|
However, the spell had degenerated in recent days, and being in the
|
|||
|
|
state he was, Merlin could not readily be counted on to go about
|
|||
|
|
renewing and restoring such things. So instead of repulsing Bob
|
|||
|
|
away with a magical force field, somehow Bob ended up tripping
|
|||
|
|
Merlin and absorbing the magical power of the failing protection
|
|||
|
|
spell. Later, Merlin would remember none of this. He would in fact,
|
|||
|
|
even conveniently forget the fact that he had later woken up with a
|
|||
|
|
terrific headache, stark naked, in the middle of a cornfield, with a
|
|||
|
|
large and particularly foul-breathed wampus cautiously sniffing him,
|
|||
|
|
apparently pondering his integrity as a urinal. Luckily for Merlin,
|
|||
|
|
the wampus finally decided that indeed he would work quite well as
|
|||
|
|
a urinal at precisely the same moment that Merlin magicked himself
|
|||
|
|
far away.
|
|||
|
|
As for Bob, he fell into a deep and unassailable coma for
|
|||
|
|
several years, even the passing of the Baron of Ebert didn't rouse
|
|||
|
|
him from his unnatural slumber. When he awoke he was a changed
|
|||
|
|
rock. The magic from Merlin's boot had woken something very deep,
|
|||
|
|
vast, and powerful within his mind. With the slightest effort of will
|
|||
|
|
he found himself hovering several inches above the roadway, and
|
|||
|
|
cautious experimentation soon had him zipping about as a
|
|||
|
|
bumblebee might do. One might wonder how the meager magic from
|
|||
|
|
a failed protection spell might bestow the power to fly, among other
|
|||
|
|
things. This is result of a minor corollary of the Law of Conservation
|
|||
|
|
of Magic-mass which states that quite simply, smaller masses needed
|
|||
|
|
smaller amounts of magical energy. Effectively, a spell that couldn't
|
|||
|
|
even protect a boot made Bob a wizard-king of his kind.
|
|||
|
|
Bob's time had not been idle while in the coma, for he had been
|
|||
|
|
visited by dreams of the most wondrous kind. In these dreams he
|
|||
|
|
would sit at a great table filled with the most wondrous kinds of food
|
|||
|
|
one could imagine, pebbles from the far off beaches of Mexico, quartz
|
|||
|
|
from only the purest of deposits, and of course bowl after bowl filled
|
|||
|
|
with the diced root of the wild rose. As he helped himself to these
|
|||
|
|
exotic delicacies, he would be revered and cooed at by ravishing
|
|||
|
|
young rock-girls. Later he might sometimes retire to his throne
|
|||
|
|
room where vast legions of the barbaric, uncivilized humans would
|
|||
|
|
bow down, grovel, and worship him as their new god. Those were
|
|||
|
|
Bob's dreams as he lay so inert upon the dusty road to Gnihton.
|
|||
|
|
Later, as he sped away into the crisp, chill night air on the
|
|||
|
|
wings of a magical breeze, those thoughts replayed themselves again
|
|||
|
|
and again inside his head. He had a vision, a dream, and none could
|
|||
|
|
stand in his way. He would have and stop nothing short of one thing,
|
|||
|
|
and one thing only: world domination.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
(to be continued)
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[-bambrose:bambrose@pomona.claremont.edu]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
% stoner adventures: "ston"
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
I
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Suspension in or of sounds running through my fingers and
|
|||
|
|
hair, past closed eyes, through slow-breathing mouth and nose, the
|
|||
|
|
energy of life with its superfluous sonic insignia of existence
|
|||
|
|
asserting itself against the cold of the conscious night, the
|
|||
|
|
serpentine erraticity of signals tearing through the night air.
|
|||
|
|
The sounds of water almost: the birthdream of the wide and
|
|||
|
|
explainable beach, the place to lie lulled on the warm sand, sleep
|
|||
|
|
like ocean foam filling first ears and then mind. The blue sky the
|
|||
|
|
depth of an honest eye for miles above, around. The horizon pushed
|
|||
|
|
back by the potential, the expanse of it all. Sleep flooding.
|
|||
|
|
Green skeins of light from the terminal wash over the waves of
|
|||
|
|
sheets, through the greyed sectors of the apartment. Anaesthetic
|
|||
|
|
morphing. Day beyond the walls of sleep, the inverse of the
|
|||
|
|
function, through gentle rollings of a green light, or fluid, a
|
|||
|
|
medium to move through. Sleep takes the eyelids, the walls
|
|||
|
|
assemble.
|
|||
|
|
On my back in the feverish suspension of restless sleep. This
|
|||
|
|
house owns its dead and those of many other houses. I hear the
|
|||
|
|
bug-killer. Its resilient fluorescent halo throws rainbow
|
|||
|
|
concentrics into the warm damp night. The frequent frying of its
|
|||
|
|
deterrent noise reveals the fallacy. Somewhere exploded carapaces
|
|||
|
|
land smoking on concrete. From here they are electronic impacts,
|
|||
|
|
a grating signal shearing of life.
|
|||
|
|
A car clatters by, a scrabbling insect of falling pegs and
|
|||
|
|
levers, cogs abrading gristle steel, integrated motion of
|
|||
|
|
percussive perturbation.
|
|||
|
|
An abstraction of the man selling newspapers in the debris
|
|||
|
|
corner of Westheimer and Montrose: "You didn't have to create your
|
|||
|
|
own consciousness: this one already comes with a sense of an
|
|||
|
|
encompassing substance called air that moves into empty spaces from
|
|||
|
|
all directions, a conception of liquid solid and gas, a gravity, a
|
|||
|
|
visual interpretation, and a sense of death in language."
|
|||
|
|
A six-second pause; then rainfall like an exhalation of
|
|||
|
|
finality, resigned. The dream starts in the stainless steel
|
|||
|
|
numbness of cold contact, a birthing onto polished concrete. The
|
|||
|
|
sensation of being suddenly a point in a vast space overwhelms me,
|
|||
|
|
but then it fades out to the brittle throating of an engine, and
|
|||
|
|
the cold numbness turns to the concentration whiteness of knuckles
|
|||
|
|
over knuckle-molds on a steering wheel. The freeway fires straight
|
|||
|
|
ahead, laid down evenly, permanently, upon the spinning earth; from
|
|||
|
|
there the perspective spans at lightspeed, covering ground in every
|
|||
|
|
direction, stretching reaching stretching the eyes in each way
|
|||
|
|
toward the horizon. Black road, tan earth, with shades of brown
|
|||
|
|
rising from it in waves of dry desert plant. Dust floats
|
|||
|
|
serpentine over the frayed edge of road. The rest is slick, black,
|
|||
|
|
uniform - racing toward the horizon. My eyes ache from hours of
|
|||
|
|
road. Indetermination reflects every angle. But forward it goes.
|
|||
|
|
At the wheel my mind sees through shifting waves of time myself,
|
|||
|
|
sixteen, faster along some road, lonelier. But not as empty.
|
|||
|
|
There is none of the lonely determination; press on to the
|
|||
|
|
resolution. The road is empty.
|
|||
|
|
Coalescent fading, a sensation of a gathering consciousness,
|
|||
|
|
a brief vertiginous halt, and fall.
|
|||
|
|
Carcass bus borne and worn by the sunlight of long hours
|
|||
|
|
travel departs gate three real soon now. Rushing, groaning tearing
|
|||
|
|
symphony of collision within the headcage witnesses its departure.
|
|||
|
|
Sweat and a wet sheet drawn close in my fist: resting hard white
|
|||
|
|
knuckles on my cheekbone.
|
|||
|
|
Thick-drawn paste invades my consciousness of mouth, moved by
|
|||
|
|
a languid tongue alerting itself from a clench. Absolute desire to
|
|||
|
|
return to sleep which is only marginally less intrusive than
|
|||
|
|
reality. Can't fall asleep here and rise to sweep sweat and grime
|
|||
|
|
from me in sheets of spit-warm water. It is the fourth day of
|
|||
|
|
investigation, and things have become hirsute. The legal
|
|||
|
|
implications of computing follow the political implications of
|
|||
|
|
religion: those that understand grab as much power as they can,
|
|||
|
|
even taking it from those that fully understand.
|
|||
|
|
I leave the shower doorway to stand shivering in an apartment
|
|||
|
|
where fading floodstains reach from the pipeburst decay in the
|
|||
|
|
ceiling to the erased linoleum floor, living under a benediction of
|
|||
|
|
legal complications and consequences I didn't catch the first time
|
|||
|
|
around, a series of jobs that would insult any halfconscious
|
|||
|
|
primate, two relationships which now in time feel like the rise of
|
|||
|
|
phlegm and vomit in a monday morning cough. Supine.
|
|||
|
|
Between tiny isolated tiles water coagulates as I use the
|
|||
|
|
battered payphone in the closet strewn with aging longleg spiders:
|
|||
|
|
a wiring jury-rig takes pleasant advantage of the chaos of this
|
|||
|
|
ancient building to defeat the taps that can't not be there. Spike
|
|||
|
|
stoner buddy and friend of years comes on the line, stilted in a
|
|||
|
|
distorted answering machine message, projected in a sense of
|
|||
|
|
unreality as if mimicking the abstract echo of the tape: I recede
|
|||
|
|
from the phone, almost, before realizing that Spike's intoxicated
|
|||
|
|
warning of possible troubles had realized. Left a message for
|
|||
|
|
rendezvous.
|
|||
|
|
In the alley across the street the pureness of blue sky above
|
|||
|
|
his head made wino (567-68-0515) turn left and see a diagonal fill
|
|||
|
|
of darkness blueness at end alley, where a no parking sign seemed
|
|||
|
|
suddenly very white and shock red. I take my rig, a folding
|
|||
|
|
slimline laptop, and duck through the the barely-believable boarded
|
|||
|
|
door of an abandoned motel, concertina wire rising above me and
|
|||
|
|
around me, as if mimicking the barricaded signs of the freeway.
|
|||
|
|
These signs always become diluted, however, with the graffitti, and
|
|||
|
|
no amount of wire or light can save their reflective messages.
|
|||
|
|
Inside there are no signs: even the bank informational tabs have
|
|||
|
|
been ripped from the cash machine in what was once the lobby. I
|
|||
|
|
prop a plywood slab against the machine, and activate power with a
|
|||
|
|
few jump-transfers in another part of the building. I had scouted
|
|||
|
|
this before, readied it somewhat, and now used it. The cash
|
|||
|
|
machine has a full netlink, and could be exploited: soon I am
|
|||
|
|
connected, with borrowed numbers and code, and shortly afterward
|
|||
|
|
begin plumbing my sites.
|
|||
|
|
The crisis of being hackerminded is your inability to
|
|||
|
|
relinquish the attack. You find something, you explore. If you
|
|||
|
|
can't you become irritated, angry, frustrated. The impotence of
|
|||
|
|
suburban life falls upon you, and you rage in your box. Curiosity
|
|||
|
|
is the drive; it is built so highly like a muscle that it must be
|
|||
|
|
resolved, or taken to its inverse: fear, where you let the various
|
|||
|
|
curiosities of the universe operate on their own if they let you
|
|||
|
|
operate in the illusion of your own. The knowledge must be had,
|
|||
|
|
but the process is almost more important than the knowledge. The
|
|||
|
|
striving. And the net is an open land: there are few rules and
|
|||
|
|
many sites. So into it you go, hacking it as you go along, and in
|
|||
|
|
the end you have built a network into it of yourself: places you've
|
|||
|
|
been, code you've written, hacks you've accomplished, ideas you've
|
|||
|
|
set forth, all terminating in the variety of entities you're
|
|||
|
|
allowed to live, to create, with the skill of forging identities or
|
|||
|
|
borrowing them or even straight away faking the work of an
|
|||
|
|
identity, implying a human in the negative space.
|
|||
|
|
None of it verifiable. Into the abyss, a mess of nodes and
|
|||
|
|
data and security bulletins, and something can be pulled from it.
|
|||
|
|
Away from the abyss and you wonder the depths: you wander a
|
|||
|
|
representation of the virtual in your mind. Soon you are almost
|
|||
|
|
there. The idea takes you in, as the abyss of life promises less,
|
|||
|
|
sometimes, or as it promises more. In the representation there are
|
|||
|
|
answers; it is another world, but a mockup of this one. I enter
|
|||
|
|
this world hypodermically (immediate appearance of a fishing net
|
|||
|
|
let fall upon itself) and link through a few nonfavorite sites,
|
|||
|
|
requiring some work. Sweat has penetrated the lobby with its wet
|
|||
|
|
smell. Some hours have passed. Another link acquired: a security
|
|||
|
|
pattern which carefully traps all incoming protocols (divided into
|
|||
|
|
their packets: small blasts of information encoded) and rejects the
|
|||
|
|
nonlegit ones, but fails to check within the legit ones, to see if
|
|||
|
|
there's another protocol running under them. An older emailer
|
|||
|
|
graphic compatibility succumbs easily to this manipulation, and
|
|||
|
|
soon I have legitimized a link to the indexer machine within their
|
|||
|
|
pattern, an older workhorse which serves information to the more
|
|||
|
|
current machines (which are guarded as hell). The emulsion of air
|
|||
|
|
from a car door impact. Time: should go soon. Incomings, and on
|
|||
|
|
parole, there is no room for error. Breeze through the main file
|
|||
|
|
area, like a large square room, layout is sloppily absolute order
|
|||
|
|
and predictability. Hmm. People on the machine: sublimate this
|
|||
|
|
account to a running process, mask the human nature of its
|
|||
|
|
operator. There - wait, new directory. An oddity of systems are
|
|||
|
|
the more slight-of-hand security jury rigs, which use unused bits
|
|||
|
|
to place concealment restrictions. What kind of daemon am I
|
|||
|
|
running? So far just thought this was a timeserver protocol -
|
|||
|
|
another car door. Time to get out - anything left? this file,
|
|||
|
|
that file - one there, the resource. Append it to the active
|
|||
|
|
objective file, download. Linked, closing. Out of this
|
|||
|
|
personality, into the physical world to the sound of a window seal
|
|||
|
|
breaking with a pocket knife. Cash machine off, and through
|
|||
|
|
another but now physical array of linked rooms, dashing through the
|
|||
|
|
remnants of the motel. Overturned trash cans, furniture piled into
|
|||
|
|
obstacle courses. Through a newlywed suite: out the window. Up
|
|||
|
|
onto the hot punched metal of the air conditioner, and a brief
|
|||
|
|
moment of insurgent fear in midair, then the gritting foot-
|
|||
|
|
adherence of concrete. Away in a flurry of pebbles, over the
|
|||
|
|
fence, inverted to the phalanx of some form of law enforcement
|
|||
|
|
outside. & invoking one new crypticity.
|
|||
|
|
I find Spike on the way out of his apartment, carrying a box
|
|||
|
|
hurriedly from what had become a boxlike gap in the block of small
|
|||
|
|
wooden boxes stuffed however predictably with cheap televisions,
|
|||
|
|
plastic flamingos, dead Presley paraphrenalia and thin skein-cotton
|
|||
|
|
checkerprint curtains, all of which are flickering out a window in
|
|||
|
|
the wind (in a vision tempting of flame). In some rooms the
|
|||
|
|
muddled chalky bark of a news program could be heard.
|
|||
|
|
On walking into the park we ruminate over the conditions of
|
|||
|
|
Spike's arrest, as we had ruminated many times before over trivial
|
|||
|
|
items in the now: deals, days, loves, decay.
|
|||
|
|
"So what happened?" I mumble to the crunching of Spike's feet
|
|||
|
|
pushing gravel into itself on the path. White-grey gravel,
|
|||
|
|
petrified clay. The trash of centuries paves the futures of today.
|
|||
|
|
The trash of today paves the centuries of future. The future of
|
|||
|
|
today paves over the trash of centuries.
|
|||
|
|
"I bought from Sherman" (a complete stoner, a last resort when
|
|||
|
|
jonesing hard, in a stupor from days' abuse of potent Calgary
|
|||
|
|
Cross, a golden variety of dope from the middle east, shove with
|
|||
|
|
some force a floppy disk into an older Macintosh computer sideways,
|
|||
|
|
destroying the disk drive) "who's been selling to a fed for some
|
|||
|
|
days, and is too hosed to notice the difference, who then smokes me
|
|||
|
|
out with this guy" (sacred stoner ceremony: the transfer of trust
|
|||
|
|
in a paranoid world, the sealing not so much of doors but of
|
|||
|
|
complicity, good honest complicity and trust) "and I figure, well,
|
|||
|
|
he's okay. A little geeky though - I think I should have been more
|
|||
|
|
sober, or just thought more. I was either too stoned to think or
|
|||
|
|
too stoned not to realize I wasn't. Anyway, fed's in the bag,
|
|||
|
|
finds a sample, and Sherman and I are taken downtown, papered,
|
|||
|
|
wiped off, shelved, and given streetwalk with some costly bail. I
|
|||
|
|
used my fund at the antiocean" (Perpetual Life of Antioch County:
|
|||
|
|
fund he'd had some years) "because I don't care what the cost, I'm
|
|||
|
|
not going back in. Out here I can move, even if I'm living in
|
|||
|
|
shit. In there, I'm trapped in the fields of Hades, and I
|
|||
|
|
suffocate."
|
|||
|
|
A pigeon gawks past us in jerking mock gesture of
|
|||
|
|
surveillance, white-walled eyes flapping up and down past us, a
|
|||
|
|
thrusting of rhythmic terror. Spike shrugs a tired abstraction of
|
|||
|
|
apathy from his face.
|
|||
|
|
Birds wander across wide wet grass amidst crushed cups
|
|||
|
|
stenching of soft foamy lager, rich in taste as the dingy water
|
|||
|
|
from the city, paper plates smeared with browning lasagna, crumpled
|
|||
|
|
beer cans, and three sheet clumps stained uneven grey by time and
|
|||
|
|
water. Empty anger of being gut-punched and flat out fucked with
|
|||
|
|
what the child's world prescribes as an ultimate evil, the utterly
|
|||
|
|
"unfair," if that term ever had any meaning before obliterated as
|
|||
|
|
useless in itself by adulthood. A resort in the passive expedient
|
|||
|
|
of present. The trash can a shocked city mouth with its cutting
|
|||
|
|
rim against a morning felt, wetted newspaper, soft drink cups, a
|
|||
|
|
broken umbrella, a marriage notice, a divorce letter, a full roll
|
|||
|
|
of toilet paper, an empty pack of cigarettes or candy wrapper, a
|
|||
|
|
standard desk pencil sharpener, one blunt corner dented with blood,
|
|||
|
|
against a rotting B.L.T. Television screens light a row of
|
|||
|
|
suburban homes where children kick a liver down a street.
|
|||
|
|
Overhead the sky burns red at midday. "Smog," Spike
|
|||
|
|
sidesquints back at me, turning from above. The federal courthouse
|
|||
|
|
awaits us; also the court recordkeeper who can tell us what we
|
|||
|
|
need. At the window: "Hello. I'd like to check up on charges
|
|||
|
|
pending for a friend," then names given, which always makes me
|
|||
|
|
nervous, even though I live under many different names. Something
|
|||
|
|
about naming an object makes it known; looking into eyes naming you
|
|||
|
|
suddenly ties you back to everything. The animal jolt of being
|
|||
|
|
ID'd by a fed: "Good evening, Burr," and suddenly a shock of sweat
|
|||
|
|
up the spine. Instead smile: "Good evening, officer" and then show
|
|||
|
|
shoes how to shuffle. Through the window the swirling of the angry
|
|||
|
|
godseye around the sun. "Ok, I've found two records, one for each,
|
|||
|
|
and both are scheduled to be tried in Meekin County" (where the
|
|||
|
|
hell? it's a courthouse, we'll find a way to get there) "but the
|
|||
|
|
dates have run past, so there's a global warrant. I'd warn your
|
|||
|
|
friends."
|
|||
|
|
"Thanks. Why Meekin County? Isn't this federal
|
|||
|
|
jurisdiction?" Her glasses lower to reflect the form in
|
|||
|
|
triplicate. "I don't know," drawn cold voice, but not cold toward
|
|||
|
|
me, just lost. Glasses now reflect themselves. "Let me find
|
|||
|
|
someone."
|
|||
|
|
And so we are let into a back room, a small conference room
|
|||
|
|
turned office, in the federal building, where a small man with
|
|||
|
|
round glasses peers at us from under a sweaty brow. "God it's
|
|||
|
|
hot," he greeted us.
|
|||
|
|
"We're just here to check up on some friends." The obligatory
|
|||
|
|
of-course-you-are follows; if he asked for ID he could verify, but
|
|||
|
|
there is a sense of compartmentalization to this office, of
|
|||
|
|
ineffective efficiency. "Only 5 Too Many Days Till The Weekend,"
|
|||
|
|
reads a wall sign, with interchangeable numbers. Today's
|
|||
|
|
Wednesday. His keyboard banging retrives me to the present.
|
|||
|
|
Papers stack in leaning collages of chaos toward each other; from
|
|||
|
|
three stacks he pulls cliplets of text from varying levels,
|
|||
|
|
collating in his roughened hands with short pugilistic fingers.
|
|||
|
|
"These are the files...wonder what they were thinking...well,
|
|||
|
|
you've been relegated to Meekin County, which is" (and a pause, in
|
|||
|
|
which we aid him in drawing flat a state map over the marker-
|
|||
|
|
textured table, battered with coffee rims from years of frustration
|
|||
|
|
past, stained with chocolate from morning donuts and any other
|
|||
|
|
enticements to bring one into a dark square barely within three
|
|||
|
|
dimensions at the end of the line in the courthouse building)
|
|||
|
|
"...not here...well, we are federal, so" (a return to the keyboard
|
|||
|
|
to look it up) "judas priest - they put you in kentucky."
|
|||
|
|
Kentucky?
|
|||
|
|
"I don't know," he giggles, a placed mask of flexiplastic over
|
|||
|
|
his mouse and nose (airline drill). "I don't know why they did it,
|
|||
|
|
but the only person who can change that is a judge. And" (reaching
|
|||
|
|
down to a cannister beneath him, twisting the knob with a tight
|
|||
|
|
blast of hiss) giggling, "I don't think you want to see a judge.
|
|||
|
|
I don't think you want to see him at all. Your friends might be in
|
|||
|
|
trouble, then. Wouldn't want to see them in trouble, would you?
|
|||
|
|
So what I'd do is go to Meekin County, and see what you can do with
|
|||
|
|
federales there. I'm just a small federale here, and I can do no
|
|||
|
|
more - even if I wanted your friends convicted, all I can do is
|
|||
|
|
inform you and perhaps take a confession - do you want to confess?
|
|||
|
|
I doubted not that you wouldn't. I doubt with a bold chin, because
|
|||
|
|
it's my job to doubt."
|
|||
|
|
Nitrous, christ I hadn't done that for a while. "Can I bum a
|
|||
|
|
hit?" Spike shanks a steel corner of elbow to my rib, but all he
|
|||
|
|
gets is a funny noise, and laughter from the little man. "Sure,
|
|||
|
|
sure," he says, handing it over. I inhale a bit, but not too much;
|
|||
|
|
littleman takes a hit. "You don't have to worry," he says, handing
|
|||
|
|
over a sheet with our pictures on it. "The clerk out front
|
|||
|
|
identified you."
|
|||
|
|
"So are we arrested?" Spike's voice straight up from behind
|
|||
|
|
me.
|
|||
|
|
"No, we can't do that, until you identify yourselves, which I
|
|||
|
|
doubt not you will not do. We really couldn't do much there except
|
|||
|
|
point you to another office, which is six feet past the exit from
|
|||
|
|
this building. No, we file you, if we wish, but we really don't
|
|||
|
|
expect much. Computer crimes, hmm? Problem is you won't be able
|
|||
|
|
to quit it. You'll be back in six months."
|
|||
|
|
"Well, we're not even convicted yet," Spike says. "So we have
|
|||
|
|
to go to Kentucky if we wish to be convicted?"
|
|||
|
|
"Your friends would, yes," eyes straightening to blue,
|
|||
|
|
recently tinged with laughing wetness. Ours with redness. Sky
|
|||
|
|
confining, hot, like the walls and foamtiled ceiling of this place.
|
|||
|
|
Artificial cave for dog. And another inhale. "But they might just
|
|||
|
|
want to go there and make an appearance."
|
|||
|
|
"Why?" this time I'm curious, moreso than Spike, who's
|
|||
|
|
already planning to blow it off.
|
|||
|
|
"We're allowed to dispense information and so I will. There
|
|||
|
|
was a recent addition to the lastest gangbuster bill, the one about
|
|||
|
|
custody? that says that if you can find local authorities to
|
|||
|
|
arrest you and sentence you, then the feds can't do so - so you get
|
|||
|
|
a lesser sentence. Local authorities are much more lax about
|
|||
|
|
computing crime. This was designed for gangs, so it'll have to be
|
|||
|
|
a two of you - you have to agree to dissolve the gang is the only
|
|||
|
|
catch." Dissolve the gang - that's not that hard, rotating in
|
|||
|
|
mind.
