i woke up nervous and alone

7/28/2019 I Woke Up Nervous and Alone

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I arrive eight minutes late for my DHS interview at 7:30 AM. It seems like a negligiblenumber to me but the employee who was supposed to interview me had determinedat 7:35 that I was a no-show and I have to reschedule my interview for 8:00.

I think: Culture is moving too fast. The mechanisms of the machine groundthemselves to such a desired efficiency that there is no room left for me.

The door of the DHS lobby opens and a mentally disabled customer that I see everyday at one of my faceless service industry positions confronts me. The customer saysto the front desk attendant that he is there to see a friend. He sits down across fromme and looks directly at me. I raise my head and say,

- Hello, what are you up to?

- I'm bored, he says.

- Already bored at eight. That's a bad sign, I say. He looks down, he says nothing.

- Any plans for the day? I say. He says nothing.

An office door opens and the front desk attendant calls my name.

*

I bluff my way out of work by conjuring a sick grandfather who in reality is long-dead.

I walk to a coffee shop. I sit in the coffee shop alt-tabbing between Facebook, Gmailand a text file whose empty canvas only exists as the proof of what I am feeling.

A casual acquaintance walks into the coffee shop. For some reason or another shesmiles and says hello to me. She asks me how my day is. I recount a vaguerecollection of my day, how I managed to get off of work. A rote exchange ofpleasantries follows.

I tell her that a friend of mine just got a job at the same Safeway where she works. I


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tell her that this friend had just been over at my house last night making baklava.

I realize that what I am saying is not interesting to hear and wonder why we aretalking.

She gets up to retrieve a soy vanilla latte now sitting on the counter.

The horizon of what we are able to talk about is inches away from nothing when sheleaves.

The point at which one of us would have to feign needing to go to the bathroom inorder to escape a collective silent animus is barely avoided.

We are connected only through the amount of time it takes to prepare a soy vanillalatte.

I stare at the blank word document.

I feel the pain of mourning for my imaginary grandfather.

I think: I will miss you more than my actual grandfather.

*

I realize that in my adult life I have cried only due to confusion.

*

I am on break from one of my faceless service industry positions. I am smoking with a

new employee.

I am happy in concept about being able to get to know her, though I wish it didn'trequire me to give her my last cigarette.

The conversation skates across thin formalities. Each of us is trying our best to


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maintain a momentum which seems consistently on the edge of giving out to thefriction of silence.

I see a friend I rarely speak with anymore biking in my direction.

I look at him in acknowledgment. The new employee seems to not follow theprogression of events and stares at me.

My friend slows down and bikes between my coworker and I. He looks at me while hepasses.

I feel marginally confused.

I abandon the remainder of my cigarette and return to work.

*

I receive a text from an unknown number which reads FUCKFACE

I stare at my phone for fifteen seconds.

*

I just purchased an unlabeled bag of cracker like things; the person I purchased themfrom visibly cringed when I called them crackers, I assume there is a less proletarianword I was supposed use. I felt immoral.

The past fifteen minutes had been spent trying to find things to put on thenoncrackers. I am now standing in front of three different kinds of humus. I do notwant any of them but the fact that I have unaccompanied crackers has created a holein me. There is an older and younger woman behind the counter, they are talking and

have not acknowledged the fact that I am staring with vague intensity at theirvarieties of humus.

The women are talking to each other, they are speaking in the hushed cloying tonesthat designate the conversation as important or profound.

Yeah, I didn't really know who I was or what I was doing with my life. The olderwoman leans forward in her chair. She is tanned to an absurd degree, she looks like


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she is shriving up like an old tomato, she looks like an old tomato. I picture her as arotting tomato.

But then I read this book and... it just told me everything about my life. The olderwoman puts her hand on the younger woman's thigh as she finishes talking.

I walk away, I have given up on the possibility of getting humus.

I think about what the book could have been. I imagine the many different ways thisbook could have changed my life.

*

I spend three and a half hours walking to and from what once was a lumber mill in the1980s, but is now a concrete dump.

I forgot to charge my iPod the night before. It dies halfway through 1,000,000 Diedto Make This Sound by A Silver Mt. Zion and the sound in my ears is replaced by loudtraffic. I feel no difference in my emotional state.

I admire the idea of walking for hours, hearing nothing but the hum of human activityoverlaying whispers of an omnipresent nature.

I think: This will make me more at home in nature.

After a few minutes, the sound of traffic becomes caustic and makes me feeldungeoned inside myself.

I will never let my iPod die again.

*

I am busing tables at one of my faceless service industry positions. My mind hasturned the act into some vague competition against unknown opponents.

