the.antithesis.txt Sam Johnson Table of Contents x. Introduction 1. Journal 2. Beggar and the City 3. Insanity 4. Circe 5. One Day 6. Stuff to do 5. The Watcher ______________________________________________________________________________ introduction ______________________________________________________________________________ While it may seem overwhelming at first, keep in mind that many of these stories are written in a langauge of contemporary light, so read these with an open mind and definitly expect to laugh. For find a chapter, I reccomend pressing CTRL+F to bring up the "find" box, then type in the name of the chapter and voila. Also, if read in a state of inebriation; the author would not discourage this. Also, keep in mind many of these stories have not been through the arduous process of editing, so please don't get hung up any minor gramatical or spelling errors. The intent is all that I wish to get across. The title, "the Antithesis .txt" is meant to be a direct opposite of any definition of the word, "bible." While "bible" is means, roughly, "a collection of stories," assumably written by different authors, I wish this to be a direct opposition to all bibles of thought. It discourages me to see how brainwashed people have become, and to prove my point, when I said the word "bible," did you think of the supposed "Holy" bible? Welcome to the world of Western Thought. ______________________________________________________________________________ Journal or Epiphany: the clothes to put around the Naked Truth. ______________________________________________________________________________ Part 1: December ___________________________________________________________________________ Chapter 1: Deceit What the hell is going on? I turn my back for a minute and everything just changes. What are these chains doing on my door? Normally when someone finds their door chained shut they would panic. It is not until after that person has called the police countless times, and the officer on duty thinks it is all a prank, that they start to feel doubtful. It is not until hours of screams and shouts that, when one finds no one as aide, one becomes quite unnerved. What is left to decay my sanity? Time. I leave for eight hours and everything changes. Peoples lives are ruined, or fundamental problems seemed rectified. Buildings are broken down and new businesses appear. I leave and nothing is done, and yet, nothing seems left undone. Chapter 2: In the Chambers A milky red color infuses with some unsuspecting white matter. I am stuck in the vortex of whist-less chains and floating words, which are stabbing me relentlessly in the side. "Would you like a cigarette?" she asks me, as if her condescending, "I'm a puppy dog," look axing me in the side was not enough. "yes!" the craving barks. The blue sky gets all gooey, and my eyes start to blur; rising light stirs a pot of milk in the back of my mind. "no, no, no!" a child shouts, as I bite at the lightning bugs that are assaulting my sanity. "What is it," she asks nonchalant, with that beautiful smile covering her lies like lip gloss. I awake in a sweat. Apparantly blue skies and ejaculate on a girls smiling face makes my nerves twitch. Sweat entrenches the pillow behind me. I look over to see if those chains are gone. No luck. What is there to do with my time? How much time has gone past? I can only remember what happened by my justification for whatever action I did. That justification which is the cause for the effect we call emotion. Without feelings, our memories would simply evaporate. The chains on the door, as I so appropriately call them, are a plague. It is as if my room is under quarantine, and yet that stench of death feels so damn impudent. Insanity waylays my senses as I notice my hair melting, drops of pasty dew stretching the color in my hair. Why is my hair wet? Minutes away, a faucet slowly squeaks droplets of water out, as fresh mist softens the sky. Chapter 3: SKIN Dead skin on my body? I scratch, as pieces fall to the floor to melt the snow. My door still has those rusty chains and that incessant lock, staring at me with mockery in their lips. Why did I do that? Did I do that? How else would chains get on the inside of my door? I haven't had guests over in months. Then it hits me: "The guy in the mirror!" It takes a lot to appreciate water. I don't know what I did, but it made Little piglets of water just start rushing out, happy of their destiny, as I stood to intercept them. This is what cleanses us of our sins. That Styrofoam backdrop of echoing raindrops, just seconds behind me. I get out of the shower and grab a towel, only to change into the same dirty clothes that I changed out of in the first place. Chapter 3: A moralization Insanity is a puppy love: it doesn't hit you like a freight train, rather it just stalks you for a few years, then creeps up and makes you slit your throat. "Creak, creak," goes the closet of Death, as echoes surround me and laugh in my face. A demon rips out of me, bloody paste on walls, and viciously shreds any ghost in front of me. Leaves in the grass, smiles the lawnmower-man, as I close my eyes to call forth endless night. "Infinite pussy!" the man cried, his teeth hungry for his desire full-filled, whilst blowing a blue whistle and handing out flyers. I ride a bouncing river to him and ask, "Who are you?." "Who am I?" the man snaps like a turtle. "Who am I?" I playfully volley. The man shocks me with a tap to my forehead and says "find out for yourself!" I pause to question his response when suddenly sharp teeth and blunt nails wrap around me and squeeze. I look at the man, as if to ask why such would happen, and he responds: "THIS IS DEATH!" A Journal! Of course. Such a place is not where we crazy men keep thoughts, is it not? "Not it is," I grin sarcastically. I flip through mounds of heaping gold, trash with flies oozing from the sides, and find a notebook full of scraps; sentences with no meaning, words left unfulfilled. I open it and find myself pouting, for who could read such a mess? I know what it is! I am unable to read the clock, read the paper, or even read what I'm writing, but I know now what it is! The light! The light is playing tricks on me again, is it not? I shall put a curse on that lamp when I awake in hell, or maybe I should curse the person who sold me that lamp, or maybe even the man who gave me the light bulb? That lamp is making light hit the paper and then bounce in wavy, dancing curves, towards my honest eyes. Poor soul! Though what about the very particles of air that the light must travel through. Perhaps in their long flight, the light is degradated and perhaps made sick from bad airline peanuts. I know who it is that locked the door! The lamp for a second lost face, and suddenly, I can see again. As I looked drastically through my notebook, on page 203, I find it. "If you were to sum up your life as actions and experiences resulting from the human mind existing during the state of an action, then your life would simply be experiences. Actions are little boxes, with little tags, describing how it affected you and how it changed your view or tastes. This is the basic rationale behind psychology. Once one is able to think every thought possible (though complete disassociation) then one becomes another. Once one becomes another, all boundries are broken, and 1 becomes 2 becomes infinity becomes a limitless capacity. " What nonsense, I think. Then it all blurs together: "sks me if i want to diem locking mysin this room to fiself." That fiend! Thinking he can trick me into coming into this room, just so long enough as to put locks and chains on the door! He is locking his sin in the room, so it can be changed for the better, right? Like a caged animal, I am expected to obey. I am sin to him. But he must be in the room, for he could not chain the door and then leave. This room is at least seven floors up. Maybe he called a helicopter? Those are expensive: perhaps the military has it in for me. Government conspiracies! JFK! They knew that I knew that they knew. They knew my mind radiated sweaty, sweet knowledge about their damn conspiracy (and JFK). Those bastards! Then I must have some documents or records of what it is I know. Perhaps I can live on in my usefulness and knowledge, I think to myself, as I run over to cabinet-man to find anything I have. Chapter 4: DEAD Empty bottles surround me as I slowly awake. Medicine, alcohol, vitamin tablets: all empty faces to me now. What was it I did last night? I recall covering my body in Glow in the dark face paint. I did something last night, and I'm certain that it has to do with those chains on my door. I look at my watch to see a blur of salty hands. I can not read anything! Of course! I look down, in aghast horror, to see dead skin covering my body. A shower, a shower, I must take a shower. "go to the power plant and find the keys, doo to the plhere people lay." I jump around a bit to warm up my legs. This is going to be a tough mission, finding that power plant and the keys. A snap behind me, and my brain falls like lemonade berries. Fresh sun, and I awake. "I am going away for a while, so please leave a message and I'll call you back later." The answering machine pauses for a quick hit off a joint, and then beeps mechanically. "No emotion," I shake my head, "There�s no emotion in that music, man." I've had people in here before. So my journal says, Martha and Stewart came over today. She cooked me a nice, fresh chicken, but Stewart just had to snort that coke and smear his feces with that damn blood. That blood has been on my walls now ever since I can remember, or at least to say, since those chains have been there. Why can't I leave? "Do as I say to do, not as I speak to speak." I see this on the wall, a pale nothingness encompassed by brown blood and feces. Someone wrote this here, and it smells like shit. I found a phone, but it doesn't help when you have no collection of jumbled names in a book somewhere. I chatted with the operator for a few hours, but she hung up when she said some guy was blabbing nonsense about the end of the world. She was sweet though; I was going to ask her for her number, but she replied, "Just call the operator whenever you need it!" So I called the police a while ago, saying I was stuck in my room. Doesn't anyone care about little old me? They thought it was a prank! I am so hungry... Hunger is a paradigm for the balance we need in life. >From one end: we need to eat to survive. From another end: we need to starve to maintain appearance and self-confidence. Chapter 4: Katherine While looking through my notebook, I found a piece of paper scribbled with lectures. "Katherine" it said with a number attached. I reached for the phone, avoiding the empty containers of yogurt and tuna, and dialed. "Hi, you've reached my cell phone! I'm not here to talk to you right now, but if you just leave a name and number, I'll get back to ya on that!" The machine pauses to burp, and then lets out a loud beep. "Hey, this is Stu! I'M STUCK IN MY ROOM AND THE DOORS ARE ALL CHAINED AND GLUED SHUT! I THINK I'M GOING INSANE." I go on, not thinking, until the voice in my phone tells me to stop. "I love you," she says. "I <3 u too." I say Her hair falls like candy beer on teddy bear tongues. I smile as I feel my hand glide across warm flesh and naked smiles. This is my last and most important journal entry. If I am not here tomorrow, at least in soul, then I have left my body. I detest my body. It just follows me like a shadow, with lies of confidence and pride swallowing my air. "I need that air to live!" I cry, as I stab with a piercing spear to this Great Lions Mouth. You see, I did meet God; I met him Once. He loves Me, and I love Him very much. He is the teacher who taught me all the capacities and boundries of the vast infinities, and the very groundwork of perception and rationale. "Do you want to die?" I hear this flowery sun request. "Why, very much so," I nod and smile contently. Chapter 5: The Fianc� So it was really me and her in this room. Was she the girl who locked me in this room? She wrote in my journal, but I suppose she left. Dissolved through the walls, Sam! That's what happened. She wrote poison words that left me sick. "She gently caressed his long, hard shaft with her tongue, moist beads of spit and cum showering her supple breasts." She thought she could be clever, writing with the same pensmanship and craft as my very hands do, as if she could make me believe I wrote it. Though I know she wrote it, that evil woman, and I simply detest her being. Animosity can be such ambition for lark. I did get a hold of Katherine, with which she simply snapped, "Dammit, this is the tenth time this month you've called about some damn chains or something; for the last time, I'm not coming over. Don't make me get a restraining order on you." "This time it's not a lie!" I cry. "The meaning of life," the fifteen-million-year-old Universe told me, "is to use rationale to get to the end." "So why not tell me what it is I must do?" I asked childishly. "Because the final test is to see if you can actually carry it out." "Carry what out?" I ask with innocent woos. "Because it is a paradox; it is something you can do, but will not do by nature." "That is the meaning of life?" I ask confusedly. "No, the action is what must come rationally from the train of thought. The actual meaning is in the thoughts Themselves and the decision to make the final action." "So the moment is just defined by the justification that we create for the manifested actions?" "That is reality," the Universe smiled at me, "That is all we really are." "The problem with being such a moral being," the words gleamed in confident juice, "is that when we know we did something wrong, we will feel the stronger urge for redemption and obligation." I smiled at the falsity of this statement, for I was such a fool to ever think this. Her glistening, pale body faced me with unspeakable humbleness. She titled her view slightly to the side, and asked, "Are you ready?" with an innocent flair. I remove my clothes and approached her, as evil continued dripping out of my being. Where could she be? Perhaps I killed her, and the only reason I locked myself in the room was out of the remorse I felt, and perhaps I feel I should do something to make myself feel better? Maybe I came in here to kill myself, because that suicide note looked awful convincing. "mmm... OH, GOD! YES! AAAH!" a man screams. "SLRF! MMPH! AAH!" come out of two girls heads. "Yummm..." "Don't suck them too hard, Mayumi." "Whoops... sorry about that. I just got carried away." "Be nice to them so they makes lots more tasty cum." "mmm... that's right." They girls halt their conversation to start guiding their toungues from his balls to the tip of his cock. "Yeah... we sure don't want to hurt or break thsi beautiful cock, do we?" "Yep... it's not like a vibrator, where you can alway buy a new one." The girls continue to suck and stroke his cock, "Slrrp, slrrp" "OOOOH!!... AAHNGS!" he shouts. The moment before he is about to ejaculate, the camera pauses to show the two girls wrapping their toungues around the tip of his penis, just begging for hot, juicy cum. One of the girls shoves her mouth over the cock and goes "MMFG!..... " After a few seconds, "slrp! gulp!" "Don't we get greedy, Miki... Gimme gimme!" The girl puts her hands gently around the others face and lowers her head. She opens her mouth and lets the fresh, steaming cum drip onto parched lips. "Ahhg! AHH! I'm gonna die!" she screams, as he rams her from behind, "You're so hard! so big!" she pauses to enjoy a few more thrusts, "Tell me you love my hot, tight pussy!" "Oh god!," he shouts, "It's so tight! so hot! i'm g-gonna..." "ARE YOU CUMMING!" she shouts back, "ARE YOU GOING TO SHOOT YOUR WAD INTO ME?" He can't reply; he's in such esctasy. "DO IT!" she affirms, "CUM INSIDE ME! FILL MY PUSSY UP WTTH YOUR HOT, THICK, CUM!" He follows orders strictly, and begins ejaculating inside her. "MORE! MORE!! CUM INSIDE ME! FILL ME WITH YOUR CUM!" she screams. But what a second: Did I kill her before or after the chains were on my door? Chapter 6: Redemption I've sinned and I need to find something to make the Maker forget about it. What is thy bidding, my master? Maybe I need to kill something? KILL SOMEONE? So maybe this is all just a crazy tale, simply more rain to get wiped off the windshield. Walking down a desolate street, the poles with chains attached in between them mock me when I'm not looking. "WE STAND GUARD AROUND HERE," one gruff barks at me, "YOU CAN'T CROSS ONTO THE STREET HERE, SONNY!" So it yelled at me, as I screamed and awoke in my bed. The pillows are wet, and my hair is a bit damp. I don't feel nervous, but I must have sweat a lot during my dream. Chapter 7: Epiphany "Do you want to die?" asked a voice. The voice was that of God, and God then said to me; "You know you want to. You know you want to escape that shell, that meaningless existence on the edge of reality, of where perception from three hundred and sixty angles of all-seeing eyes pierce your very identity. You can feel them, raping and scavenging you heart for pieces of warm flesh and sexual energy, all so they can slobber then up and digest the resources so they can dispense of the eventual waste. They are nothing but parasites to you, just selfish people who want nothing but what they perceive as your very being. They are the people around you, they are ALL that you see; it includes the person in the mirror." "He wants to kill me," I reply. "So let him." God smiles. Suddenly, the fifteen-billion year old Universe creeps up behind God and slaps him across the faSce. "You! You traitor!" The Universe shrieked. "I made you," God said in retort. "AND I MADE YOU." The Universe replied. "All I wanted to do," wept the Universe, "was to create puzzles and lives for people to live and fabricate purpose from." "I AM JUST TELLING THEM THE TRUTH" God snapped, drool dripping thick from his snarl. "So let him be, let him dream, let him live." I turn around and walk softly towards the darkness, as the light from God and the Universe creates more drama, and more motion. The secret to time travel, so it is written in this handy journal of mine, is to simply move fast. What people do not often associate