Tuxedo was a magic cat. He knew all the words that people know in nine languages and could understand and speak them fluently (English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin and Cantonese). He traveled the world, mostly on his four paws. Sometimes he traveled by boat or by ship. Sometimes he would ride the rails and hop a train like the littlest hobo, who was one of his friends. He did not find it difficult to go wherever he wanted and so he saw all the great wonders of the world many times over and would return whenever he wished to his favourite spots.
One day at the Sagrada Familia, before the nativity facade on the east face of the church, Tuxedo lounged in the sun. Being mostly black meant that he absorbed sunlight rather that reflecting it. He stretched out as long as he could and rolled over onto his back, exposing his white belly. Today was a good day to be alive, he thought, as he watched several strangers approach and stop to pat him on the head. As he listed in reverie he could not help but overhear their conversation.
"Once we have acquired the diamond, we will need a reliable buyer lined up right away."
"Yes, yes. Of course, but you already met who I had in mind. You remember?"
"That old buffoon? "
"He has a reliable connection to unload them in America."
"I wouldn't have guessed. Are you sure he can be trusted?"
"He isn't doing it for any sense of altruism, we will give him a fair cut. We can always trust people to act in their own self-interest."
Tuxedo cat had enough with these people. He rolled onto his four paws and began padding away quickly. He did not bother to swipe at them like other, lesser cats might do, but he did begin plotting and seeing if he couldn't learn more about this diamond, and so he circled around and came back in front of the eastern facade of the Sagrada Familia. The people from earlier were just leaving and he was able to follow them safely at a distance. They were talking in low voices about all the places in the city they could rob. They appeared to be arguing, though their voices remained hushed, about which burglary would be the hardest, and therefore most worthy of them.
Through the diamond the image split into a parallax of fractured geometry. Fractal geometry. Kelaedoscopic rotations of snake scale tesselatation rendered many times over in each face of cold carbon which spun the eye around it, but not through it. There was something dark at its centre that somehow drew light from the room and glowed with its own light of its own cruel cool quality.
Heated hands pressed its clear plastic case, leaving smudges which would at the end of the day be Windexed away by a cleaner. They left grease impressions of their fingerprints all over it, despite the sign, which hung on the wall next to the diamond: Please do not touch the glass. There was extra security stationed throughout the gallery for the occasion. The dosens had been warned and been forced into taking a training course in the attempt that something were to go wrong. They were to told to try to remember faces, distinguishing scars, tattoos, villianous mustachios or other prominent features, ways of identifying a potential thief. Everyone who entered the gallery was a suspect, to be memorized and taken careful note of, so that in the event of some kind of break in the dosens could simply refer to their mental inventory of possible suspects and identify the perpetrator.
Monday, 15 July 2013
Cyberpunk ramlbings.
Ivan tapped away on the keyboard, a litre of clear vitamin water at his elbow. His hands were new and still a little stiff. But they would be worked in soon enough. Each tendon was grown individually and is a tiny cable woven out of inlocking strands of carbon buckyballs. The tip of each finger has a weighted magnet to keep the whole thing in tension and transfer movement. When his fingers pressed a key the magnets made a satisfying click on the plastic keyboard. He wore an old ring around the middle finger of his right hand, a thin gold band. The skin of his hands was grown in a vat somewhere before they layed it over its robot chasis.
Our brains aren't wired for this. It's lucky we have all this stuff to mediate for us
The video parlour was a vast dark recess of smoke, gleaming and flickering with the light of hundreds of computer screens... like the eyes a spider, reeking of body odor and shrimp, it was oddly silent. Then, somewhere, far away, a microwave was beeping. It took an aeon just to find a computer terminal. The place was sea of nerds. It just went on forever. And whatever terminal wasn't in use was either out of order or occupied by a derelict or homeless vagrant currently making his residence there. I caught the eye of one of the Uighur kids who seemed to be bouncing and selling drugs; he told me in a broken argot and a series of hand gestures that there was more room upstairs. He pointed his finger in the air, then added two more. Three. Third floor. Jesus this place was massive.
The stairwell was postered with the faces of a faded era of pop-culture. A junkie sat huddled in the corner, a needle graphically protruding from his arm. The door to the third floor had a life-size cut out of Mega Man X. The fluorescent lighting cast no light, but buzzed loudly and strobed around the edges of my vision.
