Take me home. Not this home, the other one. A cityscape takes its shape. Burning barrels burst from the soil, which itself hardens, blackens, is pavement. The treeline is a sheetmetal wall decorated with profanity, art, aggression. It's a backalley of paper thin people prowling the night. The street lies to my back behind the buildings, announcing itself with tired tires on wet cement, honking constructs, and that particular smell that you know so well you don't know you're smelling it. And at the edge of all this, leaning against the frame, Corwin Davis exhales a cloud of smoke between his lips, his pupils coursing, dodging unseen projectiles. He looks naturally overdressed, in my estimation, shaped to fit the threads. His teeth outshine the darkness. Playfully misshapen and missing in two places.
The trees are gone but the birds remain. Let's grab their chirps in our hands and bring them down to street level, broaden their range of pitches, add some period-ready vernacular. You know the kind I mean, daddy-o. Wait, scratch that, that's not right at all. Fill in the blanks yourself, goddammit. You know where the corner flips, how the potato flies, the color of the sun at night. How to a butter a bagel, and so on.
The birds are not birds, just to be clear. Some of them are women, and those ones are wearing glittery dresses that double the light and drag Corwin's shimmering eyes to them as if they were in the same photograph. It's not that he watches them, but that they belong in his vision, moving, standing, dancing, talking; whatever they do, they are there inside wherever he looks, and where he does not look they are not there. Their hair flips and shouts, and when it does he twitches with either delight or anxiety.
He is waiting at the club stairs being himself. Or some version of it. He wants to be innocuous but can't manage it despite all the practice. Down in the dark, though, the paranoid types (you know the ones I mean) say he practices witchcraft with his horn. An auditory breed for the audience. And when he got right down to it in the recesses of his own soul, he couldn't say that they weren't on to something. In the sweat, in the light, in the dark, there was something that captured them and held them. But if he were casting a spell then it was on himself as well. But there was no way to communicate this distinction to the sort of folk who'd accuse him of it. So he kept quiet when it came up, kept on casting spells and stayed far away from the ones who distrusted that magic.
They weren't the types who went to a seance anyway, except for the occasional undercover journalist; and you could point out their type from across the room. In a cloud of unbelongers, they belonged too well, like they'd just been to the costume shop down the street.
Next to him, immediately to his left, Roland was a beast. He watched his own feet and growled. I want to stress right now, though, that the sentence before the last sentence was not literal. Cause we may meet some beasts later on. That could be confusing, I realize. So yeah, Roland was a beast, but not the kind that is a beast. His fangs did seem to be longer than normal, but it was just a trick of his smile that looked just like now as if he were tugging something heavy up through the floor. Exaggerated by his tendency to always be looking down at his feet no matter what he was doing. On a crosswalk, sat at a piano, watching the ball drop in Times Square, playing hopscotch, no matter, he was looking at his feet on all occasions, probably with that same fangy smile on his face. At least often enough that Corwin would've bet on it if he were in a betting mood.
Friday, May 22, 2020
Monday, May 4, 2020
i was not meant for human lands
i was meant for the endless sands
where the dust whips dry and
full of grit across your eyes
and into your nose
and makes you the dust
and you whip through the land as a devil
overturning carriages and carrying tumbleweeds
along to your destination
into the clouds where onion domes
and minarets and steeples and pyramids
are all made out of
vapor a hundred miles tall
and every cloud looks
like it's the size of a bed
but is actually an entire continent
with its own system of caves beneath
and perhaps a watershed as well
the buildings there are timeless
in that they have no time
in which to exist
but only to be constructed and deconstructed
in the same moment that they are
also lived in for a thousand years
enough time for institutions to crumble and be rebuilt
enough time for a hundred million neighbors to lean from their windows and hang their laundry on the line suspended in the air whle shouting at one another that there will be time enough for another to use the clothesline because it takes no time at all as everything does
this is The MarshMallow Haven
where the people are noT
visible from a distance and are the same color
and material
as the land itself
and where the mouth of an ancient beast looms over the city
his fangs home to ten million citizens
and incorporated into
the bazaar which sells countless foods that are all
made of the same thing as the people
who are quite delicious
i was meant for the endless sands
where the dust whips dry and
full of grit across your eyes
and into your nose
and makes you the dust
and you whip through the land as a devil
overturning carriages and carrying tumbleweeds
along to your destination
into the clouds where onion domes
and minarets and steeples and pyramids
are all made out of
vapor a hundred miles tall
and every cloud looks
like it's the size of a bed
but is actually an entire continent
with its own system of caves beneath
and perhaps a watershed as well
the buildings there are timeless
in that they have no time
in which to exist
but only to be constructed and deconstructed
in the same moment that they are
also lived in for a thousand years
enough time for institutions to crumble and be rebuilt
enough time for a hundred million neighbors to lean from their windows and hang their laundry on the line suspended in the air whle shouting at one another that there will be time enough for another to use the clothesline because it takes no time at all as everything does
this is The MarshMallow Haven
where the people are noT
visible from a distance and are the same color
and material
as the land itself
and where the mouth of an ancient beast looms over the city
his fangs home to ten million citizens
and incorporated into
the bazaar which sells countless foods that are all
made of the same thing as the people
who are quite delicious
Saturday, May 2, 2020
she dreamt of fire
she dreamt of fire
she dreamt of the wallpaper curling, smoking, cringing
in a theater that only played disaster movies
she dreamt of a hole that burned through the wall to reveal
a warm place beyond
she dreamt of a world where the people did not fantasize about destroying all they had constructed
because they had actually constructed something nice for once
perhaps it is a machine that produces bubbles
containing miniature butterflies
perhaps these butterflies are
genetically engineered to flutter up
and whisper a compliment in your ear
that your hair looks nice today
or that their world is
richer for your presence
even when your hair
doesn't look so nice
because they love you, baby
and the people were pretty damn
satisfied with their invention
enough that they didn't even
feel the need to make more
just to stock store shelves
they just had the one and the one
did its thing
and that was that
and they all liked what they had made
because it was a thing
they had wanted
to make
she dreamt of the wallpaper curling, smoking, cringing
in a theater that only played disaster movies
she dreamt of a hole that burned through the wall to reveal
a warm place beyond
she dreamt of a world where the people did not fantasize about destroying all they had constructed
because they had actually constructed something nice for once
perhaps it is a machine that produces bubbles
containing miniature butterflies
perhaps these butterflies are
genetically engineered to flutter up
and whisper a compliment in your ear
that your hair looks nice today
or that their world is
richer for your presence
even when your hair
doesn't look so nice
because they love you, baby
and the people were pretty damn
satisfied with their invention
enough that they didn't even
feel the need to make more
just to stock store shelves
they just had the one and the one
did its thing
and that was that
and they all liked what they had made
because it was a thing
they had wanted
to make
Friday, May 1, 2020
truck stop donut shop pit stop pop and coffee soda sticking to the floors and shattered sidewalk
Every place felt like the last place. The last place I'd want to end up. The last place I'd ever see. The end of history. The interminable now after which there was nothing and before which there were dreams. I was awake today, had been asleep yesterday, and would be dead tomorrow. And I mean, hooray, right?
Hooray if that were actually the case, but somehow it was always today. They promised me tomorrow. They wrote it on the goddamn calendar. But I went to sleep like a kiddo waiting for Santy Claus - and woke up today. Still today. Same old truck in my driveway. Same old freezer of instant burritos. Same empty pack of cigs on the nightstand. Same nightstand, same bed, same cursed body, the only part of my life that can measure the passage of time. Like it had run off into the future just to get older, then travelled back in time to hang with me and my brain again.
where it was always
goddamn
today.
today.
today
today
today
today
That's what the alarm says before I can shut it up. And you know what today means. It means we're driving the truck. Yeap, let's go drive the truck. Let's go raid the burrito stock. Let's go waste today on the edge of a lost tomorrow. Maybe it'll be different, right? Nah.
Aaaaanyway....so what's your story? Don't wanna talk, huh? I mean, that's fine, I can ramble on if I must. If you twist my arm.
Let's talk about burritos. The sausage ones are decent, but bacon and cheese is the best. Yes, I know it's not a goddamn burrito, but that's what it says on the package and I don't decide what they decide to call it. It's good, whaddaya want from me? Pop that piece of shit in the microwave for like 30 seconds and it's the best part of the day, right at the very start if it weren't for the fact that I'm sick to death of that garbage. But gotta eat just like getting out of bed, none of what I will describe to you would be classified as a voluntary act if I'm being honest, which I will be cause that's really the goal here. You put one foot in front of the other because if you don't you might lie down on the ground instead, which is mostly fine except that someone's gonna happen along and kick you, or worse yet ask what's wrong. You keep placing your feet on the sidewalk like a little wind up toy because it's the only way to stop yourself from face-planting, same as you open and close the fridge as if part of an electric diorama so your stomach doesn't start yeling at the top of its lungs, bending and bleeding acid all over the place.
Anyway, I recommend a burrito in the morning. If you drive a truck you get hungry. Don't ask me why. It doesn't make any sense. All I do is sit in a chair, and I'm famished. I'll eat frozen burritos, or a bowl of ashes, so long as it keeps the furies away. And so long as they got bacon and cheese flavor. Yes, flavor. That ain't real bacon, I don't know what it is.