|
|||
|
|
"Problem is if they catch you working together again, there is
|
|||
|
|
a small matter of felony." This time we all - Spike, I, littleman
|
|||
|
|
- take a hit. "So we could cop a plea, lesser, inform on each
|
|||
|
|
other, dissolve the gang, and walk out with - what?"
|
|||
|
|
"Oh..." the littleman's smile gets larger, a big grin, with
|
|||
|
|
the moisture of his oilysweat and his eyes mixing along his cheeks
|
|||
|
|
over the moving orifice. "Well, our lawmakers are trying to patch
|
|||
|
|
this one, but they haven't yet. If you get there in time."
|
|||
|
|
"What happens?" Spike is unusually alert.
|
|||
|
|
"It was a little element we didn't think of. It was put in to
|
|||
|
|
appease to prison overcrowding people, and requires the attachment
|
|||
|
|
to the gangbuster bill for the ahem more stringent elements. If
|
|||
|
|
you were to inform on each other, and then dissolve, the legal
|
|||
|
|
system would give you one year's probation, by mail."
|
|||
|
|
"By mail?" Spike and I looking awry.
|
|||
|
|
"Yes, that being the one federal agency that always comes
|
|||
|
|
through. And they don't but it makes more sense to say they do.
|
|||
|
|
So you would have to mail back a statement of existence including
|
|||
|
|
proof of gainful employment back to Meekin County once every six
|
|||
|
|
months, total twice, for a year." Quizzical incision of
|
|||
|
|
perspective: "I don't suspect that will be difficult for you,
|
|||
|
|
seeing as how documents can created by those with access to the
|
|||
|
|
necessaries."
|
|||
|
|
Into my hands came the paper, flecking skin from my inside
|
|||
|
|
thumb and leaving blood on the edge of the page (no crime in that).
|
|||
|
|
Two previous arrests, one a community service dodge (non-malicious
|
|||
|
|
hacking: a faked bill in email to our state senate which declared
|
|||
|
|
a repeal of all sodomy laws in case of nuclear attack, caught by an
|
|||
|
|
alert local CO who found my line making too many calls "for human
|
|||
|
|
fingers to dial" at the court; I was dialing by hand, but i can
|
|||
|
|
dial like a banshee, still didn't know what I was doing) and one an
|
|||
|
|
offhook with the help of a good lawyer my father hired (when I was
|
|||
|
|
still tight with the folks - I wonder what they're doing now, after
|
|||
|
|
divorce and children gone - probably still alive, even, oddly I
|
|||
|
|
hope so, afterall), but then the ugly part: three pending cases,
|
|||
|
|
the most recent two days old, with noshows in various courts. I
|
|||
|
|
hadn't known what to do about these. Two of them were legit; the
|
|||
|
|
second one was not, an attempt to pin a local computer crime on me
|
|||
|
|
because I was known to associate with two of the personalities, but
|
|||
|
|
the truth was that I bought drugs from them. One of them went down
|
|||
|
|
with Sherman, too, and that probably blew the whole mess. Poor
|
|||
|
|
Spike. His cases were further complex: an ancient warrant for
|
|||
|
|
arrest for a decade-old drug-dealing case, and then the recent
|
|||
|
|
charge, which was growing in credence the further time receded the
|
|||
|
|
former case. Fuck. He's hosed. And a federal file already opened
|
|||
|
|
to resume investigation of the first, which means that we can't
|
|||
|
|
just delete files - there's human contact that must be made. A
|
|||
|
|
heavy chestheaving to reduce the stress, the impact coming on with
|
|||
|
|
the pressure of the air conditioning, like hands suddenly grasping
|
|||
|
|
the temples of the skull.
|
|||
|
|
"Thanks," I say to the little man, shaking his hand. You
|
|||
|
|
didn't have to tell us that. He smiles up with a brightness I
|
|||
|
|
hadn't seen. Spike shakes too. Over the cheesy office speakers
|
|||
|
|
plays another moaning womn pop song, an r&b washout with occasional
|
|||
|
|
highlights in the solo. I imagined some rented-warehouse studio
|
|||
|
|
somespace where a studio musicians, full of dreams both live and
|
|||
|
|
buried, gathered to help put out this cheeseball dreamer music,
|
|||
|
|
perhaps edging in where they could a personal touch, something done
|
|||
|
|
well in a flood of mediocrity, not as much to tell us they exist
|
|||
|
|
but to prove to themselves that they had. At least in
|
|||
|
|
potentiality. We walk through the gaping office doorspace while
|
|||
|
|
behind us inhalation sucks wind. The plaque reads "Joseph
|
|||
|
|
Smallish" in bold artdeco, and beneath it "Assistant Executor of
|
|||
|
|
Documentarian Confluence" in an uninfluential roman font.
|
|||
|
|
We walk into a thick brush area: bending live oak shelter with
|
|||
|
|
a floor of smooth cracked nuts, a shifting surface. Spike removes
|
|||
|
|
a scarab from his pocket, a bright fakery of imitation. He pushes
|
|||
|
|
the head aside to give access to a simple bowl in the aluminum.
|
|||
|
|
"THE CURSE OF KING TUT" is engraved in the metal. A small bag of
|
|||
|
|
thick green emerges into his hand. "Some Berkeley purple-assed
|
|||
|
|
kind," Spike says, explaining the origins of this plant in the
|
|||
|
|
mountains of Northern California, where graduate students had
|
|||
|
|
planted some dope within walking range of an observatory, and
|
|||
|
|
gradually mutated their strain to create naturally hideous
|
|||
|
|
marijuana plants: thick, ratty, weedy, close to the earth, but
|
|||
|
|
extremely potent, with heavy fat clouds of bluegrey smoke
|
|||
|
|
announcing its consumption. Last time I smoked this expresses
|
|||
|
|
Spike with his hands, quickly fastly surely loading the bowl, I was
|
|||
|
|
a void in myself, an oblivion of temporary incapacity. Our smoke
|
|||
|
|
fills the leaves and branches of the oak, netted with the tight-
|
|||
|
|
stretched canopies of the caterpillars.
|
|||
|
|
Persistence of a species made stubborn by its irascible will
|
|||
|
|
to live (a truck parked sometimes up the street from our house
|
|||
|
|
which had a glove inserted on the stalk of a running light, a spear
|
|||
|
|
tipped with a warning glow, with the end of the extension running
|
|||
|
|
up the middle finger, giving the characteristic expression of human
|
|||
|
|
will and resistance, a life-giving irreverence).
|
|||
|
|
Night lurked in the bruised air above the trees. Spike gave
|
|||
|
|
me a glance: we were not out of the city, had not yet removed our
|
|||
|
|
stuff: the heaping belongings roughly linked to provide a
|
|||
|
|
structural life, had not found any cash of note: a vehicle needed,
|
|||
|
|
dope needed, some time to lie low, needed, had not found a
|
|||
|
|
destination: some resignation, fatigue in it. We were to stay in
|
|||
|
|
this city, this swelling humid despair, where the rain and mold
|
|||
|
|
left dark streaks down the buildings and cars rushed back and forth
|
|||
|
|
from air conditioned monoliths to preserve their occupants from the
|
|||
|
|
incessant sun, for the night.
|
|||
|
|
This city. Aging of occupants current by occurrences, past
|
|||
|
|
events involving despair and expedient thoughtlessness by others
|
|||
|
|
disciplining the intellect to diminution and the fear to
|
|||
|
|
acerbicism, ages of solitude spent examining the affect of a place
|
|||
|
|
so much imbued with the spirit of decay. In the moisture of the
|
|||
|
|
air anything rotted, and the instant decomposition allowed anything
|
|||
|
|
fixed to soften in the center, a swelling contusion of sweetness
|
|||
|
|
and failure.
|
|||
|
|
Stark acidic the air swelling around the cab. Hot a fetid
|
|||
|
|
breath of some creature, the residue of exhaust in moisture adding
|
|||
|
|
a burning sensation to the air's touch. Spike a series of yellowed
|
|||
|
|
reflection lines against the burnt fading of the sun. Red
|
|||
|
|
malevolent, impotent orb, drowning in a melting slide into the
|
|||
|
|
dense horizon of the city. Nightfall: to stand hard against the
|
|||
|
|
lapse of daylight's safety, of the ability to have eyes. The dusk
|
|||
|
|
moments before the rules change. Must find a line to the
|
|||
|
|
unexplored cities of the net. In time. I cup a hand to slide into
|
|||
|
|
my pocket, pulling out a roll of bag and dope.
|
|||
|
|
Grand Rapids kind clears out the brain and sinuses. Called
|
|||
|
|
rapid for its onset and the day-following deterioration of the
|
|||
|
|
digestive system, grown in thick leafy bunches hanging on the sides
|
|||
|
|
of the mountains framing the rapids into the genitalia of a
|
|||
|
|
sleeping god. Noone would think to look there, tired hands holding
|
|||
|
|
the thick sticky bud. Squeeze not crush into a bowl. Tired
|
|||
|
|
energy. Our bowl the small virgin mary plastic figurine Spike had
|
|||
|
|
bought on a whim from a machine next to St. Vinyl's Cathedral which
|
|||
|
|
molded the figure while we watched. Before it cooled, Spike and
|
|||
|
|
Swiss army knife added some modifications, doubled and sealed when
|
|||
|
|
we returned: a thin steel tube bent and widened at one end,
|
|||
|
|
inserted from expanded mouth of virgin, a thick smile as if painted
|
|||
|
|
stubbornly with layered makeup, cracking like drying mud beside a
|
|||
|
|
road painted with the afterimages of whipping-past cars.
|
|||
|
|
In the interstice of her legs lies buried a bowl; on her lips
|
|||
|
|
mine go, sucking in the hot but sweet smoke, a curling warmth in
|
|||
|
|
the lungs like a hot shower in midwinter as a child. Before winter
|
|||
|
|
wasn't a season: before the air heaved through me with great cold
|
|||
|
|
emotion, in darkened silhouettes of apartments, watching the
|
|||
|
|
endless city race away from me in its expanse. Under a similarly
|
|||
|
|
large but infinitesimal expanse which reached from me to before my
|
|||
|
|
birth, a darkening blue stretching past the microcosmic planet,
|
|||
|
|
into the cycling of the stars and seasons, the flaring and dying of
|
|||
|
|
figures too large for me to even perceive them. Dwarfing our
|
|||
|
|
earth. Blocked-out patches of glowing purple recede and the smoke
|
|||
|
|
mutters from my lips, handing the virgin to Spike. "Kiss her," I
|
|||
|
|
say, laughing, the bitter rind of sunset growing on the edge of my
|
|||
|
|
mouth. He shrugs, and lowers the feather flame.
|
|||
|
|
The light moves down the spine of the statue, a bronze warrior
|
|||
|
|
bent to task in the center fountain. From our bench under olive
|
|||
|
|
trees we watch the shine fade, lapsing into the water, the closing
|
|||
|
|
peaceful darkness. We smoke more than our fair share of
|
|||
|
|
inscrutable crushing marijuana: our eyes blear, our fingers numbly
|
|||
|
|
tread, our giggles muted by our mumblevoices. Our hunger is
|
|||
|
|
another blank echo as we move down the greylined streets, talking
|
|||
|
|
above the fading hum of grime: about Less Than Zero, Spike's recent
|
|||
|
|
read. I abstract: "E. Ellis writes in the current to express the
|
|||
|
|
utter disconnection of his characters; they don't relate to what is
|
|||
|
|
happening, it goes by as if onscreen; they don't relate to what
|
|||
|
|
they are doing: they are either putting drugs or bodily fluids into
|
|||
|
|
themselves, but each is an experience entirely in the present, with
|
|||
|
|
no connection to the events of their actions or present or future;
|
|||
|
|
they have no use for memory, and never will; they have lapsed into
|
|||
|
|
a dissonant abstraction whereby they don't need to reach, to touch,
|
|||
|
|
other than as objects: reminds me of Catcher in the Rye, where he
|
|||
|
|
ends collapsing as he tries to reach however pathetically his
|
|||
|
|
sister with love, something he doesn't know from family where he is
|
|||
|
|
a liability or school where he can't interact between his actions
|
|||
|
|
and his self, barely aware of either, only of what is occurring,
|
|||
|
|
effects which he can't predict and connections to himself he
|
|||
|
|
doesn't understand. In the end his reaching takes him beyond the
|
|||
|
|
catcher; he falls; fall from grace. In the end of Less Than Zero
|
|||
|
|
nothing happens, the present continues, and the action doesn't
|
|||
|
|
matter, as it is a monotone going past anyway, the self
|
|||
|
|
disconnected."
|
|||
|
|
He refines: "That book sucks. They babble, because they have
|
|||
|
|
nothing to say. They have money and they exist. Fuck 'em. What
|
|||
|
|
do we need for that shit? Holden Caulfield tries his hardest, but
|
|||
|
|
fuck him too: who wants to erase all of the fuck you signs in the
|
|||
|
|
world? He tries, but he's just young. Soon he'll find a way to
|
|||
|
|
cut it off, to get back into life."
|
|||
|
|
I abstract: "He ends in catatonia."
|
|||
|
|
A bus passes with schoolchildren faces pressed to windows,
|
|||
|
|
mouths open in suction to mock us, but no laughter. A
|
|||
|
|
hallucination. Passing a bookstore window: a bible flips two pages
|
|||
|
|
open, and hangs listless in the window, the drool of boredom
|
|||
|
|
leaking from its binding. "Fuck them too," Spike drolls, and we
|
|||
|
|
pass laughing into the night, aware of the bus passing us in time,
|
|||
|
|
the aging of lives we would never encounter again in a city of
|
|||
|
|
numbers uncountable by human fingers.
|
|||
|
|
Stopped at a convenience store somewhere north of the turn we
|
|||
|
|
need to take. Freeways course by, sidestreets break for entrances
|
|||
|
|
to greater flows, which in turn flood larger roads. Much empty
|
|||
|
|
street under the noise of cars tearing the night in random
|
|||
|
|
patterns, but discernibly pulsing, with pauses between groups
|
|||
|
|
infecting the air with their abrasion. Over the rim of the freeway
|
|||
|
|
streetlights spread their punctual halos into the night, pulsing in
|
|||
|
|
turn with the crushing impact on the light of passing cars. The
|
|||
|
|
convenience store standardized: fluorescent spill through the gated
|
|||
|
|
burglar bars, windows stuffed with as much promotional poster and
|
|||
|
|
warning sign as can obstruct the outside world without suffocating
|
|||
|
|
the inside in cramped darkness. The inside light is also
|
|||
|
|
processed: neat curtains of fluorescence shade the aisles in
|
|||
|
|
quantified representations of each shade of light, giving a darkish
|
|||
|
|
hue to some of the packaging, a feeling like day-old eyeopen on
|
|||
|
|
speed, a false freshness of suspension. Smooth fat sharkskin of
|
|||
|
|
cop cars lowslung cruising past, smooth motions between lanes,
|
|||
|
|
quiet turns into parking lots. Behind the windshield sunglasses
|
|||
|
|
and relentless eyes. Almost as if hoping their randomness would
|
|||
|
|
create a new system. Spike and I get a sixpack of Miller Genuine
|
|||
|
|
Draft, with its updated apparel of quality appeal masking only the
|
|||
|
|
musky murmurs of decrepit flavor. We approach the boarded chain
|
|||
|
|
store across a wide lot, and watch shadow figures spread stalky
|
|||
|
|
legs from windows and run soundlessly across broad asphalt plane,
|
|||
|
|
overseen by the polytheism of halide lamps stretching firmly into
|
|||
|
|
the sky before the larger mass of stores. Our empty bottles, back
|
|||
|
|
into the sixpack, point to a decision: where next? We leave the
|
|||
|
|
bottles boxed and bagged against a sentinel halide eyestalk, to be
|
|||
|
|
discovered whenever society returns to that fragmentary praire of
|
|||
|
|
pavement.
|
|||
|
|
Feet often know when the mind is confused. We walk boldy, the
|
|||
|
|
way each can knowing not much will happen of consequence to the
|
|||
|
|
world, knowing that image defers the realization of the tight box
|
|||
|
|
one must turn in. Loud conversation. As if they have anything to
|
|||
|
|
take from us, or us from them: we're moving through. I could think
|
|||
|
|
of anchors, and ways to stay, but there's no real point. Dawn
|
|||
|
|
comes to the city eyes open or closed on the human. So move now,
|
|||
|
|
reach out, feel the freedom of having a life one can toss so easily
|
|||
|
|
onto the pyres rising as if from 55-gallon trash drums in the
|
|||
|
|
corners of the city that constitute its consumptive lurch at
|
|||
|
|
warmth.
|
|||
|
|
Open house on sixth street: a grey wood enclosure with each
|
|||
|
|
board sucked dry inward on itself, drawing back from those that
|
|||
|
|
surround it. The impression left is more fence-dwelling than
|
|||
|
|
house. Spike and I enter, paying folded bills to a mime with
|
|||
|
|
bowler hat in the door. He smiles at Spike, grimaces like a
|
|||
|
|
monkey, cheeks drawn back strictly, at me. Inside punchbowl and
|
|||
|
|
walking dim rooms of people. Punchbowl: I park at it, draw a
|
|||
|
|
saucer-cup of guava-tainted alcohol, incognito.
|
|||
|
|
Very much the sucking dry corners of mouths the alcohol,
|
|||
|
|
beverage. The starch abstraction of fruit hovers in the
|
|||
|
|
aftertaste, the foreground taste devised like most to conceal
|
|||
|
|
alcohol not accentuate a flavor, being several smokescreens of
|
|||
|
|
citrus simultaneously. The most important thing to remember about
|
|||
|
|
the universe is that it is infinite enough for all things to end in
|
|||
|
|
paradox. Even the repetition is excessively recombinant,
|
|||
|
|
misapplied in parallel.
|
|||
|
|
I once called upon a friend from a previous shade of life,
|
|||
|
|
another time when we'd been closer in proximity and mindset, our
|
|||
|
|
divergent paths having us diverted, and then left, sad, lonely in
|
|||
|
|
alone motel cubicles. He leaned back against the grain of the wood
|
|||
|
|
stained, its fibrous structure rising upward toward the fading
|
|||
|
|
kitchen light above him. His eyes were closed.
|
|||
|
|
The door had not been locked, and I had turned the handle to
|
|||
|
|
go in. Clicking of the bolt whisked from lock. (We have
|
|||
|
|
sublimated nihilism into being the structure, instead of dictating
|
|||
|
|
the structure above nihilism: refusal of relativism). The mind
|
|||
|
|
pulled clean from its fabric. "Ray?"
|
|||
|
|
"Abstract yourself. Quiet. Close the door. Close your eyes.
|
|||
|
|
Close your ears. Think of the focus."
|
|||
|
|
"Ray?"
|
|||
|
|
"There's nothing in here. A big open space with nothing
|
|||
|
|
happening. Nothing to clutter, nothing to order. No permanent
|
|||
|
|
dispensation to disrupt. Listen to the silence - or the lack of
|
|||
|
|
even that, the absence of silent sound. The absence. There is
|
|||
|
|
nothing. It is beautiful."
|
|||
|
|
"Ray, you're a burner."
|
|||
|
|
"Keep an open mind. In my space this is what I want. And
|
|||
|
|
this is the life! There's nothing goin here, kid, and I couldn't
|
|||
|
|
be happier."
|
|||
|
|
I made Ray a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and put it on
|
|||
|
|
his knee. Washing the knife off, I sighed: that week there had
|
|||
|
|
been many casualties of consciousness, such as Ray.
|
|||
|
|
On the back side of the door, which I closed as I left, was
|
|||
|
|
nailed a fluttering pink paper petal, crinkled, and a collection of
|
|||
|
|
coupons. What nailed them there was a knife. I went into the
|
|||
|
|
hall, and left Ray to his silence. I thought about Ray on the way
|
|||
|
|
back, through the graffitti-splashed bus, through the aisles of
|
|||
|
|
lighted signs, through the rows of parked cars, through the crowds
|
|||
|
|
suffocating in unison in their massings. Good luck peace Ray.
|
|||
|
|
At summer camp I'd felt like that: shut off the world, shut it
|
|||
|
|
shut it let me stay here. In the shade on my bunk: nothing much is
|
|||
|
|
happening here, if I be quiet, I can hold this, maybe. Then
|
|||
|
|
nostalgia for all else going by, for friends growing up, for lives
|
|||
|
|
moving onward. Of course my reticence was popular: one less
|
|||
|
|
incompetent kid to be a liability on the baseball team. Count off,
|
|||
|
|
go. I stand in the shadow of the treads of their feet racing
|
|||
|
|
forward: a dream of some fear later, that of the world tracking
|
|||
|
|
ahead suddenly, leaving one the only anomaly in a flat, empty
|
|||
|
|
landscape. A hard summer.
|
|||
|
|
The solace I had was riflery: we didn't shoot real guns, they
|
|||
|
|
weren't loud, and they'd let you practice on free time. Cheap Red
|
|||
|
|
Rider BB guns with rust filigree. BBs aged, copper turned dark.
|
|||
|
|
Blasting away at cans: Old Milwaukee, Pearl Light, Lone Star,
|
|||
|
|
occasional Budweiser. At first I had no grasp of the difficult
|
|||
|
|
short too-light rifle; I propped it with my head and then tried to
|
|||
|
|
eye through the sights.
|
|||
|
|
"Look, that's not it," from one of the counselors. I look up
|
|||
|
|
eyes rolling back to see him, unsquinting. He smelled often of
|
|||
|
|
cigarettes, was tall, with a flattened body and tightly rolled
|
|||
|
|
limbs sprawling out from it. "You're moving your head so you see
|
|||
|
|
the target. No matter what you want to see through the sights,
|
|||
|
|
they still line up at something, and that's what the gun's pointing
|
|||
|
|
at." I tried again, compliant, silent, moving in a fog of ideas,
|
|||
|
|
wondering if that's what I had done, and wondering often where I
|
|||
|
|
looked. "That's still not it," and then a firm but not mad hand on
|
|||
|
|
my scalp, moving my head still. "Move the gun. Whatever you want
|
|||
|
|
to see, you have to make it see."
|
|||
|
|
Kindness in his stumbling speech, hidden behind a few decades
|
|||
|
|
of conduct guidelines for teen males. Wonder where he went to;
|
|||
|
|
hopefully out of that place. Assholes running it: "Maybe that's
|
|||
|
|
not how Jim saw it, Burr. You think that he meant to provoke you,
|
|||
|
|
but maybe that's just his way - and then you hit him. If it were
|
|||
|
|
you saying that, I'd believe you, but it's just him." - from a camp
|
|||
|
|
leader, about Jim, the guy who would come up and take your shit
|
|||
|
|
from your footlocker, and then lie about it. If I were Jim,
|
|||
|
|
asshole would make sense. Camp didn't make sense: even the sports
|
|||
|
|
which had tons of rules had those rules modulated into the wishing
|
|||
|
|
intent of the players while I was there.
|
|||
|
|
I disliked games where you couldn't take the ball off of the
|
|||
|
|
field (past the out of bounds lines and into the forest, maybe) and
|
|||
|
|
had so many rules that didn't make sense, that held back - but I
|
|||
|
|
thought there were moments of brilliance, like the one time I hit
|
|||
|
|
a soccerball, and it was a good pass, a good solid one, once. For
|
|||
|
|
anyone else there a daily occurrence; for me a triumph. But the
|
|||
|
|
game goes on, and I saw that. My triumph led to someone else's
|
|||
|
|
score, someone who was of no mind to speak to me anyway. I got in
|
|||
|
|
a lot of fights at camp.
|
|||
|
|
Headshaken. Eyes fully onfocused on that, feeling of the
|
|||
|
|
muscles pulling back to focus. A door closing. Entry to a movie.
|
|||
|
|
This party is an echo of others in the splayed light on the
|
|||
|
|
wall, different colors deemed festive. Calorous. Wandering the
|
|||
|
|
drinktray. Going back to the punchbowl; Spike is armsaround cutely
|
|||
|
|
talking to a quick whiteblond-haired artist from the district over,
|
|||
|
|
a reach of grey houses with neon signatures lining angular windows.
|
|||
|
|
Racing after processions of characteristicisms with the same
|
|||
|
|
ambivalence I follow these drinks, cheap brittle-shell plastic cups
|
|||
|
|
with fluid that glows resonatingly to the dissonant lights: our
|
|||
|
|
conception of modern, our modern parties. How cultured adult we
|
|||
|
|
have become. Sodden. Fuck. Spike takes her off into the night,
|
|||
|
|
doors swinging shut like a shattering of saloon. Alone. The
|
|||
|
|
cringing damn of banging tables with shut fists and impotent anger.