I wore my woongjin stars jacket. My days in esports loomed behind me like a bad dream or a bad relationship. The carpal tunnel syndrom in my wrists was not all that was left of those days. Late nights spent in front of a computer screen, in my bedroom or at a friend's house, skipping school at a pc bang. I wore it in the glazed expression on my face, Growing up it was all there was to do. You went over to friend's houses and played video games. This turned to other virtual supplements like drugs and alcohol but the video games never went away. It began with a game called XCOM. It was about earth dealing with an alien invasion--a sort of expanded version of Space Invaders. It was all about monitoring various squads and alocating resources for earth's defenses. So as my life was spiraling out of control I was carefully organizing a multitiered strategic advance in a hyperspace military theatre. I remember talking through a ten dollar microphone to my clan of 5 or 6 British people. Sometimes I think I was crazy and talking to myself. Peace out Pr3P, Jamie, Dan, and whoever else, wherever you are.
I came upon a couple out in the hall. Apparently all the cubicles were occupied and they stood vacantly, waiting. He wore a black leather jacket and did his hair combed back like he was from the 1950s. She was going for the tribal look, with piercings and Aztec tattoos. I could tell they didn't belong here. There were none of the tell tale signs. No traces of orange Cheetos powder on the fingertips. No noticeable body odor. They were kempt. They made pretenses. Something was definitely off.
A man in a lime green suit came out of his cubicle. He gazed back and forth between all of us, as if committing our faces to memory. He was old man, I noted, as he began walking in my direction. He hadn't had any work done.
"Are you Winslow?"
I nodded.
"Come inside for a moment."
I bid the couple an apologetic look before heading inside. The phoney greaser seemed not to notice and casually spat on the ground. His girlfriend was too busy on her phone to look up.
Spiritus Mundi
Across the parkway at the mouth of an underground mall, a small crowd gathered, not loud and boisterous but hushed in worship. a neoprene face sat flat on a screen preening its eyelashes like a geisha, evoking anger with its mouth pressed into a muted vaccuum O, a pinhole into nothing. They sat transfixed, gazing into the retail store display window. Crowds of people brushed past them on their way to or from wherever it was they had to go. I sat and watched and sometimes noted some things down.
When the subway train came in, it made a note through the station like a tracheotomy wind rattled through lungs ridden with pneaumonoultramicroscopicsiliovolcaniconiosis
Aztec.
A silicon dagger hangs over the mechanical heart. The high priestess clips off her fingers into the bowl one by one.
The smoke from the marijuana cigarette, the laughing face of a doll and there she was always pulling me under. The swami's chanting voice condensing the moisture from the air in this rattling hollow chamber, fogging up the plastic. The market from here is only background noise. The haggling of vendors, the noise of the boys on their delivery bikes, for now it is all reduced to a burst ear drum silence that is, for the mercenary soul, deeply relaxing. For an instant the robotic heart skips.
The tribal eyes of man hidden beneath sunglasses, duct taped to an eagle nose, jaguar warrior, the scale of a boa constrictor, made to order, there must be someone under that wormwood tangle of dread locks, yellow pink and green bits of tape, party glitter, bits of leather ties and rubber hooks and metal rings linked together in a chain mail mesh. He made his rubber suit from what you threw away.
riposte glad now de-res with the neon tipped cigarette hanging glib out of the corner of his mouth. Chronos hung in the air--loud like mustard gas rattling through a breathing apparatus. Rubber-tight to this skull, skull-faced from age. The mask lowered and laser pointers traced the outline of his face onto the smoke and ash kicked up into the air by his neoprene boots.
Tastes exacto sharp
The stainless steel rat rusts out the rat trap, sliding a mini disc into the scar just north of his Adam's apple, connected directly of the resonating chamber of the larynx. Over the phone, any loss in fidelity will be hardly noticeable. Impersonating that suit should go just fine, given some luck, if the corp he works for doesn't turn Colombo all of a sudden and start hunting his ass down. He was discrete, but no one could make a move nowadays without leaving some kind of paper trail. Besides, in his business, you had to make yourself known somehow--how else would you get any work? There are few enough people out there looking for a hit man now. Everyone wants to go to the cops. And if not, then they want to take care of it themselves.