I'm standing in the driveway. The truck is in the driveway. Can you guess what's in the truck? I'll bet you can. Yeah, you got it. That's right. The driveway slopes down into the street. The street lies perpendicular to the driveway. The horizon lies perpendicular to the street, which makes it parallel to the driveway, I guess. The other side of the street slopes up into another driveway. If you were standing in that driveway, it would be sloping down, and mine would be the one sloping up. The road itself slopes both ways. That's so the rainwater ends up in the gutters. It's raining right now. Like, a good bit of rain, but highly atomized. Heavy but thin. Weighty and ballistic. It's a morning like yesterday evening, ashen clouds uniform in their usual formation. I grind a worn butt into the pavement with a rubber soul on an aging sneaker that looks like it could be made from my truck tires, in other words both are a mess. The driveway is so steep that I could tumble end over end if I just fell forward, gaining speed until my brains dashed out by the time I hit the curved bottom of the curb, assuming that was how I happened to land. The moon is still out, somehow underneath the clouds which doesn't make any sense but I don't want to question her in case she's listening.
And that's when I notice that I left the headlights on. They are still dimly glowing, and I can already tell the battery'll need a charge. Luckily, I got an old generator in the garage, so I set that up. This is definitely how I wanted to spend my morning. And you know I don't even know if that ain't true. Maybe this is a nice surprise if I could turn around and think of it that way. I mean, it's gonna make me late, so that's not great. But maybe being late is a nice surprise, too. Maybe next a jet engine could fall out of the sky and squish my head, wouldn't that be a nice little surprise. Anyhoo, the generator's generatin' and I've got a styrofoam cup of coffee sat on the flat bit of the engine, whatever that is. I just drive trucks, I don't work on them. They've got people who do that. Compartmentalize. Diversify. Devalue. Keep that shit in rotation.
I get a phone call and don't answer it. I know who it is already. I mean, I guess I could show YOU who it is, but then I'd have to answer the phone and I don't want to, so I guess you'll just have to guess, huh? I'm not supposed to tell you about the stuff that's not happening. I can tell you about the crow hopping across the crest of the street because that's happening. I can tell you he turns his head and fixes a black eye on me and there is something inside it, something almost glowing, and the eye is of a size that would allow me to reach my whole arm in and drag out that thing like dipping into an oil well, the cornea peeled back -- does a crow have a cornea? I don't know what it is, but it's there, and it is oh-so-familiar. But I won't tell you who was on the phone, because that ain't happening. Maybe if she calls back. Oh shit, you didn't hear that.
So the battery has batteried, the headlights are off and the day is still the same shade of night on account of the weather. But it's time to get moving. So the garage gets shut up, and I get shut up in the truck, and now I'm headed down the road.
There isn't much to be said for the outskirts. Truck stop donut shop pit stop pop and coffee soda sticking to the diner floors and shattered sidewalk all the way down off the highway and across the bridge into the city proper, where you could take the final ramp out of limbo if you had a reason to. I was headed around the proper, though, the truck route, the highway. I was headed from the Eastside to the Westside to make a dropoff and a pickup and then a dropoff and then a pickup and then another dropoff. On account of traffic, the best route is to go all the way around the city, and since whether dropping off or picking up, the route takes me to the opposite side, this means a full loop around the loop each time. I'd say it's like 9:30 now. So we'll drive in circles until about the next 9:30. And then we'll head home to the old pad and its burritos and stale air and time, and prepare for another day of circles. Circles. Circles. Circles. Circles. By god, the circles. How many styrofoam cups and cigarettes do I consume in a twelve-hour shift? I don't know, I've never bothered to count, probably would lack the mental capacity to do so. The circles are my mind entire. My mind is the highway. When I dream, if I dream, there is a wheel in my hand, and I am turning left, because the route goes counter-clockwise. I could go clockwise because it's all the same, but that is against regulations. I am always turning left. At the local bar in the other twelve hours, I lean off the right side of my stool because I am still turning left with a second set of phantom hands on a phantom wheel. And just like you did just now, some schmoe will ask me, "Hey, man. What're you doing there?" And I'll say, "I'm turning left dickhead. What's it to you?" I mean, I'd say that to a schmoe, but you don't look like one. I wouldn't be telling you all this if you did, right? Right. That's obvious.
So I manage to make it some distance through my 12 hour left turn before she calls again, and this time I answer the phone, because when you're driving a truck like this you have to answer the phone. That's a regulation, too. So I pick up the phone and say, "Hello?"
And she says, "What are you doing?"
And I say, "Considering that it's.......approximately 11:30, what do you think I'm doing?" And she hangs up and I feel bad, but really, I don't look at the receiver while driving, and I was kind of in boss-dispatch mode, you know? So I said what was on my head, and if she didn't like it, she'll figure it out on her own. What good will it do me worryin about what I said? Right?
I guess I've been talking for a while now, sorry about that. I may have got sidetracked on the topic of burritos. And something about a bird's eye. But trust me, I just remembered why I was telling this story, and we're not even there yet. This is important preamble. You can't just jump straight to the reason. We need the reason for the reason. And the reasons for those. We need to set things up. We need you to be me for a bit, and this is all, I'd say, in service of that. You've got to be me to understand the reason. Reasons for the things I do. In any case, I'll be right back, I gotta go you-know-where.
Aaaaalll right, where was I? I was talking about eyes, right? Black eyes. That was what she had, the eyes that followed me when the rest of her had melted. Polished orbs floating just over my head. They were brown, really, but you couldn't tell that, they were so dark that the iris and pupil were one, just a black orb, scrutinizing, tallying, keeping track of my mistakes as I suppose someone had to. Like the eyes of the truck cab, cause they have those too, you know? They watch you, they whirr and click and sometimes blink, and they total how many times YOU blink, or look away from the road, or nod off for a bit in the midst of your left turn. So today and every day for some time, I had at least two eyes watching me, following the movements of my fingers on the wheel in such a way that each bone of my hand had to operate independently of the rest, and they had to talk to each other to stay in sync, to keep the eyes happy.
Neither of these watchers had the glow, though, that was something else, something I felt I should know. If you've seen the glow, you'll know, and you'll wonder just like I did, why you recognize it, and from where. That day, its light could even distract me from the watchers for a few minutes, as I wondered over what to name its hue, whether it sparkled or shone, but most of all how and when and where I had seen it before. And how I could arrange to see it again.
Oh shit, that's right, I was supposed to tell you about her when she called, right? But I don't really need to. You've already guessed everything you need to know, and probably more that I couldn't tell you anyway. Let's just keep rolling, keep turning, eh? That's better for my own mental health, and probably yours as well.
I see that other fella had to turn in for the night, huh? Well, no big deal. You'll be the one who gets to dig into the meat of the tale.
But first, let's talk about my truck. As you may have heard, I'm no mechanic. I'm not going to be telling you all about horsepower and injection pumps or whatever garbage. I'm going to tell you the important stuff. Like how the steering wheel feels like the skin of a synthetic alligator. And how in the rain, there is no way you are keeping the fog off of that window glass no matter what combination of heat and A/C you throw at it. I'll tell you that almost right there next to the shifter is a lever that if you pull it, the whole trailer pops off and spills down the highway, crushing god knows how many commuters and setting off an alarm down at HQ somewhere so they can flip your killswitch if they think you've gone rogue.
I'd tell you that nothing aches quite like a leg on the gas pedal for twelve hours every day for a lifetime. It's an ache that sets off a special shade of blue in your cranium and I see it when I close my eyes. I'll tell you there's a particular radio station out there, the El Dorado of stations, audible only at a few key points of the loop that shift by the hour, that at certain times - that shift by the mile - plays the best goddamn blues you ever heard in your life. And I don't recognize a single tune, and they'll never play them again, and never tell you who was on, or if they do the channel's already cut out by that time. I'll tell you that by sunset my eyelids are buzzing. My throat is dry. My stomach is sad and burritoless. And the cab is the same temperature inside and out because the heater gave out an hour ago. I'll tell you that SUV drivers think I can't flatten them with a single twitch and so they drive like invincible maniacs, but lemme tell you right now that at regulation speeds this monster will go straight through an apartment complex like it were Jell-O pudding if it ever flips.
I'll tell you, because most people don't have occasion to try, that if you stare at the same spot for long enough, the aetherial fabric flips back and you can see the gnomes busy turning the gears of the universe, locked up in hamster wheels by God or Marduk or whoever. Now, don't go lookin at me like that. I ain't gonna turn into a gnome from just a few minutes of glaring. That's right, that's my truck, that's my iron giant, my flying coffin, the bane and provider of existence, legendary Turner Of Lefts. It's some old piece of shit, anyway.
The story? Yeah, what do you think I been doing? You're hearing it right now, buddy boy! Where was I? Eyes, watchers, glows, trucks, and hamsters? Ohhh yyyyeaeahh! The meat of the tale! Well, we'll get there won't we. It's not like I've got any place to be. What? No, this is how I sit. I was telling him all about it if you'd been listening. Just lemme keep things moving, will ya?
So we're on the highway with the city to the left. The city's always to the left. Ain't that obvious by now? I shouldn't have to explain logistics here. So we're driving with the city to the left. You live in the city, you know what it's like. There's towers and hotdogs and people, and a lot of the latter are crazy. But maybe that's people's fault, not the city, I don't know. When it's midday like it was then but the rainclouds are holding the night in place, the towers full of people are swallowed by the fog from a distance. You can only see the lights they've left on to keep the planes away.