Cups: Arrange in a 'crescent moon' on bus tray, then progressively 'wax' the moon untilcup formation is 'gibbous.'


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Trash: Place napkins, kids' menus, empty sugar packets, other detritus on one side ofbus tray.

Utensils: Place knives, spoons, forks and other eating tools on top of trash. If not

placed correctly, trash will waft away as busser delivers tray to bus station.

My ability to do this is both a point of pride and shame. A lot of things seem like that.There are three people at a table near me. Two are older. One is in his twenties. Iassume this group of people is a family. I have no evidence to support this.

I overhear the younger man say, ... no. Not really R&B, more like minimalistRockabilly.

I take the tray to the bus station.

*

I am walking without identifiable purpose from the edge of town. A friend has stoodme up (he explains later that our plan to meet in the concrete dump was 'a joke'). Icut through a street that leads to a coffee shop.

I see an older woman walking five identical white Pembroke Welsh Corgis on the otherside of the street.

The woman stops, lifts one of the Corgis by its hind legs and begins shaking it out likea dusty carpet.

I first feel that I am witnessing some kind of animal abuse. Then I feel a rising need tosay something. After a second, I realize that I don't know almost anything aboutCorgis.

I think: you probably have to do this to Corgis. and this makes sense to me.

I lower my head and continue walking.

*


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I am sitting on a counter stool at a local coffee shop, I am looking out a window, thereis movement outside but no sound.

I think: There is no sound left in the world.

An elderly woman pushing a stroller walks up to a chair just on the other side of thewindow, she stops and sits down. I stare at her. I am transfixed, I am transfixed due toboredom.

I think: I have one month left in this town and this is what I am doing with it.

I look at the woman more. I move my gaze from the woman to her stroller, I noticethat there is a small Kerry Blue Terrier puppy in the stroller. I think of nothing more.

*

My coworker has just stated, Fucking table six is hot as shit.

I look over at table six.

There are two women and a man sitting across from each other. They are in their latetwenties. The women are wearing several thick layers of makeup. One of the womenis wearing heels, a tight-fitting gingham skirt and a crisp white blouse. The otherwoman is wearing heels, a tight-fitting black skirt and a crisp white blouse. The man

is wearing black dress shoes, black slacks and a navy blue dress shirt.

I cannot think of anything to say. I try to remember the last time I had an erection. Alittle too clean cut for me, I respond. I think about how I phrase this.

Last week, my boss asked me if I was into girls. I assumed most of my coworkersthought I was gay.I note that my response could easily be taken as a reference to theman. I cannot tell if I am worried about this. I am worried about being worried aboutthis.

I think: It seems like I instinctively respect people whose appearance belies at leastsome level of bourgeois self-hatred, or some appearance of also feeling the drawn-outlistlessness I imagine to be the sign of being a person.

I look back at the table.


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*

Practice has just ended for the 'musical project' I play banjo in. We have refused to

connect our music to any labeled genre, if I give the music any thought I see thewords acoustic folk in my head, I have chosen to ignore the presence of thesewords.

Though I can provide simple suggestions on chord progressions, I find myself impotentwhen it comes to producing lyrics. I suggested a progression earlier. I said that I wouldwork on lyrics for it. I walk up the hill to my house and try to think of lyrics.

I think of a series of vitriolic phrases which do not rhyme or fit into any of the

progressions I came up with.

'JEFF TWEEDY IS GOD' appears in bold Papyrus font on a white screen in my head. Ismile and imagine projecting 'JEFF TWEEDY IS GOD' on top of an image of JacquesDerrida giving a seminar. I imagine Jacques Derrida fronting Wilco. I imagine telling afriend that I love Wilco's philosophy of semiotics. I imagine Jacques Derrida saying'Dad rock' with a thick French accent. I picture Jacques Derrida's face and try toremember the lyrics to Heavy Metal Drummer. The camera in my mind moves downJacques Derrida's portrait to reveal that he is wearing shiny pants.

I stop trying to think of lyrics.

*

I am standing in front of my desk, I am counting the cobbled together selection ofcash which is supposed to pay rent. I know it will not be enough, I know that I willhave to front a portion of a roommates rent. I remember there was a time when thiswould bother me, now that part of me is dead.

My phone is sitting on the desk next to the badly organized pile of rent. It glows,indicating some missed call or other social injunction.

I think: I should check the time.

I flip open my phone. Nothing happens. I pause, close the phone, and open it again.

I stare pointlessly at a blank screen. A dead phone, a dead piece of technology. I


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imagine a landscape littered with the broken remains of tmobile and verison phones, Ithink about how little this landscape means.

