go on, take the money and run

It's raining. A driving downpour that smelled of both death and rebirth. Underneath umbrellas, underneath a streetlamp, two seemingly inconsequential gentlemen are waiting.

"I'm hungry."
"Me too. But there's nothing as can be done."
"He's late."
"They often are."
"Are you sure he's coming?"
"Nope."
"So how long do we wait?"
"Until he comes."
"What if he doesn't?"
"Someone else's problem."
"But if he never comes..."
"I think there are some chips in the car."
"Oh ... I think I can wait a little longer, though."
"Probably for the best."

...

"So are we going to kill this one?"
"Probably."
"You don't know?"
"I wasn't told."
"Then why are we here?"
"To wait."
"And...?"
"The answers will come. Or they won't. No matter."

Headlights in the distance, approaching. A black luxury automobile pulls to the curb. The driver exits, leaving the car running, walks round and opens the rear passenger side door holding above it an umbrella. A man in the full length fur coat steps from the car. He and the driver are dead before he can fully straighten. The only sound is the rain and the whisper of the engine.

conversations in idleness; more to come

Two seemingly inconsequential gentlemen stand in the shadows of Whitman’s derelict warehouse district; waiting.

“So, I’ve been reading this new book.”
“Is it another one about time travel? Time-traveling pirate ninjas maybe.”
“No need to be condescending… And they are time-traveling strippers.”
“Well that is much better.”
“Everybody loves a stripper. I know I do.”
“And what might these strippers be doing with their merry little time jaunts?”
“Trying to save Lincoln.”
“What?? What a horrible, ill-advised, catastrophic plan.”
“What do you mean?”
“Along the timeline that Lincoln was not assassinated, the one where Johnny Wilkes turns the gun on himself instead, the world goes to shit. Lincoln becomes the most fearsome tyrant in all of recorded history. Way beyond that petty orgies and making your horse senator kiddie shit.”
“Where do you get this stuff? You act like you know this for certain. Like it’s fact and not just some pulp novel I found discarded in a bus station bathroom.”
“Yeah, well. I read it in a book or something.
(awkward pause)
“You know, if they were traveling back in time to save Alexander Hamilton, I could support that. He should have lived. Fucking Aaron Burr. Plus old Alex would have loved to have been rescued by strippers. He was a big fan. Invented the g-string you know. Not that anyone wants to give him credit.”
(less awkward but equally pregnant pause)
“Want to hit up On the Roxxx later?”
“We’ll see if there’s time… Hold up, I think this might be him. Quiet.”

Sorry, Jeff, but this is part of it too/writing as therapy

I need a break from the crazy dull monotony we call life. I mean, shit (and let's be on our merry way). who actually wants this? To blend into this droning choir of halfdead dying soulless dumbfucks. The world is far too full of people doing nothing, shuffling on and off this mortal coil never raising their eyes to the heavens, never mattering, moving or contributing a verse to the powerful play. Accuse me of nonsense, lies or the crazy. do it, I have done it all myself. I no longer care. You hold none of the keys to the dungeons I desire. I have come from beyond the goblin city and ... you ... have ... no ... power over me.

My head is full. Snappy commercial jingles, books, movies, songs, words, thoughts, images, ideas, slander, prose, nonsense, insight, enlightenment, glory, bullshit, lies.

Growing up at the end of the world doesn’t do much for a body. Broken, shattered before I even had a chance. My potential lost I know not even what of. I could jump but I don’t even know if I would fall. Nothing is certain. That might be a problem. We aren’t sure. We are never sure. That might be a problem too. no one is looking into it. but the answers might surface in another one of those dreams that speak to me truths of events I have never seen, blending so well into my real life as to blur all distinction/maybe I’ve been drinking too much/spending too much time alone with only the voices and the lies and the signal(noise) to keep me company.

Look for a pattern. Always look for patterns. I have never been able to shed the analytical side of my life. I gave up math and science in college (I found that I was unsuited to putting forth the effort and I just did not give a fuck about all that shit you need to learn before you get to the good theoretical shit/same with some of that philosophy and so I fell into the books who will sell you their lies for cheap). But there is pattern recognition in my soul. That innate aneristic desire to order the goddamn world that went and got itself all fucked up. Of course, my order and Their Order and two completely different motherfucking things. We would be wise not to conflate the two. Fuck sure on that. I am not nor have I ever been a member of the ________ Party. Whatever. A passive sense of distrust towards life, the universe, everything, and ideology in general. I read people decently. They live by their patterns. I am afraid that I might do the same. And with all that effort expended on cultivating unpredictability, I would find that rather disappointing.