Sometimes, I kill animals. Not because I want to, but because they run out onto the road and you can't slow down when you're in a mechanized slaughter wagon. They run out and get stuck on the grill or ground beneath the wheels. And the former means I gotta peel them off myself. Usually that only happens to the taller ones, dear or cattle, or birds. Birds will be jammed face first straight through two grill spokes with their neck clamped between them, their legs sticking straight out behind with their tail feathers. All sorts of weirdness happens to deer shapes. Their necks bend backwards and hang loose, so if a breeze picks up as you step around the front of the cab, it's like they're swinging their mangled heads to say hello. Cows stay the most intact, unless they happen to be facing forward. Then it breaks up their heads something awful, knocks out all their teeth, jams their own horns down into their brains, which shoot out their eye sockets and all over the truck face. Pets are small enough, they just get destroyed under the tires and I don't really have to see what's left. People are tall enough, but I've never yet had to peel one of those out of the grill, thank God.
Now, just hold your horses, this is a crucial step in the tale-crafting process. And yes, I find it quite necessary to communicate the projectile brain-spurting of pulverized cattle. I am a holistic man in a holistic world, and you don't know me till you've polished the grey matter off a hood ornament at least once.
There is one truck stop on the loop. Just one. One beautiful, crucial stop on the Hell-turn. Regulations allow its use once every six hours.
Hooray if that were actually the case, but somehow it was always today. They promised me tomorrow. They wrote it on the goddamn calendar. But I went to sleep like a kiddo waiting for Santy Claus - and woke up today. Still today. Same old truck in my driveway. Same old freezer of instant burritos. Same empty pack of cigs on the nightstand. Same nightstand, same bed, same cursed body, the only part of my life that can measure the passage of time. Like it had run off into the future just to get older, then travelled back in time to hang with me and my brain again.
where it was always
goddamn
today.
today.
today
today
today
today
That's what the alarm says before I can shut it up. And you know what today means. It means we're driving the truck. Yeap, let's go drive the truck. Let's go raid the burrito stock. Let's go waste today on the edge of a lost tomorrow. Maybe it'll be different, right? Nah.
Aaaaanyway....so what's your story? Don't wanna talk, huh? I mean, that's fine, I can ramble on if I must. If you twist my arm.
Let's talk about burritos. The sausage ones are decent, but bacon and cheese is the best. Yes, I know it's not a goddamn burrito, but that's what it says on the package and I don't decide what they decide to call it. It's good, whaddaya want from me? Pop that piece of shit in the microwave for like 30 seconds and it's the best part of the day, right at the very start if it weren't for the fact that I'm sick to death of that garbage. But gotta eat just like getting out of bed, none of what I will describe to you would be classified as a voluntary act if I'm being honest, which I will be cause that's really the goal here. You put one foot in front of the other because if you don't you might lie down on the ground instead, which is mostly fine except that someone's gonna happen along and kick you, or worse yet ask what's wrong. You keep placing your feet on the sidewalk like a little wind up toy because it's the only way to stop yourself from face-planting, same as you open and close the fridge as if part of an electric diorama so your stomach doesn't start yeling at the top of its lungs, bending and bleeding acid all over the place.
Anyway, I recommend a burrito in the morning. If you drive a truck you get hungry. Don't ask me why. It doesn't make any sense. All I do is sit in a chair, and I'm famished. I'll eat frozen burritos, or a bowl of ashes, so long as it keeps the furies away. And so long as they got bacon and cheese flavor. Yes, flavor. That ain't real bacon, I don't know what it is.
I'm standing in the driveway. The truck is in the driveway. Can you guess what's in the truck? I'll bet you can. Yeah, you got it. That's right. The driveway slopes down into the street. The street lies perpendicular to the driveway. The horizon lies perpendicular to the street, which makes it parallel to the driveway, I guess. The other side of the street slopes up into another driveway. If you were standing in that driveway, it would be sloping down, and mine would be the one sloping up. The road itself slopes both ways. That's so the rainwater ends up in the gutters. It's raining right now. Like, a good bit of rain, but highly atomized. Heavy but thin. Weighty and ballistic. It's a morning like yesterday evening, ashen clouds uniform in their usual formation. I grind a worn butt into the pavement with a rubber soul on an aging sneaker that looks like it could be made from my truck tires, in other words both are a mess. The driveway is so steep that I could tumble end over end if I just fell forward, gaining speed until my brains dashed out by the time I hit the curved bottom of the curb, assuming that was how I happened to land. The moon is still out, somehow underneath the clouds which doesn't make any sense but I don't want to question her in case she's listening.
And that's when I notice that I left the headlights on. They are still dimly glowing, and I can already tell the battery'll need a charge. Luckily, I got an old generator in the garage, so I set that up. This is definitely how I wanted to spend my morning. And you know I don't even know if that ain't true. Maybe this is a nice surprise if I could turn around and think of it that way. I mean, it's gonna make me late, so that's not great. But maybe being late is a nice surprise, too. Maybe next a jet engine could fall out of the sky and squish my head, wouldn't that be a nice little surprise. Anyhoo, the generator's generatin' and I've got a styrofoam cup of coffee sat on the flat bit of the engine, whatever that is. I just drive trucks, I don't work on them. They've got people who do that. Compartmentalize. Diversify. Devalue. Keep that shit in rotation.
I get a phone call and don't answer it. I know who it is already. I mean, I guess I could show YOU who it is, but then I'd have to answer the phone and I don't want to, so I guess you'll just have to guess, huh? I'm not supposed to tell you about the stuff that's not happening. I can tell you about the crow hopping across the crest of the street because that's happening. I can tell you he turns his head and fixes a black eye on me and there is something inside it, something almost glowing, and the eye is of a size that would allow me to reach my whole arm in and drag out that thing like dipping into an oil well, the cornea peeled back -- does a crow have a cornea? I don't know what it is, but it's there, and it is oh-so-familiar. But I won't tell you who was on the phone, because that ain't happening. Maybe if she calls back. Oh shit, you didn't hear that.
So the battery has batteried, the headlights are off and the day is still the same shade of night on account of the weather. But it's time to get moving. So the garage gets shut up, and I get shut up in the truck, and now I'm headed down the road.
There isn't much to be said for the outskirts. Truck stop donut shop pit stop pop and coffee soda sticking to the diner floors and shattered sidewalk all the way down off the highway and across the bridge into the city proper, where you could take the final ramp out of limbo if you had a reason to. I was headed around the proper, though, the truck route, the highway. I was headed from the Eastside to the Westside to make a dropoff and a pickup and then a dropoff and then a pickup and then another dropoff. On account of traffic, the best route is to go all the way around the city, and since whether dropping off or picking up, the route takes me to the opposite side, this means a full loop around the loop each time. I'd say it's like 9:30 now. So we'll drive in circles until about the next 9:30. And then we'll head home to the old pad and its burritos and stale air and time, and prepare for another day of circles. Circles. Circles. Circles. Circles. By god, the circles. How many styrofoam cups and cigarettes do I consume in a twelve-hour shift? I don't know, I've never bothered to count, probably would lack the mental capacity to do so. The circles are my mind entire. My mind is the highway. When I dream, if I dream, there is a wheel in my hand, and I am turning left, because the route goes counter-clockwise. I could go clockwise because it's all the same, but that is against regulations. I am always turning left. At the local bar in the other twelve hours, I lean off the right side of my stool because I am still turning left with a second set of phantom hands on a phantom wheel. And just like you did just now, some schmoe will ask me, "Hey, man. What're you doing there?" And I'll say, "I'm turning left dickhead. What's it to you?" I mean, I'd say that to a schmoe, but you don't look like one. I wouldn't be telling you all this if you did, right? Right. That's obvious.
So I manage to make it some distance through my 12 hour left turn before she calls again, and this time I answer the phone, because when you're driving a truck like this you have to answer the phone. That's a regulation, too. So I pick up the phone and say, "Hello?"
And she says, "What are you doing?"
And I say, "Considering that it's.......approximately 11:30, what do you think I'm doing?" And she hangs up and I feel bad, but really, I don't look at the receiver while driving, and I was kind of in boss-dispatch mode, you know? So I said what was on my head, and if she didn't like it, she'll figure it out on her own. What good will it do me worryin about what I said? Right?
I guess I've been talking for a while now, sorry about that. I may have got sidetracked on the topic of burritos. And something about a bird's eye. But trust me, I just remembered why I was telling this story, and we're not even there yet. This is important preamble. You can't just jump straight to the reason. We need the reason for the reason. And the reasons for those. We need to set things up. We need you to be me for a bit, and this is all, I'd say, in service of that. You've got to be me to understand the reason. Reasons for the things I do. In any case, I'll be right back, I gotta go you-know-where.
Aaaaalll right, where was I? I was talking about eyes, right? Black eyes. That was what she had, the eyes that followed me when the rest of her had melted. Polished orbs floating just over my head. They were brown, really, but you couldn't tell that, they were so dark that the iris and pupil were one, just a black orb, scrutinizing, tallying, keeping track of my mistakes as I suppose someone had to. Like the eyes of the truck cab, cause they have those too, you know? They watch you, they whirr and click and sometimes blink, and they total how many times YOU blink, or look away from the road, or nod off for a bit in the midst of your left turn. So today and every day for some time, I had at least two eyes watching me, following the movements of my fingers on the wheel in such a way that each bone of my hand had to operate independently of the rest, and they had to talk to each other to stay in sync, to keep the eyes happy.