I open and close my phone again.

I think: The fuck.

I begin to feel lost and isolated.

*

My coworker is in the process of smoking a one-hitter in the kitchen of the restaurantwhere I hold one of my faceless service industry positions. He is blowing the smokeinto the hood vents over the deep frier to try and masque the stench of weed. He isnot succeeding.

I am preparing two gyros, a large order of fries and a side of hummus to go. I amfrustrated that my coworker is not helping me, though I am trying to hide this fact.

My coworker finishes smoking and does dishes for twenty minutes. Then he pulls a boxof potatoes from the counter near the pipe. The box knocks the pipe to the ground,producing an unsatisfying synthetic noise. I wonder what the pipe is made of, as I hadassumed that it was glass.

Burnt weed scatters across the floor.

My coworker swears. He falls to his knees and begins scouring the floor for remnantsof burnt weed. I note that the floor is covered in grease splatter.

My coworker spends ten minutes searching for one nugget of burnt weed. At somepoint during this timeframe, I watch him pick up a piece of iceberg lettuce andinspect it with a frustrated facial expression.

I watch my coworker give up. He rises from the floor and goes to wash his hands. Hisface is distorted in a fashion which recalls a type of absolute loss. My coworkerstaggers to the bench in front of the register and falls on it. He sighs and stares outthe front window. He does not move or talk for twenty minutes. Three customerscome in and order food. I prepare the food, hand it to them and watch them leavewith it.


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I prepare a pita with lamb meat and feel a part of myself grow very cold.

*

I realize that talking about quitting my job has the same immediate emotional releaseas actually quitting my job.

The same emotional impact as reading Mario Savio quotes. The potential is as good asthe event.

*

I am at a coffee shop reading an AdBusters article entitled Hipster: The Dead End ofWestern Society. The article is basically a denouement of what could qualify as 'TheHipster,' but to reach its own ends, it objectifies hipsters via a quasi-connected list ofbrand names, clothing choices and subjective experiences. There is a sentence in thearticle which notes that the way hipsters dance is stupid.

I read the article and am filled with that unique species of blind angersightlessbecause it is directed against ideas and not people. I construct counter-arguments tothe article and feel powerful. My opinion will never reach the author; it is sufficient

that it exists.

I react as if the article had been written about me and that my character had beentarnished in some direct fashion. I want to do something in rebellion, something toshow my resistance. I take a series of Instagram pictures on my iPod. I do not feelbetter.

*

I am sitting on an apartment porch unconsciously smoking a series of cigarettes

interspersed with ominous coughs. Time is slow and plodding, it cannot cut throughthe humid spring heat.

I hear a jovial scream from the street, I imagine there is a gang of high schoolers inthe distance, probably taking part in that barbaric playfulness which marks their age.I look out to the small stretch of street which I can see between the two apartmentcomplexes. I see a young girl run by and disappear, a second later I see a young boy ona skateboard being rapidly pulled by a Siberian Husky. He appears to be chasing the


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young girl in this manner.

I begin to revise history, I begin to questions how jovial the first scream seemed. Iimagine the terror of this being your final moments, to look back and see the coldstare of the skateboarder and the inevitable speed of the Husky.

I think: If I saw this tragedy approaching me would I still run, knowing that there wasno hope for escape?

Five minutes later two women an apartment further down attempt to get back intotheir apartment only to realize that they have accidentally locked themselves out.One of the women begins to bang wildly on the door (I am overwhelmed by thefeeling that there is no one in the apartment, that her banging the door only managesto emphasize the hopelessness of her position). The other leans over their porchrailing putting her head in her hands, she remains in this position as her roommatebang wildly on the door. Nothing changes.

I think: The tragedy grows.

*

I wake up feeling severely hungover. It feels oddly serene. My mind is clouded andkeeps me from thinking of anything outside of the immediate.

I saw a performance of True West by Sam Shepard in my kitchen last night. Theexperience of watching a play set in my own house felt less surreal than I expected. I

met an attractive girl standing in the back and offered her a chair from my room. Shestayed after the performance, when only the cast and my roommates remained.

I was attracted to her, but there was no tool to translate that attraction intopurposeful action. Two of my roommates began flirting with her. I despise the thoughtcompeting for someone's affection. I thought something like, 'I do not make games outof something which is supposed to be real..'

I drank more.

I did not feel sad.

This morning, I search for her on Facebook but cannot not find anything.


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I am not disappointed.