with moving, however, is thinking. If one thinks fast, then he perceives time faster, and thus, relative to that person, time is going faster and that person is going faster as well. But according to another journal entry, time doesn't exist. I wonder which one I wrote first? In another journal entry, marked at an earlier date than both entries, stated this: "Time travel is unecessary: The only reason we want to go back in time is because we realize mistakes in history that we wish could be fixed or changed, or perhaps we wish to gain some knowledge by having an experience in the past or future. However, if one knows all, then there is no need for time travel. if there is no regret..." The writing went along those lines but also seemed to justify suicide in some abstract sense that I could not understand. Apparantly I wrote this before my "secret to time travel," though I thought of it after I wrote the "secret to time travel," so why did I travel back in time to write how unecessary it was to do so? So I sit, reminiscing and getting high off of nostalgia. I never liked being a kid much. I always wanted to be an adult. Even though my parents and everyone around me constantly brought me down, and despite suicidal thoughts that plagued my brain, I often times wish I could re live those days. Not any different, either. I have never felt remorse. I simply feel a longing for this fake past that I can only scrap together from my memories and heart. For all we want in the present is confidence in the future, so to relive the past exactly as lived is to live in a present where the future is always known. I look across the room; those chains are still there. Keeping them out. Or perhaps keeping myself away from the world. Hyperbolic needles, bottles, and old bags surround me. I awake to a dark room, with nothing but the subtle sunlight seeping through the window. Gray bits of dust fluff the wind to a smooth tingle. I pick up a bag, and it smells like feces. That is the moment I remembered the blood and feces on my walls, and I look around. The walls are clean. What was that written on the wall? "Do as I say do, not as I speak." It resonates, and I hear myself echoing it softly to myself. As if it were a tune, a tune that calls forth deep, pensive, feelings. I weep. What has happened to her? What have I become. I look at the walls; blood stained again. This is not my blood. This cannot be my blood. I examine the wall closely. A red blur, and it feels quite dry. It must be at least three days old. I strip and look for any cuts or new wounds. Nothing. I hurry my clothes back on, though it is not like anyone here cares, and I look around some more. What the hell is going on here? I have not eaten in days. What was it I was cooking so long ago? It was something important. Perhaps if I check the various pots and dishes around this kitchen area I will find something of interest. Bloodstains splatter various aspects of the kitchen, and I see a knife stuck in an arm on a cutting board. At least it is not my arm, and at least we are getting somewhere here. Did I kill someone? I think they were trying to kill me, but I'm not too sure. Where is my journal? I was looking for that. Part 2: Exodus Chapter I: Hunger and the Meals that Come It was not until some time later that I realized hunger is what makes me survive. My body is shaking inside and it is making it hard to see. I cannot to feel this alarm clock I am picking up, laughing in my face, screaming bloody carols of "WAKE UP WAKE UP!" "Food will satiate my grumbling stomach," I snicker to myself as I pillage pantry after pantry to delicious snacks. "This candyland of penny arcades won't stop me!" I scream as I bring a bloody hatchet to its aim. Food in my mouth, I chew and chew, until the little screaming bodies quit their damn protesting. I feel the last spear hit in my teeth as I grind their beloved opinions to their grave. I celebrate in victory/ to those damn, ignorant knaves! I snicker tooth and butterscotch/ till the last guard falls to drunk seas and with a glint/ in my dear eye,/ I hold the flag up hiiigh... to a good day with the death of my dear sweet enemieeeeaahhs." This food tastes pretty good, I say, after my first chew. The door lets out a cough, a knock of subtle needs. "HARK! Who goes there?!" I say in a prideful cry, from behind my chair, "who dare disturbeth the master in his chambers!" Rage fills my shoes! The door remains in silence; but how can it endure? "How long can you endure?" I dribble, as I hold the axe in my clenching fists. This door does not know the extent of my torture. "Take That, and THAT!" as I hear the axe grinding pure lemon ice out of that damn incessant door! "Oh victory; the bitter sweet, "lets drink till drinkards done! "Oh bon voyage; our peaceful stars, "as the day brings sun to front!" "for the day to us, is a battlefield/ with friends to lose as welll" "Lets somber sweet, with a kiss of me/ and let our death becommmme." The door is in pieces. Then I realize the horror, naked truth: My door has had chains on it ever since I can remember. This door, obviously, must be a trap door; WHAT HORRORS LIE ON THAT SWEATY, OTHER SIDE? Chapter II: Misty, Hollow Dream But it is too late. Death is in my open mouth. The crow did hath start his descent towards my open, bloodstained heart, before wishing that to tell these tales to my lovely lovers mouth, But 'tis the sick mans dying tale/ to forever remain grave ... and polish thee/ this melody/ and keep thy heart at bay. But time had fallen all too ill, and shortness brimmed my bloody knees. Chapter III: Fair maden, how save thee? when thou kitchen remains full! (men love food in a fridge) There she was! standing at the door! "hey!" she chirped, with that dear sun caressing her hair. "hey," I script nonchalant. I got to keep it cool. Yo. "You said you wanted to get together for dinner," she pressed, and then it hit me. Chapter IV: The TRAP This is all a trap. I was made hungry by those damn, dirty particles. I ate and ate, like a sailor with no tomorrow, till my stomach was brimmed with shit. When, in actuality, I was making dinner for her, and the chains. I so affectionately call them: "fluffy-fluffy-poo!" But I have no appetite. I cannot cook. For the true nature behind cooking is the cooks desire to have the dish as much as the audience. In his mind, his selfishness manifests unto his very hands. And I have no more ammunition! "I'll put my stuff on the bed," she woos. Chapter V: The Bed THE BED! THE BED! What lies hath she dispensed? Oh, I can see you now; lying there, peaceful and naked next to some man. Some brazen, gold-clad, young man, a piece of grade A Meat, with a cigarette parched upon you lush lips. Spreading lies! SPREADING LIES! BEd! THE BED! What lies hath she dispensed? How long have I known her? Have we had sex? What kind of foul karma did she bring into my life, once we commenced the foul act of love-making. A factory of love we were indeed, had it ever happened. What is her name? "Honey, I think we should skip the meal and go straight for dessert." Dessert? Skip the meal. Then I don't have to cook! She knew all along! TAKE THAT YOU DAMN, DIRTY PARTICLES! I don't have to cook, I am saved! I love dessert though. The funny thing between desert and dessert is that the "dessert" is easier to remember because the two "ss" make it easier to spell. "If you ever have problems with remember what dessert and desert are when you read or spell them is this: Dessert you want more of right? So remember, two S's." I announce proudly. So therefore, I discover, the very human need to classify things appears in front of me. We want to remember and write and buy and sell more desserts than deserts. Therefore, in naming them, we shall name this tasty-snack-of-a-woman "DESSERT!" I SCREAM. Ok, follow me to the bed then, handsome. THE BED! THE BED! What lies hath she dispensed? She is spreading evil lies, lies that only her hips can whisper. I can see it; a moonlight graze, softly tampering her cheeks. Another man, some tall dark fellow, with candy lips and simmered lies pulls out his very piece. She obeys and gets on her knees, to begin what horrors my mind can only pause to bear. "OH YEEEAHH, suck that cock," he yelps. "mmm, you like that?" she moans as she slides her toungue up to the tip of his cock. "yeah, baby," he snorts as she massages curly Q's around his cock. And so on and so on. The axe in my hands yelps. "THAt damn Door! how dare it not speaketh of such truths!" Why, yes. Yes, it is true; that door subjected to even my harshest torture, and yet, it spoke of nothing of this. I shake my head sorrowfully at her. I owe him, the Door, redemption, in the very least, for such honor and courage will never reach the hearts of his wife or children. But how to rectify such? To kill myself. But that would not rectify the current situation. Perhaps.. perhaps If I kill this woman and kill myself, then the answer shall be golden ripe! I pick up the axe. "Hey baby, so where should I get that lotion?" she asks, with her back facing me. "KIAAA!!" I SCREAM. Chapter VI: Death of a Dream Oh my god. Oh my god. I just killed a hooker. She was not my girlfriend, she was not my wife. Though she could be a cousin. Or maybe a niece. But what ho! She is not! She is but a mild mannered woman selling her naughty fantasies-manifested in this sick, mans world! And I lay that brazen axe upon her skull, calling forth juices of precious life to spray, red ash upon my snarled teeth. I turn her face around to see what beauty may have been, and the face suddenly distorts of one of my own. I see my scarred tears, running down my face. An utter look of terror, of looking death straight in the face. This is my death as well. I pick up the axe and bring it forth unto my very heart. Bloody tears dance chocolate lullabies. I awake. I awake to my room. I awake to those damn chains! Chapter VII: Chains These chains are evil. These chains are man. We all have some chains that stop us from acting, some inhibitions, whether they be natural or imposed. These are our demons, this is our pain, and this it at the very center of the heart of Man. But when these very abstractions are taken from the heart of the metaphor to the very simile, we see that no matter what thoughts I produce, these chains shall never be more than just ugly, rugged chains. Resting on my door. Breathing haplessly upon my floor, and pissing and shitting like it was nobodies business. Those damn chains. So I look around. Nothing new. No new bed sheets, wallpaper decorations or assortments of flowers, just begging to be called "Beautiful." "But upon no lips," I declare," shall that word fall, until I lose a bit of my wits." That's right. Love is just a delusion. It is a lie that I love someone, because that is what makes me say it. If there was really something I loved, then I would be afraid to have it hear me say such a statement as "You're beautiful," for I am afraid it would simply disappear. All that was or ever will be good, in my life, has simply disappeared from me after a while. It is not that bad, really, for once I grow up a little, I won't even feel it. I grab a knife in my own defense, and ask myself, "what honor is in killing ones self?" Chapter VIII: Coffeshop Detective "Intellectually or in reality?" he asked me. A cigarette lay resting in his fingers, as the smoke rose slowly to watch my very reply. "Well... intellectually really, because with the fall of the intellectual comes the fall for the will to live, which thus causes the body to fall prone quicker to the axe of death almighty." "So, you want me to kill this guy for good?" His thick eyebrows raised to mock my very plea. "Yes. I want you to." Chapter IX: Love in a Basket. Where am I? I awake from a dream to see that ripe apple of beauty resting across from me. "hey..." she sends, sailing across open seas. I receive and feel a slight ting in my heart. What is this feeling? She is beautiful. Hair falls fresh upon calm shoulders. Her skin is smooth with milky creame and chocolate bits; she is a supple blueberry, and I am but a lonely Grape. But we are two berries amongst a few in a basket, and the sun feels nice on our skin. I run and run towards her, but she gets farther and farther. I run backwards a bit, to see if it is inversely proportional in this world (write that down!) "Sorry," she whispers, "but the time between us is falling all too short. I would love to stay with you, but I simply can't bear this feeling." The feeling! I gasp. It hits me. That feeling of waiting, of waiting as if at a loss. Those very minutes we spent, the hours of love making, all to End too soon. And upon my waves of goodbye to her waiting face, we turn back to back and lead separate lives. And in those mundane moments apart, where we laugh and nod for others and think secretly to ourselves, we could fall victim to another�s talons, and fall in love with someone else. She fades to a droplet of morning dew, to be pressed by my ignorant, childish finger. She fades to a droplet of light, but a small simmer in my eye. And she is gone. Forever. Chapter X: Forever Forever, Forever We carry such burden and pain Forever, Forever How can we not stay the same? Forever, Forever We feel happy followed by sad Forever, Forever If we can keep getting our fix, and stop feeling sick then why would we want any change? (sing proudly) They say that the direction of a mind is in its progress. Progress is classified on the level of objective thinking. The ultimate master of such would simply see an argument, and all he would see is disassociated words of the sentence, and thus the connections that come. And upon seeing such, he will see letters of each word, and the connections that made them be. And upon seeing each letter, he shall see the very pixel of each letter, thus making the connection that made them be. And so on, and so on. Infinity. Chapter XI: Schizophrenic I must leave now. I am sad to go, for all my thoughts that I will hold, so far away from you, shall never be yours. I cannot reach you if we are ever lost, lost in others lives. I wish that my words could reach you, by writing or yells, but I know without me, the words will be words, to be put back in the recycling bin. Part 3: On Vacation chapter i: Demons Seed "Sir," the red rabbit said, "why need us these soldiers whom brought forth such taste/ when really our evil shall never fall waste." "What is that Pip?" I chorted; that grimy little fuck. "We are demons, and our enemy are humans.They suffer from a condition known as mortality, and there is no cure." "So where is your logic going with this?" You Twit. "My logic is that since we are immortal, it would not matter what type of soldier we picked, because it is not like we can ever lose." I looked at my servant with utter disgust. Had he no values? Oh, but of course, he is the younger man. He is part of another generation, one ever so distant from mine. I felt old. "Pip, my son," I said in a Baseball-Coach voice, "it is the personality that makes the soldier, and our army must contain charisma unlike any other. For you see..." I pause to let a tear squint my vision. "For you see, it is all about MERCHINDIZING, MERCHINDIZING!" "Merchandising?" the bunny asked. "Yes, and you know if they ever make a monopoly version of our army or perhaps a videogame about the war, people are going to have invincibility cloaks for the humans and whatnot." The red rabbit sighed. He thinks I am insane. I am not insane though, for this is all just a test. The test is for him to realize that it is utterly pointless of him to worry, for he knows that we are immortal, as demons, and those humans are mortal. We shall crush them to dust. So why worry about anything? I take out an axe. "Pip," I say carelessly, "you know I loved ya, but you know why you have to go?" "Why?" his voice squealed, "WHAT DID I DO?" I sighed. If Pip were smarter he would know why, but, if he was smarter, he would also be able to avoid such a situation, which would make it an assumption of ours that Pip would know why (if he was smarter) I bring the axe down and it slices through pizza guts. I hear a woman scream in some deep recess of my mind. chapter ii: Avalanche "Who was that fellow who always babbled about those Hobbits?" Old men sit in rocking chairs, scattered throughout a small room. It is a quaint setting with a temperate atmosphere. Some of the men smoke, while others drink tea with shrooms. Some are chugging bottles of cough syrup, whilst others are simply lighting a blunt. A songbird whistles in the background an old tune from when they were all young boys. "hmm, I don't remember his name exactly..." said Steve. "hmm... a hell of a stoner that man was..." said Eric. "I dunno.... yeah! yeah!" said Bob, pointing a finger to the sky. "because i remember," Bob elaborated, "how I would always be, like uh, 'hey there J.R.R. TOKE, stop HOGGING THE WEED." Laughter echoes throughout the room and some spectators cry. "That fucking Einstein," said Eric. "What did he do?" I asked. "Einstein, while on mushrooms, told me this: 'Eric, I am about to create something incredible; not only is it going to end a war and bring peace, but it will also bring about a new era and the destruction of the entire human race, by their very own hands even!. I see the effect for every cause, beginning with this very moment being a Cause for an Effect.'" "Then why did he do it?" I asked. "to get to the Thought Kingdom." Steve butted in. "That fucking Einstein, now that he's in Thought Kingdom he can strip away his visage of Righteousness. He can bask in his sickest, most repressed fantasies. I've seen him, shooting junk while getting his cock sucked by some horny Japanese teacher named Mayumi, and a fucking nurse! Curse that decadence that comes from Power!" "All those damn idiots; Einstein, Socrates, Aristotle, Newton... they all did it to go to Thought Kingdom." "What is Thought Kingdom?" I inquired. "Thought Kingdom is the Kingdom of the Thought World." Eric said. Bob butted in, "I'm not sure our guest fully realizes the Thought World." "The Thought World," Bob said, "is where we make a mark depending on what our thoughts were." I was confused and gave a puzzled look. "Just as you can map your world by the category of the connections made between human to human, human to location, location