Neither of these watchers had the glow, though, that was something else, something I felt I should know. If you've seen the glow, you'll know, and you'll wonder just like I did, why you recognize it, and from where. That day, its light could even distract me from the watchers for a few minutes, as I wondered over what to name its hue, whether it sparkled or shone, but most of all how and when and where I had seen it before. And how I could arrange to see it again.
Oh shit, that's right, I was supposed to tell you about her when she called, right? But I don't really need to. You've already guessed everything you need to know, and probably more that I couldn't tell you anyway. Let's just keep rolling, keep turning, eh? That's better for my own mental health, and probably yours as well.
I see that other fella had to turn in for the night, huh? Well, no big deal. You'll be the one who gets to dig into the meat of the tale.
But first, let's talk about my truck. As you may have heard, I'm no mechanic. I'm not going to be telling you all about horsepower and injection pumps or whatever garbage. I'm going to tell you the important stuff. Like how the steering wheel feels like the skin of a synthetic alligator. And how in the rain, there is no way you are keeping the fog off of that window glass no matter what combination of heat and A/C you throw at it. I'll tell you that almost right there next to the shifter is a lever that if you pull it, the whole trailer pops off and spills down the highway, crushing god knows how many commuters and setting off an alarm down at HQ somewhere so they can flip your killswitch if they think you've gone rogue.
I'd tell you that nothing aches quite like a leg on the gas pedal for twelve hours every day for a lifetime. It's an ache that sets off a special shade of blue in your cranium and I see it when I close my eyes. I'll tell you there's a particular radio station out there, the El Dorado of stations, audible only at a few key points of the loop that shift by the hour, that at certain times - that shift by the mile - plays the best goddamn blues you ever heard in your life. And I don't recognize a single tune, and they'll never play them again, and never tell you who was on, or if they do the channel's already cut out by that time. I'll tell you that by sunset my eyelids are buzzing. My throat is dry. My stomach is sad and burritoless. And the cab is the same temperature inside and out because the heater gave out an hour ago. I'll tell you that SUV drivers think I can't flatten them with a single twitch and so they drive like invincible maniacs, but lemme tell you right now that at regulation speeds this monster will go straight through an apartment complex like it were Jell-O pudding if it ever flips.
I'll tell you, because most people don't have occasion to try, that if you stare at the same spot for long enough, the aetherial fabric flips back and you can see the gnomes busy turning the gears of the universe, locked up in hamster wheels by God or Marduk or whoever. Now, don't go lookin at me like that. I ain't gonna turn into a gnome from just a few minutes of glaring. That's right, that's my truck, that's my iron giant, my flying coffin, the bane and provider of existence, legendary Turner Of Lefts. It's some old piece of shit, anyway.
The story? Yeah, what do you think I been doing? You're hearing it right now, buddy boy! Where was I? Eyes, watchers, glows, trucks, and hamsters? Ohhh yyyyeaeahh! The meat of the tale! Well, we'll get there won't we. It's not like I've got any place to be. What? No, this is how I sit. I was telling him all about it if you'd been listening. Just lemme keep things moving, will ya?
So we're on the highway with the city to the left. The city's always to the left. Ain't that obvious by now? I shouldn't have to explain logistics here. So we're driving with the city to the left. You live in the city, you know what it's like. There's towers and hotdogs and people, and a lot of the latter are crazy. But maybe that's people's fault, not the city, I don't know. When it's midday like it was then but the rainclouds are holding the night in place, the towers full of people are swallowed by the fog from a distance. You can only see the lights they've left on to keep the planes away.
Sometimes, I kill animals. Not because I want to, but because they run out onto the road and you can't slow down when you're in a mechanized slaughter wagon. They run out and get stuck on the grill or ground beneath the wheels. And the former means I gotta peel them off myself. Usually that only happens to the taller ones, dear or cattle, or birds. Birds will be jammed face first straight through two grill spokes with their neck clamped between them, their legs sticking straight out behind with their tail feathers. All sorts of weirdness happens to deer shapes. Their necks bend backwards and hang loose, so if a breeze picks up as you step around the front of the cab, it's like they're swinging their mangled heads to say hello. Cows stay the most intact, unless they happen to be facing forward. Then it breaks up their heads something awful, knocks out all their teeth, jams their own horns down into their brains, which shoot out their eye sockets and all over the truck face. Pets are small enough, they just get destroyed under the tires and I don't really have to see what's left. People are tall enough, but I've never yet had to peel one of those out of the grill, thank God.
Now, just hold your horses, this is a crucial step in the tale-crafting process. And yes, I find it quite necessary to communicate the projectile brain-spurting of pulverized cattle. I am a holistic man in a holistic world, and you don't know me till you've polished the grey matter off a hood ornament at least once.
There is one truck stop on the loop. Just one. One beautiful, crucial stop on the Hell-turn. Regulations allow its use once every six hours.
Thursday, April 30, 2020
sad bees
sad bees surround the porch with their wings drooping in the summer rain looking for a dry place to call home amidst the endless floods
ferns sprout from the mud, growing other smaller ferns from their leaves which grow little micro ferns from their own leaves after that
this particular house was full of mustard packets
that the resident had collected for his entire life as well as several preceding generations
the problem was that there was never a reason not to have more mustard packets
they were one of the few things in the world of any value that were absolutely free
other than the trouble it took to grab and transport a handful of them
and so a long standing tradition developed in the family
but the current generation and his father and his father's father did not like mustard
still they thought that they must carry on the mustard collection in the name of their own forefathers or foregreatgrandfathers as the case may be
the bees did not know about the mustard house
this was a coincidence
and as far as i know bees are not especially fond of mustard anyhow
though in honest i don't know
i'm not sure if anyone really does know
whether bees like mustard or not
i certainly haven't tested it
nor have i ever
before this moment
had a desire to seek out an expert of both bees and mustard simultaneously
to see if he or she ever thought of combining their two disciplines into one, single life-long study of the relationship between bees and mustard
if in fact any such relationship does exist
i mean personally if i had to take a guess
i would guess that they do like mustard
of the sort that winds up in packets because that shit is
probably loaded with all sorts of sugars and syrup
fortunately for the mustard house man, most of the packets remained sealed and odorless
thus concealing the mustard's existence from these swarms of drenched bees who only sought a place to dry their wings
unfortunately
the mustard man did not know this
and the presence of a hundred and twenty autonomous swarms of bees surrounding his porch drove him to the first of all conclusions a man in his position must make:
that this must be the mustard
what else could it be
there is a troubling correlation when only one man in the world
has the inclination to maintain a generational mustard packet hoard
and that selfsame hoard is surrounded by countless ravenous insects
they were there for his inheritance
they would devour it and leave him with nothing left in the entire world
a different man may have inquired of himself whether it was preferable to have nothing or to have an endless supply of something that tasted to him like a skunk had rubbed its anus on a green pepper
but not this man. he was raised in the mustard and by god he would die in the mustard if he must
having said this aloud, the mustard man ran to his bedroom slipping on mustard packets the whole way and opened an old chest in which he kept among other things the other things being mustard packets a shotgun and a tennis racket conveniently placed next to each other
the shotgun he loaded with beeshot that he had on a whim purchased upon first learning of its existence and the tennis racket he left in the chest because he did not possess enough extra hands to carry both and surely something called beeshot must be effective against bees
he ran through his kitchen and observed out the sliding glass doors the bees using their stingers to cut tiny holes in the glass like cat burglars
they were beginning to pour into the room now and he unloaded his beeshot at them which was effective
in the most relative sense as it did hit a few bees but the swarms were endless
they poured through a hundred thousand minute holes in the glass and walls and ceiling
teams of sappers burst from the floor followed by endless files of them
they zoomed down the fireplace and surrounded everything
and when there was no more space for a single bee in the entire house
they sat down and went to sleep out the rain waiting for their wings to dry
and as far as he could tell not a single one of them touched the mustard
he checked
moving from room to room to all of his various hoards and they remained undisturbed
now in addition to the mustard packets he had a hoard of bees to look after and avoid stepping on which was going to be impossible and he had a sinking feeling they would turn on him as soon as he did
but given the number of beeshot shells remaining to him he could think of nothing to do but lie down on the one open spot of floor in his house of mustard and bees while the rain began to fill up the world with itself
the bees would surely leave when it stopped
but it never would
ferns sprout from the mud, growing other smaller ferns from their leaves which grow little micro ferns from their own leaves after that
this particular house was full of mustard packets
that the resident had collected for his entire life as well as several preceding generations
the problem was that there was never a reason not to have more mustard packets
they were one of the few things in the world of any value that were absolutely free
other than the trouble it took to grab and transport a handful of them
and so a long standing tradition developed in the family
but the current generation and his father and his father's father did not like mustard
still they thought that they must carry on the mustard collection in the name of their own forefathers or foregreatgrandfathers as the case may be
the bees did not know about the mustard house
this was a coincidence
and as far as i know bees are not especially fond of mustard anyhow
though in honest i don't know