I walk to a coffee shop. One of my friends is there already. I tell her that one of myroommates did a backflip into a tree last night. I hate that guy, she says.

What the fuck? Do you like any of my friends? I say.She changes the subject.

*

I spend the afternoon reading the Wikipedia articles on Delirium Tremens andalcoholism. I diagnose myself as an alcoholic. I don't want to feel thousands ofimaginary ants crawling all over my body. I will never stop drinking.

*

It is morning and I'm making breakfast while listening to Fall Be Kind by AnimalCollective on vinyl. There are two Greeks named Nick in my kitchen. I am makingliverwurst with onions and toast.

I woke up at seven to the Nicks screaming OOPA!!!

The Nicks say that they are making breakfast pizza. It looks exactly like any otherpizza.

The Nicks make eggs sunny side up and put them on pieces of pizza. I am confused.

The vinyl stops playing. The Nicks ask if they can put on music. They initially playworld music, but it eventually turns into Disney musical tunes played by famouscountry and bluegrass artists. The Dixie Chicks are playing a rendition of BearNecessities.

One of the Nicks is wearing nothing but a towel.

The Nicks begin doing the can-can in the dining room while making comments aboutThe Rockettes. I am confused.


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The Nicks yell at each other and clean the kitchen with a spastic intensity.

I leave.

*

I am sitting in a coffee shop. I am struggling to fill time, to make my life within thatcoffee shop have definable purpose. I am staring blankly at an open facebook page,ever sense my phone had spontaneously given up I had been attempting to usefacebook as a replacement form of communication. All this attempted replacementhad led to was me sitting in a coffee shop staring at facebook.

I felt a motive energy leave me. I felt existentially motionless.

I had been in the coffee shop for an hour, no one had responded to my facebook

messages.

I think: I will poke all of you because of this.

I feel my heart pound out of rhythm. I have had far too much caffeine, I am growingmanic. I desire a form of human contact which I am incapable of receiving.

No more phone calls, no more texts, nothing left to do but sit and wait.

*

I unexpectedly got the day off so I am walking aimlessly making mindless turnsthrough streets which hold no meaning to me.

I think: I like walking because it makes me believe that I'm doing something when I'mnot.

I alternate between looking at the ground and maintaining a coordinated lack of focuson anything I look directly.

There are two large, middle aged men in shorts wearing identical shirts coming in mydirection. My determination to notice nothing is broken by what seems like the Pabstlogo on their shirts.

I think: ... Pabst? and become interested.

The shirts are gray and have a large Pabst Blue Ribbon logo on the front, howeverinstead of reading Pabst, the text reads: Upper Playground.


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I attempt to imagine what this could be the logo for. I imagine that it is some kind ofnightclub for middle aged men; in the night club the middle aged men slowly stripeach other while Lyonard Skinner plays over the surround sound speakers. They danceon the main floor until they remove all of each others clothing.

Once all the fat, middle aged men are naked they ceremonially being out a flat ofPBR. The music switches to Skrillex and the men begin to pour the PBR on to eachother.

At this point all images cease and I see the phrase there is no more turning back inArial Black floating stationary in a white space.

I begin to walk faster as the men pass.

*

I am at a house show headlined by The Hive Dwellers, Calvin Johnson's new band. Ihave been obsessed with Calvin Johnson since I was a teenager. His musical career, hiswork as the founder of K Records, these things to me carry a haze of surreality aroundthem. He is a mythical tale passed from hipster to hipster to teach the youth ofmorality and teleology.

I try to strategically place myself in locations where I feel Calvin Johnson is likely topass and be gently ushered into a conversation with me. I have seen little success at

this point, even after standing near the bathroom for a extended period of time.Calvin Johnson seems to have a very durable bladder.

My chance comes at the small merchandise table, amidst the K Records vinyls. Hestands next to me. I initiate a nervous appeal about the state of records. and howhard it is to find good LPs without the internet. Calvin Johnson listens through largegun-range headphones and speaks in curt sentences always containing less than tenwords.

I continue to flip through vinyls as we speak, eventually stopping on Uterus and Fireby Old Time Relijun.

I say, I really like this album, I hadn't heard them until a few months ago, and pickedthis one up on CD at a used record store.

- They only released this album on vinyl, he responds.

- But I definitely have this on CD.


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- They only released this album on vinyl,

- Are you sure?

- They only released this album on vinyl.

- But... I say, and then lose my words.

- What's your name?he says. I say my name.

- My name's Calvin, he says and extends his hand. We shake hands. He walks away.

I stop looking through vinyls.