Speeding towards infinity, the balance is off and too many are dying for no good goddamn reason and the fuck of it all is I can’t seem to tell if I care. I don’t know anymore. But if it doesn’t happen to me/near me, does it matter? Does it really happen? Does life go on outside the walls of my skull? Because I know that I couldn’t imagine something this reasonable, horrible, and boring. Not my way. Never my way. I think, that is, that I have a way and so…something.

The thing is, there are answers in here somewhere. I see them in my sleep. I know things that I can’t couldn’t (shouldn’t?) know. but they vanish in that fleeting alarm fucked waking. It’s fucking killing me. this having a job shit. this waking up and going and doing someone else’s work. this is not my work. my work is here: with the bottle, the page, the signal, the noise, and everything so ever muchly much more. And I never get to it because the world is driving the sense out of me with its mindnumbing schlock and bullshit, its cleverness and stupidity, its failed attempts at meaning and usefulness, at relevance. The world is a endless collection of dying specimens of an experiment gone wrong. Clogged with drones and rotting flesh, I know not which way is up. I don’t know what I am thinking, I am not in control and the lunatics are on the grass (there is no room upon the hill, the moon or anywhere else the songs tell us to gather does that mean I am not alone, that others have gone before or that I am more alone than ever, that the signal was never meant for me and I got it all wrong all over again.).

Get all this crazy out now in the dark before you go back out into the sun and see people (you remember people don’t you?). am I just a misanthrope? A cynic, a liar? Or am I dreamer and a prophet who has lost faith and lost his way? Is there a difference? Can’t it be both? All these questions no answers not even proper grammar or punctuation no wonder I fear I would be unable to teach the language to foreigners. Just another lie to get myself out of this place going anywhere have shoes will travel.

Does anybody really read this? Does anybody really know what’s going on?

I wrote a short little piece not long after college and then I decided for fun that I would annotate it, that I would meticulously mark each deviation from the standard etc and the reason for it, each quote/reference and why I felt compelled to use such a line at such a moment. It took a while (it was only a short piece, it would be hard as fuck to say do it for a rambling shitshow like this (try it, I dare you/double dog dare you/I’ll take the physical challenge) and ended up getting longer as the annotations inevitably needed annotations of their own and so on. I’m sure I did not finish the job. I have no patience for such meticulous actions, no Danielewski I. I don’t know why I mention it. I suppose it serves to highlight the perils of influence or perhaps the nature of my writing style (perhaps even giving insights into my psyche/I wonder what it would be like to be psychoanalyzed/I wonder what they might find, if it would mean anything or whatever).

I lose track of things, fall off the page, digress, whatever, I know not what of. I gave up seeking all the answers. I never find



"What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know it's mine." - the Beatles

Fate, it seems, is not without an overdeveloped sense of coincidence.

(a late edition, not that you would have noticed)
It’s a tricky thing: being. I suppose it might get easier as times passes (time always passes even though it doesn’t even exist/never enough always out of) but I have no knowledge of that. if you don’t think about it or if you drown it in booze and other assorted chemicals you can come to an approximate state of ignorance and bliss. But that never lasts and like a shame spiral it takes you farther down to a hellpit that is nowhere near the bottom that anyone wants to be hitting. Not the good kind of hitting bottom like in Fight Club where they shed the bullshit of the material world for that sweet existential human reality. No one is desirous to be beholden to a master whether he be man, machine, system, or supposed leisure activity. “Freedom’s just another word for having nothing left to lose”/“Only when we have nothing are we free to do anything.” And life goes ever onward down that road that no one takes.

It’s all reaction; I’ve got nothing of my own

***

“No one actually says shit like that.”
“I have.”
“To girls?”
“Surprisingly enough.”
“And it works?”
“Fuck no.”
“Ha haha.”
“I mean, it endears them to me and all. Gets them thinking I’m a swell enough fellah. But it sure as hell don’t make any of them want to fuck me.”
“Balls yo.”
“Don’t I know it. I’m just not a smooth individual. That making myself look good shit just don’t come easy to me. Don’t much come at all.”

***

“Isaac, I don’t even know you. How can you say that you love me?”
“I can say anything I want. Truth of the matter is, there some things you just know that don’t need reasons. This is one of them.”
“I don’t even know you. This isn’t going to work.”
“Fair enough. I get it. But we both know that’s not your real reason.”

***

“Who are you?”
“Who do you want me to be?”
“Who are you?”
“Does it matter?”
“Who are you?”
“I don’t know.”

***

“Where do we go from here?”
“Anywhere we want. Anywhere we can. Don’t much make no difference.”
“Home, then?”
“And where might that be?”

***

“Hey you … wake up.”
“Not yet. It’s not time yet.”