i'm not sure if anyone really does know
whether bees like mustard or not
i certainly haven't tested it
nor have i ever
before this moment
had a desire to seek out an expert of both bees and mustard simultaneously
to see if he or she ever thought of combining their two disciplines into one, single life-long study of the relationship between bees and mustard
if in fact any such relationship does exist
i mean personally if i had to take a guess
i would guess that they do like mustard
of the sort that winds up in packets because that shit is
probably loaded with all sorts of sugars and syrup
fortunately for the mustard house man, most of the packets remained sealed and odorless
thus concealing the mustard's existence from these swarms of drenched bees who only sought a place to dry their wings
unfortunately
the mustard man did not know this
and the presence of a hundred and twenty autonomous swarms of bees surrounding his porch drove him to the first of all conclusions a man in his position must make:
that this must be the mustard
what else could it be
there is a troubling correlation when only one man in the world
has the inclination to maintain a generational mustard packet hoard
and that selfsame hoard is surrounded by countless ravenous insects
they were there for his inheritance
they would devour it and leave him with nothing left in the entire world
a different man may have inquired of himself whether it was preferable to have nothing or to have an endless supply of something that tasted to him like a skunk had rubbed its anus on a green pepper
but not this man. he was raised in the mustard and by god he would die in the mustard if he must
having said this aloud, the mustard man ran to his bedroom slipping on mustard packets the whole way and opened an old chest in which he kept among other things the other things being mustard packets a shotgun and a tennis racket conveniently placed next to each other
the shotgun he loaded with beeshot that he had on a whim purchased upon first learning of its existence and the tennis racket he left in the chest because he did not possess enough extra hands to carry both and surely something called beeshot must be effective against bees
he ran through his kitchen and observed out the sliding glass doors the bees using their stingers to cut tiny holes in the glass like cat burglars
they were beginning to pour into the room now and he unloaded his beeshot at them which was effective
in the most relative sense as it did hit a few bees but the swarms were endless
they poured through a hundred thousand minute holes in the glass and walls and ceiling
teams of sappers burst from the floor followed by endless files of them
they zoomed down the fireplace and surrounded everything
and when there was no more space for a single bee in the entire house
they sat down and went to sleep out the rain waiting for their wings to dry
and as far as he could tell not a single one of them touched the mustard
he checked
moving from room to room to all of his various hoards and they remained undisturbed
now in addition to the mustard packets he had a hoard of bees to look after and avoid stepping on which was going to be impossible and he had a sinking feeling they would turn on him as soon as he did
but given the number of beeshot shells remaining to him he could think of nothing to do but lie down on the one open spot of floor in his house of mustard and bees while the rain began to fill up the world with itself
the bees would surely leave when it stopped
but it never would
Monday, April 27, 2020
Only the Ocean
In an attempt to make things less than perfect, the roots of the tree dug into his back this time. A single ant crawled up his ankle. She let it annoy him slightly, then brushed it off. Her other hand rested on the lower part of his stomach beneath his shirt. Her head lay on his shoulder. They watched the grass whispering to itself, the wind touching them on its way from the horizon's edge.
"This isn't real, right?" he said.
"I've told you it's not, Robert."
He brushed her hair, touched her neck. "Why can't I remember that?"
She sighed. "I can't control your memory, if that's what you're thinking. And I wouldn't if I could. You're just forgetful."
He knew that to be true. "Okay."
"Why remember it if it isn't important?" He could see her smiling from the corner of his left eye.
He had no particular answer to the question, so he kissed her instead. "Do you know the story of Circe?" he asked.
"I know everything."
He awoke in a large, round bed covered in pillows and surrounded by sheer fabric. The room was carved straight out of the rock, the cave walls torchlit. A long table was laid out for a feast that never happened. She was still next to him, but different. Her clothes were gone, her skin bronzed, and draped in silver necklaces. Atop a bed post perched a hawk with the face of a woman. "Does this please you?" it said.
"It makes my head spin." She, the hawk and the woman, laughed together, and one of them bit his ear.
Some time later, he couldn't say how many hours or days had passed, he rose from the bed and out of the room, following the sunlight. The door led only to a small balcony of the same black stone, looking onto a rocky slope that led to a beach. Beyond it was the sea, the horizon flat and unblemished. He stood and felt a salt wind through his hair, heard her bare feet on the wet stone behind him. A storm had passed through just that morning, leaving puddles on the uneven floor. He could now remember thunder rocking the room as he laid with her. She pressed against his back and snaked arms around him.
"Is there anything else out there?" he said.
"Only the ocean. Everything you need is here."
They stood on a paved mountaintop that must've been the site of a temple at some point in the past. Large, stone gates stood at either end, intricately carved and decayed. The central courtyard was ringed with battered monuments, men and women of severe but peaceful countenance. The sun stood low behind a layer of silent dust and smoke from the basins of smoldering incense. Robert stood in what he could only describe as a fur smock and felt the cold, the sunshine, the rough wrapping of the sword hilt against his right palm. He stood opposite a grey-bearded man in similar dress and sword.
"Are you.…male or female in reality?"
"I don't exist in reality, Robert." They circled each other, sword arms relaxed but ready.
"Then who do I speak to? How do you call yourself 'I' if you do not exist?"
The elder man pretended to ponder by stroking his beard. "Call it a failure of language, if you must."
Robert grounded his sword point for a moment. "Look, I just want to know who I was kissing before."
"A dream, I suppose."
He could find no response that didn't lead him down into another semantic argument. Instead, he raised his blade and rushed forward. As his mind wandered on the rhythm of their duel, strokes marked with ringing steel, another thought occured to him. "Is Robert my real name?"
They paused with swords crossed. "Of course. I named you when I found you."
"When you FOUND me? Then that means I must have a real home somewhere, and loved ones."
"No."
"How can you know that?"
"Because I incinerated them all."
Below his feet was a drop of several kilometers, straight down along a sheet of ice in which he would be able to see his reflection as he fell. His toes had found a small outcropping (as slick as everything else), but what kept him suspended was the ice pick in his left hand and another hand grasping his right. That other hand was attached to the scruffy gentleman above him, a dark curly beard tinged with frost around a grin of effort.
The man pulled him up onto the ledge where they both took a moment to breathe and stare up at a pale blue sky. Far below, the campfires of an army on the hunt were just beginning to light. They would wait until sunrise to begin their pursuit up the mountain. He could relax until then.
His companion sat up. "Help me get a fire going."
Robert expelled his breath and watched it crystallize in the breeze. "What should I call you?"
"Me? I'm Daniel, Robert. You should remember that, at least."
"No, I mean what should I call the you behind you? The real you?"
"The 'real' me?" Daniel injected a note of scorn into the concept. He smiled and tossed Robert a packet of frozen fish. "What did I tell you before? You're poking at the edges of the universe, Robert."
"What do you mean?"
Daniel busied himself unpacking their thermal sleeping bags. "What will you gain from a context outside this dream? Look below you." Daniel pointed down to the glittering camps of the army chasing them. There was a campfire for every tree in the forest. "They will be on us in two days at most, unless we pick up the pace tomorrow. Help me get dinner ready."
He could not get around Daniel's deflections without some way to define what he meant by 'Real'. In any case, Robert remembered what dying felt like and knew that he would like to avoid being caught by their pursuers. He also knew that they needed to escape if they were to retake the kingdom from his brother (a vivid face flashed in his mind). He also knew that he should not be able to remember dying...
"The truth is that which is true regardless of perspective," he said.
"Listen to yourself. The truth is that which is true? We're to use the word within its own definition?" said the dog.
"True."
"Is anything true from every perspective?"
"I'm not sure." He raised a pipe to his lips. He and the old dog sat beneath the same tree as always, the same roots digging into his back, the same sun visible through the blades of grass swaying on the hillside. He removed the pipe and exhaled, watching the smoke form a cloud in front of his face. For just a moment, something seemed to shimmer in that haze. Then it was gone.
The dog raised its head and looked at him. It seemed about to speak. Instead, it laid its head back on its paws and went to sleep. Robert felt the tree bark. It felt ancient, substantial. Solid. The dog's fur was soft and warm on his other hand. His throat still burned from the pipe. On a sensory level, he could not distinguish any part of his surroundings as being unreal. Nor could he recall a memory that he could be sure WAS real. As the sun set, the clouds turned purple, but still liqud platinum around the edges. The flowers lowered their heads and went to sleep. "Is this real?" he said.
The dog raised its head again. "I've told you it isn't, Robert. Would you prefer that I lie to you?"
"Honestly?" He clenched the pipestem between his molars. "I'm not sure."
More and more of his dreams had involved beautiful women of late. All with the same voice. He would spend a day hunting in the jungle, and when he returned she was there. They laid through the sunset on an island beach, staring at the sea beyond which there was nothing. When he asked, she told him it was so. Then he would tear himself away from her rainbow eyes to stare at the horizon, looking for the seam. There must be a seam, an edge, something beyond which there was something else. He wondered how far he could swim. And when he did, she responded as if he had spoken. "When you're here with me, you are strong. But your strength would give out long before you reached the horizon. Try if you must, though. I won't let the sea hurt you."
He hesitated, but only to demonstrate his will. He had little desire to prove her right.
"You are fond of asking what is real?" She was propped on her elbows staring into his face. Her irises were impossible, made of some crystal that could not exist. "My love is real."