*

I am in the side alley of a coffee shop, smoking and drinking a cappuccino. I amhalfway through my double shift and am trying to collect fragments of myself

between one faceless service industry position and another. I hear a rough andstaggered voice behind me say, So this is where you've been hiding.

The man behind me is a tormentor. I met him through my participation in the localOccupy, and he has continued to bother me in a precession of methods since learningmy name.

He stands over me and begins talking at me about his study of potassium leakage andwork on heart arrhythmia. I cannot follow what he is saying, and am trying to ignorehim. I am not succeeding. I begin to feel like I am experiencing heart arrhythmia.

I feel an animalistic urge to escape the situation, but have too many reservations toget up and leave. I sense a danger in the horizon. Time is running out.

A friend of mine walks around the corner. He is only person who has succeeded inalienating the awkward Occupy man enough to keep the salvo of this man's posturingvanity consistently at bay.

The tormentor sees my friend, makes a guttural grunting noise, and then says that hehas to take off. The two men do not make eye contact as they cross paths.

My friend shrugs his shoulders and seats himself across from me.

I am filled with a reprieve I imagine to be similar to Christian salvation.


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*

I am hosting at one of my faceless service industry positions. I am waiting for myhangover to pass and for me to experience what I label the moment of clarity that

marks the end of the night before. The moment when the ethanol fog is lifted, thelights grow brighter and my mind returns to the materiality of my body.

A customer has been waiting for his party to arrive for fifteen minutes. He drinks cupsof coffee as he grows nervous and agitated. He approaches the counter and asks if hecan use the phone; I can see a deep frustration in his eyes.

He spends five minutes calling a series of different numbers, I cannot tell if he is inany way successful. He returns to the counter, an aura of failure surrounds him.

He hands the phone to me: I don't know... he might call back... if he calls back my

name is Roger and I don't know what I'm doing.

I take the phone. I think: I understand you Roger.

More minutes pass, I fill up time with empty actions.

Roger returns to the counter, face battle worn.

I just talked to him, you can take my name off the list. He was here at nine andalready eat. Had a great time he said. Roger turns, and head down exit.

I think: Roger, we are brothers. If that I could give you a minute of happiness.

The door closes and I feel something in the world break.

*

I am at the theater; a friend and roommate is performing in a reading of a play. Iwent alone and sit in an empty row, my attention is split between the play andlooking at the audience, I feel like I am anticipating something. The play is about ajar of jam and a volcano. My roommate is playing the part of a gargoyle. I think ofAndre Breton's Theater of Cruelty.

The play ends and I leave casually. I begin to walk instinctively towards a bar flippingthrough my phone contacts to try and find people to invite. I pass names I do notknow anymore, I pass through names of friends I know I will never see again.

I think: I have already lost more than I can fathom.

I pass through names of people I assume are relatives of the person who last owned


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the phone. I pass by the name Happy Noodle Roy. Debate whether or not to contacthim.

I think: I am about to try and drink with some I don't know named 'Happy NoodleRoy', I have come this far.

That night I will sit silently in a park and watch traffic pass by.

*

For the past two months I have consumed a single Tigers Milk protein bar forbreakfast six days out of the week. Mostly this is because I cannot bring myself towake up more than fifteen to twenty minutes before work.

I have made a joke about brotein an estimated 20 times.

I have made a joke referencing the Belle and Sebastian album Tigermilk an estimated10 times.

None of these jokes are funny to me or anyone around me. They are produced like theinevitably of history.

*

I am in the manic ritual of faceless service work. The day has kept a dull andbreathless rhythm, a steady flow of formless customers, never frantically busy butnever meditatively slow.

A woman has sat at a two top around one of the tighter paths through tables. She isaccompanied by a corgi; the corgi is dressed in a vest identifying it as a serviceanimal. I wonder how a corgi could be of practical help to anyone with a disability.The corgi's size and general demeanor would keep it from doing anything morecomplex than simply existing as a corgi.

I look at the vest as I pass and note that it is labeled, stress relief animal.

I begin to wonder what would happen if the woman were to be separated from herstress relief corgi. Would she descend into a nervous panic attack? How much timewould have to pass for the panic to set in? Would it be immediate, or would it take afew minutes?


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I think about what would happen if I kick the stress relief corgi in front of the women.What if I began to bludgeon the corgi with a half empty coffee mug? Would she entera stress induced blood rage and assault me with the utensils at her table?

I imagine that this is how a stress relief corgi works: whenever you start to panic you

expend that stress and energy by hitting the corgi with you fists or any convenientobject.

I think: Only corgi's are built for that level of bludgeoning. A shih tzu would fall intoa coma after the second punch.