to location..." Steve said, "you can map out a world by the category of your thoughts and intellectual maturity." "But isn't that all relative?" I asked. "No! Intelligence behind thoughts can be measured on an indefinite scale," he declared. "But how so?" I asked. "Well; for example, someone who thinks that morals are relative because they themselves don't believe in any specific morals, as opposed to someone who thinks morals are relative because they see the contradictions, paradoxes and absurdity behind meaning, definition and the very fabric of matter and time... the two are very different intellectually despite having the same opinion on morals and their relativity" "But this is getting off topic," Bob then declared. chapter iv: THOUGHT WORLD "Just as you can map your world by the category of the connections made between human to human, human to location, location to location..." Steve said, "you can map out a world by the category of your thoughts and intellectual maturity." "Therefore, the mark you leave on the world, in any sense of fame or glory, is much different then the mark you leave in the Thought World." "So it's like?" I asked stupidly. "Fine, fine, fine... tell him the useless simile." Bob yelled. "It is Heaven, but we are not measured so much by 'what we were' and 'what we believed,' but rather how 'what we were' 'got to be,' and how 'what you believe' 'came to be' as well." Eric stated, "but by calling it 'Heaven,' we have immediately brought some doubt forth in your mind, so you will not believe us." "You are measured in Heaven based on the justification that you, yourself, fabricated because of the situations, which also contributes to your intellectual side." "But why not just judge the good and the bad moments?" I asked. "Because it is not important about what actually happened. All that is important is the reasons behind the action, the intent of the individual parties, because thoughts came before action." Bob said. "Thoughts will forever be the plague that we must stop!" Eric declared. chapter v: Basins full of Paradox We lie half naked, she and I, and our hearts have never beat faster. "Is this what you really want?" she asked me. Another Paradox, I mutter. "I only want it if I know you want it," I said in a light coo. "But I only want it if I know you really want me.." she whispered, "that you want me and not just my body." Then we'll never know. Let us believe our own stories, it will make us feel better, because knowing makes us feel better. There is a paradox within knowledge though; the Greater the understanding of a truth, which is thus made Absolute, the more that very truth is immediately negated due to Objective, Rationale, or Human thinking. In other words, no matter how much one learns and how much one understands, He can never learn more than what others will call "opinions," even despite the Truth. "The truth is that there is no truth." I say to her. "Then that truth is not true... therefore there is a truth." "The truth," I say noddingly, "is the same as God. We simply cannot accept it in its most absolute form." She looked at me doubtlingly, and with the stare of a shady cat she said "and how do you know any of this?" "There is a way to connect anything and everything, and once one sees the patterns, it is hard to ever turn back." That fine line between sanity and insanity can be so much fun to cross between, though does that make one insane? chapter vi: Interlude The movie played despite there being only a handful of people in the theatre. Just a few older people and individuals, wanting to waste a Sunday evening, scattered lightly across the seats. A couple sits in the very front row/ but 'tis not for them to see. To see the lights and epic flights/ of this action packed movie. So they sit and touch and moan and puff/ and shoot crack up their veins He cums on the seat while she's beating his meat to this wavy trip todaaaaay. Close Curtains. chapter vii: Answering Quantum Physics "Once you're on a bad trip, it's hard to really just sober yourself up. You just need to give in to every little accusation and presumption you make, and you just need to ride the waves and hope you make it out alive." I shook my head. "But really what is the Greater Trip? That, my friends, is Life. The very lives we live are a strange paradox. As we age, the more we grow intellectually and the more we mature; we feel we have more freedom and control over our lives. In actuality, the older we get, the less control we have, because what we become is based on what we were. Our past becomes ever more important to us as we accumulate more moments and memories to add to this indefinite universe, we call My Existence, or the Past." "What we eventually become is victims to our own drug; whatever it is that we have a passion for. Our greatest strength becomes the very foil, the seed of anger and insecurities." I pause to breathe. "So all we can do, from our mistakes and blunders of the past, is to just ride the waves... nothing really exists." I raise my hand. "For you see, do You, the Reader, know if it is I that is speaking or I that is a listener in an active discussion? Am I and He the same Character? Is this entire chapter a monologue of one Man in a room, or is it a one on one discussion, whereas I am the speaker and He writes the story? Each are both equally valid and each are equally true, regardless of any intent from the Author. They become your reality, and in essence, did happen in the story that You and Reading." "So what question does this ask?" I ask, as the teacher rambles on and on. "I just proved," he said, "how we can be in two places at the same time." "But I didn't feel any different," I said. "Reality Changes never feel much different," He replied, "It's why nobody seems to notice." "Ambiguity really hurts intent, huh," I say. Chapter viii: Good bye "So this is it?" I say, as the night slowly melted by the coming forth of day. "What did you expect?" He said to me. His portly body accompanied his robust laugh. "I never expected any of this to happen..." I say. "You've seen things and felt things that no Man should ever have to have done..." "But Why, Why God?" "Because you are..." He paused. He pauses for a moment, to let me beg for redemption once more. "Because you create realities that are simply unfit to be, because you created me, because you become what you write, and because you become what you think and feel." Is that such a crime? chapter ix: Coffee House Detective Part Two A crime... A crime, I remembered. I hired that guy to kill my Intellectual Side. That guy disguised himself as God. Or Perhaps God was the Coffee-House-Detective. I stopped for a moment. Looked behind me. Nothing. Good. But why did I do this? Why did I want to lose the intellectual side of myself? Why? I recall saying something along the lines of, "if the intellectual side goes, then the will to live will go as well..." I can make no sense of it though. Just empty words, spilling blood upon soil that does not exist. It is what we think that makes us live. It is how we justify the moments that would otherwise be random particles dancing throughout random matter, because we create them to be our Reality. Without any ability to think would come the will to die. But why would I want such? Perhaps my only desire was to not think anymore; thoughts only bring more sadness and more confusion into life. I walk alongside a dark alley, whereas a small, muddy stream is flowing through the middle. I see a scrap of paper floating down, and I pick it up. something about it was alluring. On the back, is written, "Look in Kitchen." I walk slowly towards the Kitchen and when I see what a bloody mess is scattered throughout that room. I must close my eyes briefly to avoid vomiting. Did I make this mess? What happened during all my trips, all my drug excursions, all my day dreaming, night dreaming, lucid dreaming, acid dreaming and sleep walking moments? What did I do while I was gone? A torn up scrap of paper from my journal is at my feet. I pick it up nervously "Damn, Damn, Damn! I should have seen this coming. Whenever I left on an Acid trip or a Dex Trip, I just assumed this mortal body would become a prone, empty shell for the time being. I should have guessed that my body would want my mind there, for its selfish needs: it made me all the more sick whenever I returned. Sick in the mind, sick to a psychotic state. Who have I killed? Who will I Kill?" This was written just two hours ago, but I have no recollection of doing so. All I can remember are dreams. Chapter x: Atlantis Why did my body do this? Why is my mind doing this? I ravage notebooks for any sort of hints. I find the One. "I want to die. I have rationally induced that life is not worth living. I have also rationally concluded that reality is what we think it to be, so that those very moments that our brain is still active after our body dies (in that dream state) I shall think up a new life. Whatever that life is, I'm sure it will be different and weird, but its my Utopia. Perhaps I shall write about it someday and think it through to this reality." "But I can't get myself to do it, for the very mind that made me realize such is also the cause of all inhibitions against any form of suicide. I know once I am dumb, I will be able to kill myself, however, I know I will not be able to understand it. Therefore, it shall never have been a reality, and I shall cease to exist." "Geez" I said, " You're just a fucking character in a story." "And none of this makes sense," I say. �While you were off hunting your dreams and living your life through your thoughts, the whole world did the same, and now all that�s left are these scattered scraps of useless paper.� Chapter xi: Nostalgia "And god would ask, with his mighty guitar by his brazen side, if you would want to join him in this world, where realities are more than just what you make them: it's what you think them to be in their truest of forms." "Are there any drawbacks?" I asked. "Well, you would appear to be dead in the reality that you came from." "Well, would I feel any pain?" "No, you won't." "Then how will I know I'm dead?" I ask. "You won't care once you infuse in our world because it doesn't matter." So I decided to stay. Chapter xii: Trick Question I did not decide to stay that time. For I knew I must come back and write about such events. I must let some of this truth leak out, however, God and the Universe are not scared because they know it will sound like utter nonsense. That's how they planned it to be, for the paradox in our language and systemic memory has caused the Absolute Truth to seem a most ridiculous, stupid, lay-mans belief. Or perhaps I am just insane. However, I can rationalize why I'm insane. Should that not, in light of fact, make me Sane? It will in your eyes, but I will always be haunted by the Paradox. For I know I am Truly Insane, from my Sane Rationale, however I know I am Sane as well. Which do I hold dear? It is not a conspiracy. It is just one man's wish to Die, and His search for the reasons behind such. ______________________________________________________________________________ Beggar and the City ______________________________________________________________________________ Part 1 It was not until some weeks after I met our aquaintance that we were to actually meet. To know someone who has no say on ones self is a selfish thing to do. I found a small bag belonging to him, containing little more than his wallet and various documents required for travel and identification , etc. It seems our dear friend was attempting to leave the country. It was more than this, however, that allured me. Something that spoke of pulchritude or perhaps, simply, emmincence. In his very picture, which he had left behind for me so happendly to find, and on such accord did my find first settle. I should have stopped myself, by giving the bag to the proper authorities, so its so rightful master can reclaim what was his. Though, I must admit, I found the circumstances quite odd, for the very chance of such a man, having to leave the country, to leave a small bag containing personal items, to be found in the hands a beggar. I remained in an abiding state for several weeks, although during which I so humbly researched our dear friend. I was actually there by accident, begging for change and any spare hopes, when I saw him approaching. He paid little attention to me at first, aside from a few coughs from my dear cup, the echoes of cold coins, and I smiled in thanks towards this stranger. We began conversation, from which point I felt something so cheaply charming about this fellow. His expression and his voice dripped mellancolly: Why had he stopped just now to talk to a hapless beggar? What benefits had he to gain? When he left, I felt in strange awe. His resiliant stride and train of thought had left me stunned; for I had not expected such to happen. At no time had he given any suspicion to the foil of his life; the poor, desolate beggar. Neither, at that time, had he even offered the slightest conviction of concern towards his possesion. Apparantly he valued material possessions very little. He had a mistress, so I assumed, over early the next day. The grass was a moist sponge for sunlight, and the chirps of various city animals mingled pointlessly with their surroundings in an echo of vast cacophony. I awoke in a small corner, as people walked silently by me. To them I am simply part of the scenery, an extention of flesh to whatever wall or floor I am against. He stood waiting, flowers in hand, and a shy smile that was well returned. She was beautiful, nay; beautiful is too callous a word. Young, robust, and radiating with unadulterated sexual finesse. Moreso was her demeaner towards him, and his innocent charm and voice that left her smiling inside. Together, as a couple, they seemed perfect. She left, paying little attention to the short, stout man sitting across the street from her. I ducked hurridly to avoid any contact, but it was merely out of vanity. Nights crept into me. I found myself wide awake as the sun slowly fermented into the sky. The weather was a bit colder, and I know that he lays in comfort, as I in shambles. I could see his lover lying in his arms, as her gentle breathing kept a metronome of conjured heartbeats in tune. I felt a suddent warmth in my stomach at the thought of being mate to such a goddess. Though, not long after this thought was finished, I felt such shame! How I may have ruined his life, how I could, and even worse, the thoughts that echoed throughout my head, as convictions chipped away at my sanity. At first, I thought stealing his identity would bring me merit, and thus, success. Upon hours of research, however, I found our dear friend to be quite prodigious in his studues, and quite well respected in other areas as well. A model citizen, if means do tell the ends. Though, such a change that would be required, in order to play the part, was mostly superficial, while his bank still remained as empty as it was when I checked; money seemed quite out of reach. The thought had passed through my mind, really, the thought that such a man of his intelligence and reputation must have some money. Surely he must keep it at home, hidden away; perhaps he fears a depression. It would also explain his three locks, for when I counted them, it was brisk monday afternoon. I found his writings to be quite entertaining, although the task of reading seemed to be of less worth than its rewards. He had written a novel, after he gained some recognition off of various publications he had written for newpapers, and its success was almost non-existant. Despite this, oh, how I wished to be him! Such thoughts had he written and managed to capture, and with such intelligence. It was a Sunday evenining, and I was in my usual place, across the street from his apartment. I was quite pensive that night, for reasons unbeknowest, so I did no notice her drop a quarter into my cup. I looked up quickly and it was her: the object of His affections. She smiled at my dumbstruck, idiotic expression, for upon seeing such I felt I understoood his writings. So much of her had influenced him, subconciously even; she was his muse, as his writings played a fair lark. I smiled, gently, and ather than feel sha,e at such a toothless beggar, she began to laugh. "I am very glad that you are able to enjoy life, even without the constant bearings of money." I looked up, as if I were a violin and she the fingertips. She paused, to finish a thought, and she then added. "Money has never really done anyone any good, really." I recalled this very theme throughout several of his stories; superificiality and facing the absurd paradox of reason. I replied, from a conversation from one of his stories, "People can be so vain. The irony in this lies in the context of the human scale of reason." I paused, to see if she recognized any of the words, but she remained attentive as if I were saying it myself. I continued: "For to mark vanity as vanity is along similar lines of having, in ones possession, a vast amount of wealth, while simultaneously pointing out the absurdities of money. We often find the most vain to be the most repulsed by such notions as appreciating the very pinnicle of such vanity." She laughed, and I heard a shout from my left. It was him, asking her what business she had wit hme. Not in the least bit of offense had he expressed this, rather, he was just curious. The very generosity! They offered to take me in for a night. I felt such glee, as if a child was asked to thrust himself into a world of endless candy. His home was quite quaint. He had various books on a shelf, and a bed. I see he had no radio, which I found quite strange, but in response to my asking he replied that he was not fond of the it. His meal was a surprise as well. A very humble, lightly seasoned meal, with no prayer, however, they asked me if I wished to make one. And we talked of lives and dreams, of ephemeral scope, and when our cigarettes were out and the dishes lay bare, I suddenly felt an intense fear shiver through my body. I felt something was astray, as if the moment was not really happening. My eyes darted, suddenly, searching for places money could be well kept, and I felt my breathing grow heavier. They asked