He looks out over Sargosa Flats lit up from the cold fusion light of the blast furnace, glittering like the back of an iguana under the blue-green glow of the strip. The residential towers crumbling down into the ocean, running along a sheltered harbour created by a curving man-made promontory like that reptiles tail curling around itself for coldblooded warmth. Lights outline the darkness for miles into the sea, waves crest to white from the helicopter wind. The chromatic lung, the readying of a bullet in the chamber. Acid rain washes the pier clean. As clean as anything gets in this town. Eyes of silver. Her lipstick is red. The heroin needle, trying to find a vein. Can't see in this light. Blue veins don't stand out too well under this blue park light. The keypad depressed in aharmonic semitones.
Dumb fingers can't remember the code.
The man with the fish bowl head stared at me from the side, moving horizontally towards me. The plastic bubble reflected the flourescent lighting, forming a halo. Angel wings but gollum hands. And there are diamonds being made, a laser hand arranging carbon atoms to order. It mocked all my years in the mine.
We brought the asteroids from space and broke them down with sister robot arms and laser guided cutting saws split them into their constituent elements. Each asteroid was once part of a larger planetoid object. Like the earth, the heavier metals like iron and lead and uranium are drawn to the core of these planetoids while the lighter elements settle towards the outer surface. These planetoids have the habit of being broken up into smaller asteroid-type objects. When this happens, some asteroids are made of lighter minerals and some of the heavier core minerals. Each one of these asteroids, formed of the heavy minerals of the planetoid core, contains, depending on its size, aprox. eighty percent of the entire mineral wealth of earth.
A vortex is any whirlpool with a downdraft.
It all swirles round the rusty drain like a coin spins round the yellow plastic bowl of the spiral wishing well I remember from the science centre, staying perpendicular to its curved surface with centripetal or centrifugal force, whichever it was, until it drops through a hole cut in the bottom, disappearing from sight and into the lock box. men come with keys to unlock the box and empty the contents of coins, or else it would all fill up, men like me. But I don't deal in coins, just wishes pushed aside and into whispered conversation. See the drainpipe begins with the sink of the air, vibrating with the noise of voices. And across the room extendable ears are hidden listening in the flowers. So it all winds round to me eventually. Down to me, the earbuds in my ear, the poor blue fidelity of the closed circuit monitor, all the creases in your face and around your finger joints, growing blocky and pixilated at 240p, but your voice still warms me. I shift in my chair, the fluorescent glow of the screen casting a stripe of chiaroscuro blue across my shadowed face, catching the smoke swirling above my head. my fingers dance along the keyboard, telling my aging machinery to rewind. A loop of analogue tape reverses on its spools and the rig shudders to a sort of shambling half-life. I can hear dust on the playback head. The capstan begins to revolve. Steam rises from an open microwave bag of popcorn. Earbuds are exchanged for larger headphones. Cords are switched, there is some static. There, all is silent and ready to begin.
Everyone plays videogames all the time now. She aimed the magnetic bolt of her crossbow at the figure in front of her. Her display lost resolution for a moment and skipped a few frames. He raised a hand in stop motion, clutching a gun. Her finger squeezed the trigger. She knew what would happen once the frog nano-toxin made contact with the bloodstream of her victim. It would be a pleasant 15 minutes or so of agony or perhaps even bliss, she had a hard time reading the expression on the faces of her victims, perhaps it stood somewhere in between the two. In that state who knows how long those 15 minutes would seem to stretch. Perhaps this moment is the meaning of afterlife, just like in that movie Waking Life.
Our brains aren't wired for this. It's lucky we have all this stuff to mediate for us
The video parlour was a vast dark recess of smoke, gleaming and flickering with the light of hundreds of computer screens... like the eyes a spider, reeking of body odor and shrimp, it was oddly silent. Then, somewhere, far away, a microwave was beeping. It took an aeon just to find a computer terminal. The place was sea of nerds. It just went on forever. And whatever terminal wasn't in use was either out of order or occupied by a derelict or homeless vagrant currently making his residence there. I caught the eye of one of the Uighur kids who seemed to be bouncing and selling drugs; he told me in a broken argot and a series of hand gestures that there was more room upstairs. He pointed his finger in the air, then added two more. Three. Third floor. Jesus this place was massive.