I nearly trip over the corgi as I try to navigate the space between tables; I grow moreagitated. I am worried about how much I despise people while I'm working. Its seemsdisturbing how everyone I confront has been bleed of actual human substance.

I think: Ok

*

I am sitting on the toilet outside of a show a friend of mine is playing at. I am staringat the wall and thinking incoherent symbols. I see a picture in front of me. It is a massproduced, framed image of manual type writer keys.

Near the top of pile is the shift key.

I think: Sometimes you have to press the shift key of life and capitalize onopportunities.

I spend the next hour and half trying to absolve myself from the guilt of havingthought of something so vapid.

*

I am talking to a girl at my roommates birthday party, surrounded by a number ofunknown faces. I am attempting to see if I am still capable of causally talking withnew people. At some indeterminate moment of working in the service industry itbecame categorically more difficult to interact with people as if they were potentialfriends and/or valid human subjects.

What's your favorite song from Rent? The girl asks me.

I am outside smoking a cigarette, I had briefly joined a conversation about the LesMiserables musical and mentioned that my favorite songs were those songs which hada thin veneer of pseudo-revolutionary fervor in them. I do not know how this led thegirl in front of me asking about Rent, my sister had liked Rent many years earlier and Ihad been tortured as a teenager by the endless sounds of puerile songs like Seasons


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of Love wafting through the house like caustic garbage.

I don't really know Rent. Les Mis is the only musical I've really heard. I respond.

But... She pauses and reorients her weight on to her left foot. ... what about Joss

Whedon? Do you like him?

Again I am confused at what led to this question. I imagine having the courage to notrespond to this, or any question like this; I imagine starring into the girls face andwithout saying anything putting my cigarette out on my forehead. I raise my cigaretteslightly.

Firefly was ok I guess.

But what about Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog, you've seen that right? She retorts.

I can perceive what answer would please her, but I don't have the will to produce itaudibly. Instead I say, It was pretty funny. I laughed a few times.

She produces a forced gasping noise. She taps the shoulder of a man standing nearher; I don't like this one, did you hear what he said about Joss Whedon?

I try to get away.

Less than thirty minutes later I will be talking to someone else near the bathroom,after two minutes and fourty one seconds of conversation see will suddenly beginvomiting mid-sentence, the words being something like it is hard to kno (insert

what word best simulates the sound of vomit). I begin to worry about myself.

*

I am at a job orientation with a social activist organization. In the summer I will beworking for them as a canvass lead, the work sounds alienating (ironically), overmonitored and all consuming but I have little choice but to take it. The personconducting the process is overbearing and too excited about what she is doing.

I think to myself that no one can be that excited about subjects like health-care

reform or ending corporate subsidies. I think that she must be acting, to me andmost likely to herself. I begin to hate the idea of her.

I am given a thick stack of application materials and introduced to a series ofindistinguishable faces. I watch them interact. The person interviewing me makes aHow I Met Your Mother reference with one of the other employees saying: It is goingto be legend... and I hope you aren't lactose intolerant for this next part... dary!


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I think: You have no soul.

I am supposed to stay through the announcement portion of the days pointlessroutine. The announcements are predictably over enthusiastic. The announcementsplay out in a sequence of call and response questions which sound as if they are

scripted.

I think: All of you are someone else's character.

The announcements end and everyone is asked to get into a huddle. I join because Ineed money. They begin loudly changing Whose streets? Our streets! over and overagain. The pace and volume slowly increase becoming more and more barbaric. I feelalone and afraid.

The chanting ends with everyone breaking off and banging the walls and floor madlywith their hands and feet. I do not join, I laugh awkwardly.

I think; I have witnessed the end of rational Man.

*

I woke up confused. I wasn't certain that I was awake. I felt scared and trapped.

This feeling lasted for five days.

*,I am walking down towards my work. It is early in the morning and I am tired andhungover but angry about neither. I am eating a Cliff Bar, what has become mystandard breakfast since I stopped caring.

As I walk I begin to notice an unexpectedly large number of packing peanuts blowinglike futurist tumble weeds in front of me. Then all around me. I travel through theirdesert, it lasts less than a minute.

I try to imagine some absurd and put on verbiage, some postmodern ebullition to

memorialize the sight. I think something like, its proof that modern society is simplya prepackaged product. The phrase is emotionless and dumb. There is no descriptionor phrase that matters in reference to the packing peanuts.

I think: I will go to work and forget about this.

I go to work. I do not forget.


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*

A balding man has approached me on the back porch of a local bar. Earlier he hadviolently thrust open the door to the porch and pointed at me audibly grunting:You. and then walked off to the other side of the porch.