|
|||
|
|
Drinktray.
|
|||
|
|
Like most other urban attachments this party holds to the icon
|
|||
|
|
of halfbuilt houses decorated sparsely, as if the lack of
|
|||
|
|
completion holds excuse for the lack of overdecorating. As if we
|
|||
|
|
can't throw out our own excesses, excuses. Wallboard shreds away
|
|||
|
|
to reveal the fish spines of structural housing, wood aged without
|
|||
|
|
fading grey, hidden by the staid bulk of the house. Posted against
|
|||
|
|
the skyline, posited against the night. Through these rooms half
|
|||
|
|
made servers tuxedoed and shortskirted women (torpedoed: Spike)
|
|||
|
|
wander in predetermined paths, implying a destiny over the past in
|
|||
|
|
their topheavy desertion, carrying drinks. I take another, cheap
|
|||
|
|
plastic drink a stem imitation of flower in its simple cupping,
|
|||
|
|
easy crunching as the empty pop-shatters under my heel. I've left
|
|||
|
|
a trail. I see them slick with the residue of beverage, spit,
|
|||
|
|
sugar, distinctively pungent (sharp smell like fresh cheese mold)
|
|||
|
|
alcohol: a hall trashcan with slack sides of reflective black
|
|||
|
|
plastic, the pilings of detritus inside, all lit with the neon
|
|||
|
|
surgings like one's cheeks inflate with light in the final moments
|
|||
|
|
of a decisive suicide.
|
|||
|
|
Into the void. Spike gone and I am left standing in
|
|||
|
|
antiposition to the wall, the slouch I should carry with my age
|
|||
|
|
gone, the dramatic uptightness in my stomach abstracted by the
|
|||
|
|
flood of artificial blood. Addiction begins when the reaction to
|
|||
|
|
the substance as foreign ends. Slurping something icy, cold with
|
|||
|
|
the seething warmth that spreads from impact points in the tongue
|
|||
|
|
outward to the mouth, the spine, afterwards. Aftereffect the
|
|||
|
|
impact of the image, afterwards. Time becomes disconnected like
|
|||
|
|
the body: the arms move as the legs should follow in a normally
|
|||
|
|
coordinated movement, the top half of time sliding forward on a
|
|||
|
|
meltingness not unlike the slurring of my vision. Wander into the
|
|||
|
|
next room, the arches of the doorway passing over me like a
|
|||
|
|
reflection of my cold, bent and wanton spine.
|
|||
|
|
Tables here, beetles clustered up close against the walls,
|
|||
|
|
disposed away from the doors. The stiffening smiles of quick
|
|||
|
|
glances of verification; my UPC code is read. The laser flashing
|
|||
|
|
across my body like the light in their eyes. Quick blonde faces,
|
|||
|
|
heart-shaped like I'm told they should be. You go for the
|
|||
|
|
objective, accomplish, and then get out. You go in, talk their
|
|||
|
|
talk, and then they let you in. You gotta play it rough, straight
|
|||
|
|
up just don't work. Cheap novels, detective. Dicktalk rough and
|
|||
|
|
tongue. Move into a chair shatterable plastic like the cups, two
|
|||
|
|
people on the other side.
|
|||
|
|
Antithesis of comfortability until eyes of Sean and Corporal
|
|||
|
|
catch me (Corporal is AWOL from position in some branch of the
|
|||
|
|
military, has been for some not sure time now, but he's kept the
|
|||
|
|
name, as it's the biggest joke in the world around here, probably
|
|||
|
|
except for him (quick sharp black eyes, dark roughcut close hair,
|
|||
|
|
bluntish nose and soft short fingers in handshake) who works daily
|
|||
|
|
as a computer tech of good repute although I've never seen him,
|
|||
|
|
nightly creates wild animated art, interactive figures that crawl
|
|||
|
|
in invisible boundaries of imaginary worlds superimposed upon
|
|||
|
|
fragments of this one, a buck fifty museum tour the best thrust of
|
|||
|
|
his heart-shaped hands; Sean is a stoner, came from some college,
|
|||
|
|
fairly wealthy I suppose although nowhere heading rapidly now) and
|
|||
|
|
then open their faces, those spreading like the backward
|
|||
|
|
overexpanding and whitening, breaking cup-top I will step on in the
|
|||
|
|
glowing pool of iridescent black water outside, sheltered from
|
|||
|
|
darkness with the licking lights of immensely breakable decorations
|
|||
|
|
from inside.
|
|||
|
|
I greet, salute and start talking, pausing briefly to be
|
|||
|
|
introduced to Nitcha and Heresia, two bright-faced too unabashedly
|
|||
|
|
pretty blondes. Neither real, but in this place -- talking about
|
|||
|
|
some structure of political imagination found in movies and
|
|||
|
|
architecture, enjoying the ability to make deconstructionist
|
|||
|
|
spaghetti and easily ripple off latinate obfuscatory language,
|
|||
|
|
complex intricacies, as a thumbsuck against the fact that for
|
|||
|
|
whatever brilliance I have, there is nothing that will thrust me
|
|||
|
|
past that wall of genius, now. Or keep hope and move on toward it,
|
|||
|
|
life is a learning process. So is talking with Sean; Corporal
|
|||
|
|
having moved in on one blonde, other is something of drawn back
|
|||
|
|
from Sean, but probably not aware yet that he's gay. If this were
|
|||
|
|
a cliche modern youth novel I'd have Sean take me out back and fuck
|
|||
|
|
me in a trashcan, us both young dissonant bisexuals, but Sean
|
|||
|
|
wouldn't ever give a damn about me except as a stoner. He's cute
|
|||
|
|
though. Sipping drinks, I of course pour more on, only then to run
|
|||
|
|
into the good virgin in my pocket -- not that, please. Too
|
|||
|
|
sacreligious; anyone have a rolling paper? Second woman takes out
|
|||
|
|
Bible and hands it to me, a small Gideon's, and motions tearing.
|
|||
|
|
I smile at her and she explains, a clear voice like white liquor,
|
|||
|
|
vodka. Vodka?
|
|||
|
|
Apparently it works very well, make sure lick it gently,
|
|||
|
|
laughing at my quizzical-doubtful expression, and then -- but it
|
|||
|
|
rolls well, a thick conical wad of my best Oregon Dark
|
|||
|
|
Recollections bud, a thickly purple swelling of coiled THC that
|
|||
|
|
wanders from the oblique corners of the darkness of the room to
|
|||
|
|
collide heartily with your brain. All hail at the altar of
|
|||
|
|
sacrifice. I pass it lit to her first, where it moves to the one
|
|||
|
|
next to her, Dutch name I think, maybe German. She tokes politely
|
|||
|
|
but also gets a stuffer hit; giggles at number two: wanted to stay
|
|||
|
|
sober to seduce Corporal, who should if he can. Back to that youth
|
|||
|
|
novel. Corporal must have been thinking vaguely in the receding
|
|||
|
|
corners of his mouth about the same thing, but with a shyish
|
|||
|
|
opening toothgrits the fatty and inhales thickly, his practiced
|
|||
|
|
lungs opening like the distant light of an overpass, from the
|
|||
|
|
depths inside. Depths inside: I am next, and shrugging smoke
|
|||
|
|
again, taking a large hit with a blink, causing laughter in
|
|||
|
|
blondes, and a grin from Sean. Corporal vaguely blows smoke in a
|
|||
|
|
dissipating trail over a group of young potentialities moving
|
|||
|
|
recombinant to the dance music.
|
|||
|
|
Next to Sean. My hand extends, and the depth of consciousness
|
|||
|
|
reaches out from beyond him to the walls, the filling of the room
|
|||
|
|
with an awareness of the sounds, the movement, the hot backs of
|
|||
|
|
dresses warm under spread fingers. Awareness before perception?
|
|||
|
|
Perception before conception? Erection.
|
|||
|
|
The second blonde (whitish blonde again) takes it in red
|
|||
|
|
nails, again stoking the end, pointing fire at me. I laugh. First
|
|||
|
|
blonde is afraid, but after the Corporal takes a hit, and laughs
|
|||
|
|
over retreating blue smoke that he's going to be nonfunctional
|
|||
|
|
immaculate, as he says (did you leave a word out? no, I am the
|
|||
|
|
king lizard, of cold blood and lust for heat), and then hands back
|
|||
|
|
to her the flaming end, she takes it and charges her pulse with its
|
|||
|
|
thick smoke.
|
|||
|
|
I pass the thick joint to Sean with an explanation that he
|
|||
|
|
didn't get a large enough hit, but the truth is I did, vague
|
|||
|
|
recession of. He tokes, smokes a drawn-out, and then takes more
|
|||
|
|
air into his lungs, socketing the curled smoke in the base of his
|
|||
|
|
lungs, filling his eyes with its redness in a slideshow of
|
|||
|
|
progression: I'm forgetting time, letting it pass my fingers past
|
|||
|
|
as I zone, staring out into moving legs, orphaned smoke and the
|
|||
|
|
soundless slosh of clear liquid in cups left on tables. Sensation
|
|||
|
|
of utter lack of movement, and absolute movement of everything not
|
|||
|
|
in motion. Luckily this way I can tell what's moving by the
|
|||
|
|
negative space, by what's not, that is, the stuff in motion not
|
|||
|
|
appearing to be. I've confused myself: my friends and I, not in
|
|||
|
|
motion, but sailing over the city and its alleys and streets
|
|||
|
|
gutters lined with tricolor rags of president's departure or
|
|||
|
|
notable noteworthy's demise; televisions color the streets with
|
|||
|
|
their bluish glow, sending flashing beams of it from quartered
|
|||
|
|
windows in time to the attackado bravado of machine gun fire
|
|||
|
|
glittering on other screens. Confusing consumption.
|
|||
|
|
Conspicuous lack of my presence on the laughter of the two
|
|||
|
|
blondes, stoned shoulder to shoulder backreeling. Possibly
|
|||
|
|
paranoia: accepted as a pattern of life by stoners, accepted more
|
|||
|
|
so in the houses they've left: aversion of the head, a quick turn
|
|||
|
|
to the world, invert the cheek. Accepted without question whenever
|
|||
|
|
said; options change, heads turn, motive to new sensations of
|
|||
|
|
stability. Usually on the basic level, as stability is only
|
|||
|
|
temporal when worlds flow past and are thrown away on a daily
|
|||
|
|
basis. Sounds very newspaper.
|
|||
|
|
Flourishing of the hand of one blonde as she throws it back,
|
|||
|
|
cocking it on her wrist to gesture something, eyes brightly red,
|
|||
|
|
the other almost sullen in her quieter, acquiescent stoniness. The
|
|||
|
|
bible joint long since burnt, memories introduce themselves of
|
|||
|
|
smoking the rest of it with Corporal, the others nonstoners with no
|
|||
|
|
ability to withstand the serpentine blast of that potent dope.
|
|||
|
|
Table circular spins in abstraction, sliding each face into focus
|
|||
|
|
when their turn to speak is taken: not in the life giving turns,
|
|||
|
|
but in the taking back of the turns from a sky that would otherwise
|
|||
|
|
allow them to dissipate. The passing of years. Life is many days,
|
|||
|
|
he said.
|
|||
|
|
Another drink lands in a lap. The party is breaking up:
|
|||
|
|
people are fragmented, drunken, stoned, and falling in and out of
|
|||
|
|
focus, their own predominance. The party is flourishing: more
|
|||
|
|
people dock in the doorway, move into the house, confront anonymous
|
|||
|
|
serving personnel, address nearest acquaintance and slide into
|
|||
|
|
rooms as if into mailslots. Thin, beautiful people: the classing
|
|||
|
|
is heating up. I am allowed in as an example of what I do, or
|
|||
|
|
maybe just for amusement. Paranoia: people are fragmented,
|
|||
|
|
drunken, stoned, unconscious.
|
|||
|
|
Network. Stretching miles of wire, stringing filaments of
|
|||
|
|
fiberopticism like fingers of nerves, reaching into and inserting,
|
|||
|
|
infiltrating, moving throughout the brief flesh of the society on
|
|||
|
|
the land. No conception of real location, brief reminders if
|
|||
|
|
wanted -- not at all. Yearning for the detachment: too much of
|
|||
|
|
people hung like smoke on clothes, hung on us, hung on tables, hung
|
|||
|
|
on ideas or connections, eyes bulging in glee as chemicals shatter
|
|||
|
|
the brain. Insertion of nerves, needles, wires. Wired.
|
|||
|
|
Still talking to the blondes and Corporal. Sean strikes a
|
|||
|
|
scenario profile against the darkened glass, a skein of mist laid
|
|||
|
|
over a corner of it. Stoned, stoned. Corporal is red-eyed and
|
|||
|
|
charming: bastard, wish I could be, inequitable ascension. Blondes
|
|||
|
|
in alliance, a similarity consolidation. Collusion of aesthete.
|
|||
|
|
Stoned, immaculate. We ramble through progressions of ideas that
|
|||
|
|
slant along lazy tapers of thought, dropping to a point into which
|
|||
|
|
a new idea can be launched into the conversation, although these
|
|||
|
|
ideas, too, are recycled. We are within a tight form, allowing
|
|||
|
|
little of the free-ranging improvisation of a stoner's inner
|
|||
|
|
thoughts, but affording easily the constricted and socially-driven
|
|||
|
|
illusion of communication that paranoia presents to the outside,
|
|||
|
|
emulsifying the stoner's passage through society with adherence to
|
|||
|
|
each of its conversational traditions of iconism. Speaking of Aims
|
|||
|
|
of Our Generation or perhaps Modern Art: An Incongruous Detour I am
|
|||
|
|
unaware that in three seconds this thought will slam into my
|
|||
|
|
backskull, slowing me for a minute before I search my library of
|
|||
|
|
unfolding tape loops and spew out an anecdote, canned in
|
|||
|
|
preparation at the back of the brain for a dead-air moment.
|
|||
|
|
When I come back, we are ready to leave. I sense this just
|
|||
|
|
about as we head out the door, about: we are all pretty well lit at
|
|||
|
|
this point, Corporal and I leading the bunch, Sean complacently
|
|||
|
|
stoned, everyone else tipsy, silly, or just stoned and drunk.
|
|||
|
|
Repetition breeds familiarity. Sean takes off in a subway car;
|
|||
|
|
Corporal and blonde one are making signs of itchings to leave, so
|
|||
|
|
blonde second and I take off for the tertiary location, a
|
|||
|
|
coffeehouse in midcity built from a beached freighter, towed inland
|
|||
|
|
in decrepit rusting condition, now bearing the nameplate "RED'S."
|
|||
|
|
Rough large cups of coffee, crushable croissant made big, heavy.
|
|||
|
|
Chocolate filled my option. My treat. We are there, I finishing
|
|||
|
|
my beer and her eyes red to match tablecloth. I am not
|
|||
|
|
incompetent, but things are going well; I shall not be surprised if
|
|||
|
|
I end up with her tonight, but will it matter? Tomorrow we leave,
|
|||
|
|
fugitives, and anything tonight then will be icing, but just icing?
|
|||
|
|
We talk about newspapers, how print comes off on your hands.
|
|||
|
|
She is engaging. Society magazine words I'd hate as a child, later
|
|||
|
|
in an advertising class deconstruction, later realizing iconism
|
|||
|
|
beyond the best urges of that endeavor. And now, having numbed &
|
|||
|
|
forgotten, reducing to common tokens of vocabulary, things to write
|
|||
|
|
in bathroom stalls or bad hard rock songs bawled out in oedipal
|
|||
|
|
angst. Composite of personality in some ways: some responses fit
|
|||
|
|
too much into the edge of expectation. Friendly, lonely. A kiss:
|
|||
|
|
light on her lips, a tongue around the inside edge of her lip --
|
|||
|
|
how does this feel to you? is this what you want? -- and a deeper
|
|||
|
|
kiss in response to her hand pulling my shoulder. Further kissing,
|
|||
|
|
some hand motion along my sides, my hands massaging her shoulder
|
|||
|
|
and a section of lower back -- the game continues, having moved to
|
|||
|
|
one of the core moments of human interaction. A further kiss and
|
|||
|
|
we are off for the night, directionless as we leave without words,
|
|||
|
|
almost a clinging but more a grasping, like fingers locked to each
|
|||
|
|
other until they whiten, unbending.
|
|||
|
|
From Spike's memoirs: "He came into the livingroom of our
|
|||
|
|
cheap apartment and described a dream. He faded into the
|
|||
|
|
consciousness of the dream having sex, with the pleasure of that
|
|||
|
|
running through his body first subduedly and then intensely,
|
|||
|
|
alternating reality, and then losing it in a rush of feeling. For
|
|||
|
|
some reason he was under the impression of fear of ejaculation; he
|
|||
|
|
was sure as you only are in dreams that that occurrence would
|
|||
|
|
define the purity of bad. At the peak of his pleasure -- the last
|
|||
|
|
moment -- with some inscrutable woman writhing under him, he pulls
|
|||
|
|
out. Looking down he screams: his penis is a large writhing
|
|||
|
|
maggot, a twisted pupae with a seeming life of its own and a
|
|||
|
|
twitching consciousness. Then he woke up."
|
|||
|
|
"We decided to hit the road the next night, but we woke up far
|
|||
|
|
too late to do anything about it, and just prepared out money,
|
|||
|
|
stowed our gear. In Burr's empty apartment we ate burritos and I
|
|||
|
|
called to say goodbye to Nitcha." A continued narrative of
|
|||
|
|
despair:
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[continued in part the dos]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
/-------------------------------------------------------------------------\
|
|||
|
|
| Ralph Christ's Law of Addiction: When a substance ceases to become |
|
|||
|
|
| foreign to the host body, the initiation of addiction has occurred. |
|
|||
|
|
\-------------------------------------------------------------------------/
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[end of part the uno of the undiscovered country]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
CONTINUE (Y/N) ?Y
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
========================
|
|||
|
|
the undiscovered country
|
|||
|
|
part 2
|
|||
|
|
========================
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
% [stoner adventures: cont'd...]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
One last night on the city: we stow our bag and Spike eats the
|
|||
|
|
roach of the joint we've just smoked. I get another drink from the
|
|||
|
|
remaining bottle we have, a liter of Night Train. Against the cold
|
|||
|
|
we are wearing only jeans and our thicker jackets. Spike's is a
|
|||
|
|
bit faded light tan soft leather with collar and cuffs of slick
|
|||
|
|
brown hide, cured smooth. Mine is German military, with
|
|||
|
|
modifications for bag stowing.
|
|||
|
|
Tonight the bud I've got is California long grain, known so
|
|||
|
|
because it resembles extended Thai -- longer, thinner buds, a bit
|
|||
|
|
dry and brown when drying, but incredibly potent. This one comes
|
|||
|
|
from Curracao, California, where a friend of mine owns a mushroom
|
|||
|
|
farm, and has lights in a shielded corner of the dungheap -- they
|
|||
|
|
grow mushrooms on cow shit -- and grows this amazing stuff,
|
|||
|
|
incredibly well-nourished. We split an ounce, and, after sales, I
|
|||
|
|
have a tidy bag left, free. Friends are a wonderful thing: they
|
|||
|
|
intervene in times of no or little dope, and they bail you out when
|
|||
|
|
you're in hell. There are people all over this country I haven't
|
|||
|
|
seen in years perhaps but could probably easily smoke out with.
|
|||
|
|
Not just the bullshit bumming of smoke: but smoke out, and perhaps
|
|||
|
|
pass out, even, and not feel as if an interlocking puzzle of ice
|
|||
|
|
had dropped a unique piece into the between of me and they.
|
|||
|
|
I like smoking dope with friends, but there's friends and
|
|||
|
|
there's friends. Some friends are good - Spike I don't doubt would
|
|||
|
|
pull me out of anything - and some are pretty good, stoner friends
|
|||
|
|
to have a good time with, but not the people who save you from the
|
|||
|
|
world, yourself. Reminds me of the gunfighters Earp and Holliday:
|
|||
|
|
both psychopaths, killers, but they knew how to love each other as
|
|||
|
|
friends and psychopaths, and never let each other down. Good
|
|||
|
|
stoners like that.
|
|||
|
|
Paranoia is accepted status quo in the stoner community.
|
|||
|
|
Beyond the obvious fear of law enforcement ("The biggest problem in
|
|||
|
|
this country today" - Skunk Jr. stoned altitudinal) there is always
|
|||
|
|
fear of isolation enhanced by the displacement of being stoned. It
|
|||
|
|
doesn't place you in a new world, just a different one. It's not
|
|||
|
|
a good nor an evil world: anything is possible; it's not just some
|
|||
|
|
silly happy flowerhair trip. Paranoia is accepted, not questioned.
|
|||
|
|
Dealt with. Stoners very tight in the end of the fear twisted
|
|||
|
|
tight like the end of a joint. Everything stained with the resin
|
|||
|
|
of paranoia; you can smell it. Brownish like pissstains on the
|
|||
|
|
wall of a small bathroom in a toilet of an apartment.
|
|||
|
|
I had known Monk for six weeks before I ever smoked with him.
|
|||
|
|
Some people are quiet but Monk is quieter. Not cold quiet, just
|
|||
|
|
quiet. As if entirely abstracted from the situation, but he is
|
|||
|
|
just spotting it from a distance. Something he told me later about
|
|||
|
|
the days of youth as we tried to shout through the hey's and whines
|
|||
|
|
of the bickering wheedling crowd stuffing the room. We left back
|
|||
|
|
door of bar, went to the umbrage of burglar bars on glass that sold
|
|||
|
|
us a halfrack of watery, aluminum-spittle beer, and then ended up
|
|||
|
|
in his flat, as he reffed it. We broke out beers and were talking
|
|||
|
|
about how much of a fuckin' mess the bar was, and were just
|
|||
|
|
bullshitting in general, when all of a sudden he asks I wanna
|
|||
|
|
smoke. There are about four seconds you can take for a reply -
|
|||
|
|
maybe less - but that time took the thoughts of time: I had known
|
|||
|
|
him for some time, liked him a lot for all of his reticence (I talk
|
|||
|
|
a lot, endlessly, non-linearly) and had heard a lot from him, and
|
|||
|
|
so said, yeah, after the perceptible delay but without hesitation.
|
|||
|
|
We smoked and talked, and learned a lot about each other.
|
|||
|
|
Monk got burned in a few bad deals, got tired of being looked at
|
|||
|
|
and expected, got tired of the grooves in which to be known, and
|
|||
|
|
then got tired of the fighting against that, when all it was was
|
|||
|
|
fighting, to him. Monk wanted life; he quit the stoner thing and
|
|||
|
|
hitched with the Navy. I didn't think that would work, and it
|
|||
|
|
didn't, but we lost track of him after discharge. Back to
|
|||
|
|
narrative.
|
|||
|
|
I get on the bus first, walking point in the city. We're
|
|||
|
|
going to a far district, a semi-sequestered subcity where most of
|
|||
|
|
the usual laws aren't enforced for reasons of inadequate and
|
|||
|
|
overworked law enforcement and liberal local government. I like
|
|||
|
|
places like that: non-intrusive. We don't cause many problems, at
|
|||
|
|
least fewer than the residents of the place.
|
|||
|
|
First towards The Pie House, a twenty-four hour outlet serving
|
|||
|
|
pies in a floundering ripoff of the House of Pies, a similar
|
|||
|
|
establishment. The Pie House is shaped like a large box with a
|
|||
|
|
traditional slanting house-roof. It is up in that roof that we go.
|
|||
|
|
We get off the bus and go inside. Past the bathroom is a door
|
|||
|
|
marked 'Employees Only.' Employees and stoners are often
|
|||
|
|
synonymous. We go. There's already two people at the table, Tomas
|
|||
|
|
and I don't recall, perhaps Aditya -- Adi from back when I would
|
|||
|
|
stay up all night every night smoking pot, lots of pot, and seeing
|
|||
|
|
what fun I could have learning about distant computers the old-
|
|||
|
|
fashioned way.
|
|||
|
|
Tomas is a Swedish friend who can compose odd modern music
|
|||
|
|
symphonies on piano and does so routinely, stoned on ferocious
|
|||
|
|
imported pot. He does not use a synthesizer. He finds them
|
|||
|
|
abominable from key feel to sound, and insists on a real piano. Of
|
|||
|
|
course he doesn't hide his dope in it: too expected. He stashes
|
|||
|
|
it in the metronome, a wooden pyramid, holding guard on the top of
|
|||
|
|
the piano. Nevermind that he probably needs a metronome as much as
|
|||
|
|
an old subway car.