The stairwell was postered with the faces of a faded era of pop-culture. A junkie sat huddled in the corner, a needle graphically protruding from his arm. The door to the third floor had a life-size cut out of Mega Man X. The fluorescent lighting cast no light, but buzzed loudly and strobed around the edges of my vision.
I wore my woongjin stars jacket. My days in esports loomed behind me like a bad dream or a bad relationship. The carpal tunnel syndrom in my wrists was not all that was left of those days. Late nights spent in front of a computer screen, in my bedroom or at a friend's house, skipping school at a pc bang. I wore it in the glazed expression on my face, Growing up it was all there was to do. You went over to friend's houses and played video games. This turned to other virtual supplements like drugs and alcohol but the video games never went away. It began with a game called XCOM. It was about earth dealing with an alien invasion--a sort of expanded version of Space Invaders. It was all about monitoring various squads and alocating resources for earth's defenses. So as my life was spiraling out of control I was carefully organizing a multitiered strategic advance in a hyperspace military theatre. I remember talking through a ten dollar microphone to my clan of 5 or 6 British people. Sometimes I think I was crazy and talking to myself. Peace out Pr3P, Jamie, Dan, and whoever else, wherever you are.
I came upon a couple out in the hall. Apparently all the cubicles were occupied and they stood vacantly, waiting. He wore a black leather jacket and did his hair combed back like he was from the 1950s. She was going for the tribal look, with piercings and Aztec tattoos. I could tell they didn't belong here. There were none of the tell tale signs. No traces of orange Cheetos powder on the fingertips. No noticeable body odor. They were kempt. They made pretenses. Something was definitely off.
A man in a lime green suit came out of his cubicle. He gazed back and forth between all of us, as if committing our faces to memory. He was old man, I noted, as he began walking in my direction. He hadn't had any work done.
"Are you Winslow?"
I nodded.
"Come inside for a moment."
I bid the couple an apologetic look before heading inside. The phoney greaser seemed not to notice and casually spat on the ground. His girlfriend was too busy on her phone to look up.
Spiritus Mundi
Across the parkway at the mouth of an underground mall, a small crowd gathered, not loud and boisterous but hushed in worship. a neoprene face sat flat on a screen preening its eyelashes like a geisha, evoking anger with its mouth pressed into a muted vaccuum O, a pinhole into nothing. They sat transfixed, gazing into the retail store display window. Crowds of people brushed past them on their way to or from wherever it was they had to go. I sat and watched and sometimes noted some things down.
When the subway train came in, it made a note through the station like a tracheotomy wind rattled through lungs ridden with pneaumonoultramicroscopicsiliovolcaniconiosis
Aztec.
A silicon dagger hangs over the mechanical heart. The high priestess clips off her fingers into the bowl one by one.
The smoke from the marijuana cigarette, the laughing face of a doll and there she was always pulling me under. The swami's chanting voice condensing the moisture from the air in this rattling hollow chamber, fogging up the plastic. The market from here is only background noise. The haggling of vendors, the noise of the boys on their delivery bikes, for now it is all reduced to a burst ear drum silence that is, for the mercenary soul, deeply relaxing. For an instant the robotic heart skips.
The tribal eyes of man hidden beneath sunglasses, duct taped to an eagle nose, jaguar warrior, the scale of a boa constrictor, made to order, there must be someone under that wormwood tangle of dread locks, yellow pink and green bits of tape, party glitter, bits of leather ties and rubber hooks and metal rings linked together in a chain mail mesh. He made his rubber suit from what you threw away.
riposte glad now de-res with the neon tipped cigarette hanging glib out of the corner of his mouth. Chronos hung in the air--loud like mustard gas rattling through a breathing apparatus. Rubber-tight to this skull, skull-faced from age. The mask lowered and laser pointers traced the outline of his face onto the smoke and ash kicked up into the air by his neoprene boots.
