Two ways to look at it, really:
[ONE\] I'm inside the back of a car, inside the trunk, and I've been struggling for seventy-odd years to get the hell out of these cable holders. My wrists are raw and my feet are bound with duct tape. I push and twist and pull and hurt myself over and over and over again. I bang my head, my feet, my body against every inch of the trunk, hoping against hope somebody from the outside can hear me. I do this over and over, until I'm so tired I have difficulty breathing.
Each breath becomes precious, as I realize my time is running out. But then I catch a singular shaft of sunlight streaming through a crack in the trunk. It must be daytime outside. That vibrant string occupies my entire consciousness, stamping out any stray thought, blocking out any stimuli that was less than impending, and I think, with the conviction of a fast-dissipating soul, "It is not going to get any better than this." And I am, for all intents and purposes, right.
or
[TWO\] I'd have difficulty describing this sea of infinite possibility in a way that can properly impress your visual armory. There are mythical creatures here: human beings with extra appendages erupting from their spines, human beings that hardly look like human beings, but part great big birds and great big cats and great big primal entities covered in beast fur, scales, or sugar-coated puff things.
There are time-fucked places over here: the multiplicity of living many lives, a profiler for the satanic brigade, a soldier with the eyes and nose of an unstoppable, unidentifiable serial killer, a stalker bent on remaining unknown but in his wake, a stream of inspired paintings and heart-rending installations about the object of affection. To live these lives in glorious, singing parallels, and to switch and jump between one and the other and to not know how and when and why.
The thing is, there are monsters, too. It killed a friend yesterday. Again.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Dumas Chang and the Universe
Dumas holds up a hand and stops walking. “Eighty-five. Why do I do what?”
“You leave whatever you happen to be doing every single day at five minutes to eleven to walk in the desert. Why?”
“The last time I answered that question The Cesspool started its nightly ‘Send Dumas Back to Norway’ series.”
The kid laughs, like bells. “Why’d they want to send you back to Norway? Are you from Norway? Where is Norway?”
“I don’t care where I came from, kid, same way you shouldn’t care about your origins. I’m the most normal guy around—”
“Ha. Ha. Ha.”
“—and, the reason I walk is so I can go and play chess with the Friar.”
“The Friar? Is that the old guy with the purple thing over at the guard posts?”
“Yes, and the only one as far as I know.”
“Why?”
“Let’s walk fifteen steps so we can finish our first hundred, okay?”
“Okay.”
They walk fifteen steps out of town and into the desert.
“Okay,” the kid says, stopping.
Dumas stoops with his hands on his knees so he and the kid are at eye-level.
“Okay. The question is why. The answer is: mostly because I can, but also because I’m looking for anchors.”
“What’s an anchor? You mean for ships?”
“Yes, for ships. For my ship.”
“Where’s your ship?”
Dumas straightens himself up and stretches out his arms. “Right here!”
“I’m confused.”
It is Dumas’ turn to laugh. He puts a finger underneath the kid’s chin so the kid is looking up at him.
“You don’t have to have been in the ocean to know what it’s like. You’ve seen it in the movies, in TV shows, in the archives. Imagine that the entire space-time continuum is the ocean. In that ocean, everything flows into everything else: stuff you know because you saw them in the past, stuff you feel you know will happen in the future, stuff that’s happening right now, stuff that should have been, stuff that never was, at least in this version of history.
“In theoretical physics, all possible realities already exist somewhere—and by this I mean whether or not you return that book on time because it says right there,” he says, pointing at the back of the book, “‘Three days for fiction,’ where each decision leads to a different outcome, a different you—it’s just that you can’t get to that single viewing deck where you can see everything because, well, by nature, it’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because who we are or what we are or why we are would be so closely tied to where or when this event exists that it cannot conceive that the world be something other than what we think it is. We believe we need a body or at least a consciousness to do the observing.”
“Well, we do, don’t we?”
“Well, yeah. And there’s nothing wrong with that. This world rocks. And it’s more than enough to contain the most compelling and the most meaningful of lifetimes. I’m just saying, that sometimes, when you allow yourself to lose yourself, or you were born without a sense of self, it becomes very hard to function like a normal person.”
“But wouldn’t that be cooler?”
“Of course, you’d think that. But there are too many minds that insist that this plane of reality exist. Including you. And I’m just one guy.”
“So, for you to not get lost in all these shit about the ocean, you need an anchor.”
“Or anchors. I dream big.”
“Have you found any?”
Dumas smiles again. “You ask too many questions. Can we quit this talk until I reach my prime number?”
The kid crosses his arms and grumbles audibly. Nevertheless, they start walking until they reach a tall trailer husk near the guard post at the left of the town’s entrance. At one hundred and thirty, Dumas begins taking bigger steps. The kid accuses him of cheating. He ignores this and lands on one hundred and thirty-nine.