|
|||
|
|
This room is here for stoners. The management here are
|
|||
|
|
stoners, and aren't too busy about hiding it, especially as it gets
|
|||
|
|
them business for the high school crowd. This room is also
|
|||
|
|
strictly up periscope: one hears the dope here, so to speak.
|
|||
|
|
Within ten minutes Tomas and Adi are stoned to brain rupture, and
|
|||
|
|
take turns on the phone summoning others. Eleven minutes means
|
|||
|
|
eight people. More dope passes around, Spike and I already loaded
|
|||
|
|
to the gills and afternoon is barely killed yet; but it is a rule
|
|||
|
|
in the stoner code never to fear how intoxicated you are or where
|
|||
|
|
you will go, to save the energy for focusing on how to do what you
|
|||
|
|
must.
|
|||
|
|
The truth unfurls like a sluggish, drunken tongue: no police
|
|||
|
|
action on us, some Hypnosian skunk and Crucifixion kind bud (grown
|
|||
|
|
in empty cannon shell casings in Jerusalem: affords cash to live
|
|||
|
|
during wartime, which there appears to be as common as rush hour)
|
|||
|
|
infiltrating the south of the city. One of the Stark brothers has
|
|||
|
|
some kind of money rig set up with the DA and knows when things are
|
|||
|
|
bad for any of us -- as if cop questions don't clue stoners in
|
|||
|
|
either. Over joints in corners of cities, landings of fire
|
|||
|
|
escapes, freight elevators, vans, crawlspaces, water towers,
|
|||
|
|
condemned buildings, square apartment rooms with rinsed white
|
|||
|
|
walls, bellfries, stained-whitewall bathrooms, parking lots,
|
|||
|
|
dumpsters, limousines, shadows of doorways, the word is passed.
|
|||
|
|
The light of the joint flickers with the words, which pass from
|
|||
|
|
stoner to stoner, whatever side of society they lee upon.
|
|||
|
|
Something of our structure seems to be known, but they can never
|
|||
|
|
connect up the clues: we're seen as a group of low-end criminals,
|
|||
|
|
when our society stretches up within the greater society.
|
|||
|
|
Out there in the mass of people, it seems like just a clump,
|
|||
|
|
a random hunk of humanity thrown into some space for temporary
|
|||
|
|
storage. But if you looked through the crowd you could see the
|
|||
|
|
stoners, and figure that's the crowd. It's connect the dots;
|
|||
|
|
through all the faces there are more orders than just stoners, more
|
|||
|
|
recognitions in the blurring rush of faces.
|
|||
|
|
Stanley has brought some Polka Dot Thai. Polka Dot gets its
|
|||
|
|
name from the contrast of the very white seeds against the burnt
|
|||
|
|
brown color of the rich bud itself. Goes down rough but is worth
|
|||
|
|
the pain. It's an incredible, lasting high, suspending you out
|
|||
|
|
over the crisscrossing electric lines of the night. Jonas reaches
|
|||
|
|
behind him and grabs a floor vacuum, upright with a snakelike hose
|
|||
|
|
and attachment, short, for cleaning stairs and shelves. Luckily
|
|||
|
|
the mouth is about the necessary size for that labor, and the
|
|||
|
|
attachment fits neatly over most mouths. A quick flick of the
|
|||
|
|
switch pumps a substantial amount of smoke through the water in the
|
|||
|
|
gut of it, filling the lungs more than sufficiently with succulent
|
|||
|
|
smoke. It's the longest-lasting electric bong I know.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
&interlude: hypothesis of incarnation of desensitivization, of
|
|||
|
|
dissonant expectation of obliteration, filtration and isolation,
|
|||
|
|
abstraction of perceptions. devastation impelling emigration,
|
|||
|
|
after exigencies of evasion from febrile discontiguous orientation,
|
|||
|
|
hallucination. regression to primary vocalization: egress of
|
|||
|
|
reification, ejection. indecision.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
The two stoners walked into the street stiffly, young men
|
|||
|
|
arrayed in brown and tan. They walked shoulder to shoulder
|
|||
|
|
casually, a short distance apart, without speaking but comfortable
|
|||
|
|
with this absence of noise, realizing a communication which did not
|
|||
|
|
require sound thrown at the maw of expectation. Turning down a
|
|||
|
|
side street, one produced a small stick of marijuana wrapped in
|
|||
|
|
paper printed with a notice of nonpayment. The other accepted, and
|
|||
|
|
they shared the joint, a distant orange star migrating between them
|
|||
|
|
down the alley. Down the darker avenue to a bus stop. The bus
|
|||
|
|
departed from the City of Despair to the Gates of Delirium.
|
|||
|
|
("I don't know what will happen," he recalled saying, after
|
|||
|
|
years of being unable to remember, "since we've been waffling
|
|||
|
|
around in this place long enough for them to put out notice on us
|
|||
|
|
if they catch us on the nearby roads." Burr just looked at him, as
|
|||
|
|
he said, and said something like, "We can give them time to forget
|
|||
|
|
about us. We seem to be doing alright now," and resumed his locked
|
|||
|
|
stare past colliding molecules of air into the darkness submerging
|
|||
|
|
the passing terrain.). &&Transmigration.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Leaving the flatly constructed hotel room took no grief. The
|
|||
|
|
walls were cardboard painted pimply with textured paint, the floors
|
|||
|
|
hard-packed carpet, worn into pavement with the passage of wet
|
|||
|
|
feet, endless feet, leaving in it a vague stench of bacterial
|
|||
|
|
decay, but strongly muted under suffocating purulence of antiseptic
|
|||
|
|
cleaner. Designed to stench like various spring flowers: their
|
|||
|
|
cleaners crawled the walls, mopped the floor, sterilized the toilet
|
|||
|
|
seat worn through to pressboard wood, falling with a hollow beat
|
|||
|
|
against the cheap porcelain, stained by corrosion in rings like a
|
|||
|
|
cut tree trunk.
|
|||
|
|
Our duffel bags sunk limply against a wall; we took them. My
|
|||
|
|
laptop rig had rested on the cheap pressed-wood desk; I moved it to
|
|||
|
|
safekeeping in our vehicle: we purchased it as we had thought we
|
|||
|
|
would from a lesser used lot on the southern perimeter of the city,
|
|||
|
|
a potential ripoff except for our stoner tactic of obliterating the
|
|||
|
|
salesman with some hydroponic Canadian green. We walked him until
|
|||
|
|
we found a car worth taking; we took it, paid a few hundred less,
|
|||
|
|
and wandered onto the road. Its soft sneakered tires nuzzled curb
|
|||
|
|
and muttered their way along hot pavement, a subdued exit. It is
|
|||
|
|
an anonymous Ford, made with Japanese help some time ago, more than
|
|||
|
|
a functional box only in its advertisers' minds. Projection screen
|
|||
|
|
televisions everywhere play the commercials, and we use them to
|
|||
|
|
time our returns to the bar, oblongs of light under dark wooden
|
|||
|
|
obstacles in the shadow of the place, a cave-ish concealment,
|
|||
|
|
retreat from the outside paradox of enlightened overload.
|
|||
|
|
Finding another hookup isn't hard here either: most businesses
|
|||
|
|
have several links, and sometimes one can be patched to, as the
|
|||
|
|
case of the air conditioning repair shop I crouched behind, in the
|
|||
|
|
protective walling and stench of a dumpster, free to type even as
|
|||
|
|
police cars cruised within feet of my hiding place. Stars rotated
|
|||
|
|
minutely in the window of the absent dumpster top. A/C repair
|
|||
|
|
personnel treat netlinks like power cords and put the hookup on the
|
|||
|
|
side of the building; some thin network wiring, a converter and I
|
|||
|
|
were now prowling the ranges of the net. First to set up a
|
|||
|
|
convenient, secure jumping point - there to another site, from
|
|||
|
|
there another - now looking backward, scanning, to verify that I'm
|
|||
|
|
not noticed. Now to that other site - and the surprise of the
|
|||
|
|
night when it's not there. Not not answering, but not extant.
|
|||
|
|
"Judas priest," I whisper. "What?" - Spike, in the far corner of
|
|||
|
|
the dumpster, a lighted end glowing with his breath of speech.
|
|||
|
|
"That site vanished," I say, manipulating deeper into the network,
|
|||
|
|
losing the surrounding world in my absorption. I had stowed the
|
|||
|
|
file in several places, several sites I could use with impunity,
|
|||
|
|
but only one had it. Retrieve to local machine - a large file -
|
|||
|
|
and bail. "Going going gone now," I spit at Spike as I'm over the
|
|||
|
|
top of the dumpster. He follows; we are gone into the adjacent
|
|||
|
|
field when police cars hit pavement at high speed, leaving sparks
|
|||
|
|
over speedbumps, searing to a stop where we were. "Out - to the
|
|||
|
|
car - fast," and we are into the night, another pattern of lights
|
|||
|
|
smearing into a massive intricacy of them, all in motion, their
|
|||
|
|
tracing paths overlaying each other.
|
|||
|
|
Parking our box we go into the cafe, and it is here that I
|
|||
|
|
realize how stoned Spike and I are. When he looks back at me, body
|
|||
|
|
half-turned from the register, I see the fringes of wet redness in
|
|||
|
|
his eyes, a sweltering glow rising in them. I ask for a coffee and
|
|||
|
|
skip the danish: more cardboard, baked with sugar to conceal.
|
|||
|
|
Idolize the iconization: beer ads in more cardboard, cardboard
|
|||
|
|
breasts pressed against the window. Spike gets a danish. We watch
|
|||
|
|
traffic, as if in a seventies movie. Traffic gets lost in the
|
|||
|
|
diffracted orange-brown refraction of twilight as the city caves in
|
|||
|
|
for the night. To where? Spike nibbles, then devours, folding the
|
|||
|
|
danish into his mouth. We are unfound, now, but their searching
|
|||
|
|
takes them through the lights and links and lines of the city,
|
|||
|
|
scanning for the hint of our voices in the refraction of the
|
|||
|
|
multitude. All we have are our voices.
|
|||
|
|
Pass calm. Lapsing noise of cars passing, soft fading. Along
|
|||
|
|
the aisle of shops lights fade, metal gratings clatter to rough
|
|||
|
|
cement floors, inches past the smoothed threshold of the same
|
|||
|
|
substance. Night never fades; it crashes silently into the
|
|||
|
|
periphery of vision and then intensifies in darkness. One can tell
|
|||
|
|
as the contrast of the lights rises, and then everything takes on
|
|||
|
|
the slick obscured perspective of night darkness. Not really a
|
|||
|
|
photonegative of day, but given enough time to get used to it, an
|
|||
|
|
inversion of the day: release, disconnection.
|
|||
|
|
"...Harvey, don't call me that," intones the waitress, and
|
|||
|
|
slams the phone down. The drum solo has ended. We are the only
|
|||
|
|
two left, our plastic cups suddenly brittle in the outside light
|
|||
|
|
shining through their rims, the old man with heavy thick slab
|
|||
|
|
fingers poked through his cup mumbling to himself the other there.
|
|||
|
|
Her black phone encoffined, she turns with a contrast smile: we tip
|
|||
|
|
and leave.
|
|||
|
|
We're into the night. It isn't unlike making love to enter
|
|||
|
|
the night: it takes a push out the door, the initial shock,
|
|||
|
|
confusion, blindness, and then absorption. It reaches fingers into
|
|||
|
|
you from outside and draws you outward in extension, then allows
|
|||
|
|
you to resolve yourself back into a mixture of night and self. All
|
|||
|
|
are one in the night: the faces coming don't have stories until the
|
|||
|
|
cigarette is lit or the awning selected for rendezvous. We are
|
|||
|
|
one, Spike and I, a moving phalanx of two dodging telephone poles
|
|||
|
|
as we hunt out safe lodgings until we've had our final fill of
|
|||
|
|
information and celebration. As if we were celebrating. Life is
|
|||
|
|
a fishhook that turns in space, however, and the celebrations of
|
|||
|
|
past days are often funerals, so a grim bracing party might be a
|
|||
|
|
dawning, or even just nothing, a continuation. With no
|
|||
|
|
deterioration there is amelioration, as this city is a slide of
|
|||
|
|
shale into a fetid pond, a steadily collapsing conception of decay.
|
|||
|
|
Into the back door of the Cranberry Cafe, a slightly upscale
|
|||
|
|
place of new red brick against the crumbling steady exteriors
|
|||
|
|
beside it. I balk at first: this is a cop territory, the smell of
|
|||
|
|
their urine thick around the poles and doorways. Into a back poker
|
|||
|
|
room, the attendant thinguy young cop takes a pause ducker into the
|
|||
|
|
door. Bit of cigarette smoke follows the answer, an enticement.
|
|||
|
|
We return offer (personally, I am not liking this: cops and dealing
|
|||
|
|
with cops is suspect as ordinary deals gone wrong are a walkaway,
|
|||
|
|
whereas with cops there is always the twist of adder possibility:
|
|||
|
|
arrest) and receive our bid, a Malibu in the parking lot. Buttocks
|
|||
|
|
to bumper we wait, Spike with a halfburnt cigarette waved in the
|
|||
|
|
air, lit end away from the building writing gesticulations in the
|
|||
|
|
sheer expanse of night past our eyes. Minutes later we have our
|
|||
|
|
cop, an older guy with smoothed brown hair around the crown of his
|
|||
|
|
head, a small belly building. He hands us a bag, but its fresh
|
|||
|
|
scent is uncoiling light and sinuous in the air toward us. We pay.
|
|||
|
|
Goodnight, gentlemen, in that soft southern accent that says
|
|||
|
|
college, politeness and beware: a turning of soft white mouth
|
|||
|
|
inside lights up his eyes, his canines stretch toward us. Spike
|
|||
|
|
smiles, and we back away.
|
|||
|
|
More bright eyes in the night. You can never see them.
|
|||
|
|
Arenas open with each alley, stretching past us in a line of
|
|||
|
|
conflicting images, shadows colliding before fading degrees of
|
|||
|
|
light, the red eyes of cops slanted cynical from the slow slowing
|
|||
|
|
cars that roll past. No slow rolling: after something, their
|
|||
|
|
wheels pour ahead on a drumbeat, and they are sliding past, cutting
|
|||
|
|
the night. Nightsticks for the dawn. Shadows which were soot on
|
|||
|
|
the walls fall into limber motion again. We ride.
|
|||
|
|
"Ride on, ride on," sings Spike. "Looking for a truck..." he
|
|||
|
|
murmurs fumbly. I agree: there ain't much more to do sometimes.
|
|||
|
|
So you go on, you move on, you go into the cold night and you sing
|
|||
|
|
and drink and smoke against it about it and then keep going,
|
|||
|
|
because if in the back of your mind, there is something at the end:
|
|||
|
|
if it is art or it is love or it is freedom: if that, then there is
|
|||
|
|
life in your moving forward, and not just drudging reaction and
|
|||
|
|
frozen-fingered refusal to die on principle. Principle, hell: a
|
|||
|
|
line of ideas; life is many days, but are they good days? I just
|
|||
|
|
look for something I want to be in a few months, and keep it in
|
|||
|
|
mind - something a headmaster once frowned upon, literally, his
|
|||
|
|
mouth downturning into a bitter lemon smile when I said I didn't
|
|||
|
|
like rules, but I knew what I wanted, and what I wanted not to do.
|
|||
|
|
He said I'd learn to like them. I never got sense of it; Spike,
|
|||
|
|
who has been to jail, says that sometimes those words have a truth
|
|||
|
|
to them which makes you feel like cold concrete sweating in the
|
|||
|
|
basement noone goes into, except every six months to throw down
|
|||
|
|
strychnine to kill the rats in twitching potency.
|
|||
|
|
Carnival House: a massively failed carnival ground left for
|
|||
|
|
exploration into which opened a bar, and then a series of
|
|||
|
|
underground businesses. Almost anything available there, however
|
|||
|
|
absent ascendant antagonism celebrated. The penalties of financial
|
|||
|
|
failure the burdens of those who pass, and those who squat and stay
|
|||
|
|
in the space created by the ruins become possessors of the night.
|
|||
|
|
The area wasn't safe enough for a carnival; now we have a festival.
|
|||
|
|
Lights string angular through the place, weird Christmas gig setup.
|
|||
|
|
Spike thumbs up at a few. I guess I'm hazy from the blunt some
|
|||
|
|
streets back, a quick clutched smoking of the honeydew bud we'd
|
|||
|
|
gotten from the pig. Erik has joined us; I turn to see him behind
|
|||
|
|
me, grinning a bit at me (realizing I had no idea he was there?
|
|||
|
|
realizing I'm too stoned?). Into the carnival. Good cover until
|
|||
|
|
we can hit the road, but more good cover for our stressed brains.
|
|||
|
|
Spike is way fucked, legally speaked. I'm not so bad off and I
|
|||
|
|
trust in luck: perhaps out of all the papers there, they'll lose
|
|||
|
|
mine.
|
|||
|
|
The carnival: People are passing out drinks of odd sorts, and
|
|||
|
|
I infiltrate the bar for a beer or three, bringing back two more
|
|||
|
|
unconsciously for Erik and Spike. Reflexive. Arc lights whiten
|
|||
|
|
the sky above, in which the dogfights of insects leave trails like
|
|||
|
|
northern lights through my vision. Everything is reflex, once you
|
|||
|
|
do it enough. Eating, defecation, micturation, conversation,
|
|||
|
|
intonation, appreciation, evaluation, fucking. The carnival is a
|
|||
|
|
massive reflexive swirl of humans, which wash through buildings and
|
|||
|
|
lots and fill the night with their noise and light. Welcome now,
|
|||
|
|
in a solitary age of seconds strung together as telephone poles are
|
|||
|
|
connected across vast fields and valleys. I brush hair from my
|
|||
|
|
face: I like Spike a lot as a friend, a better stoner than a stoner
|
|||
|
|
friend. Erik's a stoner friend, the scrawny Viking, and a good
|
|||
|
|
guy, but is not Spike. He smokes a mean binger however. Ramble
|
|||
|
|
on. Spike has saved me from my share of dangerous days and
|
|||
|
|
starchy, disconsolate nights.
|
|||
|
|
There are disposable buildings, ugly plated steel
|
|||
|
|
fabrications, to clutter the horizon, and reflect the neon and
|
|||
|
|
traffic light, and rust archly against the bluing sky of a Saturday
|
|||
|
|
evening, but the superstructure of Carnival House stays below
|
|||
|
|
ground: an intestinal complication of tunnels and ballrooms,
|
|||
|
|
storage areas, bars, garage parking, and video arcades, bathrooms:
|
|||
|
|
converted now a milling of gamble-holes and dark corners. The cops
|
|||
|
|
don't have to notice, and often don't, until there's a bill missing
|
|||
|
|
in a monthly pay. I suppose moles die for that. Amazing the level
|
|||
|
|
of humans searching through the grit on the floor for pinprick
|
|||
|
|
drops of salted gold.
|
|||
|
|
Grit rides our feet down the serrated metal stairs.
|
|||
|
|
Clattering of heels, even mine the ever-sneakered. Into a larger
|
|||
|
|
room, a gymnasium of conversion: filled with people: unceasing blur
|
|||
|
|
of melding colors pulled inside out to bring up faces, and then to
|
|||
|
|
vanish again into the gleeful boiling mass, hands and drinks and
|
|||
|
|
feet awry in scattered directions of randomness, Spike and I
|
|||
|
|
drawing up chests to wander through, Erik having lapsed into the
|
|||
|
|
rugged churning morass of people. And it moves on: not blind, but
|
|||
|
|
not having an eye, just motion: when on one side there's a fight,
|
|||
|
|
or on the other someone vomits, the mass swerves back the exact
|
|||
|
|
opposite just as forcefully. Not even noticed, as conversation,
|
|||
|
|
seduction, peregrination, prevarication, and perpetuation flogged
|
|||
|
|
the motion of the crowd, seduced with their bulging eyes and
|
|||
|
|
crotches, their saliva lurching for liquor or flesh, their
|
|||
|
|
peristaltic shock waves spreading through their wanting faces,
|
|||
|
|
their dope-hungry gleaming gaze probing the night, the crowd.
|
|||
|
|
Spike pauses. I recollect turning to speak to him, and then
|
|||
|
|
the blunt and beer and heat of the motion seized my head. His face
|
|||
|
|
blurred away in a smear toward the lagging corner of my vision, and
|
|||
|
|
there was a soaring noise like the roof sucked off in a twister,
|
|||
|
|
and then I was reeling in the motion, lost under the glee with dark
|
|||
|
|
bile creeping behind my eyes. Another spin, a drink spilling,
|
|||
|
|
thrusting out a splash that soaks instantly into stained red
|
|||
|
|
carpet.
|
|||
|
|
Her face half-skeletal attacks mine; swings into view from
|
|||
|
|
below, leering happily, takes me by the mouth. It's the girl with
|
|||
|
|
the H name from nights before -- when? mind rolls into bile
|
|||
|
|
unconsciousness -- or is it her? Is she aware me? can't even tell,
|
|||
|
|
conversation a blur from me, drunken straightforward from her:
|
|||
|
|
stagger back to grin realistically, end up with her in concrete-
|
|||
|
|
stepped handrail-supported stance in back stairway, my tongue and
|
|||
|
|
hers heavy silvery smooth-muscled beasts holding each other in
|
|||
|
|
their strength. Hands sliding and shifting; a drill older than my
|
|||
|
|
teens, something only refined in adulthood. A massive blur this
|
|||
|
|
is. It would be a shame, she is cute, but I am not of the presence
|
|||
|
|
to. Leaving tomorrow, no need to leave wreckage of a perhaps in a
|
|||
|
|
clutter of destroyed potentials. In the hang of lust, our hands
|
|||
|
|
drift apart to come together on the car. Cold metal, buckling
|
|||
|
|
under our movements. Her car, tucked in the lee of a corner of
|
|||
|
|
cyclone fencing nice a condom with its artificial skein, her warmth
|
|||
|
|
grasping me sliding downward a touch stopped, resumed, and I'm on
|
|||
|
|
top of her, moving forward with the rhythmic slowness of the night.
|
|||
|
|
All of this time has taken; where are we lost?
|
|||
|
|
Entering this world of heat, a stretching sash of warm flesh,
|
|||
|
|
her body pivoting on it, turning curving against mine. Her mouth
|
|||
|
|
opens, hot also. The sigh that runs down my spine and through this
|
|||
|
|
weird stinger I have sprouted, into her flesh, the wound widening.
|
|||
|
|
Tears in my eyes, a delirious descent of twenty or thirty narrow
|
|||
|
|
reflections of the carnival in my sight, shimmering with
|
|||
|
|
hallucination. She begins to suck in air faster louder, ...she
|
|||
|
|
takes breath with my thrust, she hold it drawn strict into her
|
|||
|
|
lungs, fingers rushing down my back. A sigh taken too quickly, a
|
|||
|
|
choking intake, her pulling back, pushing carseat in fear. I swing
|
|||
|
|
my head down pleasure taking into something new an element of
|
|||
|
|
useless fear.
|
|||
|
|
Abstraction of vision in a sharp shot of moment as I see
|
|||
|
|
squirming in my crotch a footlong maggot, squirming agonizedly,
|
|||
|
|
burrowing into her, maybe mewling I can't tell her scream. Not
|
|||
|
|
even her: she is gone, but the maggot is there. The rotting heap
|
|||
|
|
of the city writhes with its minions. The eyes of living inside,
|
|||
|
|
cocaine off the mirror and then the reflection twisting, the
|
|||
|
|
carnivorous maggot chewing through all that lives. The piles of
|
|||
|
|
trash twitch alive, and curl around the nearby humans like adders
|
|||
|
|
striking at the wrist. The corpses of the dead burst; the coffin
|
|||
|
|
lids split; maggots roll upon the earth, crawling from the wound-
|
|||
|
|
graves of the deceived, killed, buried, and lied after. She is
|
|||
|
|
gone; it is over. Am I hallucinating? All I see is maggots, the
|
|||
|
|
crawling of decay, the appetite of putrefaction. Choking in my
|
|||
|
|
throat: fear or vomit, and then, beneath my skin, I feel them
|
|||
|
|
spawning, moving, too near me, chewing me into trash like the rest
|
|||
|
|
of the city. A violent cough vivisects. Scream, dash, chaos of
|
|||
|
|
angular falling outward of door, gravel roll and recovery, back
|
|||
|
|
inside: must find Spike.
|
|||
|
|
Must have collapsed in sleep. Across her backseat. She has
|
|||
|
|
gone, some hours later. Somewhat sober, still in dangerous
|
|||
|
|
hallucinatory sliding swimmingness of reality. She is gone. This
|
|||
|
|
was more an impact than a touch, this was more lost than gained.
|
|||
|
|
Hide any evidence on self, don't want to hear it from those around
|
|||
|
|
me, who might chalk up a mark on the wall somewhere for this
|
|||
|
|
exploit. Not really an evidence excepting doubts of reality.