Tastes exacto sharp
The stainless steel rat rusts out the rat trap, sliding a mini disc into the scar just north of his Adam's apple, connected directly of the resonating chamber of the larynx. Over the phone, any loss in fidelity will be hardly noticeable. Impersonating that suit should go just fine, given some luck, if the corp he works for doesn't turn Colombo all of a sudden and start hunting his ass down. He was discrete, but no one could make a move nowadays without leaving some kind of paper trail. Besides, in his business, you had to make yourself known somehow--how else would you get any work? There are few enough people out there looking for a hit man now. Everyone wants to go to the cops. And if not, then they want to take care of it themselves.
He looks out over Sargosa Flats lit up from the cold fusion light of the blast furnace, glittering like the back of an iguana under the blue-green glow of the strip. The residential towers crumbling down into the ocean, running along a sheltered harbour created by a curving man-made promontory like that reptiles tail curling around itself for coldblooded warmth. Lights outline the darkness for miles into the sea, waves crest to white from the helicopter wind. The chromatic lung, the readying of a bullet in the chamber. Acid rain washes the pier clean. As clean as anything gets in this town. Eyes of silver. Her lipstick is red. The heroin needle, trying to find a vein. Can't see in this light. Blue veins don't stand out too well under this blue park light. The keypad depressed in aharmonic semitones.
Dumb fingers can't remember the code.
The man with the fish bowl head stared at me from the side, moving horizontally towards me. The plastic bubble reflected the flourescent lighting, forming a halo. Angel wings but gollum hands. And there are diamonds being made, a laser hand arranging carbon atoms to order. It mocked all my years in the mine.
We brought the asteroids from space and broke them down with sister robot arms and laser guided cutting saws split them into their constituent elements. Each asteroid was once part of a larger planetoid object. Like the earth, the heavier metals like iron and lead and uranium are drawn to the core of these planetoids while the lighter elements settle towards the outer surface. These planetoids have the habit of being broken up into smaller asteroid-type objects. When this happens, some asteroids are made of lighter minerals and some of the heavier core minerals. Each one of these asteroids, formed of the heavy minerals of the planetoid core, contains, depending on its size, aprox. eighty percent of the entire mineral wealth of earth.
A vortex is any whirlpool with a downdraft.
It all swirles round the rusty drain like a coin spins round the yellow plastic bowl of the spiral wishing well I remember from the science centre, staying perpendicular to its curved surface with centripetal or centrifugal force, whichever it was, until it drops through a hole cut in the bottom, disappearing from sight and into the lock box. men come with keys to unlock the box and empty the contents of coins, or else it would all fill up, men like me. But I don't deal in coins, just wishes pushed aside and into whispered conversation. See the drainpipe begins with the sink of the air, vibrating with the noise of voices. And across the room extendable ears are hidden listening in the flowers. So it all winds round to me eventually. Down to me, the earbuds in my ear, the poor blue fidelity of the closed circuit monitor, all the creases in your face and around your finger joints, growing blocky and pixilated at 240p, but your voice still warms me. I shift in my chair, the fluorescent glow of the screen casting a stripe of chiaroscuro blue across my shadowed face, catching the smoke swirling above my head. my fingers dance along the keyboard, telling my aging machinery to rewind. A loop of analogue tape reverses on its spools and the rig shudders to a sort of shambling half-life. I can hear dust on the playback head. The capstan begins to revolve. Steam rises from an open microwave bag of popcorn. Earbuds are exchanged for larger headphones. Cords are switched, there is some static. There, all is silent and ready to begin.
Everyone plays videogames all the time now. She aimed the magnetic bolt of her crossbow at the figure in front of her. Her display lost resolution for a moment and skipped a few frames. He raised a hand in stop motion, clutching a gun. Her finger squeezed the trigger. She knew what would happen once the frog nano-toxin made contact with the bloodstream of her victim. It would be a pleasant 15 minutes or so of agony or perhaps even bliss, she had a hard time reading the expression on the faces of her victims, perhaps it stood somewhere in between the two. In that state who knows how long those 15 minutes would seem to stretch. Perhaps this moment is the meaning of afterlife, just like in that movie Waking Life.
Bedtime for Baby Boy
What did I like about the world? What was there besides her? And now that she was gone where was there to go when everything took the shape of her or bore her wicked memory onward?
I lay awake. It was late. Or early? This final question came in the voice of a sneering joker. What are you to do? Who are you to be with so few hours of sleep?