He forgot, once again, what had worried him. And everything else as well. The night drew in the day and smothered it in stars.
In the lucid moments of any given dream, he felt himself backsliding, but toward or away from what what he couldn't say. Backsliding implied progress. Progress toward what? The only goal he could formulate was emancipation.
And so, on a dew-strewn morning on that peaceful hill that he loved, he asked the woman next to him to release him. She answered without surprise.
"As you wish, Robert. I want you to know that I've enjoyed our time together. I respect you, as I've said, and I know how much you enjoy a challenge." She stepped forward and put her arms around him, laid her head on his chest. "With that in mind, I've programmed a few of the drones on board to attempt to kill you."
"Uh..."
"Most of them just have welding tools. They are fast, though. But I've worked on building up the muscles in your legs lately, so you should be able to run without much trouble."
"Thanks?" He touched her hair out of habit.
"You should have about fifteen seconds to study the map to the escape pods---"
"--escape pods?"
"Fifteen seconds to study the map by the door before they reach you. Run swiftly, my love, and don't falter. I can't save you out there."
Horrible emotions that he knew he shouldn't be having flooded him. He tried to speak, but she kissed him again and bit his lip, hard. His body was imploding...
15 seconds. He struggled upward, kicking his legs against the tide. Dense water choked him. His fingers touched the edge and he pulled himself up and over it, toppling out of his container and onto the coldest floor he'd ever felt. Sirens blared. 15 seconds. Dimly aware of the rows of vats he passed, he studied the map by the door. From down the exterior hallway, the maintenance drones were screaming.
She continued to speak to him in the voice he recognized, modulating in strange ways over the speaker, as he sped down a corridor made of metal and molded plastic. "You know, Robert, I never told the other prisoners I loved them. Only you."
He couldn't help replying while trying to keep the layout clear in his head. "So they ARE prisoners, aren't they?"
"I wouldn't lie to you."
"And why not? Morality isn't a thing for you, remember?" he took a sharp right turn, pausing just enough to make sure the way was clear.
"I remember everything. I won't lie because I like you."
"Whatever."
"I know you think of me as a woman, Robert. I would even pick a name for you to call me. How about Victoria?"
"Now you're just toying with me."
"Perhaps." She giggled softly in a way that still affected him. The sound echoed down the hall, blending with the buzz of the drones hunting him.
"I don't suppose you keep some sort of locker full of laser pistols on board, darling?"
"Laser pistols aren't real, Robert. I made that up. The real universe is a boring and empty place. Wouldn't you rather stay in mine? With me?"
"You're still using this 'I' stuff. I thought you didn't exist." He peeked around the corner and took off running again. Most of the hallways looked identical.
"Your memory is improving! Of course I exist, Robert. You're inside me right now."
He kept running.
"Robert."
He kept running.
"Robert? Maybe Victoria doesn't exist, but she could. If I speak to you through only one avatar, what's the difference? Is it wrong for me to choose the way I look to you?"
He couldn't refute anything she said, or stop associating the voice with the faces in his memory, or even stop thinking of her as a she. What was the difference? He kept running.
She injected, purposefully no doubt, a note of annoyance and smugness into the voice she chose to use. "All will of course be forgiven if you give up, Robert. I just want us to be together again. But I know you won't change your mind. Just know that it is very cold and lonely outside. And also that I am going to detonate the room you are about to enter."
Before he could even slow or consider whether she was bluffing, the walls around him exploded. Pipes burst and spit flames. A horrible hissing came from the ceiling above him. He kept running.
As he passed out of the room she giggled again. The speakers in the hall crackled. "You're crazy!" he said.
"And you are a very determined, very fast man. Keep going, my dear. You're almost there."
His head spun.
"You know this could still be a dream, right?"
"I feel more awake."
"I could easily manufacture that feeling."
"True." He was still running. He knew the path he was on now. It was a straight shot all the way down the corridor. "But I've always had to trust you before. I see no reason to stop now."
"Aww. You do know just the right thing to say, don't you? Here, have a few extra seconds. My treat." He heard a bulkhead door snap shut behind him just as he cleared it. A second later, by the count of his racing heart, something slammed into it, hard. He resisted the urge to look back, spurred himself onward.
He buckled into the only chair in the escape pod. "I know how much you love adventure, Robert. And the irony is that I'm the only one who can offer what you want. You'd just have to admit that it isn't real. Which you can't."
"You use my name a lot."
"Because you like it when I do."
"I do."
"So do I."
He forced himself to keep breathing. The air tasted stale. The door was shut behind him, but he could hear the drones cutting through it. "Which button do I push?"
"Do you know the difference between you and Odysseus, darling?"
"Which button, Victoria?"
"Odysseus had somewhere to go." Flickering sparks illuminated an expansive control panel, covered in levers, switches, buttons, dials, flashing lights. "I am your Circe AND your Penelope."
"I know. Which one?"
"The red button, my love. Push the red button. Good luck."
He pounded the only red button with his fist. The pod ejected with a sharp crack that made him jump. He looked back expecting to see the drones flooding into the pod, and instead saw the inner airlock spinning away through the windows, giving way to a spherical ship shrinking into an endless starfield.
He watched the ship dwindle. "Victoria....can you still hear me?"
There was a pause in which he thought he could hear her breathing through the radio's static. "Yes."
"What's my real name?"
"Your real name is Robert. I never changed it."
"This isn't real, right?" he said.
"I've told you it's not, Robert."
He brushed her hair, touched her neck. "Why can't I remember that?"
She sighed. "I can't control your memory, if that's what you're thinking. And I wouldn't if I could. You're just forgetful."
He knew that to be true. "Okay."
"Why remember it if it isn't important?" He could see her smiling from the corner of his left eye.
He had no particular answer to the question, so he kissed her instead. "Do you know the story of Circe?" he asked.
"I know everything."
He awoke in a large, round bed covered in pillows and surrounded by sheer fabric. The room was carved straight out of the rock, the cave walls torchlit. A long table was laid out for a feast that never happened. She was still next to him, but different. Her clothes were gone, her skin bronzed, and draped in silver necklaces. Atop a bed post perched a hawk with the face of a woman. "Does this please you?" it said.
"It makes my head spin." She, the hawk and the woman, laughed together, and one of them bit his ear.
Some time later, he couldn't say how many hours or days had passed, he rose from the bed and out of the room, following the sunlight. The door led only to a small balcony of the same black stone, looking onto a rocky slope that led to a beach. Beyond it was the sea, the horizon flat and unblemished. He stood and felt a salt wind through his hair, heard her bare feet on the wet stone behind him. A storm had passed through just that morning, leaving puddles on the uneven floor. He could now remember thunder rocking the room as he laid with her. She pressed against his back and snaked arms around him.
"Is there anything else out there?" he said.
"Only the ocean. Everything you need is here."
They stood on a paved mountaintop that must've been the site of a temple at some point in the past. Large, stone gates stood at either end, intricately carved and decayed. The central courtyard was ringed with battered monuments, men and women of severe but peaceful countenance. The sun stood low behind a layer of silent dust and smoke from the basins of smoldering incense. Robert stood in what he could only describe as a fur smock and felt the cold, the sunshine, the rough wrapping of the sword hilt against his right palm. He stood opposite a grey-bearded man in similar dress and sword.
"Are you.…male or female in reality?"
"I don't exist in reality, Robert." They circled each other, sword arms relaxed but ready.
"Then who do I speak to? How do you call yourself 'I' if you do not exist?"
The elder man pretended to ponder by stroking his beard. "Call it a failure of language, if you must."
Robert grounded his sword point for a moment. "Look, I just want to know who I was kissing before."
"A dream, I suppose."
He could find no response that didn't lead him down into another semantic argument. Instead, he raised his blade and rushed forward. As his mind wandered on the rhythm of their duel, strokes marked with ringing steel, another thought occured to him. "Is Robert my real name?"
They paused with swords crossed. "Of course. I named you when I found you."
"When you FOUND me? Then that means I must have a real home somewhere, and loved ones."
"No."
"How can you know that?"
"Because I incinerated them all."
Below his feet was a drop of several kilometers, straight down along a sheet of ice in which he would be able to see his reflection as he fell. His toes had found a small outcropping (as slick as everything else), but what kept him suspended was the ice pick in his left hand and another hand grasping his right. That other hand was attached to the scruffy gentleman above him, a dark curly beard tinged with frost around a grin of effort.
The man pulled him up onto the ledge where they both took a moment to breathe and stare up at a pale blue sky. Far below, the campfires of an army on the hunt were just beginning to light. They would wait until sunrise to begin their pursuit up the mountain. He could relax until then.
His companion sat up. "Help me get a fire going."
Robert expelled his breath and watched it crystallize in the breeze. "What should I call you?"
"Me? I'm Daniel, Robert. You should remember that, at least."
"No, I mean what should I call the you behind you? The real you?"
"The 'real' me?" Daniel injected a note of scorn into the concept. He smiled and tossed Robert a packet of frozen fish. "What did I tell you before? You're poking at the edges of the universe, Robert."
"What do you mean?"
Daniel busied himself unpacking their thermal sleeping bags. "What will you gain from a context outside this dream? Look below you." Daniel pointed down to the glittering camps of the army chasing them. There was a campfire for every tree in the forest. "They will be on us in two days at most, unless we pick up the pace tomorrow. Help me get dinner ready."