|
|||
|
|
Spike? Reality. Must move. Wonder where she went, a stretching
|
|||
|
|
of an emotional want into the night, a car door open as if she'd
|
|||
|
|
run. But peaceful here. The beast must've been a dream, or a
|
|||
|
|
hallucination. Or was this a dream? Whose car is this?
|
|||
|
|
Transient, like the haze of memories rising like smoke off the
|
|||
|
|
forehead in morning, the break of fever, the loss of recall.
|
|||
|
|
Into sanctorum: sudden yearning for Spike, my friend and
|
|||
|
|
stoner buddy, beyond the stilted starch uselessness of drunken
|
|||
|
|
babylon.
|
|||
|
|
Slamming door into the night, where the yearning draws, but
|
|||
|
|
instead I find a hollowness and longing. On the freeway above
|
|||
|
|
lights rush by, destinations found, links made, connections
|
|||
|
|
accomplished. Here I stand with life rushing around me, dust of
|
|||
|
|
gravel soaring around my feet. There goes. The emptiness and
|
|||
|
|
loneliness rushes in with the force of innumerable such yearnings,
|
|||
|
|
rushing from the vacuum of night to me, sucked from void to void,
|
|||
|
|
the painful begging of my soul succumbing to the terror crouching
|
|||
|
|
compressed in my throat like chancreous resurging alcohol. Charge
|
|||
|
|
into the night, scared like the man shouting into the dark and
|
|||
|
|
empty room to dispell demons, to build his own fear so that
|
|||
|
|
whatever demons await him won't disturb his peace of mind with
|
|||
|
|
their ravenous teeth, empty gnarling bellies, and yearning claws --
|
|||
|
|
the gods of emptiness hover above, into the castle, into the
|
|||
|
|
carnival, to find Spike. Through scuffing gravel, desperate eyes:
|
|||
|
|
Spike, Spike, Spike.
|
|||
|
|
Hanging pause for breath, backward feeling for rail like
|
|||
|
|
drunkard. Wait for silence, continuous roar. Oh fading throughout
|
|||
|
|
me like this up straight to wait. Fixed wristlock on the railing.
|
|||
|
|
Darkness can't be seen here, foreseen. I am wasted am I so? in the
|
|||
|
|
breath of darkness on the skirts of this place. Falling faces
|
|||
|
|
inside. Step, fall: face in papercup, stench of stale tobacco and
|
|||
|
|
wet paper, latex. Pull back, up, shake hair and move slowly into
|
|||
|
|
center of this mess. Too many people stagger upfront sweaty hair
|
|||
|
|
in my face, head against my forehead. God, a drunken apology.
|
|||
|
|
Eyes blink signal move. Did that just happen? A vomiting of
|
|||
|
|
narrative. A loss of.
|
|||
|
|
Whorls of sunlight splintered are antlike in my eyes.
|
|||
|
|
Stinging stare away from light, move onward while camera eclipses
|
|||
|
|
and swells like some cheap artschool film. Lurch, stomach.
|
|||
|
|
Falling slops of spew into a flowing industrial trashcan, grey
|
|||
|
|
beauty of stolidity against my onslaught. Tirade of like words.
|
|||
|
|
On top of beer cans crushed and torn ties, broken cummerbunds,
|
|||
|
|
condoms split like gunfired balloons. Food rotting in there too,
|
|||
|
|
now there's some digestive juice. Fucking threw everything out.
|
|||
|
|
Back to the vortex: Spike locator. Interlocutor. Can't see
|
|||
|
|
a thing, moving onward. Would be in deep shit if it weren't for
|
|||
|
|
people falling against me falling against them. Jerkstop
|
|||
|
|
coordination, thoughts. Fad argyle against my cheek, brush past
|
|||
|
|
the jacket with my hand down, could have gotten his wallet.
|
|||
|
|
Laughter. Phones hang from the ceiling in this odd room, swinging
|
|||
|
|
over my head, pendulae or pendulums? Hate latin, people dance in
|
|||
|
|
clothing with reflective tin cloth as part of it, big shiny bands
|
|||
|
|
around their guts. Full guts. Laughter.
|
|||
|
|
Stumble down hall past tables of gambling, through back room
|
|||
|
|
full of some goods in crates, over couples fucking, one fading
|
|||
|
|
whinnying moaning scream muffled by pressure. Don't fall down
|
|||
|
|
that way man. Walking straight across slabs of stamped metal.
|
|||
|
|
Steam from somewhere, fading of the night into the dark abstraction
|
|||
|
|
of morning. Head still damage. Back into the main area, must find
|
|||
|
|
Spike.
|
|||
|
|
Loaded like a freight train. Sweetened breath of vomited
|
|||
|
|
wine. In an alley of hamburger wrappers, cigarette packets,
|
|||
|
|
plastic lapel flowers, swinging Christmas tree air fresheners,
|
|||
|
|
toilet paper, gold teeth and a plastic raincoat torn on the ground.
|
|||
|
|
Insurgent fear demanding flight. So much for the cavalry. The lot
|
|||
|
|
edged with cars spinning around, searing the night with the noise
|
|||
|
|
of their burning tires, swinging into each other with ferocious
|
|||
|
|
jarring collisions. Thumping of tires over barriers, maybe bodies.
|
|||
|
|
Who knows? Gunfire also from above, but scattered with quick
|
|||
|
|
giggly noises as if above taken-in breath from the white face of
|
|||
|
|
fear.
|
|||
|
|
Woman pushing past my face, eyes silver glass above grey
|
|||
|
|
smears of dust on her face. Breath is wet heavy rot of the streets
|
|||
|
|
soaked in gin, cheap oily vomiting waves. Must awaken, away. A
|
|||
|
|
side of the inside building collapsing in dustflow of cheap
|
|||
|
|
plasterboard. Dance music pressing my skull together, insistent
|
|||
|
|
beat entirely linear. Our silence is so often from fear; we learn
|
|||
|
|
from the confessions of others.
|
|||
|
|
Giddy woman's laughter. Bodies shrinking against each other
|
|||
|
|
into the tainted darkness (edged rancid with colored glow).
|
|||
|
|
Exhaustion hold. Cough. On through the beating pulse, mechanical
|
|||
|
|
thrust knocking over heartbeats all-ahead on expediency. Into the
|
|||
|
|
bar, down in a corner table under red neon seamstitch of black and
|
|||
|
|
white room. A police car. Withdraw cigarette, limp crumpled.
|
|||
|
|
Smoke hesitantly, use time. Soberify. Must have been drinking
|
|||
|
|
more, smell like six types of liquor. Cough.
|
|||
|
|
"S'nomore 'bout th'life? S'getting it goo n mhhnth."
|
|||
|
|
"Mack'n gone? Ssshea beh."
|
|||
|
|
"Guvmint fall'n. Gunna d' hod. Killa th' bnhh mmn, duth inna
|
|||
|
|
thnth. Hunth."
|
|||
|
|
"Mos' bood gunthnth. Mockva munthuth."
|
|||
|
|
"Gunna ahe's'snathmmnh."
|
|||
|
|
"Gunna."
|
|||
|
|
"D'th' mn th rhtht e nnthnth uh hh a'm'bl."
|
|||
|
|
"Munna guth."
|
|||
|
|
So the police are looking for a dark haired drunk man.
|
|||
|
|
Several thousand here: there he goes. Wonder where Spike went,
|
|||
|
|
stomach turning over uneasy again. Vertiginous outbreak, man.
|
|||
|
|
More intoxicants not a good idea, but jonesing hard. The drunk
|
|||
|
|
worn off anyway. The drunk run off anyway. From the face of
|
|||
|
|
reality: ...and the difference is? No difference engines here; a
|
|||
|
|
large disposable blur. And I? In this crowd, I - a syllable or an
|
|||
|
|
organ, perhaps the latter selling in Vegas.
|
|||
|
|
Fake fruit display on bar. Fruit flies: real. Mango'll do,
|
|||
|
|
will fit. I eat carefully in the dark. A woman at the next table
|
|||
|
|
laughs, perhaps pointing. Ignore. Dark silence waits in the
|
|||
|
|
corners of the room. The ends of the hall. A thousand paper
|
|||
|
|
napkins pass, carefully wadded and tossed an empty booth over. The
|
|||
|
|
pit shines in the redshaded light. Pocketknife a beautiful object:
|
|||
|
|
carving the pit, carefully, using the thick shell for my work.
|
|||
|
|
Done: the pipe. Feeling more clearheaded, still lost. Sobriety
|
|||
|
|
isn't the cure. Neither is this, but sustenance.
|
|||
|
|
Loading half a bud of American Sigma I kept on me: dry, potent
|
|||
|
|
pot, sweet-tasting and green. Taste was just that, sweet. Light
|
|||
|
|
hit at first, rising in waves through the chest and head until
|
|||
|
|
suddenly the earth is a very faraway place. Also stores well,
|
|||
|
|
hence the backup bag. Loading a bud is breaking it in half,
|
|||
|
|
putting half carefully in dish of pit pipe. Smokes a little rough,
|
|||
|
|
but good traveling device. I take hard fast hits, sucking tightly
|
|||
|
|
into my lungs. Clears my head.
|
|||
|
|
Location of Spike has suddenly become important. Speaking
|
|||
|
|
curt sentences sans articles like a cheap paper detective. Better
|
|||
|
|
start carrying or I might get rubbed out. Haha. Searching the
|
|||
|
|
arcade, searching the other drink area, a more practical
|
|||
|
|
establishment consisting of a vending machine loaded with Night
|
|||
|
|
Train, Thunderbird, King Kobra, and a few I'd thought were banned.
|
|||
|
|
Probably not: just banished. Thrown away. We throw it all away if
|
|||
|
|
we can't hold it, if we can't hold on to it. Baboons shrieking
|
|||
|
|
shit-throwing at the great cat, its eyes glowing somnolent,
|
|||
|
|
malevolent in their darkness. Context of infinity.
|
|||
|
|
Some tables scattered around, bracelets of their iron legs
|
|||
|
|
caught in the careless dance of trampled dead. Leering face drawn
|
|||
|
|
over original manufacturer's logo; now beyond loyalty of that sort.
|
|||
|
|
Looking for a drunken darkhaired man? Cops? Or were they looking
|
|||
|
|
for sunken dark stairs to bunk?
|
|||
|
|
Halfasleep to the left; rouse, shake, grin, sort of leer. Mug
|
|||
|
|
thickly at this concept. Spike moves in faster than slow motion
|
|||
|
|
and follows me from the place, thinning in the morning light as we
|
|||
|
|
walk down the broad red carpet, our feet flicking flattened paper
|
|||
|
|
cups and torn lottery tickets. There is enough blue in the morning
|
|||
|
|
to light as way as we go. Spike pulls out into the bluebacked vein
|
|||
|
|
of a street, and tires peel down flat hot lane.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
&null. (change of balance muffle rotate lost dark tea-smelling
|
|||
|
|
colliding of dark angulars, dark blue and dark dark going through
|
|||
|
|
some light area female talking drifting haze of winter shadows an
|
|||
|
|
open window the breeze beyond it picks cloth and tall grass,
|
|||
|
|
whipping intricate rhythms drift never rotate sudden-falling
|
|||
|
|
inspection). &&resume.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Footsore in the back seat, rising with the stiffened
|
|||
|
|
consciousness of ending sleep. Spike: where are we going? "Been
|
|||
|
|
on the road since midnight," is all he says. All he'll say. Ah,
|
|||
|
|
right to the town of justice. A burnt blunt rests a severed finger
|
|||
|
|
in the ashtray. How we stay up all night. I once talked to a
|
|||
|
|
trucker who told me about been told with condolences of factory
|
|||
|
|
delays, made to wait, and been told that his cargo still had a
|
|||
|
|
pressing destination, time schedule notwithstanding. At a
|
|||
|
|
truckstop they have solutions, and he moved on with the liquid
|
|||
|
|
thrust of methamphetamine, to return to his home site and have to
|
|||
|
|
inject his bladder full of clean urine to pass the next day's drug
|
|||
|
|
test. He used a turkey baster; the nonuncommon resort of the
|
|||
|
|
desperate. In the absence of a presence, the grasping forces of
|
|||
|
|
evolution take charge: whatever means needed. Whatever needs
|
|||
|
|
mediated. Something of that form. Never understood government, or
|
|||
|
|
logic: far too many terms with hard angles to them, uncompromising
|
|||
|
|
pre-contradictions.
|
|||
|
|
Desperation follows us on this road. It rolls behind us,
|
|||
|
|
dodging the broken yellow lines. The desperation of a city
|
|||
|
|
collapsing like an overburdened landfill, shifting weights of
|
|||
|
|
flattened paper, rotting food (mostly food processed uniform,
|
|||
|
|
taking the texture of taste to an icon), broken toys, smashed
|
|||
|
|
cameras, urine-soaked newspapers (colors colliding in a staining
|
|||
|
|
melange), golf videos, promotional pamphlets for politics and
|
|||
|
|
luxury cars, the oracular works of Gideon, shattered punk records
|
|||
|
|
and umbrellas flippantly pulled into inversion, their spiny vanes
|
|||
|
|
sticking incongruous over torn cloth.
|
|||
|
|
If trash doesn't collapse over the streets, flooding them: the
|
|||
|
|
last garbage collector's strike left mounds of bagged trash rotting
|
|||
|
|
in its enclosures reaching to second story windows. The same day
|
|||
|
|
a Papal Bull came out blaming the use of condoms for the excessive
|
|||
|
|
trash; the strike was settled two days later with the use of force,
|
|||
|
|
the government opening fire on the trash and igniting blazes of
|
|||
|
|
flatulent decay which covered the city in its choking wrath of
|
|||
|
|
smoke, driving the garbagemen and everyone else back to work where
|
|||
|
|
at least the airconditioners filtered the worst of it. This is a
|
|||
|
|
city with assiduous dedication to nonpermanence: everything is used
|
|||
|
|
and deployed strategically half-over the rim of a public trashcan,
|
|||
|
|
as if condom, with the grease-smeared "Keep Our City Beautiful"
|
|||
|
|
placard half-removed by bored teenagers with can openers.
|
|||
|
|
Condemned signs fill the windows.
|
|||
|
|
We had hit open road: miles of grey-black strolling road under
|
|||
|
|
the kneading grey clouds of future horizons. A glass company truck
|
|||
|
|
with its infracted rack of mirrors passes us, making us pass it by
|
|||
|
|
in reflection, its driver oblivious. With Morgue: Morgue the
|
|||
|
|
demented skier, a collector of fine objects normally called trash,
|
|||
|
|
gaudy lights, cheap mirrors, Jesus figurines and Elvis statuettes.
|
|||
|
|
His apartment was visible for miles because of the unique setup he
|
|||
|
|
had of Christmas lights, mirrors, and pinwheels and fans. Lights
|
|||
|
|
flickered and pinwheels spun, throwing images through the mirrors
|
|||
|
|
around the room and out the window. The array was so confusing and
|
|||
|
|
disorienting that people would come to stare, sitting bug-eyed on
|
|||
|
|
the pavement looking up at his window. Most of these were normals,
|
|||
|
|
not even stoners. Inside we smoked with impunity as the room was
|
|||
|
|
set up in such chaos only to reveal movement and not the specifics
|
|||
|
|
of said movement. The flinging of my arm changed from a trajectory
|
|||
|
|
upward to a shower of greens spiralling out of the left corner of
|
|||
|
|
the pane, ricochetting from the ceiling mirrors, and finally
|
|||
|
|
dissipating in a burst of fractured color in the center of the
|
|||
|
|
window. And still they watched. One night his room caught aflame
|
|||
|
|
and vanished in a swirling conflagration that defied the cheap
|
|||
|
|
silver beauty of his trash collage: a puff of black smoke squirted
|
|||
|
|
from the rear of the building, with a final grunt as the generator
|
|||
|
|
bolted on to power the phones to call 911. Morgue lived in near-
|
|||
|
|
poverty, spending his money on dope, and often found himself
|
|||
|
|
renting from landlords glad for the extra income over the tax
|
|||
|
|
shelter they'd built out of previously-condemned buildings. Like
|
|||
|
|
pre-owned toilets: no matter how you euphemize, trash is trash.
|
|||
|
|
We found him later somewhere on route 66, living amidst the
|
|||
|
|
glory of classic American dreams. His place was a mobile home with
|
|||
|
|
fake red brick side sitting alone in a field of tall bleached grass
|
|||
|
|
and scattered rusting ribs of equipment. His mattress took up a
|
|||
|
|
corner, leaving stark fake-wood floor stretching to the
|
|||
|
|
centerpiece, a steam engine mockup of sorts, a small-scale version
|
|||
|
|
of one of the permanent pumps that carcass the Texas countryside:
|
|||
|
|
a raven dipping its beak into the black well of oil. Character-
|
|||
|
|
istic rust and lichen had been removed, leaving a faded but
|
|||
|
|
identifiable red, flat and broad in its tone and years. "This was
|
|||
|
|
once an operational pump, on a small scale," Morgue (Morgan is his
|
|||
|
|
real name, but after one of his hypotheses led him to grow indica
|
|||
|
|
using seven fluorescent lights and a microwave dish he produced pot
|
|||
|
|
he named after himself, called Morgue, which gave one the feeling
|
|||
|
|
of utter detachment that being dead on a pull-out slab must
|
|||
|
|
provide) said, but broke his lips into a smile and explained his
|
|||
|
|
conversion. The pull of the pump pendulum drew air past a
|
|||
|
|
combustion chamber, dragging thick pot smoke through a chamber of
|
|||
|
|
heated water (heat provided by an adapted coffee maker) and then
|
|||
|
|
through a stack filter of iced water, chilled by the innards of a
|
|||
|
|
dorm-room fridge of his from past years wrapped around the pressure
|
|||
|
|
cooker casing that was this final stage.
|
|||
|
|
Carefully taped and sealed to this end of the machine was a
|
|||
|
|
vacuum attachment with added foam rubber, to fit around the mouth
|
|||
|
|
and nose. Nose? "That's the beauty of this one," Morgue exclaimed
|
|||
|
|
gleefully, his red eyes opening brightly under his thick watershed
|
|||
|
|
of hair. "It takes the smoke you exhale back through this
|
|||
|
|
alternate pipe here -- " (pointing) " -- separated by weight, as
|
|||
|
|
relative temperature allows, and runs it through a condenser, which
|
|||
|
|
inserts it again here, distilling whatever THC remains into
|
|||
|
|
fortifying smoke." Try it. Insurgent lust. Spike played point
|
|||
|
|
and took the first hit, a seeping weight of warmth that filled his
|
|||
|
|
lungs and sat him down hard. Morgue grinned at him, warningly.
|
|||
|
|
"Shoulda told you: it burns as fast as you drag, and the smoke's so
|
|||
|
|
purified that you don't even fill the hit much. You just burnt
|
|||
|
|
this whole bowl," he grinned over the rim at Spike, holding up a
|
|||
|
|
thimble full of ash leeched white by the potent fire of the draw.
|
|||
|
|
"That was some of my Alaskan, as well." Spike grimaced defiantly
|
|||
|
|
in return, and blew out the pressure of smoke he had been holding
|
|||
|
|
tight-casked in his lungs. "I's one stoned motherfucker," he said,
|
|||
|
|
and then remained silent for the rest of the evening, lost in the
|
|||
|
|
rotations of his own mind around that blast of cannabinoid.
|
|||
|
|
My hit brought me into an opened world, where I could see
|
|||
|
|
reflected around me my skull and the fissures that lined my brain.
|
|||
|
|
Impressionable instantaneous bonding. Morgue reloaded his bong
|
|||
|
|
while I attempted to compliment it: "Very much a significant
|
|||
|
|
presence; strong affect and assertion; overall, a command
|
|||
|
|
performance." Cementing impact of fast falling intoxication,
|
|||
|
|
spurious reality ascended, sudden rush of full stimulus: the scary
|
|||
|
|
combination of a healthy abstraction (distance enough to consider
|
|||
|
|
the subject) and an unfolding of layers of reality. The red means
|
|||
|
|
the eyes are open; or am I just falling into ludicrous pot-worship,
|
|||
|
|
when in fact it is only an excuse to see without taking the onus on
|
|||
|
|
oneself to prove the necessity of doing so? "A fine year," I
|
|||
|
|
concluded.
|
|||
|
|
That was Morgue's narrow warm home, a strip of wood and
|
|||
|
|
aluminum reminding of a wafer cookie somehow lost on a flat pounded
|
|||
|
|
grass plain. Coming away from it it seemed as if that strip and
|
|||
|
|
not I were moving away turning into the desert. I reflect as I
|
|||
|
|
read the massive file now on my personal rig; in terseness, a
|
|||
|
|
system not human although grammatically precise (although not
|
|||
|
|
correct: its method of using prepositions as conduit sometimes
|
|||
|
|
falls into grammatical, sometimes does not - but always almost
|
|||
|
|
makes sense). Within this a protocol is described, a parasitic
|
|||
|
|
nature which assembles itself within other protocols. Similar to
|
|||
|
|
my technique, an offhand and difficult method but an effective one
|
|||
|
|
along unsuspecting networks. What made theirs better: the paper
|
|||
|
|
described a system of network rather than a method of intrusion, a
|
|||
|
|
way of connecting machines invisibly to the world, and, had it not
|
|||
|
|
been for hacker error, to me. Penicillin blues. I have to put the
|
|||
|
|
reading down after some time to assimilate the technical details
|
|||
|
|
gleaned, but more importantly, the impact: how had I thought I had
|
|||
|
|
run so smoothly through the net, when with this there were others,
|
|||
|
|
or the potential for others, to be invisible, omniscient, watchful?
|
|||
|
|
Damn.
|
|||
|
|
On the road similarly, towns and land twining behind us as we
|
|||
|
|
kept speed at subdued scream down the isolated pavement, a part of
|
|||
|
|
thousands of miles laid by lonely hands through country and
|
|||
|
|
mountain and desolate territory. Desolate is of course always a
|
|||
|
|
contrast, and we had just left the large city of plastic. There
|
|||
|
|
are always cities of plastic, some erected every day. We evade
|
|||
|
|
most, Spike and I, because our lust for plastic converts into need
|
|||
|
|
for dope. It's non-addicting, but anything is addicting if it
|
|||
|
|
stops the hole in the floodwall: the bloodwarm water ceases to pour
|
|||
|
|
out into the cold abyss, the hunger more precisely which is always
|
|||
|
|
there to weaken you, to break your will, to make you bow to it and
|
|||
|
|
the fear it holds rank over your head.
|
|||
|
|
Pink Knight used to have mounted on his computer monitor the
|
|||
|
|
motto of forward motion: Fear is the mindkiller. He was taken on
|
|||
|
|
a raid, turned in by a young sycophant facing a small jail
|
|||
|
|
stiffness for his part in some escapade, and who having the goods
|
|||
|
|
on PK found very little reason not to turn state's evidence. And
|
|||
|
|
so an incredibly common story iterates again: hackers are a closed
|
|||
|
|
community for a reason, blocking out the efforts of such types. In
|
|||
|
|
an age of so many causes, so many are overturned by expedients.
|
|||
|
|
Hackers have a uniting ethic which locks them to a common cause, an
|
|||
|
|
ideal of how to use machines. I can't blame them for being a
|
|||
|
|
somewhat closed society.
|
|||
|
|
More road and I'm driving now. As night washes away into dawn
|
|||
|
|
and daylight, the road goes from slick black to sprawling worn
|
|||
|
|
grey, slick in parts where the smooth whizzing tires tread it down
|
|||
|
|
daily. Copside road with a car pulled over, belly of cop moving at
|
|||
|
|
the window where some other life awaits a gutpunch. The whole
|
|||
|
|
crowd has slowed; cars now trot in slow motion in comparison to our
|
|||
|
|
former speed. What gives: living in fear, an accrued sense of
|
|||
|
|
learned helplessness. It comes when you're sitting with your back
|
|||
|
|
straight in the air, hands over your head, while men in blue with
|
|||
|
|
slick black boots circle you and talk of trivialities, holding the
|
|||
|
|
power higher than the nightstick. Spike still has a jaw scar from
|
|||
|
|
a cop incident, I believe a class ring caught in the impact.
|
|||
|
|
Miles are like fingers counted over again in a jail cell, the
|
|||
|
|
five fingers being the five cuts of light dropped by the bars of
|
|||
|
|
small window to the floor, five feet square on a side, five years
|
|||
|
|
in a felony. Five states in the crossing, lucky for a vehicle that
|
|||
|
|
sort of runs. We get oil into it not in the nick of but definitely
|
|||
|
|
on the hot side of time in Las Vegas, and move on. Roadwearing
|
|||
|
|
down the eyes, blunted by reflection and time, iteration again of
|
|||
|
|
the same patterns. Stop briefly to hack and find our records are
|
|||
|
|
the same, the networks seem the same. Someday this will have to
|
|||
|
|
grow; too much being said, or perhaps too little - only a fraction
|
|||
|
|
of the net seems to be motion, the rest is a swelling before
|
|||
|
|
motion, a swirling of data and ideas. Suddenly the signal is
|
|||
|
|
traced among them, and then there is a language, a network -
|
|||
|
|
perhaps through one of these networks or languages lies expansion.