And as I close my eyes and think of some plan, perhaps I will buy a coffee on the way to work? perhaps I will set my alarm a half an hour ahead? It is as if some anxiety rises in me, which builds and builds, which at first keeps me up restless for long hours, but precisely at its crescendo, sends me off to sleep. My dreams like satyrs dance around it. Why do they dance?
I lay awake. It was late. Or early? This final question came in the voice of a sneering joker. What are you to do? Who are you to be with so few hours of sleep?
And as I close my eyes and think of some plan, perhaps I will buy a coffee on the way to work? perhaps I will set my alarm a half an hour ahead? It is as if some anxiety rises in me, which builds and builds, which at first keeps me up restless for long hours, but precisely at its crescendo, sends me off to sleep. My dreams like satyrs dance around it. Why do they dance?
Rhinoceros
She took the straw into her mouth and inhaled the strange gas. Salvinorin A. It bubbled away in a beaker suspended above her head, on a roller like an IV. She lay in bed with blankets that were the stars of the night sky. The moon was snoring. Hot air steamed from two craters on its surface. The steam rose in columns that rose into the sky and all the way to earth. And she felt herself flip upside down as the tumlbed through the sky and tucked her knees in tighter to her chest.
The tank bubbled. Toot toot goes the tugboat! She laughed out loud. She was only dozing, not really sleeping, but the pictures dancing through her mind kept pulling at her like the hands of children. And she wanted to play, oh if only to play in the heat of the sun in summer and popsicles and swimsuits and getting sprayed by the hose. The cool gas poured out like a cloud from the place where she pressed her lips. So when not inhaling from it she had kept it stopped up with her thumb. But now her hand lay lax and the cloud spilled out like a spirit or ghost of mist off the bed and settled into a stratum just off the floor, heavier than air, it sought the lowest point.
Blue flames licked the bottom of the kettle. Her mother dozed in a chair. When it came to a boil she shuddered, almost imperceptibly for a moment, her eyes remaining closed. She leaned forward quickly, and they snaped open as she pounced up like a great cat onto her slippered feet and padded her way to the stove. The dishes from dinner lay by the sink, washed and drying. She ran the tap until it was good and hot to scald the teapot.
Would you like some tea honey?
No thanks mom, it's time I went to bed.
Okay. Goodnight honey.
She tossed and turned for what seemed like hours, never finding a comfortable position, her neck always feeling to high or too low. Infomercials for memory foam pillows kept floating through her head, the x-ray pictures of the human spine and how it bends when lying on a normal mattress with a normal pillow. The graphic showed bright red glowing from these points of torsion. She could feel it pulsing in her neck. The cleaning lady must have given her some other pillow, her favourite pillow must be somewhere else. It must have got mixed up. Was it in her brother's room? She pictured him sleeping soundly and it filled her with rage. She snapped open her eyes and flipped over onto her back. It was then, suddenly, that she realized how sleepy she was, how late it must be, or early. There must have been a phase shift.
The pictures on her wall looked eerily down at her. Behind glass they seemed withdrawn, distorted, reflecting the light from the hallway. The faces in them, stern, old Victorian faces presided over the whole scene like a three-headed magistrate, dispensing forgiveness, mercy and clemency. Two rhinoceros beetles fought in a ring of salt on the dresser. Kabutomushi. A scorpion sat in a ring of fire dug in the sand. Men were gambling, passing money back and forth furiously, chattering over the smell of hot metal, seared steak, welding fumes, the sound of wind out the window. It was open a crack. The drapes, diaphanous, danced with a ghost. The breeze was cool and yet she felt warm, as if she was sitting beside her grandfather's fire, that he had kindled in the fire place in front of her as she watched. She helped him carry the wood in from the back room and he placed the logs carefully in its great jaws. Just enough newspaper for kindling, he would ask her to light a match.
The tank bubbled. Toot toot goes the tugboat! She laughed out loud. She was only dozing, not really sleeping, but the pictures dancing through her mind kept pulling at her like the hands of children. And she wanted to play, oh if only to play in the heat of the sun in summer and popsicles and swimsuits and getting sprayed by the hose. The cool gas poured out like a cloud from the place where she pressed her lips. So when not inhaling from it she had kept it stopped up with her thumb. But now her hand lay lax and the cloud spilled out like a spirit or ghost of mist off the bed and settled into a stratum just off the floor, heavier than air, it sought the lowest point.