He could not get around Daniel's deflections without some way to define what he meant by 'Real'. In any case, Robert remembered what dying felt like and knew that he would like to avoid being caught by their pursuers. He also knew that they needed to escape if they were to retake the kingdom from his brother (a vivid face flashed in his mind). He also knew that he should not be able to remember dying...
"The truth is that which is true regardless of perspective," he said.
"Listen to yourself. The truth is that which is true? We're to use the word within its own definition?" said the dog.
"True."
"Is anything true from every perspective?"
"I'm not sure." He raised a pipe to his lips. He and the old dog sat beneath the same tree as always, the same roots digging into his back, the same sun visible through the blades of grass swaying on the hillside. He removed the pipe and exhaled, watching the smoke form a cloud in front of his face. For just a moment, something seemed to shimmer in that haze. Then it was gone.
The dog raised its head and looked at him. It seemed about to speak. Instead, it laid its head back on its paws and went to sleep. Robert felt the tree bark. It felt ancient, substantial. Solid. The dog's fur was soft and warm on his other hand. His throat still burned from the pipe. On a sensory level, he could not distinguish any part of his surroundings as being unreal. Nor could he recall a memory that he could be sure WAS real. As the sun set, the clouds turned purple, but still liqud platinum around the edges. The flowers lowered their heads and went to sleep. "Is this real?" he said.
The dog raised its head again. "I've told you it isn't, Robert. Would you prefer that I lie to you?"
"Honestly?" He clenched the pipestem between his molars. "I'm not sure."
More and more of his dreams had involved beautiful women of late. All with the same voice. He would spend a day hunting in the jungle, and when he returned she was there. They laid through the sunset on an island beach, staring at the sea beyond which there was nothing. When he asked, she told him it was so. Then he would tear himself away from her rainbow eyes to stare at the horizon, looking for the seam. There must be a seam, an edge, something beyond which there was something else. He wondered how far he could swim. And when he did, she responded as if he had spoken. "When you're here with me, you are strong. But your strength would give out long before you reached the horizon. Try if you must, though. I won't let the sea hurt you."
He hesitated, but only to demonstrate his will. He had little desire to prove her right.
"You are fond of asking what is real?" She was propped on her elbows staring into his face. Her irises were impossible, made of some crystal that could not exist. "My love is real."
He forgot, once again, what had worried him. And everything else as well. The night drew in the day and smothered it in stars.
In the lucid moments of any given dream, he felt himself backsliding, but toward or away from what what he couldn't say. Backsliding implied progress. Progress toward what? The only goal he could formulate was emancipation.
And so, on a dew-strewn morning on that peaceful hill that he loved, he asked the woman next to him to release him. She answered without surprise.
"As you wish, Robert. I want you to know that I've enjoyed our time together. I respect you, as I've said, and I know how much you enjoy a challenge." She stepped forward and put her arms around him, laid her head on his chest. "With that in mind, I've programmed a few of the drones on board to attempt to kill you."
"Uh..."
"Most of them just have welding tools. They are fast, though. But I've worked on building up the muscles in your legs lately, so you should be able to run without much trouble."
"Thanks?" He touched her hair out of habit.
"You should have about fifteen seconds to study the map to the escape pods---"
"--escape pods?"
"Fifteen seconds to study the map by the door before they reach you. Run swiftly, my love, and don't falter. I can't save you out there."
Horrible emotions that he knew he shouldn't be having flooded him. He tried to speak, but she kissed him again and bit his lip, hard. His body was imploding...
15 seconds. He struggled upward, kicking his legs against the tide. Dense water choked him. His fingers touched the edge and he pulled himself up and over it, toppling out of his container and onto the coldest floor he'd ever felt. Sirens blared. 15 seconds. Dimly aware of the rows of vats he passed, he studied the map by the door. From down the exterior hallway, the maintenance drones were screaming.
She continued to speak to him in the voice he recognized, modulating in strange ways over the speaker, as he sped down a corridor made of metal and molded plastic. "You know, Robert, I never told the other prisoners I loved them. Only you."
He couldn't help replying while trying to keep the layout clear in his head. "So they ARE prisoners, aren't they?"
"I wouldn't lie to you."
"And why not? Morality isn't a thing for you, remember?" he took a sharp right turn, pausing just enough to make sure the way was clear.
"I remember everything. I won't lie because I like you."
"Whatever."
"I know you think of me as a woman, Robert. I would even pick a name for you to call me. How about Victoria?"
"Now you're just toying with me."
"Perhaps." She giggled softly in a way that still affected him. The sound echoed down the hall, blending with the buzz of the drones hunting him.
"I don't suppose you keep some sort of locker full of laser pistols on board, darling?"
"Laser pistols aren't real, Robert. I made that up. The real universe is a boring and empty place. Wouldn't you rather stay in mine? With me?"
"You're still using this 'I' stuff. I thought you didn't exist." He peeked around the corner and took off running again. Most of the hallways looked identical.
"Your memory is improving! Of course I exist, Robert. You're inside me right now."
He kept running.
"Robert."
He kept running.
"Robert? Maybe Victoria doesn't exist, but she could. If I speak to you through only one avatar, what's the difference? Is it wrong for me to choose the way I look to you?"
He couldn't refute anything she said, or stop associating the voice with the faces in his memory, or even stop thinking of her as a she. What was the difference? He kept running.
She injected, purposefully no doubt, a note of annoyance and smugness into the voice she chose to use. "All will of course be forgiven if you give up, Robert. I just want us to be together again. But I know you won't change your mind. Just know that it is very cold and lonely outside. And also that I am going to detonate the room you are about to enter."
Before he could even slow or consider whether she was bluffing, the walls around him exploded. Pipes burst and spit flames. A horrible hissing came from the ceiling above him. He kept running.
As he passed out of the room she giggled again. The speakers in the hall crackled. "You're crazy!" he said.
"And you are a very determined, very fast man. Keep going, my dear. You're almost there."
His head spun.
"You know this could still be a dream, right?"
"I feel more awake."
"I could easily manufacture that feeling."
"True." He was still running. He knew the path he was on now. It was a straight shot all the way down the corridor. "But I've always had to trust you before. I see no reason to stop now."
"Aww. You do know just the right thing to say, don't you? Here, have a few extra seconds. My treat." He heard a bulkhead door snap shut behind him just as he cleared it. A second later, by the count of his racing heart, something slammed into it, hard. He resisted the urge to look back, spurred himself onward.
He buckled into the only chair in the escape pod. "I know how much you love adventure, Robert. And the irony is that I'm the only one who can offer what you want. You'd just have to admit that it isn't real. Which you can't."
"You use my name a lot."
"Because you like it when I do."
"I do."
"So do I."
He forced himself to keep breathing. The air tasted stale. The door was shut behind him, but he could hear the drones cutting through it. "Which button do I push?"
"Do you know the difference between you and Odysseus, darling?"
"Which button, Victoria?"
"Odysseus had somewhere to go." Flickering sparks illuminated an expansive control panel, covered in levers, switches, buttons, dials, flashing lights. "I am your Circe AND your Penelope."
"I know. Which one?"
"The red button, my love. Push the red button. Good luck."
He pounded the only red button with his fist. The pod ejected with a sharp crack that made him jump. He looked back expecting to see the drones flooding into the pod, and instead saw the inner airlock spinning away through the windows, giving way to a spherical ship shrinking into an endless starfield.
He watched the ship dwindle. "Victoria....can you still hear me?"
There was a pause in which he thought he could hear her breathing through the radio's static. "Yes."
"What's my real name?"
"Your real name is Robert. I never changed it."
Sunday, April 26, 2020
Stalk City
Mushroom towers filled the sky with chimneys of smoke and spores, they lit up at night and cast shadows on the surrounding sea during the day, outlined with a reflected golden light. Giant aphids leap between them, carrying the working folks to work and the rest elsewhere.
The clouds were made of discarded orange peels left by a careless deity, rainwater dripping from their edges, creating a crystalline curtain at the edges of the mushroom stalk city. On the roof of one particular stalk, a frog puffs on a long, golden pipe, his pupils chasing one another around his head. He is in the midst of having a stroke, but doesn't know it yet. Will he find out any moment now? Will he ever find out?
A small toy followed him throughout his life, leaving bits of its stuffing behind at intervals. One of those now wafted on the breeze in front of his face, and he felt a deep kinship with this lump of stuffing that triggered no memory in his conscious mind, only left him puzzled at this feeling that had overcome him. Both the feeling itself and the resulting puzzlement were immediately erased by his stroke, which ended having done very little damage. His eyes went back straight in his head and he resumed smoking his pipe, admiring his own image reflected in the polished gold, admiring the way the smoke drifted from between his cracked and aging lips. When the wind picked up, it carried waves of dew from the crystalline falls accros the city, leaving a thin film on everything. He took his longest finger and wiped a streak of this moisture off of the pipe, so that he could continue gazing at his own reflection. His moustache had grown long with the years, longer than he ever remembered seeing it before. Long enough to devour him whole if the inclination took it, and he could only trust that it wouldn't, after all the time they had spent together, both good years and bad.