me if I was alright, and I replied with my condolences; for it had been so terribly long since I have had such a meal, and my poor stomach could no handle such generosity! It was about then that the sudden though of stabbing both of them, as he sat smoking another cigarette in bliss, and she picking up the various dishes, came into my mind and left with myself out the door. Part 2 I could not sleep. I cannot sleep. Nights became days, as time molded together into some slick disgusting creature in my brain. I could no recall yesterday, as I knew not tomorrow, and I felt as if I were a birds eye-watching. I felt such hate, such disgust, towards myself, for decisions and seemingly youthful care-free attitudes left bones so bare. Remorse! A fellow that one could take out drinking some lonely Wednesday night. And yet, a strange animosity filled my heart every night I thought of either of them, together or seperate. I saw them togehter in their Utopia away from all Utopias, a place to call their own. It was also that night, the night of a humble meal and company, that he had mentioned his desire to leave M-------, and when I asked why he had not left yet, he replied that he had lost his belongings. I did not know how to react, for any such action could lead to his suspicions astray. I know not how I replied, though I noticed a more stern look hiding seedily in his eyes, every time he saw me. For I know now what allured me to him, his life, and his lover. I spent nights, throwing my desperation and loathing into some infamous plot, hoping it would bounce back as reality. His dissapearance should come as no surprise. I had gone into a police station, after leaving the bag carefully outside, near one of their cars, and claimed it to be mine. Of course, how should they doubt me, for upon showing my various documents proving His identity, they handed me the bag and I replied with thanks. >From doing so, I wrote many letters to various friends of his, in his very voice, acertaining to his anonymous departure. I made sure, with an intensity rivaled by that of God Himself, that my voice and tone in the writings had been exactly his. Ironically, he had given me an old typewriter that he used to write his very stories on, and what greater irony then to be struck down by ones former tool? Many laughed at the various klinks and klanks of the beggar, typing away madly, on his own plane of thought, to remain unperturbed and unnoticed except by those few very tourists, who would stop to stare at any notice of attraction. Though more mad had I become from reading them, countltess times, through my very eyes. I felt his longing to leave, which he wrote about constantly, and his desire for the unkonwn. I read each letter I had written, as if reading to the person it was specifically adressed to, and gauged each individual reaction to each and every word. It took about a week, which when one does not sleep, is approximately 150 hours of solid writing and revising to get it perfect. It was absolutely stunning. That night I slept with the tranquility of a clear conscience. I had a dream, and despite having amnesia upon awaking, I felt as if it were a harbinger of some kind. Part 3 His footsteps echoed quietly as he walked up the steps. I approached him and gave greeting. He asked how I had been, since he had not seen my around, and I told him, as of recent, I had spent many of my days writing. He felt an affinity with me; perhaps he saw me as a pupil? He was the one who supplied the resources. He offered a cigarette and some coffee, over a nice conversation inside, he stressed those last three words. I could no help buy comply. He was fascinated, for what I described in my writings sounded so much like his writings that he felt we were mentally connected. "And how ironic could this be? You are me, though you are just a beggar!" He said with absolutely no offense, moreso, I suspected a desire that he wished to switch places. He confirmed such suspicious by quickly adding that he would end up a beggar, whereever he eventually went, had he his documents. It struck me as no surprise, and yet, it seemed so unrealistic, Had this man any money or ambition? His writings seemed to fulfill his mind, but his heart was empty. I knew now that he lacked the experience of a life fully experienced of all possible; who really wishes to take a chance that there is another life? The phone rang, and as he picked it up, I felt a sudden nervousness. I expected it to be her, guilt stricken and in pain, from the letter I had written her. I could no restrain myself from curling my lips slightly in a menacing grin at such a malicious thought. Rather, it was the Prefect. I could hear his voice, quite stern, even from across the room. "Do you remember how you called me a few weeks ago, asking me to keep an eye out for your bag?" "The small, brown, leather bag that contains many important documents of mine?" he replied, urgently and with a hint of optimism. "Well, we found it last week, on a Tuesday afternoon, though it was picked up by you, apparantly." "What? Impossible! We were just having lunch on that very day; how could I have done that?" "Well," the prefect pondered, "the man who picked up your bag had all of your documents of identification, and the man stationed at the time had no idea of what you looked like. He was just hired the day before." He asked for a description of the man, and the Prefect replied a beggar of sorts; short and stout. Shaggy hair, wrinkled face, old cough. It was at this time time that I, behind him now, stuck a butcher knife into his neck, which came out his front side, bursting his throat wide open. I quickly caught the phone as he dropped it, and, holding the phone quite still, I continued on slashing and stabbing until his gargling stopped. The scene was quite morbid, actually. His head had become almost detached from his neck. The Prefect, stunned, asked if I was there. I replied, in a perfectly crafted voice. from which hours and hours of patience was put into. "The beggar is at my door. He came just now." The police man asked if I was alright, for he had heard some strange noises. "It was nothing, my dear friend is quite sick. I have known him for quite some time, and we exchange words often. He is here to return my bag." The Prefect paused for a moment, said "all's well that ends well," and after exchanging various thanks and goodbyes, finally hung up. The phone rang some hours later, as I was carrying his body into the bathtub. I had layed out various towels and prepared a solution as which to dissolve the body in and also cover the smell until the body is dissolved into an ambiguis sludge-like material. The phone continued to ring. I picked up the phone with an impulsive caution that can only bring more excitement. In a very shaky voice, I heard her cry, "Please, do not leave me all alone, for what worlds have I to share with whom now?" I could not help but smile, for I shall tell her to come over for one last time, so as we can talk in person, and in His voice, I shall. ______________________________________________________________________________ Insanity ______________________________________________________________________________ The essence is of sweet perfume. Was I really going this insane? How many lives have I broken, getting those damn fine splinters in my feet. They were already blood-stained as they always are. I pause. Blood. Blood, look at that very word. The way the B curves, and the two O's that attach and l and d, the very S between that LSD. This word is gothic in appearence, which thus made us associate it with something we find dark, disturbing, and violent. Blood is the essence of this darkness, and that crimson hue pulled over any of our eyelids would never be good. Death is never pretty. Or so I thought. A young man, 20 years old, who is dissassociated from the world. "I have dissillusioned for quite some time," he once stated to himself. "I create a false reality which I exist in, thus making it reality by my very hands. I am God." What redemption of grand scale was he trying to go through? Hark, the son is calling. The soul of all lost bodies, and grim green giants as well, crept softly up my spine. This demon-god love child is what we call self. We call it Self, though we feel selfless in doing so. That is why only I exist. I traveled, and many places have been in my head, but no place can ever compare to this. Death is never very much of a nice place to be. But as all tourists say, "Another day, another place." Chapter 1: Self She was a cold damsel in distress. The type that would take your cigarette, light it with a zippo, and flick the ash at you. She was real dirty like that. I had some good times with her, nonetheless. Painting the entire town in a sweaty coat, spreading glossy dreams into little minds to grow into evil manifest. Corrupting minds and watching life fade was like the cigarette smoke blowing through the wind. A classic Bonnie and Clyde, though all too similar. If I die, she will die too. It is not because of the same reasons that I choose, nor the same means. She will die because of me, and she is ever so happy at doing so. It is harder for women to understand objectivity. The world to them is simply objects that are related to themselves. People are placed in a social scale by ones own desires. The only true way to understsand objectivity is to look at everything as pieces. Each thought simply a piece of a puzzle that we must define, refine and process. Each shade and hue, each placement of particles in a room, are simply a 2 dimensional picture in our mind. And yet, once one understands everything, one also understands everything in relation to themselves. Thus we gain knowledge of Women as well as Ourselves. "Selfless as always," I mumbled, as a faint crackling of parched, desperate eyes poured buckets of tears on me. "You always do this," she exclaimed, "how am I supposed to feel?" How are you supposed to feel? I don't know. I don't. So please. Leave me alone. Just go away. I want to find myself. I just want to be alone for a Little While. "Please go away," I asked the world, "please let me live." "Life cannot exist without reality," The World stated, "and reality cannot exist without life." The nude resemblence startled me. "You need me as much as I need You," I remarked. I hope I win this game. I snicker, but then The World rebuked with a quick "But I don't need You. Fine. Go kill youself." Why, why, why, must this be such a cruel place? Chapter II: Peaceful Skies "Just have faith," said the big sign. A flopping vagina of old means, whoring itself to the people. "You know you want this." "This is you," it continued, "and you know you have a problem. Think about it. Someone hates you or you hate someone. Conflict and drama run your life, and cause stress and depression. You must change yourself first, so buy buy buy!" Suddenly a giant beehive squishes out of the sign, with fresh nectar and sweaty dew covering it in fine gloss. Honey oozes out, ripe and fresh, as I slide my toungue carefully over it, letting each second soak up that honey. Back and forth I counted carefully, as my toungue slid up and down, to grasp each and every facet of this beauty. "buy buy buy!" the infomercial screamed, with veins popping blue and black. "You want this new videogame system, and look at these donuts, don't they look tasty? You want to look better? Wear this cologne, because smell is important, It is indeed, so buy these breathmints, or if you want to look really fab, chew gum like it ain't no thang." She was so beautiful. Why, why, why, can't I have you? Why can't we lay down together with nothing but the moon and stars to look back at us? Why must every smile send such shivers down my throat, and whip lions inside my very loins? If only she knew of the worlds and monsters I would save her from, the very sacrifice I would offer for just a moments happiness. She was quite the trick though. Chapter III: May "And what's your name?" she asked me. Birds were off chirping somewhere in the distance, and the clouds lay peacefully on top of blue blankets. "What was that?" I asked. "What, do I have something inbetween my teeth?" she asked. "I like toothpaste, but I prefer mouthwash," I replied. "Wait a second, wait a second!" she exclaimed, "lets go brush our teeth!" Chapter IV: Wonder Comets Plato "If you can understand it," the teacher said, "then you don't need to read any furthur, you can now go live and be enlightened." "But teach, it makes no sense" said a student. "As you can clearly tell, he called the third chapter 'May' because that is the name of the girl." "She asked what his name was, and then the narrator went on to talk about birds and clouds." the class said. "It is to show complete disassociation. There were two people in a room, a boy and a girl. They are both disassociated with reality. Therefore, each time someone said something, the other would reply with something only partially related. However, the relation is made in the individuals mind. For example, he asked 'what was that' in reply to a question she was asking, and she thought he was asking 'what was that' in relation to something in her teeth, Perhaps she felt something inbetween her teeth, and thought he noticed." The class began to listen and their ears opened up, sucking in hot air and butter, "So each person was responding to what they logically thought the other person meant?" "Yes. See when she said, 'What, do I have something inbetween my teeth?' he then thought of his teeth and how he likes to brush them, but prefers using mouthwash, "But now that we get it, we don't feel any smarter," the students said, as they looked at their socks in discontent. "It is all just a metaphor for the bigger picture; To give order to chaos we must simply accept all as Right and Possible." "Metaphor is bad" said a student. "It is classic scientific method. The higher the probability that a thought exists, the more existant it is. The more existant we all our," "So you understand everything," said a skeptic. Chapter V: Ether Night Radio Where did I go? I was in Greece, or someplace of old time, and I was being lectured by plato. I told him that metaphor was bad, and then he beat me with a stick. What an Asshole. Note to self: "You might die soon, probably by your own hands, and I'm here to say, Goodbye!" I turn my head slightly, and hear a groaning bear in my stomach. Where am I and how long have I been doing this? I struggle frantically to find a mirror, and look in putrid horror at this sculture in front of me. "I feel like I did when I was a Jew stuck in a Nazi concentration camp. There were no mirrors there. Many years later, when the survivors would look in mirrors, they would feel as if they were looking at a completely different person. Not only are they detached from their physical image of themself, which is obvious to happen because they would have grown and changed appearance while at the camp. They are also detached from their mental selves, which they tell by looking deep into their eyes, because they are looking hauntingly back. Insane stuff, huh?" I hear it announced and knew it was going to come out even before I heard it, so I'm sorry for spoiling it. I paused to yawn and look at the words in front of me. Suddenly I could make out paddles with Indians rowing. Is it a hallucination if I know my mind is just thinking it, that my imagination is just making me picture full images out of mere harbingers? The very faint shadows that I see renarjubg (resonating?) quaint features makes me appreaciate the seemless flow of beauty." "Just ride that rainbow," I heard myself say. "Ride those rainbows." Chapter VI: Sunflower Oasis Sparkle "Help!" he screamed. Chapter VII: Clever, but stupid. So you found it out, but what does that mean? It means that you are really stupid, but also that your thought process is very compliant with abstract thought, Abstract thought is simply letting ones imagination take hold of their perception for a split second, a mere speck of cosmic universe. Abstract thought gives us an appreciation for the deeper thoughts, though they also realize the very superificiality of their own need to classify such things as "superficial" and "Deep." "So that chapter six," I moaned, with faces staring blankly at me, "is really S O S, like Sunflower Oasis Sparkle. And it says help." Imagination! What fun. Chapter VIII: Spaghetti Western Finale "I'm writing, don't disturb me!" I screamed. My friends backed off as I wrote, and spoke into a megaphone. "This is important." "Dude," one of them said, "you're just really fucked up right now, and stoned, and tripping on that damn cough medicine again." "Don't forget the beer," another said. "Listen people," I announce, "I have little time to chat. I can feel myself forgetting, as if shedding time and precious breath, and I know I cannot forget it." "Forget what?" they smiled. They knew it was already over. "I don't remember...." I say. I mutter, and watch my words slowly lose steam and crumble on the ground. I lay in my own defeat. I look at my paper. "I look at my paper," it says. That won't help me remember! Arg! I look again. "I look again" it says, and I can't remember why I wrote it. Simply the fact that I must remember something? Remember what? I look again. "I look again" is still written. But why would I write that twice? Ok, I'll look one last time. I look at my paper. "OK, I'll look one last time." is written. One Last Time, I think. I recall as song I heard on the radio once. It was quite sappy, and written by some 16 year old who was in love with a girl. It went something like; You're more beautiful then all the stars in the Sky. Or so I think as I get lost in your eyes. I open my mouth just to watch words slip away. It's not you; I just don't know what to say. That girl is so pretty, like a perfecty sculpted pixel. "I can't forget her!" I yell in victory. The ghost are laughing at me. They hold faces, masks of my very friends, and strip away their shadows. "But how do you know she exists? We don't exist, though we are just a huge figment of your imagination. We don't exist, and no one will ever believe you. So how can you believe yourself, and how can you believe she is real?" "Don't forget her," I say to myself, "never forget her." Chapter IX: Forgive and Forget. "I know I can't win" I told him. This whole legal system was as lost as the society we can never seem to escape. "You see," I said, "if I am really guilty, then I would want to say I'm innocent to hide for myself. If I was not guilty, then I would be saying I'm innocent because I am. The problem is, there is no way for anyone that is not myself to know what I am doing." "Also," I added, "the punishment is more harsh if you plead innocent and are proven guility, as if you were hiding something. What if you are proven guilty but are really innocent? I suppose it doesn't matter, because it won't bring back old friends..." Chapter X: Paradox Float The cold starry night was a haven for lost souls. Ravens scavenging for bits and pieces of hopes and dreams would go hustle people for money, and others would simply ask for change. I was in a bar once, because someone had been fortunate enough to want to buy me a drink, rather than toss quarters into my cup. 