Blue flames licked the bottom of the kettle. Her mother dozed in a chair. When it came to a boil she shuddered, almost imperceptibly for a moment, her eyes remaining closed. She leaned forward quickly, and they snaped open as she pounced up like a great cat onto her slippered feet and padded her way to the stove. The dishes from dinner lay by the sink, washed and drying. She ran the tap until it was good and hot to scald the teapot.
Would you like some tea honey?
No thanks mom, it's time I went to bed.
Okay. Goodnight honey.
She tossed and turned for what seemed like hours, never finding a comfortable position, her neck always feeling to high or too low. Infomercials for memory foam pillows kept floating through her head, the x-ray pictures of the human spine and how it bends when lying on a normal mattress with a normal pillow. The graphic showed bright red glowing from these points of torsion. She could feel it pulsing in her neck. The cleaning lady must have given her some other pillow, her favourite pillow must be somewhere else. It must have got mixed up. Was it in her brother's room? She pictured him sleeping soundly and it filled her with rage. She snapped open her eyes and flipped over onto her back. It was then, suddenly, that she realized how sleepy she was, how late it must be, or early. There must have been a phase shift.
The pictures on her wall looked eerily down at her. Behind glass they seemed withdrawn, distorted, reflecting the light from the hallway. The faces in them, stern, old Victorian faces presided over the whole scene like a three-headed magistrate, dispensing forgiveness, mercy and clemency. Two rhinoceros beetles fought in a ring of salt on the dresser. Kabutomushi. A scorpion sat in a ring of fire dug in the sand. Men were gambling, passing money back and forth furiously, chattering over the smell of hot metal, seared steak, welding fumes, the sound of wind out the window. It was open a crack. The drapes, diaphanous, danced with a ghost. The breeze was cool and yet she felt warm, as if she was sitting beside her grandfather's fire, that he had kindled in the fire place in front of her as she watched. She helped him carry the wood in from the back room and he placed the logs carefully in its great jaws. Just enough newspaper for kindling, he would ask her to light a match.
TED
TED was the face of the cult.
It was the fountain head of propaganda, spewing "be yourself", "slums are the future". Thousands of people, all the most affluent members of society and academia apply every year to be a member, of them two thousand (2,000) are chosen and these are each asked to pay eight thousand dollars ($8,000). Speakers are not payed, but rewarded with networking opportunities. Everyone wants to pitch their idea, everyone is sharking around looking for investment. This is where start-ups go to live or die.
I was working for myself at the time for SOLARIS and our work had attracted enough attention so one year I was actually accepted and I had to think about actually getting eight thousand dollars together, and enough for a plane ticket down south. At this point we had essentially nothing left in the company and would have closed down if we didn't secure an investor. But this was a venture capital Roman orgy.
It was the fountain head of propaganda, spewing "be yourself", "slums are the future". Thousands of people, all the most affluent members of society and academia apply every year to be a member, of them two thousand (2,000) are chosen and these are each asked to pay eight thousand dollars ($8,000). Speakers are not payed, but rewarded with networking opportunities. Everyone wants to pitch their idea, everyone is sharking around looking for investment. This is where start-ups go to live or die.
I was working for myself at the time for SOLARIS and our work had attracted enough attention so one year I was actually accepted and I had to think about actually getting eight thousand dollars together, and enough for a plane ticket down south. At this point we had essentially nothing left in the company and would have closed down if we didn't secure an investor. But this was a venture capital Roman orgy.
Subways
Lucky. The subways run until two in the morning. After that, unless you have money for a cab, is the night bus. These are ghastly. Each one a shambling Barbarossa stagecoach. Engines roaring, raising and lowering pneumatically at each stop, lurching forward before careening into traffic. Each night they become packed with the detritus of the drinking crowds, too drunk to drive, too broke to take a cab, making their way home in a half-dead mob, eyes glazed over, checking their cellphones for text messages, vomit running down the centre aisle, mostly liquid.