Minutes later he returns. He is wearing a button up shirt and there is a tiesymbolically draped around his neck.

I think: The looseness of his tie is a simulacric representation of his state of mind.

He begins talking to me about the music project I have been working on. He sayswords that may have had meaning at one point in time, or in the proper context, nowthey simply stumble out of him. I have not followed the path of his sentences.

But you know, persistence is the most important word in the world. He says this

with a drunken confidence. Since I have not been listening to him I can only respondto this final phrase.

I respond: What about the equivalent word for persistence in other languages? Arethose less important?

I think: I am being a dick but I don't mind.

He sways slightly to the left: Well, don't know any other languages. But, persistenceand patience are the most important 'p' words. You learn things like this when ya getas old as me.

I think: I hate you. I do not know why I hate him but I feel like L. Ron Hubbardwould be able to tell me.

I say: But what about... ping pong, or pinball? Those are really important wordstoo.

The man pauses and walks back toward the other side of the porch.

I feel alone and angry as I walk back inside to get another drink.

I think: He will probably tell people that I was an asshole. I feel vaguely worriedabout this.

I think: I am drunk so nothing matters. I smile to myself in my head.

*


22/26

I am walking drunkenly though a sporadic haze of rain with a friend, badly trying toremain quiet, our intoxication muzzling noise from ourselves. We are walking towardan abandoned house a friend of mine noticed a few days earlier.

The front door is locked. The side door is locked. We hop the fence into the backyard,

producing another flurry of sound.

The backyard is a museum of bourgeois hobbies. There is a trampoline, a halfpipe anda forlorn drained pool. The rain has gathered in the bottom of the pool, just enoughwater to remind me of how the pool was constructed to function.

I want to run up and down the half pipe making skating noises and pretending to dotricks but I don't.

We check the backdoors. All locked.

I began removing the screens from all the windows I could find to see if any of thewindows had been left open. After a series of closed storm windows we finally foundone which was not completely closed. I was more exited than I should have beenabout this.

We fumble our way through the house, there is almost nothing inside, the bottomfloor shows signs of recent construction or demolition. I think to myself It is odd thatthese two things are so difficult to distinguish from each other.

We find one copy of National Geographic, there is a pug on the cover simulating asmile. The featured article is entitled What We Can Learn from Dogs. We grab the

magazine and leave through the front door. The world outside remains the same.

I do not know what I can learn from dogs.

*

I am walking along a residential street. My mind is a graveyard of past idea's.

I hear what sounds like Nickleback bleeding out from a house I am about to pass.There is a sound of a small dog barking nearly at perfect rhythm with the music. Ismile and find the thought of a dogs bark Nickleback album humorously

consumeristic.

This is replaced by the image of Chad Kroeger with the head of a Corgi. I find thisimage horrific and POST-HUMAN. This image remains with me for three hours.

*

For a day, I am haunted by the phrase, They were young but no light shined upon


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them.

*

I am smoking with my roommate on our front porch. We are speaking in the casualnonsequiturs which become common between people who are comfortable with oneanother.

My roommate will be leaving in two weeks to study in Guatemala. I feel no strongemotion about this passing. I feel guilty for not feeling.

I try to come up with things I could do for my roommate to commemorate ouroncoming separation, but the thought of spending two weeks only around him seems

unpleasant.

The thought of spending two weeks only around anyone seems unpleasant.

There will be a moment of melancholy in the future. In three weeks.

It will not be overblown or extreme.

I comfort myself by thinking, 'emotions are never as strong as people make them outto be.'

*

I am sitting in a decrepit office of a warehouse in an abandoned lumber mill and amreading Cur De Lion by Ariana Reines. The book-long poem is heartfelt andprofound. I feel a mixture of passion and envy for her gift, as well as a deep impetusto start writing.

The poem orbits a past relationship. The emotions Ariana Reines expresses seem touniversalize themselves in a subjective fashionthe universalization of experience. I

begin to feel a hole in my experience. I begin to feel that I cannot fully comprehendher poem because of how few romantic relationships I have been in. The feeling is notsimilar to a young angst vis--vis suppressed libido, nor is it yearning for a lostromanticism. It is the feeling of running into one's artistic limits. I feel like theexperiences expressed by Ariana Reines are equivalent to creative steroids.

I feel inadequate and small in the presence of this fact.


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I think, 'there are certain things which will never change.'

I feel outside of myself. I feel fatalistic.

I think, 'I'm becoming a Swedish fatalist.'

I feel melancholic, but not sad.