“You leave whatever you happen to be doing every single day at five minutes to eleven to walk in the desert. Why?”
“The last time I answered that question The Cesspool started its nightly ‘Send Dumas Back to Norway’ series.”
The kid laughs, like bells. “Why’d they want to send you back to Norway? Are you from Norway? Where is Norway?”
“I don’t care where I came from, kid, same way you shouldn’t care about your origins. I’m the most normal guy around—”
“Ha. Ha. Ha.”
“—and, the reason I walk is so I can go and play chess with the Friar.”
“The Friar? Is that the old guy with the purple thing over at the guard posts?”
“Yes, and the only one as far as I know.”
“Why?”
“Let’s walk fifteen steps so we can finish our first hundred, okay?”
“Okay.”
They walk fifteen steps out of town and into the desert.
“Okay,” the kid says, stopping.
Dumas stoops with his hands on his knees so he and the kid are at eye-level.
“Okay. The question is why. The answer is: mostly because I can, but also because I’m looking for anchors.”
“What’s an anchor? You mean for ships?”
“Yes, for ships. For my ship.”
“Where’s your ship?”
Dumas straightens himself up and stretches out his arms. “Right here!”
“I’m confused.”
It is Dumas’ turn to laugh. He puts a finger underneath the kid’s chin so the kid is looking up at him.
“You don’t have to have been in the ocean to know what it’s like. You’ve seen it in the movies, in TV shows, in the archives. Imagine that the entire space-time continuum is the ocean. In that ocean, everything flows into everything else: stuff you know because you saw them in the past, stuff you feel you know will happen in the future, stuff that’s happening right now, stuff that should have been, stuff that never was, at least in this version of history.
“In theoretical physics, all possible realities already exist somewhere—and by this I mean whether or not you return that book on time because it says right there,” he says, pointing at the back of the book, “‘Three days for fiction,’ where each decision leads to a different outcome, a different you—it’s just that you can’t get to that single viewing deck where you can see everything because, well, by nature, it’s impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because who we are or what we are or why we are would be so closely tied to where or when this event exists that it cannot conceive that the world be something other than what we think it is. We believe we need a body or at least a consciousness to do the observing.”
“Well, we do, don’t we?”
“Well, yeah. And there’s nothing wrong with that. This world rocks. And it’s more than enough to contain the most compelling and the most meaningful of lifetimes. I’m just saying, that sometimes, when you allow yourself to lose yourself, or you were born without a sense of self, it becomes very hard to function like a normal person.”
“But wouldn’t that be cooler?”
“Of course, you’d think that. But there are too many minds that insist that this plane of reality exist. Including you. And I’m just one guy.”
“So, for you to not get lost in all these shit about the ocean, you need an anchor.”
“Or anchors. I dream big.”
“Have you found any?”
Dumas smiles again. “You ask too many questions. Can we quit this talk until I reach my prime number?”
The kid crosses his arms and grumbles audibly. Nevertheless, they start walking until they reach a tall trailer husk near the guard post at the left of the town’s entrance. At one hundred and thirty, Dumas begins taking bigger steps. The kid accuses him of cheating. He ignores this and lands on one hundred and thirty-nine.
Backhanded Profiling
Well. So there, if you think about it, everything's out here (vast blue silent empyrean, sea of cloudless, mightless, broken pianos and water-logged pink pillows caught against logs resembling the last few moments of the forlorn, hearts crushed by the pain of longing) floating, cerebral debris, artifacts of love and hormones and undignified/dignified lust, severed friendship bands, memorized conversations that bordered on a future so certain it would find you together on some porch, laughing at kids.
Your heat is so damn specific, molten mercury running through your veins must find should find goddamnit why can't you find your way to me?
And how all this can exist in someone else's universe, but not in yours, suggests the greatest profanity, but in the end it is also ultimately golden. We don't elevate the mundane to feed egos, but to make sure we are not alone.
Each word, after all, is a bottled message for the universe to read. That sometimes that's the best we can ever get out of it, the knowledge that it was never meant to be, and that we must move on.
And that, maybe, something better is on its way.
Your heat is so damn specific, molten mercury running through your veins must find should find goddamnit why can't you find your way to me?
And how all this can exist in someone else's universe, but not in yours, suggests the greatest profanity, but in the end it is also ultimately golden. We don't elevate the mundane to feed egos, but to make sure we are not alone.
Each word, after all, is a bottled message for the universe to read. That sometimes that's the best we can ever get out of it, the knowledge that it was never meant to be, and that we must move on.
And that, maybe, something better is on its way.
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