This is public transportation at its worst. You can say what you want about the morning commute or rush hour crowds, the vomit comet trumps it all. Which is not to say that the public transportation in this city is always terrible. There are certain times of day where it is bearable: after about 11 o'clock in the mourning and before four pm, the later evening after the work rush, these are periods of relative quiet. And there is a certain hour just before the subways close where everything goes almost magic. Right before the rush for last train, where certain odd people come out of the woodwork. I met an old woman with white hair and heavy silver jewelry. Earrings, a necklace, rings, all in the same heavy style. She wore a leather jacket and spoke in a New England sort of way that sounded like old money. She had a black eye and as I was talking with her she was doing coke out of a silver tin. She said that she had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend and that she had been riding the subway for hours. I told her I liked to ride the subway just the same and that I would sometimes just sit for hours, without a book or anything, just watching people. And I said how nowadays people all have to do two things or three things at once and they can't just eat dinner without watching TV or they have to listen to music everywhere they go like their life is a movie and they are not only the star but also the director.
She told me about how she was cheated on her husband with his accountant. She said how he had said that she had only loved him for his checkbook, that it was only natural for her to try to fuck it more directly. I said how the accountant spoke his lines like a priest promising mediation. But that he only ever stood in as second best, a consolation saying, "Please, do not look behind the curtain."
I'm not sure how well that went over, so I tried to ask her how long ago this had happened. She offered me some coke and I accepted. 17 years ago. Their son never speaks to her but he's a doctor or a lawyer or something in a large American city. She found a bird dead on the road so she put it in her purse, would you like to see it?
I did a line and said why not.
The whole experience later reminded me of a time when I was headed over to my ex girlfriend's parent's place in in the west end, just before the subway closed. There was a man in a bow tie sat down across from me with red eyes from crying. He looked totally despondent, rocking back and forth with the motion of the train. In his hands he held a small red pocket notebook. His red eyes traced lines written inside, darting back and forth like a frightened animal. His lips moved silently as if in prayer. I imagined his story, the epic saga of love and drama with his one true love, now estranged, who mocked him from the happier time locked within the pages of this aging diary, like these people locked away down here in tin cans, young in their hearts, kept fresh. And now, each one proud of their scars.
This is public transportation at its worst. You can say what you want about the morning commute or rush hour crowds, the vomit comet trumps it all. Which is not to say that the public transportation in this city is always terrible. There are certain times of day where it is bearable: after about 11 o'clock in the mourning and before four pm, the later evening after the work rush, these are periods of relative quiet. And there is a certain hour just before the subways close where everything goes almost magic. Right before the rush for last train, where certain odd people come out of the woodwork. I met an old woman with white hair and heavy silver jewelry. Earrings, a necklace, rings, all in the same heavy style. She wore a leather jacket and spoke in a New England sort of way that sounded like old money. She had a black eye and as I was talking with her she was doing coke out of a silver tin. She said that she had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend and that she had been riding the subway for hours. I told her I liked to ride the subway just the same and that I would sometimes just sit for hours, without a book or anything, just watching people. And I said how nowadays people all have to do two things or three things at once and they can't just eat dinner without watching TV or they have to listen to music everywhere they go like their life is a movie and they are not only the star but also the director.
She told me about how she was cheated on her husband with his accountant. She said how he had said that she had only loved him for his checkbook, that it was only natural for her to try to fuck it more directly. I said how the accountant spoke his lines like a priest promising mediation. But that he only ever stood in as second best, a consolation saying, "Please, do not look behind the curtain."
I'm not sure how well that went over, so I tried to ask her how long ago this had happened. She offered me some coke and I accepted. 17 years ago. Their son never speaks to her but he's a doctor or a lawyer or something in a large American city. She found a bird dead on the road so she put it in her purse, would you like to see it?
I did a line and said why not.
The whole experience later reminded me of a time when I was headed over to my ex girlfriend's parent's place in in the west end, just before the subway closed. There was a man in a bow tie sat down across from me with red eyes from crying. He looked totally despondent, rocking back and forth with the motion of the train. In his hands he held a small red pocket notebook. His red eyes traced lines written inside, darting back and forth like a frightened animal. His lips moved silently as if in prayer. I imagined his story, the epic saga of love and drama with his one true love, now estranged, who mocked him from the happier time locked within the pages of this aging diary, like these people locked away down here in tin cans, young in their hearts, kept fresh. And now, each one proud of their scars.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)