'I'll have the paradox float," I say to the bartender. "What's that?" asked my company, the very same person who is buying my drink, "It's a drink so potent it will make you shit faced in seconds, and it is called a paradox float because I drink to crash and fade away for a mere moment, though I know the escape is only temporary and I will feel worse when I awake." "So why not stay asleep forever" the man asked me. "Wait a second," I say to him, and I begin feelig a bit suspicious. This man felt all too familiar, and I glide my hand slowly across the knife in my pocket. "Have we met?" "In a dream," he said as he stood up, flicking a cigarette into his fingers as if by some leger= demain, "Or perhaps in another life," he added as he tossed a few dollars at me and, with his other hand, flicked open a zippo. The mettalic klank was music to my ears, and I recognized the lighter; it was mine. He left and dissapeared into the night, perhaps a figment of my imagination. Though, regardless, I was drunk and passed out from that damn Paradox. When I awoke, the stale cigarettes and cheap cologne almost made me throw up again, My hair was sticky with some substance, probably vomit, and I had no clue where I was. A hotel room, nonetheless, but where? Why? Who was I? Assuming this was my place, I go to take a shower, though a part of me is still lying down, as if to question my very existance. Did I die the other night, from that overdose of whatever drug came my way at the time. Perhaps I am just watching a dream. "The problem," my psychologist once said, "is that you are so disassociated with reality that you exist in a 'false reality.'" I rolled my eyes in the mirror at this nut job. "You are so convinced that the world is simply another dream that it has become such for you, because you cannot tell the difference between when you're awake and when you're dreaming." I give myself a puzzled look and ask myself, "so is that good or bad?" "I don't know," my psychologist replied, "but you seem to suffer from OCD, clinical depression, ADD, marijuana, mushroom and DXM addiction..." and the list goes on. Why bother? Chapter XI: Rascal Finess "Listen to me," the book shouted in my face. My very words turning on me as I write, each one a bitter rebel spitting in my wind. "You must not forget about her. She is the reason you live, she is your love, and she is everything to you." "What about objectivity?" I reply. "You are distracting yourself and you will never find her again. You lost her, remember?" Then it hit me. My girlfriend. Her name, which I can hardly remember. She just got fed up with my psychopathic, insane bullshit. My constant ramblings, for often I would treat her as if a bunny in one of my dreams. She is the one I must find, through my writing, that is the essense of myself. "In order to understand yourself," said The Great Cynic Leo, "you must first admit you are not complete, and as a Human you have some innate faults that are not yours to blame. As with any understanding, you must understand both halves to know the hole. She is that other part of you that you must catch." A sick game of cat and mouse, indeed. The bread here tastes stale, so why not go and eat a chicken for four bucks? ______________________________________________________________________________ Circe ______________________________________________________________________________ Being pertentious was my only virtue. A man of means, though even the moon can be so far away from our mortal minds, and with such abundance; I kept walking. To be dead upon a midnights stroke, with only time to fill the gaps that leave us bare. This wasteland we call The City; bodies, silent with mortality, lay in rooms and indulge in honey decadance. but let us go to my one and only confidant, the foil of all means, dear Cesar. Cesar was a strange man, a man Of secrets and a man of means. He did what not many could accomplish, which was to have the complete face of seriousness in death. All of it was an act, and all was simply a pretention. To meditate on ones sins is to let oneself boil alive, slowly and with much agony in the sparing parts, but not many could endure and he was no exception. I saved him though, saved him that night I called him. Friends are to there to talk to you on nights one would not feel like going out at all. I spent a night talking, which was the night that was supposed to be the end of his life, though conviction convinced him otherwise. For I am simply a spool of thread, to be made into the fabric of imagination. In the recesses of his mind, he alone sat and rocked back and forth, mumbling tales of honeydew and sandalwood. To let oneself wash away with the smoke, cleansing te air of itself, and causing death and despair towards the somber world. "and that is the meaning.." he said to me. "It means nothing, as do you. As do all of us. WE are simply here to ask ourselves if life is worth living based on what we know." He and I sat, on a tuesday afternoon, when the streets were empty, yet the pavement still warm, from the busy passerbyers that had just driven back to work from lunch. We were too broke to eat though, and our wallets screamed for money as desperate as the starving child resting inside our hearts. We say and talked, a machine of vast interworkings and twine, with which we molded worlds and stories. I was created in such a brothel; an orgy of steaming ideas, ripe for the taking and the moment. "When one accepts all, he can cast away his innate doubt," I say to Cesar, as the wind blows soft melodies into the trees. To ask the colors why the leaves take such from them, with nothing to respond but "It was no problem on my part." "The innate need to know," I listed, "the innate feeling to believe in something; anything, whether by name or association, and with that the innate need to find the higher power. God." Cesar was a bright kid, but his imagination was just limited by the countless inhibitors stocked inside ones mind. To empty himself of all is to accomplish the fulfillment of the ultimate desire: JNothing. I had no plans, and neither did he. Whenever someone wanted to talk and spend some intimate time talking, one could always come to me. I was there, and because my planner was not only nonexistant, but blank, so I could take time out of the day to make the most of it. Every person I met was given however much time I felt, and time is one of the only things that humans can be truly generous about. Cesar was almost in tears, for such talks brought the most feminine aspects out of him: "So no matter what I know, I lack the confidence to say what I truly know." I looked at him and offered a cigaretter for consolation, for it had been too long since we had one. AFter liting up, I responded: "When one simply knows, rather than believing, one can simply act. When one knows nothing, there is nothing one does not know, and it no longer becomes a matter of 'do' and 'don't.'" But I did not allow a reprisal, for my mind was still rolling with fresh type. "It is because we truly know nothing. We discover things that we can only conceptualize, and yet we make a catagory for it anyway. Always smaller; it is as if we are trying to put together a puzzle, and in order for us to understand the pieces, we must make them smaller in order for us to understand it." Cesar was, at best, befuddled. My words were like jumbled soup, salty in the can, and he had no interest in jargon. "For example," I offer as my lungs hold in smoke, "everything is relkated: psychology, quantum physics, philosophy, economics, and even sociology." I blow out the smoke slowly, "and when one realizes that it is simply rationale that attaches the respective terminologies and 'right' answers, expression becomes a langauge. We are all striving to see the picture, but it is only possible to see the picture from a certain angle. Our bias is that angle." "So what makes you any different?" Cesar asked. The devil in his eye, with protest and waitings of judgment. "My only bias is that I am unbias. I see all; when it comes right down to it, the ultimate expression and langauge is that of infiniy." "The capacity?" I smile as I drop my cigaretter and smush it with my foot. My student is learning. Regardless, my existance is that of a dot, with my perception allolwing me to see the vast infinites within. Even the most infinitismally small point can be a vast curtain of pitch black, vast colors in an array combined to that blinding white, and with which we can be lost forever. The complexities of the mind are, by nature, quite obscure and dreamy. Around my dot, when ones perception is of more visceral means, is simply a sphere; electrons of thoughts surround, and protect, the nucleus that we call self. Eleectrons are labeled: some are selfless, others are selfish, while most are others opinions and thoughts. With which each image is a mirror of self, and when one sees the nothing within, one shall look into a mirror and see nothing but the vast infinity of space. But not to get off topic: Cesar. He was a friend, a clost friend, and when I heard of his death I felt quite disturbed. For one to understand is for one to lose interest, for the innate huuman desire to understand (as if with a purpose) is the very basis of all human thought. We wish to understand our place in the universe to help allow perception changes; we wish to travel back time in order to fix things only retrospect can offer. We know, and yet, we know nothing as of this moment. We are unsure of our actions, and so unsure of tomorrow. We are unaware and scared; the winter can be so cold, and yet, the cold damp that we call the human heart can bleed such fresh flowers and rainbows. At his funeral, many were in shock and wonder. Amongst the crowd, many whispers; "He was so younge..." "What a loss..." "he had such a future in front of him.." and so on. And with that, I lit a cigarette right on the spot and threw a cigarette in his coffin. He had an open casket, as he had planned, and he wished he could have a cigarette for the afterlife. Whatever that shall be. For it is simply a dream, and that cigarette will last him forever, for he can no longer use it. With visceral means comes practicality, and circumstance is everything. We say that we are innocent or guilty, and most is based on circumstance rather than character. Circumstance is that which involves interaction and judgment, and what else can happen when the mind multiplies into two. I met a girl there, a friend of his, of whom I had quite te conversation with. "So... how did you know Cesar?" she asked me, with bitter tears staining her eyes. "I knew him for a while. We talked a bit, and then we went our ways..." She paused, as if waiting for me to say more, though instead I looked away and smoked in silence, just as Cesar had always enjoyed. The silence was too much for her to take, as most women seem to feel, and she blurted out, "he talked about you a lot... you're Deken, right?" Without any sense of astonishment I asked her who she was, for Cesar never talked much about me to anyone. I was, after all, a figment of his imagination. "cecilia..." at which she paused, "but people call me Circe." I smiled a bit at that one, for what woman does not corrupt the mind of man in such a manner? The numerous crowd was dead silent, save the cries and sniffles, as memories of Cesar mixed and matched to create his very identity. She continued, as I walked calmly off to finish my cigarette in peace. "he talked about you a lot, and he told me that I would never understand why he had to do what he did. IT was your fault, wasn't it? That's why you are being so quiet." Tears were rolling down her eyes. What intimacy they must have had! I stood outside by a tree, as the gathering to my right were saying their last goodbyes to that which is called Cesar. Sinners were redeamed instantly at their confession to the dead, which in all due resepect is the ultimate testimony. Who would not take the chance to confess to a deadman? I looked at the various clouds scattered throughout that ocean blue, as the sun worked its eight hour shift, just to go home to a lousy and kids and wife. To my surprise she was still there beside me, though by then she regained some composure. "Did you love him?" I asked quietly. Without much interest, either, in which my voice sounded like that of a calm sailor. She never did answer me that. She cried and dispersed herself into the crowd, though I noticed her walk off; in the glimpse of my vision I saw her pull out a piece and a lighter. For the piece was full, I assume, though it was only full of decay. When she came back she seemed quite mitigated, and she neither spent the time to avoid me, nor the time to even toss me a glance. Not that I noticed anyway. Days passed, as I slept in my car. Being in this town, rather than that vile place we call the City, was somewhat of a temporary escape. I had no friends there, so when the family and friends began to leave and turn the volume of their weeping down, and the car stereos up, I saw only she remained. She was in a daze, and sat beside his tombstone. The actual process of burying his body was far less strenuating than the intial reception. She looked like hell; her eyes a goo and in a strange, white escape. I noticed her left arm shaking, in which her body quickly followed. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and I stood above her, watching her convulse. Strangely enough, it was as if she was in estcacy. I wondered what I was supposed to do at that moment, but I could not help but notice that smile. Her smile was that of indifference; that of acceptance. It was that smile that left us all bare and naked to stand, covering our insecurites, and shaking in a winters night, as we stand alone in front of a mirror. It was about then that I saw the stream of vomit pour from her mouth. She suddenly clutched her arm, and as if in pain, her face shrieked and yet all that came out was a mild woo. A whisper, as if to make one last cry. She was seeing death; she was dying. When she awoke, she found herself lying in the backseat of a car. Her head had been on a pillow, but regardless she had a killer headache; she was in a post-neurotic daze. I walked towards my car to see her looking, like a paranoid caged animal. She could not move, though, for the heroin was still in her body, and the waves were still rough. She felt her body rush with tremors of pleasure and pain, of life and death, and she felt her very soul break and shatter, simply to be put together again in a moment of pure heaven. I had brought her a cappuchino drink, which I enjoyed quite a bit in my younger days, until money demanded I make cheap coffee at home. I tossed it to her, and upon reaching in my pocket for the gummi bears I told her "don't move, you're still pretty fucked up. You overdoesed on something." Sleeping in ones car is somewhat discouraging, and unfortunately she could not speak yet. All that came out were mumbles and fits of rage. She cried and cried, and occassionally vomited. She was lucky, for it seemed impossible for her to have survived. At that time, I was sure she was simply acting, for some superior motive, though in my days I have seen many miracles. I lit a cigarette as she lay in the back, still visiting God and seeing death on the other end of the fork. It was starting to smell, for her vomit and urine left such stains and aroma. I did not mind, at the time, for smell does not bother me much. I can always move somewhere else in due time. She spoke, though it came out as "mmmphhb.... phhhb... " I had not slept that night, for fear of anything happening with her. She occasionally gave me looks, and smiled in a sort of delusional way. Perhaps she was dying, and in me she saw all that could forgive. I was her father, and she was confessing to me and in myself she saw condolences. Days passed, and not much happened. I asked Circe if I could stay with her for a little bit, seeing as the City had made me quite strung out over the years. Living paycheck to paycheck, and without any real aspiration, can be quite depressing sometimes. Cesar and I had long talks about how the City was our deathbed, and how we needed to get out. I awoke much later than she, and I found her, locked inside the bathroom with a knife. I had picked the lock, and she was in the bathtub bleeding. Her cuits were numerous, however, as the cutting went on, she was weakened and many of the more shallow cuts were made out of pure intent, rather than phsyical desire. I picked her up, and thousands of strands of water spilled below. The floor was slippery as I lett a red trail, and upon laying her carefully on the bed, I rusehd to find any sort of medial kit. After dressing the wounds I pondered. To let this person die is something, but to know why she is doing such is ultimately my desire. She awoke, and her screams called me from the kitchen. "What the fuck?!?" she screamed, "untie me now, you rapist-faggot!!!" I walked softly into the room, carrying a plate with eggs, bread and sausage. "Eat now," I told her, "your body is weak and you lost a lot of blood." "Shut the..." she screamed, though her scream quickly became a lesser whine, as her eyes grew more tired. "I want to die. I am going to die." she told me. "and you can't stop me." "I do not wish to stop you. I simply wish to understand you," I