|
|||
|
|
Road expansive, curving through the heat to the horizon.
|
|||
|
|
However far you go there is still road. Above the striated
|
|||
|
|
earth and broiling redness of sand is a sky which reaches
|
|||
|
|
interminable to form the second half of the world, the greatest
|
|||
|
|
free space imaginable crouched over our narrow and flattened
|
|||
|
|
perspective. Who are _we_: All of us. There's none of that
|
|||
|
|
anymore, says a man worn like rainblotted newspaper, shaking a
|
|||
|
|
knotted finger in my head, there's no all of us. There's us, and
|
|||
|
|
them. The Russians aren't coming, Doctor: but it's still us and
|
|||
|
|
them. Who's them? Anyone not us right now -- anything more is too
|
|||
|
|
big a thought.
|
|||
|
|
Our car a capsule. Swallowed by darkness over road. Heavy
|
|||
|
|
surging in my brows signals the ending of my shift driving. Spike
|
|||
|
|
and I have a friendly arrangement: I drive until I'm tired, and
|
|||
|
|
then he takes over, and the cycle continues. We don't question
|
|||
|
|
because we trust the other to be honest: we're both going to the
|
|||
|
|
same place, we have been friends for years. Once Spike, Me,
|
|||
|
|
Amorphine and Gonzaga took to the road, heading to a nearby town
|
|||
|
|
for Gonzaga (an imported citizen; I have no idea what his real name
|
|||
|
|
is, but he communicates a few words with exceptional pronunciation
|
|||
|
|
and clarity, leading me to value his communication over that of
|
|||
|
|
most other acquaintances, even though a detailed one hour
|
|||
|
|
conversation might take only a dozen words and twice as many
|
|||
|
|
gestures from him) to lie low for a night so that his ex-girlfriend
|
|||
|
|
could spend her furlough time without having to "ram his nose
|
|||
|
|
through his ass so he has a clitoris" as she had threatened
|
|||
|
|
drunkenly in a sports bar called The Punched Ticket (Jeanine is
|
|||
|
|
really nice, overall, but occasionally becomes sauced on Cisco
|
|||
|
|
clones and uses her skills as a aikido trainer to unleash her
|
|||
|
|
angst. She once was about to do the above to my nose but I was
|
|||
|
|
able to deter her with a procrastinatory explanation of the
|
|||
|
|
derivation of the word assassin, from the Arabic, for Hashish) the
|
|||
|
|
night before. Amorphine lounges in chairs, slouches on sofas,
|
|||
|
|
collapses on car seats, and hunches in bars. I've known him for
|
|||
|
|
ten years, and I've never seen him the same.
|
|||
|
|
Amorphine and I made acquaintance in a small restaurant in
|
|||
|
|
Mississippi called The Checkered Dog. Most restaurants useful for
|
|||
|
|
meeting people are a definite article, an adjective, and a noun in
|
|||
|
|
name. Someday I'll have a bar named The Definite Article. The
|
|||
|
|
future, prepositionally speaking. All of which is a split infinity
|
|||
|
|
with the present moment, something I can't focus upon quite yet,
|
|||
|
|
not unlike the concept of death.
|
|||
|
|
Me dying: Amorphine and I met on a cold day, not unlike a
|
|||
|
|
vacant drooling sky to die underneath. When I was young I thought
|
|||
|
|
I'd die by battle; Amorphine thought the same. He would eventually
|
|||
|
|
die being shot to death by federal agents confiscating computer
|
|||
|
|
equipment, chestholding a Braun toaster he had saved two weeks'
|
|||
|
|
wages to buy, which contained a microchip, excusing his death in
|
|||
|
|
the line of duty in itself. Condemned in newspapers. For the next
|
|||
|
|
two years, he would periodically appear at local sales, cafe
|
|||
|
|
openings, used-car lots, hangings, elections and debutante balls.
|
|||
|
|
Once I saw him in the background for a late-night advertisement for
|
|||
|
|
the Nixon box set, featuring sixteen CD's with remastered and
|
|||
|
|
annotated recordings of the Watergate tapes, for $129.95, the
|
|||
|
|
original price of the dictaphone machine most of the phone calls
|
|||
|
|
debated during the trial were recorded on. Amorphine gave a sad
|
|||
|
|
wave, and faded behind his thick sunglasses as the voice
|
|||
|
|
overwhelmed even the physical space in the picture with its
|
|||
|
|
incessant advertising pledge.
|
|||
|
|
At The Checkered Dog, Amorphine and I consumed two hamburgers
|
|||
|
|
and six beers, and I learned from four words of his that his name
|
|||
|
|
had come from a time six years ago when he had rejected all claims
|
|||
|
|
of physical existence and had starved himself for nine days,
|
|||
|
|
passing out at the end and having to be revived with morphine
|
|||
|
|
leftover from a GI shipment to his country during the second world
|
|||
|
|
war. In the end, he would die at age 27, similarly injected with
|
|||
|
|
morphine that failed to revive him. The third time: once as a
|
|||
|
|
child of six, he had been injured falling from a tree, and morphine
|
|||
|
|
had enabled his broken body to repair itself in isolation from pain
|
|||
|
|
or pleasure, only the numb delight of absence. As we drove, I
|
|||
|
|
thought often of The Checkered Dog and Amorphine, who seemed to be
|
|||
|
|
limp and porous tissue, unconnected disconnected but still grasping
|
|||
|
|
the wheel firmly as if it mattered. Shrug. We took six hours
|
|||
|
|
shifts each, and those became failures as half the time we fell
|
|||
|
|
asleep on our shifts, and the rest of the time we were just getting
|
|||
|
|
into interesting thoughts as drivers when we had to retire to the
|
|||
|
|
back of the van.
|
|||
|
|
The method Spike and I use works much better. Spike lies eyes
|
|||
|
|
turned down in the back seat, indestructible auto industry fake
|
|||
|
|
cloth feeling synthetic beneath him. On occasion he snores. I
|
|||
|
|
snore alongside him, grateful for the company of sound on this
|
|||
|
|
desolate drive. Empathy to the subsuming joy of sleep. Going the
|
|||
|
|
long, awkward, circuitous route instead of out the front door; back
|
|||
|
|
door manners may get a bad rap, but the endurance of continuity
|
|||
|
|
beats some honor points anyday. The road here is grey, older semi-
|
|||
|
|
asphalt, with mid-sized pine trees venturing occasional stabs at
|
|||
|
|
the sky. As if thrusting thumbs at an unkempt god: Spike jars
|
|||
|
|
this out of me stirring in his sleep to mumble.
|
|||
|
|
"Burr...?"
|
|||
|
|
"Uh huh. What up old man."
|
|||
|
|
"Thinking about itches. When it itches, you scratch."
|
|||
|
|
"Because otherwise it drives you mad: too much stimulus."
|
|||
|
|
"No, I figure it evolved in us. It was part dream. Because
|
|||
|
|
itching brought blood to the skin, it was useful against most
|
|||
|
|
causes of itch. An evolutionary mistake."
|
|||
|
|
"Like intelligence."
|
|||
|
|
"I haven't gotten there yet."
|
|||
|
|
Rolls over, falls back asleep. Warmth of sleeping people. I
|
|||
|
|
feel most like an animal when I walk into a room full of people
|
|||
|
|
asleep, and feel my breathing slow to their rate as I sense -- not
|
|||
|
|
as much smell or feel -- the bodies in the dark, turning in their
|
|||
|
|
disconnected dreams of life.
|
|||
|
|
More road. When I was young I visualized the car grille as
|
|||
|
|
eating the road, consuming enticing stripes of divider alongside
|
|||
|
|
pure asphalt, consuming it all as we rushed along, the fragmented
|
|||
|
|
patching of the roadsurface rushing up at us in smearing collisions
|
|||
|
|
of light. Now we eat our way through fast food and tearing cheap
|
|||
|
|
roadmaps, batteries for our flashlights, cigarettes, and gasoline.
|
|||
|
|
Behind us the road settles its detritus of paper shreds, beer
|
|||
|
|
bottles, broken rust-fragments of cars, condom wrappers and burnt
|
|||
|
|
flares. Now we eat our way through countryside left unnamed by the
|
|||
|
|
map, a neurotic compulsion in itself to name everything: even the
|
|||
|
|
index is labeled as such at the top and bottom of each column. Our
|
|||
|
|
red vein rides through the ridges of several states, passes the
|
|||
|
|
blocked dots of great cities, detours down the fragile outlines of
|
|||
|
|
sideroute freeways, and pours us into the sheaf of valley where
|
|||
|
|
Loquate, TN, makes its resting warm the hills.
|
|||
|
|
Where once nothing but Appalachian subsistence indolents
|
|||
|
|
wandered, now a city springs from a mall and a gas station left by
|
|||
|
|
passing tourists. The sign reads POP: 24,022 but we know there are
|
|||
|
|
several thousand more, because Loquate lives two lives: a
|
|||
|
|
legitimate economy and the leftover overflow from the attempt some
|
|||
|
|
decades ago to make it an Atlantic City for valley America,
|
|||
|
|
legalizing gambling, prostitution, and leaving an easy regulation
|
|||
|
|
on drug use. The experiment was so successful that within a year
|
|||
|
|
the city was wealthier than the third world, the local government
|
|||
|
|
had capitulated, and the Mafia was buying up local libraries as tax
|
|||
|
|
shelters. The city revolted, but the new economy threw it back:
|
|||
|
|
and, illegal, continued to prosper. This makes Loquate ideal for
|
|||
|
|
hiding out on one's way farther into the countryside, but both
|
|||
|
|
Spike and I wanted time to rest, to recover for our journey, but as
|
|||
|
|
importantly to recover from the despair which crouched like the
|
|||
|
|
hallucinatory cloud of a black widow spider on the past horizon.
|
|||
|
|
Loquate is not ideal for habituation, however, because of the
|
|||
|
|
virulent local economy and the environment it creates.
|
|||
|
|
Coming into the city, we bound over a soft swelling hill
|
|||
|
|
populated at top with a gas station selling "Gas line" and a small
|
|||
|
|
store with a sign labeled with a blue squid, marked "Pes ados."
|
|||
|
|
Neither are open, both secure places in the universe with their
|
|||
|
|
dingy neon. Crackling probably under the drawing brows of a storm.
|
|||
|
|
Spike pulls off of the broad road down a gravel path to a 7-11
|
|||
|
|
which must exist without business, far from any path or combination
|
|||
|
|
of roads I can read except for the narrow grey dusty stretch we
|
|||
|
|
have just pulled in through. The sign flickers its bright broad
|
|||
|
|
colors over us as we extend each of our nervous and tense limbs in
|
|||
|
|
an approximation of stretching. An itching in the calf muscles, a
|
|||
|
|
thick condensation in the gut. We go to the door, but the inside
|
|||
|
|
is dark, but Spike pushes the door regardless, drawing from some
|
|||
|
|
internal sureness I can't reach. The windows are darkened with
|
|||
|
|
grime and provide cover, but it is still obscure inside, lit only
|
|||
|
|
by a few shaky fluorescent tubes. Waist-high rows divide the small
|
|||
|
|
space of linoleum.
|
|||
|
|
Behind the desk two feet keep watch, supported by a head
|
|||
|
|
averted to a television, its abstract black and white showing a
|
|||
|
|
domestic argument, a tortured rehash of poignantly fake lines.
|
|||
|
|
Soap operas are like hearing one side of a drunken phone
|
|||
|
|
conversation. "I must leave town, I must: He's dead!" shrieks a
|
|||
|
|
bodied voice, a full womanhood blonde in drawn-faced desperation.
|
|||
|
|
His eyes catch ours without any sense of loss in his inattention to
|
|||
|
|
the movement; the noise fills the air, keeps the store from
|
|||
|
|
domination by the crepitant hum of the fluorescents. He is young
|
|||
|
|
and stark-faced, and hands us ZigZags for a buck fifty, a weathered
|
|||
|
|
bill (under fingers of ages, ours and his, his and ours, yours) and
|
|||
|
|
points to the bathroom in the rear. We go through the glassbead
|
|||
|
|
curtain and a throat-voice punches through the haze of our travel:
|
|||
|
|
"And look who is joining us:"
|
|||
|
|
Long, thick beard and glasses, also thick. Jerry? Above a
|
|||
|
|
cigar his thick reddened eyes track us, beadily without greed or
|
|||
|
|
malice. A belly of some proportion, but well-carried (fat doesn't
|
|||
|
|
bother me until it shows signs of desperation, the eating in order
|
|||
|
|
to generate stable ground to walk upon, to be too big to be
|
|||
|
|
displaced) and tucked into a thick-cut chest. "How are you?" he
|
|||
|
|
speaks at us, allowing his cigar to roll to the edge of his mouth
|
|||
|
|
and lock there. A vagary of memory: Buffalo Bill, our cohort from
|
|||
|
|
the wild mountains of Southern California where he for years
|
|||
|
|
maintained a mushroom farm that must have been the envy of every
|
|||
|
|
psychoactive weapons division in the world. Strains of
|
|||
|
|
psychoactive mushrooms pushed the floor of his house upward,
|
|||
|
|
growing steadily in their thousand and one Mason jars in the
|
|||
|
|
darkness. Bill loved to barbecue brain cells, and we had joined
|
|||
|
|
him for several exploits, including the one in which he was named.
|
|||
|
|
Our love of jargon, names. To control the world: to rename it
|
|||
|
|
without a care for the original, an abrupt imposition of self. May
|
|||
|
|
my last name stand for some kind of potent weed.
|
|||
|
|
A folding card table supports three chairs and two other
|
|||
|
|
individuals, an exact clone of the man behind the desk out front,
|
|||
|
|
and a scrawnier, younger version of either of them with his hand on
|
|||
|
|
his hip, as if he were a gunfighter. "Howdy," Spike says, striding
|
|||
|
|
ahead of me to shake Bill's hand, and introduce himself to the two,
|
|||
|
|
named Alex and Stanford. They nod me in as well, and I pull up a
|
|||
|
|
milkcrate to sit to the lee side of the refrigerator.
|
|||
|
|
Spike takes a seat across from me and I meet his eyes. We
|
|||
|
|
break out the bag of the chronic. Luscious, steamy bud from East
|
|||
|
|
of Eden -- somewhere to the east of us, a massive underground
|
|||
|
|
facility housed in the basement of an IRS tax records facility,
|
|||
|
|
where an enterprising and bored employee had started growing dope
|
|||
|
|
twelve years ago, where now a steady flow of volunteers kept his
|
|||
|
|
salary augmented for a brief cut of the torrent of cash.
|
|||
|
|
Expensive, but through a contact near to the source and proud
|
|||
|
|
of it: a seventeen-year-old playwright, left bored in his parents'
|
|||
|
|
house between days of numbing school to write brutally nihilistic
|
|||
|
|
plays about characters in high schools named after colors or
|
|||
|
|
letters, who, in the many volumes (contiguous) of his plays played
|
|||
|
|
out every permutation of petty crisis of worthlessness that could
|
|||
|
|
be imagined, coming near the realization of pointlessness in its
|
|||
|
|
purity frequently, but always continuing their quest for a plot in
|
|||
|
|
near tears of frustration. Each night of meditation or writing in
|
|||
|
|
his black room lined with reflectors and strobe lights, he would
|
|||
|
|
smoke fat bowls of this thick, treacle-knotted bud and launch his
|
|||
|
|
brain far into the void, where it would hover and produce the apt
|
|||
|
|
descriptions of hopelessness he felt on life. Even his players
|
|||
|
|
smoked thick, rich, vicious bud. A grim character, he added a
|
|||
|
|
comment as we took the bag away: "You all remind me of my dead
|
|||
|
|
uncle" (pointing to Spike) "and the character (Y12) I turned him
|
|||
|
|
into" (pointing to me) "who (AB-) eventually took an overdose of
|
|||
|
|
oven cleaner in desperation, and died vomiting blood at a school
|
|||
|
|
play" (pointing at ground) "not unlike my real uncle (2), who
|
|||
|
|
killed himself drinking." Smiled.
|
|||
|
|
We smiled smoking blunt nuggets stuffed into our portable
|
|||
|
|
bong, a small homemade created from a Magic Mushroom air freshener,
|
|||
|
|
an odd idea of clean breathing that injected scent into the air
|
|||
|
|
around it, a small plastic mushroom with incongruous, frivolous
|
|||
|
|
polka dots to hold against the stench of the world, feeding its
|
|||
|
|
sweetness not even honest enough for decay. A faint smell like the
|
|||
|
|
sweet bitterness of infection hanging in the tainted air when
|
|||
|
|
removed, a plastic carcass to illuminate the trash. The hanging
|
|||
|
|
basket of the bowl mars the purple surface of the shroom. Our pull
|
|||
|
|
carb comes from the plastic action of a cheap cap gun. It smokes
|
|||
|
|
well but fast. Alex or his brother becomes silent, withdrawn,
|
|||
|
|
quickly as the smoke hit him from what was not intended to be the
|
|||
|
|
monster hit it was. Some people get silent: for some pot is a
|
|||
|
|
cutoff from the world, the line dropping dead for a few hours.
|
|||
|
|
With the sudden displacement of reality, almost anything can
|
|||
|
|
happen. You can see terror and snap out of it clutching your feet
|
|||
|
|
up from the floor, locked in some toilet somewhere, terrified of
|
|||
|
|
the world and the intricate scenarios that crawl through the cracks
|
|||
|
|
of the bathroom tiles to illuminate the skeletal fear of the
|
|||
|
|
overwhelmed organism. Sometimes it's the bubbling exuberance of
|
|||
|
|
nothingness, but that echoes hollow, popping like champagne bubbles
|
|||
|
|
against plastic glass (her name lost in the concavity exploding).
|
|||
|
|
For some dope is a mediator. There is no relative - it hits you
|
|||
|
|
all the same, but what you're doing at the time forces it through
|
|||
|
|
its twists and turns. For me pot is relaxation with a motive.
|
|||
|
|
Numbness from hours of travel clutches me like a stomach spasm
|
|||
|
|
during drinking sickness. I don't want a large hit, slow inhaling
|
|||
|
|
this one...fade to negative space, a jarring withdrawal into the
|
|||
|
|
abstracted. Are we all artifacts? Exhale.
|
|||
|
|
Spike again. Fast hits, two, and then passing the smoking
|
|||
|
|
chalice to Stanford. Across the table, Buffalo Bill passes me a
|
|||
|
|
bag of Cheetos. "Thank you," I say, "Is this your establishment?"
|
|||
|
|
Interruption for Stanford to pass the bong to Buffalo Bill. I pass
|
|||
|
|
the bag to Alex. Buffalo Bill takes a large hit. I take the bong,
|
|||
|
|
and Alex passes the bag to Spike. Spike eats complacently. I
|
|||
|
|
inhale quickly, tasting ash, and dust out the bowl, filling it with
|
|||
|
|
an oversize bud. I prod it one more time into the base of the
|
|||
|
|
bowl, and pass it to Alex. Stanford has the bag; "We all are
|
|||
|
|
partners in this, Dad and Alex and Van and I." His red eyes smile
|
|||
|
|
at me. Alex's hit drifts past my face, dispersing on its way
|
|||
|
|
elsewhere. He passes the bong to Spike. He looks at me. The bag
|
|||
|
|
of Cheetos is with me, passed by Buffalo Bill. "Is anyone up for
|
|||
|
|
another hit?" Spike asks, but we are all zoned, no-one replying.
|
|||
|
|
Again, Spike.
|
|||
|
|
One of the things I dislike about the modern novel is the
|
|||
|
|
detached amusement. Things are funny, self-conscious, but gone is
|
|||
|
|
the dedication to character I've found in some older, better
|
|||
|
|
novels: the negative space outlines a vague human, wary of
|
|||
|
|
emotional being, scratchy as if carved from the static on a detuned
|
|||
|
|
television. But his name (Q. Public John) and life are carnival
|
|||
|
|
cutouts, painted from oxymoron, contradiction and pun, and give us
|
|||
|
|
some sense as readers of the work of a self-recombining intricacy,
|
|||
|
|
existing as lace did hundreds of years ago, craftsmanship for
|
|||
|
|
appreciation, decoration. Cyclic redundancy test from birth to
|
|||
|
|
decay to chaos in aftermath. Each one of these countries is an egg
|
|||
|
|
dropping from an ovary, blooming in luteal glory and then falling
|
|||
|
|
free, leaving the swollen launch site to vanish back into the
|
|||
|
|
fruit-shaped organ. Each has its empire, which flourishes,
|
|||
|
|
explodes, and dies, leaving a nation of scar tissue. Dislikes are
|
|||
|
|
likes in the end; in the end, all is paradox. Arf - I'm zoned.
|
|||
|
|
Where? So is everyone else. No relative effect with marijuana,
|
|||
|
|
the great equalizer. Spike is staring at his cards, probably
|
|||
|
|
hallucinating. Would like to be in his mind, sometimes. Awe to
|
|||
|
|
respect to friendship.
|
|||
|
|
Time to go rig. I picked up a cellular unit some time ago,
|
|||
|
|
and now invoke this through a local gateway, the only way to
|
|||
|
|
guarantee no tracing - the packetized nature of this protocol and
|
|||
|
|
the intricacy of gateway hardware neutralizes the threat of trace
|
|||
|
|
in under about fifteen minutes. That's all I want online, anyway:
|
|||
|
|
the car trip having allowed me the construction of a program to
|
|||
|
|
speak this language, the immersion of protocol within protocol.
|
|||
|
|
Hacking stoned enables me to subvert the outside world and leave it
|
|||
|
|
there: I'm more efficient, as I get closer to the actual machines
|
|||
|
|
and ideas I'm working with by subtracting all else. Putting the
|
|||
|
|
navigation into reflex, getting my thoughts closer to the computer.
|
|||
|
|
Although it's there. My friends used to always kid me about NWI,
|
|||
|
|
but we'd always be netting under the influence. Searching for
|
|||
|
|
something, wading through epochs of digital signal, aeons of
|
|||
|
|
digital noise. Others alongside but not with us - the hunt for
|
|||
|
|
something, the feeling that in all of the worlds of network there,
|
|||
|
|
something has been missed - that it is a matter of screwing up the
|
|||
|
|
digital eyeball and coming closer, and one will find within the
|
|||
|
|
morass a human nervous system of resonant meaning to a living
|
|||
|
|
organism. But our fields of data are our graveyards; it is all
|
|||
|
|
there for anyone to look, much as I search my memories of childhood
|
|||
|
|
for clues to what I am now, to who I've become. Or was destined to
|
|||
|
|
become - not that, but that beyond our control could as well be
|
|||
|
|
destined, or that in the past -the event is the value.
|
|||
|
|
And now I search in repetition, probing among the interlocking
|
|||
|
|
minions of network subroutes, searching for what in all of that
|
|||
|
|
traffic is disguised, has more to tell than its subordinate
|
|||
|
|
function. Starting at the point of entry (discovery), I find
|
|||
|
|
linked systems and explore, but that is decoy - I soon learn that
|
|||
|
|
thinking physically or topographically fails, as this layout is
|
|||
|
|
based upon some structure defined by the structure of the protocol
|
|||
|
|
building it - not crammed into any predefinition, it instead
|
|||
|
|
defines itself among those things defined. The protocol makes more
|
|||
|
|
sense to me after fifteen minutes: based upon a protocol for
|
|||
|
|
maintaining accurate chronological data on machines, it enables a
|
|||
|
|
routine connection to be made for this transfer - into which it is
|
|||
|
|
fairly easy to envelop another voice, the voice of the protocol I'd
|
|||
|
|
just finished teaching my rig to talk. Testing effective,
|
|||
|
|
successful. Onward into the void: and after several probes, I find
|
|||
|
|
a connection, finally. A moment of pause, as if I didn't believe
|
|||
|
|
it - and then packing up, returning to the group. More time to
|
|||
|
|
digest this inhuman thing.
|
|||
|
|
Back to the table. How long have I been zoned? No way to
|
|||
|
|
tell but this means I'm rather high. Well, the orgies should start
|
|||
|
|
any minute now: I saw reefer madness. Doubtless the beast is
|
|||
|
|
behind it all. Buffalo Bill Spike Alex have broken out cards;
|
|||
|
|
Stanford and I are outside the circle, obviously too stoned to
|
|||
|
|
operate. Almost paranoia, and then an uncaring, knowing that
|
|||
|
|
Buffalo Bill the older stoner would not care, would be safe to be
|
|||
|
|
around. Amazing the trust that echoes even in these ultraviolet
|
|||
|
|
sessions of unreality. Odd place for a stoner shack.