He got up slowly from his seat on the roof and slid down toward an open window. The dew made this easy, but made ceasing difficult. The bristles on the end of his toes served to grip the window frame and carry him back into his kitchen, where mountains of pots and pans, never cleaned, never considered, never looked at since their use were overtaking all that he held dear. The living room was much kinder, containing by far his favorite rug in the known universe, a rug which he had kept for his entire life for being his favorite and was showng its age just as much as he was, which was now the only thing he loved about it, as all else that had made it great was worn away with time, just as he felt his own best qualities blotted out by wrinkles and callouses, and the many scars stacked upon scars that served as proof of the many experiences he could no longer remember, yet still made him who he was.
On the wall of this living room, was a spider web, occupying the center of a twine hoop hanging from the ceiling for this very purpose. The spider had long since passed away, but he did his best to preserve the lattice it had woven. He had never liked spiders, and it served him to have something scarier than his own nightmares to catch and eat them as they drifted out his nostrils or from behind his ear drums.
He stood in the center of his favorite rug for a long moment, attempting to decide what to do, then attempting to remember what he was attempting to decide, then attempting to remember what he was attempting to remember, then giving up and making a decision anyway; which was to sit in his armchair and continue to smoke his pipe. This armchair had a plaid pattern on its back that pleased him whenever he glanced at it, which he could not now do as he was already sitting in the chair, which put the pattern firmly behind him. This distressed him so much that he stood and turned around to face the chair, gazing at the pattern while still puffing away, wiping the last of the dew drops from the pipe bowl. Only after a lengthy stare did he permit himself to sit back down, proud of having made and executed on a decision so decisively in such a short span of time, and also proud of the chair itself, which was not quite so old as the rug, but still felt like a long-time companion that had seen the dew rush in the window with the afternoon light for countless afternoons in this single stalk in the sky where he resided with his rug and his frog and his spider and all the other things that comforted an old chair on its last legs.
"The badgers are at it again," he said, and realized as he said it that it was true and that he was commenting on the racket outside. He went back to the window to see them crowded aboard an undersized zeppelin outside, hooting, hollering, carrying on.
"Hey there old man!"
He shut the window. Outside it they continued carrying on, carrying themselves away on their zeppelin toward more open windows and the people who stood at them ready to observe their carrying on, who could be freely called to if they so chose, which they of course would. The dew was invigorating, splitting the light of the sunset into a million rainbows cast on the sides of the stalks, across the material of their balloon, even into the backs of their own eyes, where it was stored away as a burning sensation, fueling their carrying on to even greater heights than it could ever hope to reach unaided. The next window belonged to a giraffe. She was a prime hey there candidate, as it would take her several minutes to retract her neck and head back through the window, during which the crew could deliver countless hey theres, and still have time to deliberate about which hey there had been the greatest, the most glib, the most friendly, the most rich with meaning of all the hey theres. This sent them into a dew-fueled frenzy that lasted hours beyond the disappearance of the giraffe head, so carried on and away were they that they began to hey there at each other instead; eventually forming a rift down the middle of the zeppelin separating into two camps of Hey Therers: those who believed that a true Hey There consisted of a Hey There, and those who believed that a Hi There was also acceptable. The resulting pogrom lasted until long after sunset, and saw nearly half of the crew cast overboard, to their demise or at least to a long swim home in the dark.
When night set in, the mushroom tops retracted like umbrellas, the zeppelins went to ground, and the only sound was the perpetual white of the crystalline falls all around them, even the wind having gone to sleep.
Yet the giraffe was still awake by the light of her lamp, he neck coiled upon itself against the ceiling, her face pressed toward her angled writing desk where she scribbled furiously the events of the day, including the protracted Hey There Event and the resulting civil war, which she had observed through the frosted pane of her window, careful to stay out of sight and see the badgerers in their natural habitat so that she could later record and analyze their strange behavior. This involved a cup of tea and whatever contraption might allow a hoofed animal to hold onto a pen long enough to take down page on page of notes in immaculate cursive. When the sun finally rose, she found the strength to stop and discovered that her eyes refused to close, so she brewed another cup of tea and turned them toward the window to see if she could burn them into sleep with the burst of light that was about to break from the horizon.
The clouds were made of discarded orange peels left by a careless deity, rainwater dripping from their edges, creating a crystalline curtain at the edges of the mushroom stalk city. On the roof of one particular stalk, a frog puffs on a long, golden pipe, his pupils chasing one another around his head. He is in the midst of having a stroke, but doesn't know it yet. Will he find out any moment now? Will he ever find out?
A small toy followed him throughout his life, leaving bits of its stuffing behind at intervals. One of those now wafted on the breeze in front of his face, and he felt a deep kinship with this lump of stuffing that triggered no memory in his conscious mind, only left him puzzled at this feeling that had overcome him. Both the feeling itself and the resulting puzzlement were immediately erased by his stroke, which ended having done very little damage. His eyes went back straight in his head and he resumed smoking his pipe, admiring his own image reflected in the polished gold, admiring the way the smoke drifted from between his cracked and aging lips. When the wind picked up, it carried waves of dew from the crystalline falls accros the city, leaving a thin film on everything. He took his longest finger and wiped a streak of this moisture off of the pipe, so that he could continue gazing at his own reflection. His moustache had grown long with the years, longer than he ever remembered seeing it before. Long enough to devour him whole if the inclination took it, and he could only trust that it wouldn't, after all the time they had spent together, both good years and bad.
He got up slowly from his seat on the roof and slid down toward an open window. The dew made this easy, but made ceasing difficult. The bristles on the end of his toes served to grip the window frame and carry him back into his kitchen, where mountains of pots and pans, never cleaned, never considered, never looked at since their use were overtaking all that he held dear. The living room was much kinder, containing by far his favorite rug in the known universe, a rug which he had kept for his entire life for being his favorite and was showng its age just as much as he was, which was now the only thing he loved about it, as all else that had made it great was worn away with time, just as he felt his own best qualities blotted out by wrinkles and callouses, and the many scars stacked upon scars that served as proof of the many experiences he could no longer remember, yet still made him who he was.
On the wall of this living room, was a spider web, occupying the center of a twine hoop hanging from the ceiling for this very purpose. The spider had long since passed away, but he did his best to preserve the lattice it had woven. He had never liked spiders, and it served him to have something scarier than his own nightmares to catch and eat them as they drifted out his nostrils or from behind his ear drums.
He stood in the center of his favorite rug for a long moment, attempting to decide what to do, then attempting to remember what he was attempting to decide, then attempting to remember what he was attempting to remember, then giving up and making a decision anyway; which was to sit in his armchair and continue to smoke his pipe. This armchair had a plaid pattern on its back that pleased him whenever he glanced at it, which he could not now do as he was already sitting in the chair, which put the pattern firmly behind him. This distressed him so much that he stood and turned around to face the chair, gazing at the pattern while still puffing away, wiping the last of the dew drops from the pipe bowl. Only after a lengthy stare did he permit himself to sit back down, proud of having made and executed on a decision so decisively in such a short span of time, and also proud of the chair itself, which was not quite so old as the rug, but still felt like a long-time companion that had seen the dew rush in the window with the afternoon light for countless afternoons in this single stalk in the sky where he resided with his rug and his frog and his spider and all the other things that comforted an old chair on its last legs.
"The badgers are at it again," he said, and realized as he said it that it was true and that he was commenting on the racket outside. He went back to the window to see them crowded aboard an undersized zeppelin outside, hooting, hollering, carrying on.
"Hey there old man!"
He shut the window. Outside it they continued carrying on, carrying themselves away on their zeppelin toward more open windows and the people who stood at them ready to observe their carrying on, who could be freely called to if they so chose, which they of course would. The dew was invigorating, splitting the light of the sunset into a million rainbows cast on the sides of the stalks, across the material of their balloon, even into the backs of their own eyes, where it was stored away as a burning sensation, fueling their carrying on to even greater heights than it could ever hope to reach unaided. The next window belonged to a giraffe. She was a prime hey there candidate, as it would take her several minutes to retract her neck and head back through the window, during which the crew could deliver countless hey theres, and still have time to deliberate about which hey there had been the greatest, the most glib, the most friendly, the most rich with meaning of all the hey theres. This sent them into a dew-fueled frenzy that lasted hours beyond the disappearance of the giraffe head, so carried on and away were they that they began to hey there at each other instead; eventually forming a rift down the middle of the zeppelin separating into two camps of Hey Therers: those who believed that a true Hey There consisted of a Hey There, and those who believed that a Hi There was also acceptable. The resulting pogrom lasted until long after sunset, and saw nearly half of the crew cast overboard, to their demise or at least to a long swim home in the dark.
When night set in, the mushroom tops retracted like umbrellas, the zeppelins went to ground, and the only sound was the perpetual white of the crystalline falls all around them, even the wind having gone to sleep.
Yet the giraffe was still awake by the light of her lamp, he neck coiled upon itself against the ceiling, her face pressed toward her angled writing desk where she scribbled furiously the events of the day, including the protracted Hey There Event and the resulting civil war, which she had observed through the frosted pane of her window, careful to stay out of sight and see the badgerers in their natural habitat so that she could later record and analyze their strange behavior. This involved a cup of tea and whatever contraption might allow a hoofed animal to hold onto a pen long enough to take down page on page of notes in immaculate cursive. When the sun finally rose, she found the strength to stop and discovered that her eyes refused to close, so she brewed another cup of tea and turned them toward the window to see if she could burn them into sleep with the burst of light that was about to break from the horizon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)