told her. She looked at me with the eyes of a mother who found a long lost child, only to realize that she never knew him, and he is pointing a gun at her face. "Don't worry. We all die in due time..." and my mind was elsewhere. Thoughts of Cesar, thoughts of walks. Those nights and endless trees, nocturnal spirits to kindle our burning thirst for knowledge. Though in the next few days, as she regained her full self, I felt a strange attraction to her. Cirumstance had brought us together. The clcok behind us, on the desk, was ticking. It was digital, so silence accentuated our voices. "Why did you save me?" she asked, with such pertention in her eyes and comfort in her heart. A certain fear, a certain loathing, for she detested me, and yet found a strange confidence in our conversation. "I want to know you. Who are you? How did you meet Cesar? How did you know him?" "I met him at a park. He was reading, as he was wont to do, on a bench that he always sits on, face the lake and sky, and I found something interesting in him..." "He was a good friend," I responded, "he was that of a mirror." To see in others in oneself is one thing, but to see one self in others is the true reward. I lit a cigarette, and offered her one. She took it without hesitation, though when I swung my silver zippo lighter over to her, her face gave me that expression of akwardness. Not like she had a light; she had been trying to quit. "But we never did anything. He never liked talking to me. He just didn't seem to like women..." She spoke and let the words wander the room, "he didn't seem to like anyone." Cynical as always, I thought to myself; that was the one sin I taught Cesar. One of many, though colletively he was enlightened and raised to the level of a superhuman. Living with the true desires unfulfilled is excrutiating at best: To do and to not repent; to redeem oneself through sacrifice, to create a low simply to make the high, and then rest oneself comftorably among the low. For what is more easier than naming ones universal faults than ones greater aspects? What is more human then that very degradation, the degenerate act of lowering oneself to make others happy in the very mind of the user. I had told her of such, and told her that her wish to die was probably related to the death of Cesar. She did not rush to deny, nor denounce any of it. She said she felt a strange affinity with him, and that his death was meant to be, just as hers. Though she broke, within that week, and I found her crying in my arms. After minutes passed and her tears stopped, she, with her arms still wrapped around my neck, paused to look at me. I don't know what she saw, for as with any figment of ones imagination, it must have been pretty. She saw endless rainbows and stacks of infinity. She saw that which was forever locked inside her to keep, the obscure, pale figure she knew as herself. In her eyes I saw a bleak face, the face of a man aged by exprience. Blood dripping from a fresh cut, as if years of knowledge were attained simply to throw out at sea to create a wish, imagination floundering and soaked into a dishrag, bloody wet yet soon to be brown. I could not stand to look, and yet, her eyes held such beauty. Her iris was that of a faint green, though speckels of gray wer somewhat filtered in, and her pupil was accentuated by that very outline which beffited her. It was at this time that I realized this woman is quite weak hearted. So quick to jump off one plane and onto another, just to fear the jump and yet enjoy the flight. She was a desperate creature, as if a man with nothing left but his bottle to assuge his physical desires, and I could tell her mind was about to click into a routine mode of seduction. She looked at me with a cat-like ferocity, as if her eyes spoke of sin and nature, vast fields of untouched abelias and larks. With that of leger-demain she began carressing my neck, whispering soft coos. "I can't" I told her, "I'm just a figment of your imagination. I do not exist, so do not even try." "I just want to get to know you," she smiled, though still reserved. Perhaps it was all too pertentious to assume such passions upon just meeting. Especially under our circumstances. "I feel like I know you," she said as her eyes winced to perhaps distort my picture, as if to make my random features blend into someone else. "You knew Cesar..." And with that I got up, reached in my pocket for a cigarette, and went to smoke out on the balcony. I detest human contact, the epitomy of such being intimate. I detest the solitude that one makes in such human commitments, and the redemption that one seeks upon sin. Whatever doubts that one has, one cannot deny the past. When I came back she was crying. She begged me to leave, for she wanted to kill herself soon, and she wanted me to have no association with it. She wanted to die alone; "to die in peace," as she so delicately called it. I asked her what she thought of love. "Love?" she remained silent, as if seeing my bet with a raise, just testing to see if I was leaving the question unprovoked. "What is really that wrong in your life right now? What justifies your death?" She laughed, the laugh that spoke words of "you would not understand," and I simply replied with a firm stare, whispering "Try me" in response. What clever game was I playing at this time? It was simple really: I want to know what is inside her head, I want to pick at her secrets and desires, I want to know that which is human, for what a ripe infinity her mind seemed at the time. Looking in retrospect, I feel quite foolish. For she must truly be insane to be attracted to such a man as myself. Hair unkempt, face unshaven, with a scrawny body that reeked of excursion. Drugs had consumed my everyday faced and replaced it with that of sedation. I no longer cared much for anything. Though when the obligation to care, or the physical desire pinpointed Mans true addiction, the same reaction was always stirred: "I do not want love." It is as simply as that, though I know not the answer; why. I do not want to be seen, heard, or simply imagined. And in she walks, into my perception, as do I, and from here on I am figment of her imagination. A toy to play with, to shape, and to constantly study. Simply a doll, with bloodstains on the carpet, as we all try to escape our very insanity. "Can we go out?" she asked me. "Maybe to a nice resturant or to a movie.." "I can just leave. You seem better now. I've been here for the last few weeks... I feel very uncomftorable staying at your place and not paying any sort of rent or anything." "Well.. it's just that with Cesar gone, I have no one to talk to..." The streets passed by and the lights illuminated the sound. Chipper days seemed to pass us by, as we drove into the ends of the night. We talked, though I paid little attention to what I said, for I had no real interest in her. She, on the other hand, seemed quite open to say what was on her mind. "My parents were always so mean that I dropped out of high school, just to spite them." She laughed, the laugh of the wise man who knew he was, at a time, wrong. "Looking back, I suppose I should have listened." The constant white line in front of me, as I drove, was quite hyptnotizing. I said something along the lines of the necessity to disregard retrospect and simply accept; to allow all things to simply happen and flow, so as they will have happened and are gone. Away from our judgment. "But I don't mean to bore you," I hear myself say, as I snap back to reality. "I really don't want to talk much. Sorry. I did a lot of talking when I was younger, and many told me to be quiet..." I drove her home and was about to start my drive back to my home, when she asked me if I wanted to come in. "I enjoy your company," she said to me. I forgot what I said in response. It happened. The television was on a mute buzz, as voices chatted and stories unfolded across empty air. We lie, naked, with nothing but the blankets and each others bodies to keep us warm. In our gradual decay we found our forlorning afterschock, in the depths of deep sects, for us to indulge and drool. I was laid out, sure to have conquered the world. As with any man when they are sexually pleased, they reach a euphoric state for about five minutes afterwards, while the woman is left thinking about her desire unfulfilled, for what man can truly satiate a woman unless he wears her out physically? And I never was the type to overextend myself in such areas, though on occasion, even I did. That night I had done so. "I really like your body," she said to me. I was skinny, though my muscles were quite defined. Still, I was no body builder. Simply another scrawny guy that could retain his zestful youth, at least in spirit, which would gradual drip out and manifest into this skin and touch we call body. "You're quite beautiful," I had spoken, and it was no lie. She had dark hair, with round cheeks and big lips to accompany her warm smile, whereas her eyes would squint as she smiled. She was Vietnamese, so she told me, though her light, silky tan skin showed that off. Her eyes were actually a dark brown, much like my own, though that was because dark eyes were her favorite. She whispered that my eyes were so beautiful, and how she felt so comftorable and yet so frail when she looked into them. "It is as if you are looking for something, and you can see right through me," she rambled in a daze. She had reached that point of ecstacy at least five times, in the hour that we spent. I never much enjoyed it though, I was simply a machine to do such acts that are scripted to be perfection. I simply want my drug, as any druggie does, and to get a shot of heroin through a wet, steaming oraface was as good as any other. Perhaps I have gone too far. For heroin and sex are so vastly different, for the latter is such a natural high, whereas the former numbs and makes one forget all feelings; to become disassociated. However, sex can feel all the better, and afterwards, leave us feeling so happy in our numb summers of content. She brushed her foot quietly up my leg as we lay, like ice upon my waiting skin, as she wrapped her legs around mine, toes curled, body rocking to her own beat of sensuality. I matched with equal animosity, and soon we found ourselves kissing frantically. "Oh god... I want you so bad.." she moaned. It was about then that I felt an urgent need to leave. For I have only known her for a month and she was already acting like a whore. I hated seeing this side of women, and I hated even more myself for invoking such. Perhaps this inanition was from a sense of self pity; I do not deserve this, not even for a second. For she is truly a sexy, beatiful, energetic person at heart. I have seen, in these few short weeks, the child that still lives inside her. The spirit which causes her to be such a catch to my very incorrigble eyes, as if begging to be an inamorata. The way she curls into the blankets, her curves outlining the night sky, with such slender, long legs to map out such desires. How is it that such beauty was to be mine, when in all actuallity, I deserved nothing. I did nothing. I am simply a figment of her imagination. She began weeping after one of our three hour excursions; before I could ask, she began confessing. "I have never been intimate with any male, really. I have had others before you, but they felt so rigid. As if they were machines, and I was simple another hole for them to stick their dick in." Used and abused, as we all our, I sang quietly to myself. "It's just... I was so lonely. I took so many walks, and I tried dating coworkers or going out to bars and clubs, but all the men just wanted me for my body. They just wanted to fuck me and leave me." The television was but a flicker in the backdrop, a simple candle solution for us to dip flames of boredom into. I decided now was as good a time as any to tell her the truth. "I am no different. All men are like that. Women are objects, just because men simply see themselves. Men are, by nature, selfish, as are women selfless." One would die for another, but what kind of death is that for ones self? To sacrifice yourself for the simple, selfish reason that is to save the self? She did not seem to care, no matter how I tried convincing her. I was trash, a lowly bum on the streets. I had been homeless for months, while drifting among confidants and acquaitances. Drugs had laid a path for me to follow, a yellowbrick road of pushers and users. She woke me up the other night, kissing my ear and sliding her tongue around inside it, slowly yet with ease. She began stroking my chest softly, whislt whispering lullybies, into my ear, with promises of pulchritude and ambience for the supple twilight outside. I looked into her eyes, though I know not what expression I gave. She responded with a look of lust, of blushed cheeks and inhibitions lost, though I fear it is love. With her lips half parted she lay, on top of me, carefully stroking her body against mine, so I can feel ever inch possible. And in all hypocricies of hypocricies, I followed. I obeyed. I was the mirror that reflected her innermost desires, her innermost self, and I simply acted. Perhaps, though, she was the mirror, for I know now what I did but she would respond and cause me to do such. As she wrapped her legs around me, I could feel the muscles in her thighs begin to contract, though she squeezed me all the more tighter. Her moans were loud, for all to hear, though I kept my lips by her ear so I could whisper to her in my pleasure. She begged to feel it, the very seed of man, shooting inside her. She begged to feel it, slick, steaming and hot, as if this saltly paraffin substance was a drug. She was selfless, and simply wanted me to reach orgasm so as she could know, for a fact, that I am happy. Though it was these nights I could not stand. I could not bear to be myself, for what else was I except a lone speck on a piece of paper. A dot, micrcoscopic to even the highest degree of magnification. that was to be a bundle in a sphere of thoughts. These thoughts blossomed from her being, and in their radiance, I became nothing more than her puppet. I was pleasure, I was self assurance, and I was everything but myself. For I had left her some time later, impulsively and without a note; I left her the same as I had found her. I heard some months later that she had died, though no one would tell me how or why. Some said I could not bear it, while others thought that perhaps I was the cause. Regardless, many looked ill upon me after her passing, and I felt a discomfort in that town. I never went back. ______________________________________________________________________________ One Day ______________________________________________________________________________ Part 1: Awakening He awoke to the same sky and sun. He had passed out the night before while reading a book, though it was no surprise that he was wearing the same work clothes he always wore. Yet things felt a little different. His teeth ached, and his mind was jumbled. Like a machine he rose from his bed, and even his yawn felt routine. He sat, sleepy in a mist, as he tried to regain his consciousness. "No luck," he mumbled, and got up to grab his keys and his coat. Work was boring as usual. Endless stacks of paper and more busywork. He would let his body move while his mind took a nap, and as the time passed he felt his soul go more and more dry. For thirty years he has been doing other peoples work: writing words for others mouths to speak, all the while letting his heart drip dry. He tried hard to remember the last truly intimate moment he had with his wife and, despite waking next to her earlier in the morning, he could not remember how she lay. She was hardly there. He could barely recall the breakfast he ate, and despite any sort of attention he would put towards his selection in lunch, he knew he would hardly remember that either. The clock struck 4:30, and he got up like a young school boy. "Got any plans tonight?" asked a coworker, like words read off a piece of paper. "me, the wife and the kids might see a movie," he replied, "but other than that, nothing special." "That's the third movie this week; you guys must see a lot of movies!" What else is there to do, he thought as he smiled and nodded, affirming his very existance. As he was walking to his car, he stopped to watch the people walking by. The parking lot was full, with a vast array of green, blue, red and black cars scattered with ants walking to them. People would walk towards their cars with expressions of pure apathy, as if their body was moving but their mind was stuck in quicksand somewhere begging to be rescued. The very mecanism of turning off the car alarm, unlocking the door, getting inside the car, shutting the door without letting it slam, and then starting the car was so scripted that he did not feel himself do it, as he was thinking all this. When he got home, his wife was wearing a smile. He replied by hanging up his coat, and he let out a quick sigh, as to not let down appearances. "How was work?" she asked him. Every day she would ask the same thing, and it mattered little how he differed the reply. "It was fine. Gloria and Rick are having a baby, so he was off work today. I had to cover for him." "Oh." she said, as she put the steaming food on the table. She then turned around to call their son and daughter to the table. Glasses were filled and chairs were sat in, as the various klinks and klanks from silverwear echoed throughout the tiny dining room. Minutes passed as people chewed and swallowed their plates, and it was not until the wife spoke that the silence was broken. "So how was school?" she asked the son. "It was alright." "Any homework?" "Not really." He never even looked up at her as she spoke, and she took some offense to this, so she directed her attention towards her daughter. "And you, honey, how was your day?" "it was ok," the daughter said meaninglessly. Some time later the son arose to go back to his room and listen to whatever music the youth related to at that time, and the daughter arose to go towards a phone and exchange words with some fellow peers. He was the last to leave, as his wife picked up the various plates to walk them over to the sink where they would be washed. He sat in silence, watching the table