|
|||
|
|
The shadows are inside the door before I've even seen them.
|
|||
|
|
There is a crack sharp hard and Bill's terrified face flashes blank
|
|||
|
|
before me, hitting the table which collapses. Shadows flash across
|
|||
|
|
the light, into the darkness, Spike looking vulnerable paranoid
|
|||
|
|
scared with his hands raised as brackets above his shoulder.
|
|||
|
|
Passing shots in the night. Vanishing shadows with the tearing of
|
|||
|
|
the wind of an engine starting, a car peeling away. Buffalo Bill's
|
|||
|
|
wideyed face launches into my eyes; I close them and rub them in
|
|||
|
|
sublimated understanding mocking me as impotent fear, Alex and
|
|||
|
|
Stanford staring numbly. Blood has gathered under Buffalo Bill,
|
|||
|
|
too fast to be anything good. No grief as of yet, but chest
|
|||
|
|
withdrawing as if approaching. His hand, extended, must have
|
|||
|
|
brushed my lap: two aces (black), a pair of eights, and a red-eyed
|
|||
|
|
joker stare at me from my left thigh.
|
|||
|
|
The balcony is blanched with the weak light of dawn. Alex
|
|||
|
|
Stanford are inside making police statements; Spike and I have
|
|||
|
|
assumed the role of friends and are outside of a roomful of state
|
|||
|
|
cops jawing questions at Bill's survivors. Below his body may lie
|
|||
|
|
outlined or perhaps tenting a sheet taken away. Goodnight friend.
|
|||
|
|
As a final precaution we had reached into the pocket of Bill's
|
|||
|
|
overalls and snagged his bag preciously, hiding it in basement tube
|
|||
|
|
joints of pipes and conduits leading to nowhere, forming their own
|
|||
|
|
interlocking maze for rats to race and stoners to stash. Moments
|
|||
|
|
of silence and counted breathing.
|
|||
|
|
Unneeded we march down stairs and out the door. Alex joins
|
|||
|
|
us. Numbness like the way the chill of the night hits you: a
|
|||
|
|
stiffening uselessness from the waist upwards. Stoically Spike
|
|||
|
|
removes the battered faucet he had snagged from the junk out back
|
|||
|
|
from his jacket as I slide a patch of screen ripped from spare
|
|||
|
|
screen in the same area from beneath my shirt. I then hand him my
|
|||
|
|
cup of water, which he pours into the U-bend of the pipe, then
|
|||
|
|
sealing the connection end of the faucet with screen. This comes
|
|||
|
|
from the kitchen sink of a rather nice kitchen and has a wide bent
|
|||
|
|
to it like a socket wrench. I hand a chip of American Thai
|
|||
|
|
(smooth, muscular) bud which he slides into the depression of
|
|||
|
|
screen.
|
|||
|
|
Alex bends to it, and a smell like some odd, beautifully
|
|||
|
|
burned earth rises into the night. Spike and I take hits next, our
|
|||
|
|
bong behaving beautifully. I can't tell if the stars are flashing,
|
|||
|
|
or if they're just there.
|
|||
|
|
Sometime later we reappear inside. I can't remember how much
|
|||
|
|
time. The cops are gone: wide open room. What do you wanna bet
|
|||
|
|
that was a waste? Stanford's eyes cast at us. Alex stoic grimly
|
|||
|
|
proposing sleep. Not a bad idea; Spike and I explain our situation
|
|||
|
|
briefly to a few flat whistles, and leave with our best wishes
|
|||
|
|
burnt on our tongues. Bill's eyes flutter behind my lids. His
|
|||
|
|
cold hand rests on my lap. Christ. No matter how many bits or
|
|||
|
|
bytes flow past my eyes, they can never equal feeling Bill's there.
|
|||
|
|
I resolve never to mistake a human for machine again, no matter how
|
|||
|
|
easy the inverse is. I used to think everything ended in paradox.
|
|||
|
|
I now know to know things as inverses, as those are their ends.
|
|||
|
|
The rattling of the unwanted sip of coke in the aluminum echo
|
|||
|
|
chamber of the can, a ticking like some wearingdown machine.
|
|||
|
|
Emptiness and abandon await the hollow. I feel the hollow.
|
|||
|
|
We dodge a rotting cow carcass, and pass through two
|
|||
|
|
intersections of unmarked dirt roads, and then turn back into the
|
|||
|
|
city. Lights line a path of approach, their flashing multitude of
|
|||
|
|
color spreading like a wound into the breadth of the city. Like
|
|||
|
|
angels, like holy. A breath taken in fast. The lights blink like
|
|||
|
|
a pond stilled with bacteria: a sheet of silence. Sagging yellow
|
|||
|
|
lights pass overhead. We rush in on skeins of air, the comforting
|
|||
|
|
cruising sound flashing in my ears.
|
|||
|
|
Into the void of the valley filled with night, and then over
|
|||
|
|
a hill, cresting it with morning, the refracted burnglow stinging
|
|||
|
|
our eyes as it is caught in the dirt attached careless to our
|
|||
|
|
windshield. Past a hill, two cacti, some scattered farmhouses
|
|||
|
|
under a skyscraper, complementary dead-end turns, a grove of pine
|
|||
|
|
trees, cold acres of wheat, a tanker casting its shadow alone in a
|
|||
|
|
spread of sand, banana trees shading an artichoke farm, six maguey
|
|||
|
|
plants near an aluminum trailer, and mesquite interspersed
|
|||
|
|
throughout the rocky flatland. Along more road: absolutely flat,
|
|||
|
|
laid on wet on the flat soft and deep-packed sand, occasional
|
|||
|
|
basket of a compact tumbleweed. A field of poppies. And then the
|
|||
|
|
shoulder turns to gravel, and we are cruising on the bed of a dense
|
|||
|
|
loam of crushed rock.
|
|||
|
|
Through one more canted bend through rock: spines on the
|
|||
|
|
rockface from the intruding needles of the engineers, their
|
|||
|
|
injections placing the shock-resounding blasts deep in the pink
|
|||
|
|
softness of rock. Rusted cage of a lowbuilt car. And then angular
|
|||
|
|
geometries of rising electroneurotic signs, twitching out their
|
|||
|
|
messages in the unhurried instancy of electric current. More
|
|||
|
|
allies between loave-boxes of stores, their fragile hollowness
|
|||
|
|
exploited by the contrast of light filling their guts. Cars matte
|
|||
|
|
in the dark, occasional vein of fire in a passing reflection along
|
|||
|
|
a door, or maybe a blotting blur of it as the door opens, a man
|
|||
|
|
talking across his tympanic roof. A billboard swings into view,
|
|||
|
|
with an anonymous black font printed fixedly on the white
|
|||
|
|
background, an icon of vertical jail bars in the lower right
|
|||
|
|
corner. Spike catches me with his crosscut glance in the aerial
|
|||
|
|
box of the car as we swoon into the valley. This is Meekin.
|
|||
|
|
The air holds thickly together, a thin mat of solidification
|
|||
|
|
and purulence hanging its drenched mantle over the refractive
|
|||
|
|
brightness of the signs and the stolid somnolence of the grey-stark
|
|||
|
|
buildings. There is a drawn-out sweet smoke industrial smell, the
|
|||
|
|
wheedling sinister whisper of the fumes encoded in air surfeited
|
|||
|
|
with smudge. Down a hill of parked cars, the roofs gaining
|
|||
|
|
fragments of a moon as we ascend. Beyond the rim of hills that
|
|||
|
|
defines this valley the close-glowing palette of clouds is sucked
|
|||
|
|
into the fecund earth.
|
|||
|
|
What we find in the valley is singularly beautiful: a local
|
|||
|
|
netlink, with low usage, oddly so for a town the size of the one
|
|||
|
|
ahead. However, no complaints, especially when the padlock is the
|
|||
|
|
only security method discovered locally. A quick rig links me with
|
|||
|
|
full bandwidth, and after sharing a quickie smoke of some Mexican
|
|||
|
|
Coronita green (rolled in paper with "It's a Boy" in blue letters
|
|||
|
|
on it) with Spike, I invoke whatever demons await on the net.
|
|||
|
|
Contact is almost immediate, as if they knew a frequency we would
|
|||
|
|
meet on by hand of Fate the defunct. The site looks local, from
|
|||
|
|
the speed, but that is highly doubtful (I remember that time
|
|||
|
|
requests are prioritized networking, from some class some days ago,
|
|||
|
|
my last contact with the outside world) and the setup looks too
|
|||
|
|
extravagantly competent to be from this area of hingelocked back
|
|||
|
|
doors and decaying superstructures.
|
|||
|
|
Into the abyss: a divergent twisting series of connections, a
|
|||
|
|
penetration into a self-forming structure that from every angle
|
|||
|
|
resembles itself, but then expands to twist inside, and portray
|
|||
|
|
itself in the inverse perspective. Making hacking it difficult:
|
|||
|
|
necessary to think like it. Its primary structure seemed to be an
|
|||
|
|
infinite series of machines until I realized that the structure was
|
|||
|
|
built of objects, which could be on one or several machines, near
|
|||
|
|
or far: the advantage of a hidden protocol was greater expansion
|
|||
|
|
without fear, an ability to know data in its own context and group
|
|||
|
|
it by characteristics of the data and not by machine or financial
|
|||
|
|
structure; this realization enables me to plough into machine code
|
|||
|
|
and documentation in one object, one that soon learned some of my
|
|||
|
|
request patterns, and began to preassemble queries and
|
|||
|
|
subcontextual searches for me. To every grouping of data it
|
|||
|
|
recognized a surface pattern; underneath that patternit recognized
|
|||
|
|
the subtextual relevance of my requests, and assembled a structure
|
|||
|
|
of response from them. This system is amazing, I thought,
|
|||
|
|
frighteningly efficient. The only problem I see with it is its
|
|||
|
|
unfriendliness to humans. None of the commands are designed around
|
|||
|
|
a human mind, but that of a database, a series of internals, and
|
|||
|
|
the responses fire data into another engine, as if piping through
|
|||
|
|
a conduit. The only reason it sees me: it has no idea I'm human.
|
|||
|
|
Or am I? I think, reacting in turn to another response. So
|
|||
|
|
much of the past has been a running, a response, that I feel more
|
|||
|
|
like a vending machine. S'okay. Spike pats my shoulder - we're at
|
|||
|
|
about the four hour mark, and he has waited - and then I feel in my
|
|||
|
|
mouth the end of a fat jay, and into my nostrils comes first the
|
|||
|
|
fresh minty scent of good green pot, and then the dry abstract
|
|||
|
|
smell of flame. The first inhalation is huge, and when my eyes
|
|||
|
|
roll back Spike takes the joint from my mouth and smokes. We take
|
|||
|
|
turns, wordless, and then I thank him with my eyes and return to my
|
|||
|
|
rig. Some hours of penetration await me; that was good pot, the
|
|||
|
|
world swims wide, potentiality; the system awaits me.
|
|||
|
|
In my early days of hacking I'd been at first a brute force
|
|||
|
|
blaster, finding wide pathways and blasting them in, but had found
|
|||
|
|
that unstimulating after a while. No point to the repetition of
|
|||
|
|
ease, of brute sensation. More sense to go for finesse, and to
|
|||
|
|
have some rules about what you did, leaving all else up to freedom.
|
|||
|
|
Like being able to play an instrument well, in hacking you don't
|
|||
|
|
need to slam things around anymore or rely on gimmicks to get
|
|||
|
|
effects when you're good. Several years and many machines took
|
|||
|
|
that point, and then I realized I'd departed a basic field, and
|
|||
|
|
could only then see how much effort it would take to get good.
|
|||
|
|
Practice outside of school - never took computer classes in school,
|
|||
|
|
partially from paranoia but partially because most were too
|
|||
|
|
directed, not enough freedom of serendipic tunneling - and some
|
|||
|
|
more years got me to the stage of comfort, of being able to speak
|
|||
|
|
the language of the net and of computers. Now I had entered a new
|
|||
|
|
stage: my discipline, although hidden behind junk food and dope,
|
|||
|
|
had taken me this far, taught me a language and an art, and now I
|
|||
|
|
had ascended a new level, and found a new network. Thinking: it
|
|||
|
|
can't be that hard to find this, just a matter of time when you're
|
|||
|
|
good. And then - who's running this thing?
|
|||
|
|
Not much time to ponder. I grab some documentation on the
|
|||
|
|
languages of the protocols, which appears to be variations on the
|
|||
|
|
basic protocol, and by the language spoken specifies a lot of the
|
|||
|
|
object manipulation, leaving the rest up to intricate, compact
|
|||
|
|
coding. All of which appears to be designed to look random, to be
|
|||
|
|
invisible to the security eye, or any eye but the one acquainted
|
|||
|
|
with the language already. I couldn't have done better myself.
|
|||
|
|
The only aspect of this net that staggers me: who's running this
|
|||
|
|
thing, if it takes adjustment time to understand requests phrased
|
|||
|
|
by humans? Was this a mutation from the endless dead cycles of
|
|||
|
|
AIs, databases, servers, protocols, daemons, and bored outpost
|
|||
|
|
workstations? Selfawareness? I can't find that, but the eerie way
|
|||
|
|
the network reshapes itself in response to queries, rerepresenting
|
|||
|
|
data and objects as if the viewfinder had twisted in a fall, and
|
|||
|
|
the way it builds extensible data structures as if anticipating the
|
|||
|
|
range of question, have alerted me to an underlying structure more
|
|||
|
|
powerful than most of what I had witnessed to that date.
|
|||
|
|
More data expands into view. I think it operates by finding
|
|||
|
|
inverses and working from there, creating a span of possibility,
|
|||
|
|
playing with the calibration of infinity, and then rebuilding
|
|||
|
|
itself based upon the data. Part of what held back my thinking was
|
|||
|
|
the extremist nature of it; when I got a dead end, I'd back up and
|
|||
|
|
pull out, react in the opposite rather than the inverse. Computing
|
|||
|
|
inverses it was ahead of me. A terrifying machine to meet in
|
|||
|
|
conflict; a terrifying network to penetrate. Security buzzes
|
|||
|
|
around us (the machine - net - and I) but I realize I am covered by
|
|||
|
|
the machine, that its masking of my activities has lead them to be
|
|||
|
|
assimilated as routine processes of the net. With all that
|
|||
|
|
shifting, it must be easy - or am I incorporated into this thing?
|
|||
|
|
Tiles of the floor. Onward.
|
|||
|
|
The structure seems a mess to my infant mind for it, placing
|
|||
|
|
it compartmentally. But there is intricacy here, like the
|
|||
|
|
interlocking lace of a vacant lot flower, that I can barely see,
|
|||
|
|
much less decode. I invoke a few demons on my rig to help me,
|
|||
|
|
having them process incoming information and filter, translating
|
|||
|
|
from the original. So much in language. Vaguely aware of smoking,
|
|||
|
|
and of lighting a religious artifact. Just more data in the brain.
|
|||
|
|
The world stretches before me, a series of helical extensions
|
|||
|
|
mutating in response to its turning, represented as chronology but
|
|||
|
|
more accurately delineated by requests, which I can see mutate the
|
|||
|
|
structure from within. So much complexity. I query the machine
|
|||
|
|
for data on myself, a prime hacker mistake, but I must know: how
|
|||
|
|
does it think human? And of what?
|
|||
|
|
A pause. Drywall mouth. Movement in the periphery, taking in
|
|||
|
|
Spike in a corner, waking up at my movement. Ash taste. And here
|
|||
|
|
comes: a brief synopsis of past, police record included, some
|
|||
|
|
assessment of abilities from an official test, parking violations,
|
|||
|
|
a couple of bulletins cross-referencing me from various computer
|
|||
|
|
security agencies (and two private firms), and an employment
|
|||
|
|
history complete with current address. Some of this stuff I hadn't
|
|||
|
|
known, and had never expected to see in one place. Queries for
|
|||
|
|
financial and educational data are available, and I run them,
|
|||
|
|
sending them scurrying for information in the background. And then
|
|||
|
|
more data comes: labeled current intrusion report. I must have
|
|||
|
|
gasped; Spike is watching. I open the file, and there is a listing
|
|||
|
|
of connections, a report of activities, and finally, a listing of
|
|||
|
|
the contents of my machine. The protocol works both ways. The
|
|||
|
|
inverse is accomplished. And suddenly empty I was, feeling the gut
|
|||
|
|
echo of realization, the ashen fatigue descending over my shoulders
|
|||
|
|
to blank me out. I break connection.
|
|||
|
|
"Let's go." Not blankly, but surprisingly normal sounding.
|
|||
|
|
Spike helps me, and we hit the road. He watches me in the mirror.
|
|||
|
|
Concern. For now I don't care: I understand, and from this
|
|||
|
|
structure - well, I am a part of the structure. And there is no
|
|||
|
|
inverse to be found. We descend the valley.
|
|||
|
|
We fold into the parking lot of a motel, the ground eroding
|
|||
|
|
under us with the roll of gravel. Into the office and the clerk is
|
|||
|
|
worn narrow drab by the job, I am guessing: hair curved downward
|
|||
|
|
with the listlessness of summer heatbaked leaves, lifeless in their
|
|||
|
|
collapse. Under that a defensive nose. Still more to the narrow
|
|||
|
|
face, mainly smooth lines worn uninspired by aging. Clothing
|
|||
|
|
matches colors conservatively: a purple shirt organized around the
|
|||
|
|
boxes of the pockets, and grey-black slacks with frosting on the
|
|||
|
|
creases, running past the dryclean wearing. Eyes submerged in the
|
|||
|
|
tiredness flowing upward in the red of his lower lids. Spike and
|
|||
|
|
I need hours to rest. A transaction of cash, no cards, a room key
|
|||
|
|
with a thank you attached and we're into the moist unused smell of
|
|||
|
|
a motel room, a component box in a forest of them stretching
|
|||
|
|
defiant against the direction of the freeway, which leads away to
|
|||
|
|
the east.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
#unconscious: low, medium
|
|||
|
|
#unconscious: deeper stretch of sleep, density descending
|
|||
|
|
(soaking into sand, heavy wetness)
|
|||
|
|
#unconscious: apocalyptic intensity
|
|||
|
|
(the motel floor collapses downward into feathers, the tatters of
|
|||
|
|
the room itself reassembling elsewhere. they evade through the
|
|||
|
|
oily water of reality and appear out of the blackness elsewhere.
|
|||
|
|
everything's an elsewhere. these words I -- your slumbering brain,
|
|||
|
|
unslumbering but unlimbered -- speak to you have nothing to do with
|
|||
|
|
reality, and follow a linear contiguity only in the base meanings
|
|||
|
|
of the words, what whatever is left of your interpretive process
|
|||
|
|
will grab in immediate weariness. the actual aspect of this
|
|||
|
|
conversation is in the multiplicity of these speech units, the
|
|||
|
|
harmonics on the chords, which are strung together with a real
|
|||
|
|
theory and not the weary expedient non-entity of structure most
|
|||
|
|
speak. the door is a pink-grey in the loss of light; the sink runs
|
|||
|
|
blatant, the silver faucet turning above it, the chin of water it
|
|||
|
|
drops steaming into the hole. the hole sucks it down with the
|
|||
|
|
washing of a thirstiness. in the closet there is a ton of luggage,
|
|||
|
|
piled upon itself in its slickness of imitation leather, aluminum,
|
|||
|
|
plaid and textured surface resembling the goosebumps prickle of a
|
|||
|
|
forearm. mother garner the edge of my eye. i'm going places for
|
|||
|
|
the paste, taste. is there a doctor in the house? doctor f., so
|
|||
|
|
good to see you arriving, and so good to see you haven't noticed
|
|||
|
|
anyone here. good to see your soul. sold american. the cars
|
|||
|
|
punch by on the crunching of the road collapsing a spine smashed
|
|||
|
|
impact rocked back into itself to take the blast, instead crumbling
|
|||
|
|
in an instant like the gritty popping of a nose under fist.
|
|||
|
|
remember that time you fought cathers? catheters. something you'd
|
|||
|
|
bypass now. draining of the waste. waist: the exercise clinic,
|
|||
|
|
blue and silver buffet against the freeway feeder, cars mosing out
|
|||
|
|
with their blunt and faded probisci. probar: to experience. need
|
|||
|
|
for experiential data? no thanks i've already lost a leg. to try
|
|||
|
|
out. all is tried, mother, i've got to pass this grade. wearing
|
|||
|
|
my eyes spread out like the letters on this cheap newsprint
|
|||
|
|
schoolpaper, must go on. tired yellow round the ridges burning
|
|||
|
|
with fatigue like this overburnt kitchen light, a yellowing of the
|
|||
|
|
corners of the windows in their starchy mountings. doctor f.
|
|||
|
|
departs with his papers, discussing acceptable loss. cars rush by
|
|||
|
|
on the white road. wearing into it their grey smear of exhaust.
|
|||
|
|
tired. right, more road. it is all roads. life is many days.
|
|||
|
|
mother? must go on. did you know you're a scorpio? and i an
|
|||
|
|
aries? oh, well, that was supposed to go on. but one owns our own
|
|||
|
|
dreams. arms fatigued at the root, reaching out. must push,
|
|||
|
|
stretch onward to pull over darkness, pulling it down beneath the
|
|||
|
|
gut and out of sigh, bottoms of feet itching tickling as if
|
|||
|
|
prepared for a needle so many times in the doctors office, flesh
|
|||
|
|
puckered for the slinking stab of the needle. in quick, the pole
|
|||
|
|
of steel. into you. but don't let it touch you. up fast, up fast,
|
|||
|
|
must over the wall -- )
|
|||
|
|
#unconsciousness: resurrect, retire.
|
|||
|
|
(pulling, tugging of anaesthesia)
|
|||
|
|
#unconsciousness: restrict. retire retirement.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Spike's eyes in my face. Stodgy retirement of darkness and
|
|||
|
|
comfort. "Good morning pal we've got road to take," Spike moving
|
|||
|
|
onward toward the bathroom, I can't see his steps. Okay. Waking.
|
|||
|
|
Bring me home.
|
|||
|
|
A shower helps: soap under the arms, soap the chest (enough
|
|||
|
|
chest hair there to stand in rows like cattails above dunes. Wet
|
|||
|
|
they trail in adhesion in the water-slickness of my chest.
|
|||
|
|
Thickness, resilient flesh with the hollowness of my lungs coughing
|
|||
|
|
in the steamy air behind it). Curt sharpness of the motel soap,
|
|||
|
|
foamy thick orange squeezed into my palm, dying my hair shades of
|
|||
|
|
a guava smell. The muffled voice of Spike is a broad murmur-tune
|
|||
|
|
punctuated with the blast syllables of his accentuation. Time to
|
|||
|
|
leave the shower; time to hit the road; time would be of the
|
|||
|
|
essence were it not indeterminate, time would be nice.
|
|||
|
|
Sunlight always shocks, the eyes receding tender under the
|
|||
|
|
buffet of its approach. Stark fingers shocked straight forward
|
|||
|
|
into the sockets. Spike leads and I stagger, wet-haired, a vague
|
|||
|
|
doggy smell on the wetness. Am I raw animal? Crush the skull.
|
|||
|
|
Eyes must be a little tired, hanging dark and low in the shade of
|
|||
|
|
the hair over my forehead, dark, wet. Spike leads and we turn down
|
|||
|
|
the corner of a dry but palatable drag, a main line of this town.
|
|||
|
|
Quiet, suspended, with a newspaper paper punched out by the wind
|
|||
|
|
hanging like a dead jellyfish in the stagnant grey waters above the
|
|||
|
|
streets. Somnolent visions of Atlantis, KY, the seat of Meekin
|
|||
|
|
County.
|
|||
|
|
Some eyes glance us as we cross the facade of a local store.
|
|||
|
|
Muffled gazes with chins fastly bound into themselves. Jawlines
|
|||
|
|
defined in the sterile isolation of stillness. I ask one local,
|
|||
|
|
checkered blue shirt and broad lined hands, where I can find a road
|
|||
|
|
map, and he answers factually, quickly: "At the corner there is a
|
|||
|
|
gas station which will sell maps. They cost about three dollars."
|
|||
|
|
Thank you, I say, unnerved somewhat, and move out of his stare to
|
|||
|
|
pursue the gas station.
|
|||
|
|
Awareness of what disturbs me, squirming in my shirt, about
|
|||
|
|
that dialogue would be forthcoming, the realizing that no eyes
|
|||
|
|
followed me, no extraneous conversation followed the directions.