I think: 'it is time to stop fighting.'

*

It is nine at night and I am sitting in a park. The drifting sounds of traffic linger in theair as the only reminder that somewhere, human beings still exist and work. I feelinhuman.

I want to bury myself in the sand of the volleyball court, I want to become the groundon which bro's recreate, grunt and tan. I play at picking up handfuls of sand; I makeholes in the court and think: I want to make holes in everything.

Tonight I will drink; tomorrow I will work. I scan through names in my phonewondering who I could contact thinking: My life is not real.

*

I am talking with my oldest friend at my house. He is currently homeless and haspitched a tent in my living room since returning from South America. We are seatedon camping chairs near it. We speak on the subject of movements after Occupy. Theconversation traverses well-worn ground; the conversations of leftists areprepackaged at this point.

I state that the next movement has to be 'less explicitly political' and more 'artistic orcultural.' I bear no connection to my arguments. They come from a voice outside ofmyself, a different self that possesses me sometimes. A self which may have oncebelieved.

My friend flips through Magic: The Gathering cards while we speak. I find the


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situation comical in a negative sense, but this does not stop me from taking part in it.

As we speak I stop paying attention to what I say and my words slowly melt and losemeaning. The conversation is a copy of one which has already happened. I wonder if

this is what I have always sounded like. I think a general statement like, 'I HAVE DONETHIS ALREADY BEFORE. EVERYTHING I THINK HAS ALREADY BEEN SAID. EVERYTHINGHAS ALREADY BEEN DONE BETTER THAN I COULD EVER DO IT.' Where I once would havefound an epiphanic release in this thought, nothing calls back to me.

Later this night, I induce vomiting in order to get rid of hiccups.

*

I am sitting in a coffee shop when I learn of a bombing on the east coast which takesthe lives of three people and injures many more. I scroll through a series of newsarticles on the attack, I look at a few pictures but avoid looking at too many.

I feel a dull emotion similar to the feeling of having had too much caffeine. Since Ihave had multiple cups of coffee I think that it may actually be the feeling of havingtoo much caffeine. A close friend texts me about the bombing, the text is short andexpresses the feeling of being emotionally speechless about the tragedy. I feel a senseof inhuman distance from others.

I imagine responding: Yes I heard and I feel nothing for the victims because I think I

have become emotionally dead inside.

I respond that I hadn't heard what happened.

I go back and look for more news articles on the incident in the hope that this feelingwill change.

*

Since birth, I have been an amateur baseball player, an amateur historian, an amateurcomputer technician, an amateur philosopher, an amateur radical, an amateur writer,

an amateur musician, an amateur socialite.

When I was five I wanted to ride motorcycles when I grew up. I am now twenty-sixand I still haven't learned how to ride a bicycle.

My roommate has offed me rides on the back of his motorcycle. I refuse because I am


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terrified and walk.

*

I am lying in bed. It is 2 AM. I am thinking about my immediate demise.

For a number of months my roommate's cat has slept in bed with me. She is 15 yearsold and has lost the ability to regulate her diet. She often will hoist herself up anddirect all of her weight on top of my face.

I am convincing myself that my childhood cat allergy is coming back. My difficultybreathing will end in my throat closing up like a wilting floor. My last moments will bespent in a desperate (but ultimately fruitless) attempt to scream for help. Thethought of this ancient cat killing me seems to appropriately meld with the trajectory

of my life.

I drink water, stare at the ceiling and wait.

*

I am sitting alone in a coffee shop. Traffic is passing loudly, it is creating a solid wallof noise interspersed with the drone of the pedestrian crossing light: Cross streetwith caution, vehicles may not stop. and so it repeats infinitely inhuman.

I think: Someday I will move away from myself, what I am doing and where I am. Iwill not work in the service industry forever, I will get a job that is marginally better,or something which provides stability. It will most likely not be in a field I enjoy butit may be in a field I can convince myself I enjoy, something like editing or custodialwork. I will die at 59, I will be well on the way toward liver failure by this point and Iwill have a serious case of lung cancer which is undiagnosed; ironically however, mycause of death will be a ripped esophagus, torn open while trying to get rid ofhiccups. I will be considered romantically alone but will have made a small collectionof lifelong friends so I will feel far less alone then those around me think. Whenpeople are asked to give their honest opinion they will say I lead a pleasant, if not

uninspiring life. What Would I Want? Sky will be played at my funeral or at least Ireally hope it will be.

I look at the street further. I wonder why it is that the croissant sandwich I am eatingtastes so much better while I'm smoking.

i woke up nervous and alone

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