gradually go empty. A metaphor for the Soul, he thought, as more and more plates and scraps of food disappeared off the table. "It was a good meal." "Thanks," she replied. Part 2: Death It was the middle of December, and christmas carolls chimed throughout peoples smiles. Everyone is cheery around this time of year, though they make their smiles all the bigger to hide the stress of formalities unfulfilled. "life goes on," he said, "no matter who you follow. They will have enough anecdotes and drama to make anyone interested content." So the story goes on. Words will always be written, regardless of whatever author decides to stop writing. One mans death does little to change anything but the circle that he existed within; his family and friends may suffer but he will not be missing out on much. She set the plates on the table and whispered a small prayer and her children pulled chairs out to sit down. A chilly wind whistles, sending shivers down her spine. Some time passed, as the small gulps and chews filled empty space. "So how was your day?" she asked her son. "it was alright." ______________________________________________________________________________ Stuff to Do ______________________________________________________________________________ "Stuff to do" "Stuff to do," the plug asked, as he tilted his head. His eyes jiggled in their sockets, as I heard gushy-gooeey blood swirl around in his head. Electrons with ideas attached to blood cells, lobbing information: hurling it into the ends of infinity. "Shut up" I scream. A voice echoes in the distance. A warm, lucrative bathtub caressing my body. I feel worms crawling, slimy in their appearance, and oozing slowly up my legs, over my genitals. A man with a plug, spit dripping from his chin, about to jam the plug into an electric socket. The plug is to a radio; a radio in the bathtub resting gently against my chest. The radio is set to "on" so I can be electrecuted by the radio, once it is plugged in. Those electrons in that Radio sure hate whatever my Electrons are telling them. my body Radio E- E- E- E- E- E- Damn those electrons! That weak bastard over there, with his electrons telling him what to do, carrying sweet nectar of information. His electrons believe what the Radio is telling him, what his electrons are saying to him. E- E- E- E- E- E- radio His body The radio then seduces his ripe, budding daughters; apples on the tree of information, holding sweet seeds and juices for the future generations of information. They them encourage this desire and wants into what we use to fuel temptation. Temptation is a feeling of fear. It is what we feel we lack. What we lack is what we think, what we decide to become that thing that we lack. And yet, we are everything. We are the trees, growing fresh nectarines, apples and grapes. Once you understand everything, the nectarines, apples and grapes don't matter. They are all fruit, though, our desire; our differentiation of the taste of these fruits causes us to want and hate other fruits. We become picky and arrogant, calling some fruits "luxurious" and "Bland!" These fruits, these fruits of knowledge, cannot be truly experienced when the user lacks any sort of apathy (the cold muzzle to my chest. I felt the slimy grip of death rising up my chest.) With this apathy comes a lacking of lacking. We all lack something, because we think we need to lack that something. It is our electrons that, through sacrifice, gain other electrons. It is a clever game, indeed. One electron decides to like another electron because it flatters her. Electron A gives his food to a homeless person because he feels he needs to. Electron B bullies little kids around schoolyards in order to feel tough. Electron C decides to die in order to save his lover, Juliet. Electron D decides to die for his country, in a war that, 20 years later would be the biggest mistake in American History. And so on. "THE PLUG" he screams. Please don't drop that electric radio on my brain. I don't want to die in my MIZ SER REE I know that I've sinned and I know that I've lost. When my human apathy causes brains to fart. I've lost it all in a stupid game. A game where everyone stays the same. And if the people don't change they all grow the same. And with the people, all the same none of them would complain because differentiation's in the mind! A man is sitting outside, smoking a cigarette, as I walk out of the car. He sees in me a fashion model; a lovely figure of a woman. Walking out, eyeshadow outlining my corruption with no unjust, a lush figure seeping up your pants, to slowly grab and twist your very hot desires? To simmer and cook them, to let them bathe in the tender carress of their own juices? To let minds think what they want and bask in the steamy juices of their own making? This is what we all truly want, though it only comes out as "being understood." "You want this can of Pop?" he asks. (That's Soda for you weird people.) > _ > < _ < --Do you want this can of Pop?-- >_> --my mommy doesn't let me talk to strangers.-- <_< --(D:)-- >_> < _ < --But really. The machine gave me two.-- >_> -(<3)- <_< >_> < _< -- Thanks. I didn't want it to go wasted.-- He knew it. He knew I was going to really want that Soda later tonight. He knew that exactly 2:11 AM I would want that Soda. He knew that my experience WITH THE SODA would be much more enjoyable. I would be better off. And yet, he knew that if I did not have a SODA, my experience you be something like this. ^_^ Gee I'm Thirsty -_- Where is my Soda? >_< oh well, i really wanted that soda. but i'll just drink water. AND YET HE KNEW!!! He knew that from a better experience comes more knowledge. So not drinking the soda would not only be NOT satiating your thirst, but also, you knowledge. You would be losing a good experience as well as the action that results from doing it. But is is impossible to know how good the experience COULD HAVE BEEN if you are just sitting there, thirsty, and you don't have a soda. "But I do!" I yelled, splashing water all around. "I know how it could have been, and I know that I am RIGHT in the decision of Good and Bad." "I am right to decide to think like this because I know I would not be able to think it otherwise." if you are in a state-where-you-cannot-think, then you can never know what it is like to think when you are in a state-where-you-can-think. And yet, if you are in a state-where-you-can-think, you will be able to know what it is like when you are in a state-where-you-cannot-think. To simplify it: You, when you can think: A You, when you cannot think: B If you are in a state of A, you cannot be in state B. If you are in state B, then you can be in state A. "Weird, huh?" I say to my students. "So that makes B better than A, right?" chirp the kids. "Well, I suppose that is what are Human Rationale tells us." "our electrons are happy" they smile. So a state where you can think is better, right? Therefore, think and think, until your mind grows! Until it becomes a beanstalk encompassing the earth, your very being. It will entangle and snarl, and things will drive you Nuts! "You think and think," she shouts, "and think until it hurts!" >_> <_< boy girl >_> -hey- <_< >_> --do you know what the derivative of 1 over e to the X squared is?-- <_< (jumps back) >_> <_< --um.. no-- >_> -...- <_< >_> --baka-- D: "And that situation is not HAX, now is it?" I ask my class. "IT IS INDEED RATIONALE!" they churn. "LEET LEET LEET" goes the monkey "1337 1337 1337" goes the Man! "But you know what is really interesting?" I say, whilst stuffing potato chips in my mouth. "What is it?" asks a lone student, sitting innocently at his desk. The classroom is silent as they await my response. "THE ELECTRONS" I Scream, as I bring out a hatchet to do the Old Man's Duty. (note: whipping, punishment, psychological abuse.) "It was so simple!" she pleaded. "Then why didn't you say it?" I asked, "let alone ask the question in the first place." "I wanted to see if you could get it too." she cried. "You dare think that you are smarter than me?!?" I scream, "THAT YOU THINK MORE THAN ME?!?!?" She pauses, and the class stares in anticipation. The ticking from the clock grows gradually louder as we await her very answer; "umm... but really I was unsure of myself. I was unsure that if I said the Right Answer, it could be Wrong. (a droplet of water hits the ground, and the sound echoes in the distance, floating across calm, sunlight zephrys. Cranberries, resting on a plump leaf, absorb morning dew and drink fine wine. I say nothing to let her know she could keep going. "I was just so afraid of being wrong. The entire class would have seen me goof up. I would be an idiot." I look at her, and say: "In all honesty, did you know it was right? What exactly did you mean by, 'I wanted to see if you could get it too?'" "well.. I suppose I knew it was right..." How dare you think less of me... How dare my bitter cries go unheard, to silent walls and chilly trees, whistlting faint reminiscing tunes In the faint, pale moonlight, dreams flutter up, Fluttering as Butterflies, fresh from warm Cocoons of Time, the very essence of our Life. Fresh water to parches toes. How dare you think that you knew more than me, that you could ever be so capable. Act 1, Scene 1: A Conscious Death A man stands silent in a classroom, dark shadows for faces. The curtain opens to a still shot of him; his hand up in the air, veins outlining his anger and sweat. The kids are quiet and scared. Man: Now you see why you must die. Little School Girl: Because I thought I knew more than You. Man: And? Or do you dare think I feel unsure about myself? If I were to feel unsure of myself, I would not answer your question, but rather, wait for you to tell it to me. (add in playfully) as if I wanted to see if you could (makes a quotation hand gesture) "get it." Little School Girl: umm... Man: For if I don't answer, then it means that I want to see if you can get it. I know it's right, but I know that if I was unsure, I would not know if it is right or not. Little School Girl: well... Man: But if I let you answer to my last two questions, then I would have proved my unsurity. My insecurities. And yet why did I ask them? For I am going to tell you right now! Little School Girl: (screaming at the top of her lungs) BECAUSE YOU WANT TO DIE, AND IN ORDER FOR YOU TO DIE, YOU MUST WAIT FOR DEATH TO COME, AND CONVINCE DEATH TO TAKE YOU IN. YOU MUST PLEAD WITH IT AND BEG IT, AND FINALLY, YOU REALIZE YOU MUST SIMPLY TELL HIM HE IS RIGHT. IN ORDER TO MAKE HIM TAKE YOU IN, YOU MUST DO THINGS TO PROVE HE IS RIGHT, YOU MUST SMILE BEHIND YOUR LIES AND TELL HIM HE IS RIGHT. THIS WILL MAKE HIM FRIENDLY, AND THUS, HE TAKES YOU IN. YOU MUST TELL HIM WHAT HE WANTS TO HEAR. Man: (twitching with anger) You just proved that I was unsure of myself... that I was wrong. You just proved me Wrong! Little School Girl: It's because, even though I knew it would bring death, it would thus make Now into Right. I would be Right for once. Man: This is not about you, this is about me! (raises hatchet) Little School Girl: (watching man walk towards her. She sits patiently.) Man: You are just electrons manifested in my head. (screams) Show me Yourselves! Little School Girl: HaHaHa... You Figured Us Out. (Little School Girl fades into a small pinprick of nothingness) (Man stares in horror as the classroom fades into nothingess, and there is nothing to see.) Electrons: We Are Here. You Know Now Why We Came. Man: You're just in my head! You're just in my head! Electrons: We Are The Information. We Control Your Mind; We Are Your Information. We Map Vast Images, Sunlight, Broad Skies, Rainy Nights, And Canyons Upon Your Brain, Through A Complex Series Of Connected Nerotransmitters And Electrons. Man: You're Driving me Crazy! Electrons: We Are All That You See. (echoes...) We Create All That You Are Close Curtain Chapter 2: Step 2 I then realized how I got those Electrons out of my head; the crazy thoughts that corrupted my stale body. I told them that, "if you are the Information, then you can you be my information too? My information is not the absolute information, it is not You." And with that, God dissapeared from my life, and wouldn't show up until some years later. "And just to let you know," I say to my students, blood dripping from my hatchet, "that a year to Us is about a nano-second to God. For every nanosecond he gets, he thinks thousands of thoughts, and he lives and dies in so many of them. Electrons are tricky devils, I write, as I scream for bloody soda. It's all in my head though, for I am just a pigment of your imagination. A gentle shade, to affect your Criticisms slightly, a gently hue to softly massage happy moments in your life, to let you get the most of them. "So where was I?" He sat in a bathtub. He was holding a radio when he realized that the plug was plugged in. It was plugged in, and he was still thinking. He was still thinking, and was therefore alive. He was therefore still alive when the plug was in, and therefore, he is Dead. Thoughts in the Afterlife? No, not really, just those few seconds we have left before death. Chapter 3: In The Last Episode Of Heartbreak High! Jim and his Girlfriend broke up because Jim did not like his Girlfriend. He thought she was stupid. In actuality, this is what his Electrons did. guy girl E- E- E- E- DX E- Though really, the girlfriend felt quite sad because of this. Because she did now know the answer to one of Jims questions, she felt that, because Jim thought she was stupid, this made her sad. Why did it make her sad? Because of so. guy girl E- E- This is a world with no resolve. We strike inhibition based in Walls, and run around stroking out balls! The world is all but small to fit us all! So gather the kids and light up the cribs, Cuz death Comes to Us All! End Story The plug talked to me. Oh my God, it talked to me. I look up and feel a sudden rush. What is going on. "Whauff to d-ing on." (Wha(at)-(stu)ff to d(o)-(go)ing on" I hear it again. It is memories repeating in my head, overlapping, driving me insane. So the secret to Life is Understanding Life. We think we have an undestanding, even an understanding of the unknown (the very term, the entity) Why is it that I am sitting here, bleeding from my arms, as I bask in Knowledge? What is it, at its core, that makes us want to do it? What is it that makes us do anything? It is useless just to say Conscious, or any sort of God. It is beyond that. It is noticing the patterns, the patterns of the Intellectuals. Not just in their thought, but also in their everyday lives. How they lived, their morals; did they think killing was wrong? Did they ever cut themselves? And if so, what was the cause? For all Great People are praised for their intellect, when really, it was their thoughts that made them smart. What makes one smart is the very train he takes from the Rationale Station. The Rationale Station is a station that we go on to get smart. As the train goes on, various Thoughts are inserted to make us logically follow a path. Once we reach the end of the path in our minds, such as each step is a lilly pad for us to jump to and from, it makes sense. This is Rationale. example: Thought ---train tracks--- Thought Makes Sense. We start We follow our The thought makes here Rationale Sense Rationale is just our ability to follow steps. How much can we break things down so that people can follow them? Being of an Objective mind, we see things in steps, in pieces, and they could or could not be related. We see things, we gather all the information, and we give both an equal chance. Then we put together the pieces, as if they were puzzle pieces, to make us think something is right. For example, look at Abortion. Do you believe it is about letting a little could-be baby, or is it about letting Women have a Choice in their lives. Really it is the steps that you take, while on the Rationale Train, that lets us stop at whatever we currently believe. "What is driving me insane," I murmur, "is the blood coming out of my arms. It seers like a burn that is winters old, though the memory is enough to cause a faint chilling." "It is also the very fabric of time," I say, "For I believe that if everyone knew everything, as if they were in State B, they would all reach towards the Greater Good." "The way," the old man said to me. "Yes, the way." I light up a cigarette. "The way is a mystical thing indeed," the old man smiled. "Not once you understand it." I say. "Well, once you understand it, you will also realize that now you understand why it is so hard to understand. And you will see people that do not undestand it, and you know there is nothing you can do to convince them." The old man pounded. I said to him: "I know how that is." "Prove it" He sneered. "I used to cut myself, and at the time, I wouldn't listen to anyone. Well, I grew out of it, and know how stupid it is. A girl that I care about was cutting herself. I was sad because I knew I could not help her, for she was in the same spot I was in. Myself, I wouldn't have listened, and neither would she. But I knew she had to make that next step, and pay the money to take that Rationale Train. "Ah... you are Smart indeed." "'Tis the way," I smile, "and the Paradox?" "You have learned well, young Grasshopper," The big ball of Electrons said. "Thanks... yeah, the Paradox of how, with eternal knowledge comes a complete lack of understanding from other people. Of how total knowledge can never be expressed so that anyone can see it for what it is. Hell, people couldn't even see it, let alone know it." "So how do you know?" It asked. "Because I followed absolute truth, and I'm very afraid of its end." I say. Chapter 3: Sober State There is a state of being, a state that is defined by our thoughts. Thoughts can be of different types, and because we differentiate between them, we make some "good" and some "bad." There is a state above "good" and "evil," and this is the state of Understanding. Understanding is simply being in state B where you can know state A, wheras in state A you would not understand B. How does that work? As a Great Man once said, "I know not why Heaven hates." It simply does. This is the philosophy, the philosophy of the enlightened. Once we reach it, there is no turning back. The irony is that it is the biggest alienation, despite the