|
|||
|
|
I had the straight dope laid on me like a crowbar. Right along the
|
|||
|
|
line of my nose. Onward to the gas station, pushing our legs down
|
|||
|
|
into dusty cement to feel the impact, a jolting reassurance. Maps
|
|||
|
|
-- $2.95. Guy knows his gas station. Gastronomical: brittle candy
|
|||
|
|
bars, thick toffees, gummy globules of sugar fruit, resilient
|
|||
|
|
capsules of hot cinnamon candy, brown sugar, apple pies,
|
|||
|
|
jawbreakers, chewing gum, jellybeans bagged by the pound. Where
|
|||
|
|
the hell are chips, or anything? Pay the guy $3.11 total for a
|
|||
|
|
map; he's stark factual, asking three-elev-en please, no smile when
|
|||
|
|
we entered or left, a blinking cursor on his terminal.
|
|||
|
|
Back out to the street and we see the first one: the churning
|
|||
|
|
muscle (fistsized like a heart) hanging over the erect vein, the
|
|||
|
|
fine finger of a skinny needle slicing a slide into the flesh.
|
|||
|
|
Blood mixes the substance in a flourishing hand of red; the plunger
|
|||
|
|
fills the arm under the momentary thrust of firmness of the thumb,
|
|||
|
|
uniting the body in action where it had previously been loose,
|
|||
|
|
abstracted on a park bench. Not the same guy, but they might have
|
|||
|
|
been brothers from the stare, he wrote in his diary, back in the
|
|||
|
|
hotel room, somewhere in the future. Meantime: Needle slicks out,
|
|||
|
|
droplet of blood licked away, the untied innertube peeling from the
|
|||
|
|
arm. Unselfconscious entirely. He readjusts his shirt, rolling it
|
|||
|
|
slowly, twitchingly down his arm, and at the end has an immensely
|
|||
|
|
direct sense of calm.
|
|||
|
|
Erect he walks across the street slowly, his feet bonded to
|
|||
|
|
the shadows he leaves for a hanging instant on the pavement. Spike
|
|||
|
|
and I inhale an accustomed tolerance of drug use and the twisting,
|
|||
|
|
insinuating, strange ways it pervades a life, makes the user an
|
|||
|
|
upright citizen with no fear from either the needle or the eyes
|
|||
|
|
tracking its silver-scarlet plunge. Longshadows stand out down the
|
|||
|
|
lane from either eye; there are no cars, our realization. Spike I
|
|||
|
|
and the habitual nervousness of such contextual disparity stand
|
|||
|
|
aback into the shade of the gas station overhang. The cursor waits
|
|||
|
|
inside.
|
|||
|
|
I creep an eye over the figures on benches, still, their
|
|||
|
|
forelegs angular to the ground, their backs and heads straight and
|
|||
|
|
eyes ahead. Almost military: a dedication to inaction. I don't
|
|||
|
|
like this town, Spike is thinking or maybe saying, and I agreeing
|
|||
|
|
with a sudden urgency to pull back to the road and go when a car
|
|||
|
|
rolls to a silent pause in front of us, chrome glistening over
|
|||
|
|
white breadth and black confines. There is no mistake these cops
|
|||
|
|
are here for us; it is only one, and he motions us inside the car.
|
|||
|
|
We get in back. An admission of guilt or maybe shock.
|
|||
|
|
Each word means a different thing, none of which are its
|
|||
|
|
dictionary meaning. It all has to do with where it's said; "jail"
|
|||
|
|
on the street, in an apartment with a known number on the door on
|
|||
|
|
a street with familiar landmarks, is an entirely different entity
|
|||
|
|
from "jail" in a police car that knows unfamiliar land equally
|
|||
|
|
well. The cop is bulky, compressed into a stout bullet with
|
|||
|
|
reflective sunglasses, on which slide the corners and buildings.
|
|||
|
|
Spike is upright, stiff, and I am aware of the sweat on my thighs
|
|||
|
|
infiltrating the fake leather of the copcar seat. Nothing here is
|
|||
|
|
connected; this cop is unaware of anything but routine, the people
|
|||
|
|
on the streets are unaware of anything but the stare, the gas
|
|||
|
|
station man waits for a terminal input. Terminal, disconnected.
|
|||
|
|
The line is dead, sir; would you care to hold? This place is far
|
|||
|
|
on hold. Should've edited those felony convictions to parking
|
|||
|
|
violations.
|
|||
|
|
Into the air conditioning which squeezes the water from air,
|
|||
|
|
instantly chilling the drying flesh. Dessicate in these cells.
|
|||
|
|
Wait here: a stiff voice like four straight fingers held up at the
|
|||
|
|
chest. The cop turns a corner out of sight; from the desk the two
|
|||
|
|
eyes of an attendant follow us in our stillness. Spike leans over
|
|||
|
|
to ask, and is reminded of his distancing requirement of four feet,
|
|||
|
|
and as he steps back is addressed by number, told his ordinance
|
|||
|
|
number violated, and told to wait. Stiff fingers. Another cop
|
|||
|
|
comes back, and we see first cop moving into a back room near a
|
|||
|
|
coffee machine, pulling back a chair of aluminum frame and padded
|
|||
|
|
platforms, taking from his back pocket a length of rubber tubing.
|
|||
|
|
Spike turns and my eyes meet his straight on, a sudden thrust of
|
|||
|
|
dangerous awareness. We are not even cuffed.
|
|||
|
|
Taken down the hall, now moving into a holding cell. Shock
|
|||
|
|
muffles our mewls. A three-part collision of steel cage on door,
|
|||
|
|
lock on lock, and then catch on lock-rim, a chin of steel worn
|
|||
|
|
shiny by use. Eyes are opened in the darkness. The same starkness
|
|||
|
|
of expression. We learn our visuals from context: by knowing wall,
|
|||
|
|
we distinguish human. We can smell the drug, on them, in them. In
|
|||
|
|
the dark. Here the context equals the eyes, which bore at us with
|
|||
|
|
the patience and awareness of a wall. The only living thing in
|
|||
|
|
this room is Spike, and the twitching of the muscles under his
|
|||
|
|
shoulderblades, something that only happens when he's really
|
|||
|
|
nervous. I put my palms on the muscles and grind them in, feeling
|
|||
|
|
the spasms release like a trampoline with each push. Let them
|
|||
|
|
think we're gay.
|
|||
|
|
No eyes even find this. We are more wall. Do they even have
|
|||
|
|
words for wall and face here? Or is it morewall came downwall to
|
|||
|
|
us all, wall, and from there we walled ourselves in, went out with
|
|||
|
|
a wall? At an interval from our entry, as if a clock's hour hand
|
|||
|
|
clicked into place, one of the group facing the bars emptily palms
|
|||
|
|
a needle, and draws tubing across his bicep with the help of the
|
|||
|
|
silent man next to him, who carefully verifies the tube is on and
|
|||
|
|
then resumes the twilight stare. A spoon cooks in the background,
|
|||
|
|
and is passed over. The hunger of the sliding in, and the head
|
|||
|
|
moves back briefly as the drug rushes through the valleys and
|
|||
|
|
canyons of his brain. Spike sits two down from him: "Mind if I ask
|
|||
|
|
what that is?"
|
|||
|
|
Working, steadily attentive, assiduous at cleaning the works:
|
|||
|
|
"Stoicaine."
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
#interlude: connect
|
|||
|
|
(past tense deep in the folds of brain)
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
login: FIELD
|
|||
|
|
pass:
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Welcome, FIELD REPAIR. To access FCLAD, type 'FCLAD' at the
|
|||
|
|
prompt.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
It is 09:38:17 GMT (-0600).
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
FCLAD: FCLAD
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Welcome to FCLAD! Please enter L S C E Q:
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
&| C
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Enter the drug to cite by brand name, chemical name, or common
|
|||
|
|
name:
|
|||
|
|
STOIC?
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
1 records found.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Stoicaine.
|
|||
|
|
Methylaldehide Disodium Lethium Chlorosomatomate (.4 g).
|
|||
|
|
see also Shock[7], Soma[1], Strych-9.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Stoicaine is the latest in the family of chemical subversives
|
|||
|
|
reported from the streets of major cities. Acting apparently upon
|
|||
|
|
the forebrain neurons, it acts as a blocker as well as a
|
|||
|
|
transmitter of vital neurochlorides, resulting in a reductive
|
|||
|
|
effect upon forebrain activity as well as the pleasant release of
|
|||
|
|
endorphins that similar opiates possess. Not much is known about
|
|||
|
|
this drug as most subjects have died in police captivity, but
|
|||
|
|
according to users interviewed in the field it 'makes everything a
|
|||
|
|
shade of light blue' and reduces the brain's creative and
|
|||
|
|
connective impulses, allowing it to record data without effect on
|
|||
|
|
memory, but leaving it virtually non-interactive with the outside
|
|||
|
|
world. Users have been known to sit motionless for hours in
|
|||
|
|
perfect contentment.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
FCLAD: disconnect
|
|||
|
|
#interlude: return
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
The memories that impinge upon the memory for their very fear
|
|||
|
|
value. Doubt for that drug -- yes -- no more -- on the way toward
|
|||
|
|
real believership. Stares of rough faces into the shadows of jail
|
|||
|
|
bars without a concern for motion. Normally prison cells activate
|
|||
|
|
not as much to find a victim in the newcomer but to assess the
|
|||
|
|
threat of the latest entrant; not even that occurred. Utter
|
|||
|
|
contentment of imposed solitude. Solitude now perceptual upon our
|
|||
|
|
tired lids; confusion exhausts, the roomful of nonhumans of our
|
|||
|
|
species tiring us doubly. Spike and I lapse to vast sleep.
|
|||
|
|
Awakening: the needle stinging into my arm.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
#interlude: terror
|
|||
|
|
(...)
|
|||
|
|
#disconnect
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
The hands draw back from my arm. Redness suffuses the
|
|||
|
|
whiteness in splotches on the skin. The air is thick. There are
|
|||
|
|
seven in the room; the light is not dim enough to be unable to see
|
|||
|
|
them. Spike who I came with is to my right by three feet. Blue
|
|||
|
|
suffuses the air in a light wash. Coming down hard from above.
|
|||
|
|
Something like falling backward, sinking into the ground. The
|
|||
|
|
ground around with the idea of mushroom to it.
|
|||
|
|
...Door opening, three crashes. About a second between each.
|
|||
|
|
Trays all around; there is food here. It has been four hours since
|
|||
|
|
the last food. Eat. The trays leave with scraping on the beige
|
|||
|
|
floor with scratches of steel. ...A need. Vague. Very vague:
|
|||
|
|
twitching. Must find. Some thoughts of need. Day blends to
|
|||
|
|
night: in the darkness, a pinprick, and then sleep.
|
|||
|
|
So still. There is nothing here without a word or number.
|
|||
|
|
There are four walls. There are two doors. There are one toilet
|
|||
|
|
and one sink, one drain. There are seven. There is one. Or is
|
|||
|
|
there one? Counted already. There are seven. Each day is twenty-
|
|||
|
|
four hours. This is a net stretched over everything, an enwrapped
|
|||
|
|
structure. Everything fits into it. You even die at a time.
|
|||
|
|
Over two from me is Spike. Quiet stares into room. The door
|
|||
|
|
opens somewhere behind; a hand squeezing my arm, walking down the
|
|||
|
|
hall. One more takes Spike. The door crashes three times. In
|
|||
|
|
front of the desk: dismissed with a ticket for Loitering, fine $85.
|
|||
|
|
Spike pulls out $43.12, in one twenty ($20), three fives ($5), four
|
|||
|
|
ones ($1), seven quarters ($0.25), thirteen dimes ($0.10), twenty-
|
|||
|
|
one nickels ($0.05) and two pennies, $0.01 each. I have $21.77:
|
|||
|
|
one twenty ($20), one dollar bill ($1), three quarters ($0.25) and
|
|||
|
|
two pennies, each also $0.01. There is an order to these amounts:
|
|||
|
|
add them, it is $64.89, which is the price of a fifty-pound green
|
|||
|
|
metal wheelbarrow in the store on the way around the third turn on
|
|||
|
|
the way to the police station.
|
|||
|
|
...There is given to me a pen, blue with a clicker that needs
|
|||
|
|
to be thumb-punched so that the pen-tip is out, and a clipboard,
|
|||
|
|
somewhere where the signature needs to be made. Made. Spike takes
|
|||
|
|
pen, does same. In front of the glass-eyed woman clerk is the same
|
|||
|
|
stack of papers littleman had; she strikes through them, and tells
|
|||
|
|
us to report to the following address, by mail if necessary, twice
|
|||
|
|
in the next twelve months. Seamless, her eyes flawlessly alert.
|
|||
|
|
We are allowed now to walk through the tinted door (they let us go
|
|||
|
|
knowing we go nowhere) and take ten steps down the street, where we
|
|||
|
|
pause, and sit on the slatted bench. Beneath the slats the sun
|
|||
|
|
runs in strips: 12 of them.
|
|||
|
|
...Sweat creeps from the back of the sides of my head to my
|
|||
|
|
eyesockets, rimming them in wetness and continuing down my face.
|
|||
|
|
Sweat chills and then emerges on my skin, getting colder.
|
|||
|
|
Stoicaine is cold, but this is much colder. Stoicaine cold freezes
|
|||
|
|
all of the air and objects in the air, making them move slowly, and
|
|||
|
|
talk slowly if they do. Everything is a light blue, it is a calm.
|
|||
|
|
Like water, but water doesn't feel like anything but air. Runs
|
|||
|
|
faster though over wrists. There is no need really for sleep, but
|
|||
|
|
the order fits lying down for eight hours during the darkness. Now
|
|||
|
|
more sweat. There is need. Last time there was need ... , ..,
|
|||
|
|
there was an occurrence. The drug: more. Give us each day our
|
|||
|
|
daily bread...
|
|||
|
|
...Goddamn, it is cold. Frozen to what would be thirty
|
|||
|
|
degrees. The drugstore clock says not, says eighty. Twitching
|
|||
|
|
intense, odd free jazz slitting my veins. The bench vibrates with
|
|||
|
|
another twitching. Spike is one away from me. Goddamn, cold.
|
|||
|
|
Goddamn. Cold. And suddenly the parchment of sidewalk in front of
|
|||
|
|
me: I vomit cold yellow splattering acidic, running into the grass
|
|||
|
|
in slow fingers. Across the street an eye or three are on me.
|
|||
|
|
...Impact jar of perspective as Spike yanks the left arm out
|
|||
|
|
of socket, and by it we go down the road, to our car. Starting,
|
|||
|
|
and leaving. And the road begins to pass as we both vomit, twitch,
|
|||
|
|
and sweat, the cold sweat of a morgue slab or icy winter water
|
|||
|
|
falling into sand on a beach with no one else there but vague
|
|||
|
|
memories of their presence, once upon a time.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
#final (interlude)
|
|||
|
|
(crescent casting shattered halos of streelight passing by my car
|
|||
|
|
the whisking noise of wind like lives souls torn out of life and
|
|||
|
|
thrown into the endless spiralling orbit of descent, the heat of
|
|||
|
|
the city's decay rising like mist from the streets, their asphalt
|
|||
|
|
pores breathing pure oily ancient down my neck, the pressing weight
|
|||
|
|
of time insurmountable flowing through my veins, aging crack and
|
|||
|
|
die, like streets bleached black to grey, continual fade of days,
|
|||
|
|
the isolation of driving alone through streets marked nameless on
|
|||
|
|
vague maps of mind, more cruise control for the thoughts in
|
|||
|
|
isolation, something big or small vile or beautiful, the impact
|
|||
|
|
rests you here, in the contemplation of life from a chunk of steel
|
|||
|
|
muttering random through constructs of eroded concrete; this is the
|
|||
|
|
life of the loner and the joiner, to drive while city sleeps and
|
|||
|
|
watch its lights, almost a vigil for the empathy that you can't
|
|||
|
|
help feel, the same empathy that puts you in the lonely mode, the
|
|||
|
|
withdrawal, feeling the weight of life knowing that more suffering
|
|||
|
|
is here, present, only kept away by time, that the now is a vaguely
|
|||
|
|
warm damp car, the smell of it too present in the nostrils,
|
|||
|
|
relaxing, the feeling that life moves past the car even in sleep,
|
|||
|
|
past your eyes somnolent with machine to keep going; this isn't an
|
|||
|
|
isolation but a resurrection, a rediscovery of one's narration one
|
|||
|
|
tells oneself to sleep at night, a realistic readjustment, the
|
|||
|
|
stolid swallowing of the truths to big to tell, the determination
|
|||
|
|
of motion, the fledgling might of empathy, and the wondering where
|
|||
|
|
your friends are, where do you end up? and realization that things
|
|||
|
|
move, the time burns buffing into the windshield, the days draw
|
|||
|
|
long like calloused old fingers drawing a cigarette from the pack,
|
|||
|
|
nothing more to do but kill one more and watch the road, the night
|
|||
|
|
encompassing, the fear of darkness, the love of light, the love of
|
|||
|
|
the freedom of darkness, the flight through cavernous clearings
|
|||
|
|
disclosed, the wrath and love and loneliness pulling through the
|
|||
|
|
taught tendons of your fingers tied to the wheel, a determination
|
|||
|
|
to drive until morning is a sensible entity, a calling to pull the
|
|||
|
|
soul into its own, to pull life forth before the dawn, watching
|
|||
|
|
grey concrete pass its own shadows, the buildings rising into the
|
|||
|
|
daylight, the trash clattering down gutters to hide, a mass of
|
|||
|
|
people receeding, comfortable in namelessness but not realizing
|
|||
|
|
that is never true, that in the cacophony of our machined empires
|
|||
|
|
the resonant human truths are what we can't ignore, pipe-bound on
|
|||
|
|
rooftops, sharing a jay near the surf, burning a bowl in a parking
|
|||
|
|
lot or just killing beers on a porch, into the void of intoxication
|
|||
|
|
beyond the void of our enforcement, a determination to see things
|
|||
|
|
in their layout, when that is all known, has been known, and the
|
|||
|
|
passing of the bowl over the glow of friends' eyes is the noblest
|
|||
|
|
truth i'll ever know)
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
#consumption (irridescence)
|
|||
|
|
#continue
|
|||
|
|
The car wheels a squeak out in the turn, and we peel off like
|
|||
|
|
an airplane coming home. The files are cleared we are safe and I
|
|||
|
|
can't feel it, the hollow resonance of security or delusion.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
II
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Four days later we will be in downtown Houston, under the grey
|
|||
|
|
shadows of smog between glass pillars reaching toward the babbling
|
|||
|
|
clouds of the sky. Small injections of morphine will help this.
|
|||
|
|
Spike has found us a home, a way from that place. His spine was
|
|||
|
|
chilled like mine but not as badly. He pulled me out. Thank you
|
|||
|
|
Spike. If once I was afraid of the word love for a man, from
|
|||
|
|
expectation and insult: I love you Spike. People do shit all of
|
|||
|
|
the time because they feel they should, or they think it'll get
|
|||
|
|
them something, but Spike brought me out of that hell, the land of
|
|||
|
|
cold flesh walking with gutless dissonant eyes.
|
|||
|
|
Spike also worded me on the computer: gotta speak its
|
|||
|
|
language. But this was over a fat joint of Columbian green (stuff
|
|||
|
|
the locals don't smoke; to their practiced taste, it's too much
|
|||
|
|
like Jamaicano, but Spike and I know this stuff crushes like a
|
|||
|
|
trash compactor on overdrive and have no intention of giving it up)
|
|||
|
|
when we found some stoner buddies on our way north. We bounced
|
|||
|
|
between Cleveland and Iowa a few times, then began a slow perusal
|
|||
|
|
of northern states. All clear records came from the south. I
|
|||
|
|
decided to verify the state of our records with my new friend of
|
|||
|
|
unease, the network I couldn't imagine naming, and cautiously
|
|||
|
|
extended a local construction of some machines that I had
|
|||
|
|
commandeered for that purpose (belonging to a paper company a
|
|||
|
|
continent away). The local architecture defeated it; too much
|
|||
|
|
noise.
|
|||
|
|
From other machines I built a contextual network across three
|
|||
|
|
continents, and then scaled down, as this network doesn't care
|
|||
|
|
about size, only data. It links them in concepts, contexts. So I
|
|||
|
|
built an emulation of myself, a machine which existed to thrust its
|
|||
|
|
hidden signal into the ever-flowing cacaphony of mainstream noise,
|
|||
|
|
encoding within that signal another protocol, an insurgent noise
|
|||
|
|
which overwhelmed and then entered the matrix of the hidden
|
|||
|
|
network. Based it upon a little used feature of data relativity
|
|||
|
|
within the network - from an inverse, I constructed a self-
|
|||
|
|
referential argument; this spread confusion and susceptibility to
|
|||
|
|
bogus responses to more-data requests. I am amazed how easily it
|
|||
|
|
worked - but more. I queried it on me and Spike, and found Spike
|
|||
|
|
had no record, and I had a traffic ticket (a cashier's check hit
|
|||
|
|
the US mail service that afternoon, in an envelope addressed to the
|
|||
|
|
DPS in an envelope addressed to a local friend who'd mail it) but
|
|||
|
|
no serious record. The welt had closed, the scar tissue receded.
|
|||
|
|
Tissue lost in the mass of it, pouring past, some of it alive, with
|
|||
|
|
some ideas, but most dead, grey, unaware. I asked it several
|
|||
|
|
times, but it reported no more intrusion requests.
|
|||
|
|
Sometime around Athens, TX, I lost all ability to connect with
|
|||
|
|
it. The protocol eclipsed along a chromatic and vanished into the
|
|||
|
|
noise, pulling away into a void too large to grasp. I at first
|
|||
|
|
panicked and locked myself in a toilet for six hours, afraid of
|
|||
|
|
another arrest, the jail time. Must have been the Cyclopic Thai
|
|||
|
|
that Spike and I had murdered an eighth of earlier that day. I
|
|||
|
|
tried more connects, feeling braver when the next sun rose and I
|
|||
|
|
was free, clear, alive. Too much noise, but I found the assumption
|
|||
|
|
of the noise calming: it is in here somewhere, and I will find it.
|
|||
|
|
Others fear the noise, but that's a brute-force thrust, not the
|
|||
|
|
finesse of hacking. A beauty, a martial art like all of them are.
|
|||
|
|
It awaits me, or a new narration of me, an identity to borrow for
|
|||
|
|
a jaunt with this system. No mocking, it just moves: it processes
|
|||
|
|
like all else, with no thought for its death, but with movement
|
|||
|
|
toward life. Someday it may live. Hopefully at that point in time
|
|||
|
|
I'll have a network to watch it (of my own, or rather - borrowed,
|
|||
|
|
to become my own). A cool night breeze washes in over the desert,
|
|||
|
|
disturbing small whorls of dust to coagulate in the dark
|
|||
|
|
inscrutable air. So much noise in the silent desert, but so much
|
|||
|
|
of it - so much freedom. I have learned its value.
|
|||
|
|
Four days more and we will be free again to move, with
|
|||
|
|
hopefully the small worm I unleashed across the network
|
|||
|
|
metamorphosizing into uselessness, having eaten all of our files.
|
|||
|
|
With those gone we have relative freedom to build our identities
|
|||
|
|
and begin a relatively clean life again, although any disturbances
|
|||
|
|
may resurrect our files. No problems - from the perspective of
|
|||
|
|
freedom, I'm less afraid of screwing up. Caution is the byword, as
|
|||
|
|
Spike used to smirk. We are however going to cautiously murder
|
|||
|
|
tons of really good green pot, or maybe vary and go for some of the
|
|||
|
|
dry brown stuff that makes you peel your eyelashes off the ceiling.
|
|||
|
|
Houston's not a bad city, but another location. More than
|
|||
|
|
location, but it has its advantages:
|
|||
|
|
Below us by thirty miles lies Galveston, with an honest and
|
|||
|
|
beautiful blue sky. The inverted silhouette of the expanse of the
|
|||
|
|
ocean, the insignia of freedom.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[-sven:cblanc@pomona.claremont.edu]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
/--------------------------------------------------------------------------\
|
|||
|
|
| In our continuing search for meaningful survival among the labyrinthine |
|
|||
|
|
| complexities of modern decay, resonant human truths are what we cannot |
|
|||
|
|
| afford to ignore. |
|
|||
|
|
\--------------------------------------------------------------------------/
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[EOF]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
____________________________________
|
|||
|
|
| Hello, I am: | s.r. prozak cblanc@pomona.
|
|||
|
|
| -------------------------------- | philosopher of claremont.edu
|
|||
|
|
| | DISTURBED | | disorder, chaos,
|
|||
|
|
| -------------------------------- | depravity, and lust. Fri18:00/88.7FM
|
|||
|
|
|__________________________________|
|
|||
|
|
|