depression that should unify intellectuals, but rather seperates them. Intellectuals (Depressed) (^_^) (^_^) (^_^) (^_^) Why is it that The Great Depression always follows these Thoughts? Thoughts that can be called "cynical," "pessimistic," but regardless, are usually agreed upon to be called "smart." "Smart," in the objective sense, is simply being able to be objective. If one can view each and ever opinion by the very bias and rationale that manifest them, then one can have a better understanding of why people believe what they believe. And yet, there is a dead end wall that all Intellectuals run into. The state of endless contemplation. There is a state where we can understand all, but we then realize how pointless it is to be in that state. We can never truly express it for what it is; it simply comes out as religion or philosophy. Jesus, Buddha, and Confucius, and all the others. All the same. "So I figured out why we need not to kill people," Jesus said to me, as he passed the bowl. "Why is that?" I asked instinctively, whilst adding "That's some good weed." Jesus paused to cough and then said, "it just makes sense. If everyone was out killing each other for stupid, superficial reasons, then eventually Death would become a Luck of the Draw." "That's not what I believe," barked Confucius, "if people followed their Li then we can all just exist peacefully." "But what about different cultures and their Li?" asked Jesus. I passed the bowl to Confucious, watching the smoke softly rise from the baking grass. "People should simply stay within their own cultures and subcultures: The very existance of culture is in the formation of a society and the self-declaration of any sort of differences between A and B," Confucious stated quite clearly. "I believe everyone should exist in harmony, regardless of culture," said Lao Tzu. He was pretty baked, his eyes a purple hue, glazed with reminiscence. "And how is that so?" asked Jesus. Even he knew that sacrifices must be made. "The Way," Lao Tzu whispered, as smoke stalked his words coming out of his mouth. "Godammit, always that godamn Tao" Jesus said. "Well, can't we all just agree that we shouldn't just go out and kill people?" I asked. "You're missing the point," they all said to me in a chorus. Chapter 4: The Bible, in all it's Practicality. I sit in a chair, staring blankly at the table. "What is the meaning of life?" I ask. The book says nothing. "Why do you hold back on me?" My lips quiver, "Why do you not answer my pleas?" The book remains motionless, apathetic to my problems. "Well then, why should I believe You?" The book says nothing. "That's it, I'm burning you." What are words, what are thoughts, but simply things that become processed in our Brains? Is there an absolute, most efficient Process by which Thoughts can become their most pure, a Most Absolute? That is the state of Being. We think and become what naturally ensues. Chapter 5: Back to the Story, eh? So I got up out of the bathtub. Suicide is always a weak escape. I wonder though, with all these voices in my head, who needs friends? Friends are simply more drama, because we can never be sure what is going on in their heads, though we can never escape the drama that our Electrons put us through. E- Remember when you said to me, "I wish that we could live forever?" I replied, "We can always wish, but they will just remain Our dreams." Entitled "My Dream," it was somewhat clever, but right now, all I want is a cigarette. I check the time, just to make sure that I have enough before I have to go back behind the register. The clock strikes midnight and I grab my coat to leave. I wave goodbye to her, and she mouths "see ya." "Take it easy," as I feel the words bitter sweep past my lips. The air outside is brisk, and I can feel it nipping at my ears. My ears are always red, because of frostbite some years ago, when I got locked out of my house. The anecdote with this? A girl in my drawing class once thought I liked her because she thought I was blushing. My cigarette tastes a bit stale, as they all do, when you get near the filter. I take a deep breath and close my eyes. Winter is coming soon, I think. Until then, I watch the leaves fall and lay dead, on the street, to be brushed about. Each one a different color, each with their unique beauty. With each leaf on a tree I see a person, a child, and with age and the pitfall coming-of-age renaisance that we all seem to go through, just another leaf to be brushed away. I flick the filter with absolutely no effort and turn around to walk inside. The sun should be up in about six hours, I wonder, should I stay up to see it? "It's a little cold tonight" I say, "Yeah..." I feel her teeth tremble behind closed lips. "Here." "Thanks." The funny thing about giving your jacket to a girl is that people see it as such a nice thing; but really, it is the easiest thing in the world to do, and I'm no gentleman. My ears flush bright red and I notice my breath in front of my face, much like smoke. "haha, it's really cold tonight." I exclaim. "Here, I don't need this," as she takes off my jacket, "I'm fine: really." "No, I'll be alright." Her eyes bleed compassion and I assuage them with a smirk. The sky is a hazy blue, quenching thirst, and it seems to move towards us. Everything around us dissapears as salty, cold dew drops fall, and I see something in the sky. As it comes towards us, the infinite canvas, a buzzing in my ear gets louder and louder. I awake to my alarm clock, yelling, "Get up! It's time to go to work!" Four o clock and I rush in. I hate being late. As I put my coat on the hook, I frisk briskly for my name tag, and put it on. The line is long and the weekend is calling. "Hey," she gleams. I type my intials in, press enter, and a customer walks up to me. "That will be seven twenty two." "Thanks, have a nice day." After some time, the customers scatter, and I sit back to relax. She says to me: "Your name tag is on upside down." What is it that makes her so beautiful? Is it her mild, carefree smile? Is it her eyes, which shine so brightly green, as if they are detesting to the gods that they could not possibly be made as beautiful again on another woman? Is it her dark, velvet hair, which can only be mirrored by a night void of light? She is wearing her hair up today, but her bangs brush a bit past her eyes, pulling a somewhat alluring shadow across her face. I look upon myself and cast aside her being, to find what it is that is manifested upon her. I like how, despite how fragile our human hearts can be, she can manage to fake a smile; thoug,h I have heard she has had it quite rough. Perhaps in her I see my infant mortality, and that will to live forever, because perhaps, love can last forever. With the passage of any indefinite amount of time comes the erosion and decay of all things, though they are tangible and of this earth. Perhaps because we cannot explain something, it seems to last forever. The door mutters a creak behind me, followed by a loud slam. It always does that. Same walls, same room, and the same grimy feeling of discontent. I open a window and point the fan towards it, then move a chair near it. It's too cold to stand outside, so I smoke in my room most of the time. With a blanket over me, my feet resting comftorably on the window sill, and the smoke dancing in front of me, I suddenly feel great. I smile and close my eyes, just so I can see her. Like an kid with a paintbrush, in a clumbsy mist, I jumble together bits and pieces to make a smile. A mirror simply for me to stand in front of and ask, "How should I look?" I copy and rest easy. I notice her walk in a bit faster than usual, and she punches in efficiently without thought. Her hair is a bit mussy and her eyes a subtle red. "three dollars and thirty seven cents," I hear my self chirp, as seeing her in person was infinities beyond anything my mind could even begin to fantasize about, I glance back towards her and she stares, blankly, unchanged. Autumn rain is always so refreshing. Steam rises as I raise my cup, my lips gasping for fresh coffee. The monotonous pitter-patter of rain hits my hood, and I feel it soak through to seize my dry hair. I look at my watch; three minutes left on my break and half a cigarette. Time feels good. Thunder cracks, like an old man breaking a bone, and I notice that she jumped, spilling someones coffee on herself and the floor. "OUUUCHHHHH!" she screeches, as I turn around, grab a napkin, get some cold water, and walk towards her. "Are you okay?" "Yeah, it just spilled on my stomach a bit." I can't help but grin, how childish it is to jump at the thunder! She took offense to my grin, and her eyes spoke: So you think it's funny that I spilled and made a mess and probably burned myself pretty bad? "That was cute," I say, and then pause as I clean. For some odd reason, I always felt quite shy when talking to her about anything, but the words came out as if I was watching myself speak. "Jumping at the lightning, I mean." She quickly smiles and her eyes soften up a bit, then she walks past me to go in the back to get a clean shirt. "Thanks." she says, as it dissapates into the breathless, stale air of the coffee shop. "Would you like to hang out, get coffee sometime?" I ask quickly as she gives a customer their change. "sure. Anywhere but here though, I hate being here when I don't have to work." she rolls her eyes. I snap out of a daydream and get back to work, as she tucks in the clean shirt that she got from the back. "Thanks for cleaning up out here," she says to me. I wonder for a brief second if I should rewind and simply mimic my little fantasy, just to watch and see where it would have gone. A customer comes up to me as I decide not to. "That will be seven fifty two." Part 2 "Here's your change. Have a nice night." I say. A shadow sweeps behind me, and I say "hey" as he tucks his shirt in. He doesn't seem to notice, so I wait until after he is done to say it again. Though it barely comes out, so it must have come out as a whisper or something. He sure is out of it; must be the late night shift. "How's the day been?" he asks casually. "Slow as always," I respond, in the same effect. I look at the register in a futile attempt to make time move faster, and see that it is still only eight o clock. I hear him say, "have a nice afternoon." I can't help but laugh a bit at his absent mindness, and I tell him that it's eight o clock at night. "Oh I just woke up." "Up late again?" I smile a little. "hmmm," he ponders, "same old, same old... I was up writing a story." "About what?" I ask. There are no customers around, so this kind of small talk makes the time more bearable. "Just some story." He leaves it at that. At first, working here, one is baffled by the seemingly countless faces that rush through the register. After a while, it becomes routine. That old lady over there, who paid 3.37 for a measly cup of coffee? She is always here alone, though she talks to her self without reserve and watches people condescendingly. Her name is Mrs. Brooks, and she reminds me of the old bag ladies you see feeding pidgeons seeds in the park. I guesse you could say that the pidgeons are the people and the seeds are her thoughts. I sometimes wonder if she ever gets sick of it; the same people, the same place. Then I realize that I am asking myself this question as well. Working alone in a coffee shop gives you time to think, to ponder. Of course, when your co worker always seems out of it or pumped up on drugs of some sort, these times seem to be abundant. I see him sitting outside, smoking. He looks quite contemplative, and a little depressed. Not my business to meddle, though. Just moments before he was sitting inside, reading a small book. A collection of poetries of some sort. It kind of irritates me: these coffee shop intellectuals. They put on a visade like they are trying to do something with their life; they think are smarter than everyone else by reading what others say is good and restating what they read as their own "opinions." They feel like the world is some movie and they are the stars; as if any bad times that we suffer, whether financially or emotionally, are simply plot devices to lay plans for resolution. Peoples lives are stories, I must say, though they are not comedies or romances or late night B movies: they are tradgedies. No matter how much fame we gain, and no matter how much money we have, we just live to watch it eventually crumble down. Our only hope lies in believing that the future holds better times. You know what they say, "The grass is always greener..." Most of these people end up being like my co worker, who does not say anything important or show the least bit of interest in anything. They are just puppets, caught on to something they cling so hard to, the life of redundance. It's sad really; people in their prime who have the world in front of them, only to zone out while it passes by them and then to hope to get some of it back. Take Mrs. Brooks, for example. She must have been where we all were: a student of sorts with potential and livelihood. But our interests get screwed up as we grow up and our priorities are never as good as they should be. I smile at my own hypocricy. The clock was at 11:59 and I sat waiting at the register to punch out, my initials flashing in front of me. The door slammed behind me, and I curse myself for making so much noise. Luckily I did not wake him up. I giggle to myself, he looks so cute when he's asleep! "hey there" I whisper, only to get snores in reply. I creep up to his unsuspecting body and glide my hand up his stomach. His breathing pauses, and his eyes twitch a bit. I bring my face closer to his, hoping to get a quick kiss in before he wakes up, though his eyes were open and a broad smile ran across his face as our eyes caught. "Hey honey," I muse. "good morning." In a foggy daze the words crumble out. As he sits in the window, blowing smoke out into the hapless night sky, a rush of sadness swells inside me. "Please stop smoking" I plead. "I'm cutting back, I told you that." It's no use. And he smokes so much! He always has one in the morning, when he wakes up, and one after most meals, one before he goes to bed, and one after we make love. I sigh. "I just don't want to see you become sick and have cancer and look forty when you're thirty and..." "I'll be fine. Don't worry about it." I hate it when he says that. When I awake, it is to his face. It is somewhat amusing how we have been together for almost two years now, and it never feels old. No matter how routine my life can get, he shall never become a part of it. "bye bye honey" I whisper with pleasant delight, as I lay a light kiss on his cheek and grab my coat. I make sure to leave close the door quietly, as not to wake him. Some hours later, he finally shows up. "it's about time you got here," I say as he rushes past me, ignoring me as usual. "You were supposed to be here an hour..." I stopped myself midsentence. What's the point in talking to someone who doesn't listen? I sigh again. At least my boyfriend is never late; I smile as I think of him. He comes from the back, and I say "Hey!" with a cheery delight that surprises me. I hope I didn't startle him, but it seems he was not paying much attention, as he types in his initials to punch in. I see his name tag is on upside down, and I laugh a little to myself. His abstracted personality is cute in a way. Just the other day, it took him an hour or so to realize that he buttoned his shirt wrong. He looks busy helping customers, so I'll wait to tell him. I'm surprised he can get dressed in the morning without having someone to remind him to do so. I wonder, can someone who is so bemused ever become sick of routine? Later that night, I felt a compelling, growing sadness in my heart. What is it that makes me so cold to those arond me? Why is it that I have become what I hate, and what I fear most? Working a dead end job at this small coffee shop, coming home to the same small, unkempt apartment, and thinking the same dreadful thoughts? The utter routine; the constant smell of cigarettes and stale cologne that fills my room. The snoring, unemployed, lump of a man that I call my own. Even the sex can feel routine sometimes, with the same grunts, sweat and heat. I tried to muffle my crying in the pillow, but it's not like I had anything to worry about; he sleeps like a rock. When I awoke, my eyes were red and swollen. Rain pours down across the streets, and I glance out the window the see people running across the streets, trying not to get wet. "What a great way to start the day," I grumble sarcastically, as he sleeps. Not a care in the world. When I get to work, I toss my rainjacket across the floor in the back. I don't care. I suddenly feel tired, and time itches at my nerves. Slowly the minutes pass, and the customers come in, running circles of routine. Same face, same coffee, same money, same small talk, same smile. "Have a nice day" I say in a non chalant fashion. "That will be one sixty two" I hear from my left. I grin. He sounds more extroverted than usual. I wonder, what lottery did he win? Peoples faces seemed to blur and voice become drowning waves of sound with no direction. How late did I stay up last night, crying? I feel so weak. As I pick up someones coffee from the machine, a bolt of thunder cracks in the distance, not too far away. I almost never jump at such a thing, but I did, and I watch in horror as the coffee cup leaps from the tray to turn upside down. I let out a shrill, and I see him rushing towards me with napkins and a cup of cold water. "Are you okay?" he asked. I felt a bit surprised by the emotion he conveyed. He actually cares? "Yeah," I say smuggly, "it just spilled on my stomach a bit." I see him grin, and I realize that he is mocking me. He thinks it's funny that I spilled coffee everywhere and made this mess! "That was cute," I heard him say as he cleaned up the floor, "jumping at the lightning, I mean." I get it, the epiphany of the laymans joke. I throw off a fake smile and go to the back to clean up and get a dry shirt. "Thanks for cleaning up out here" I say when I come back. He may be a blockhead sometimes, but he sure has work ethic. He seems to ignore me, as usual, and goes to help a customer. "That will be seven fifty two," I hear in the faint distance.