Wednesday, January 19, 2005
So, yeah. Something bad happened. Did you know? Here's a link. There's more here. Er. Talk among yourself.
Anyway, this is a little piece that I just pushed out now. It's a bunch of stuff that's been swimming around in my head for the last little while, but it's all exposition. I really need to work on getting dialogue and plot and stuff going on.
But, for the time being, here is a little piece of the world of tomorrow as it floats around behind my eyes.
Freedom from Desire
It's first thing in the morning. Frank's up. Right
NOW.
Full on frontal assault. Manic DJs storm his sandy pillbox. A crack-a-dawn jack-in-the-box, Frank bursts the burning membrane of another day.
Whisps of dreams trail around his ankles like a ribbon on a rock thrown into a caldera. A tang of fresh plastic, the seductive giggling of some long-ago whore, toy alien fingers with bloody stub tails trailing across his anus, crackling purple eyes and a sparking laugh.
Sleep in his eyes.
Dreams going, Frank digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. Dreams going, Frank eradicates sleep. Dreams gone, black and red cononae, after- after- after-images dance under his lids.
The smell of bad coffee wafts into Frank's tiny loft. He swings his feet over the edge of the bed. Plants them. Drops his head back into his hands for a return engagement. Feels the floor sway slightly.
A momentary hitch, swiftly smoothed. A tiny prick of the ears. A fraction of a twitched eyebrow. A reflex reflexively suppressed.
"Every time," Frank says to himself, just like he does every time.
Frank stands up, sets the floor swaying. Frank takes a step, and the floor gets closer to the drunken reel it promises.
Frank stops at the railing. Leans on it. And the floor's jig begins to ease as Frank acquaints himself, yet again, with the murky water. With the shattered edge of the floor. With the taught cables that suspend his bedroom between unwelcome water and his leaky roof, all fruit of the whirlwind.
Frank isn't drunk. Wasn't drunk. He wishes he was, in some ways. But he is free of that desire.
*****
The coffee was good. Or at least is tasted more strongly of delicious fats and sugars than of a filthy filter and water stolen from the sea by a bit of clear plastic and a metal bucket.
Cream is a luxury that Frank indulges in, for want of the knowledge that his filter wants washing. He trades for it, twice a week, from a little Chinese sampan lady with an impeccable French accent.
This, his home, this new Venice, born of a century's profligacy or nature's wrath, pick your poison, was a magnet for the strange. "Displaced people seek a place where they can keep an eye on displacement." A comment that Frank, drunk, thought profound and which he spent the rest of a night down at Dino's explaining in shrinking circles of flumoxed, sodden logic.
Back when Frank still desired drink.
*****
Now it is time to attend to his little herd of Goats(TM).
It used to be that the sound of their little cloven hooves would enrage Frank. The Goats(TM) stumbled back and forth, like little drunken lords, tap tap tapping across the corrugated metal of Frank's roof, their floor.
Finally, though, Frank made a breakthrough deal. A seller of hay, who peddled his wares from the upturned, lacquered roof of what looked to have once been the merriest red barn outside of Wisconsin, happened into the neighborhood with a load of his wares. Now Frank trades him chunks of the mysterious rusted scrap machinery that hunkers redly below the waterline in his former warehouse for fresh roof-loads of wispy mountain hay. Nobody has ever claimed the stuff, and by this point Frank has consigned the hazy mental outline of some lost owner to the watery grave shared by so many of those who lived too close to the coast.
Now, the Goats(TM) sport and defecate in the largest offshore barnyard on the West Coast, and Frank sleeps deeply enough not to spend sleep's hours reflecting that he is a sport, come to ground on water, come to feed of the dead.
And today, the Goats(TM) are off their feed.
*****
Now everyone knows that goats eat most anything at most anytime. But not Goats(TM).
But what is a Goat(TM)? Decades ago, some bright young fellows with labcoats and expensive brains realized that there were some interesting similarities between the glands that goats used to produce milk and that spiders used to produce silk. A little tinkering here and there, a little DNA from there goes here, and voila! It looks like goat's milk, it tastes like dog crap, and if you pour a bucket of it through a rusty noodle strainer, you get enough silk to make half of a lady's glove. A bullet-proof lady's glove. A lady's glove that could suspend a steel girder over a room full of toddlers.
Naturally, the Goat(TM) was patented. Naturally, the Goat(TM) was copy protected. Naturally, some messy cousin of the software pirate managed to suture all of the necessary tubes back together. And, quite naturally, Frank came to be the proud owner of a small herd of Goats(TM) that he had to lie quite strenuously about, or which he would have if anybody collected taxes on this dump.
And, of course, the Goats'(TM) swollen milk glands puked out useless shit and then they quit eating whenever they didn't get just the right B Complex vitamins, whenever they needed more fiber in their diets, or whenever Frank needed money.
*****
It took most of the morning to figure out that the Goats(TM) needed another shot of antibiotics. The broad-spectrum ones that cost two weeks of silk for a bottle.
By that point, Frank was a little upset. It wasn't bad enough that his Goats(TM) were off their feed. It wasn't bad enough that the little pizza joint he liked capsized last month.
Oh no.
The worst thing was that he had to have integrity. He had to live here. He couldn't slap his little herd into a U-Haul, drive across the mountains, buy a little patch of dirt, and then hook into some of the sweet subsidies that had all of his Goat(TM) farming peers holidaying in Tahiti just so the petro-synthetic factories could keep employing people making horrible yellow rope and frightening species of polyester shirts.
It was enough to drive a man to drink. If only he desired it.
*****
In his more reflective moments, Frank will admit to himself that his lack of desire is, perhaps, something of a conceit. His friends call him on it constantly, but Frank always falls back to define desire as the state of wanting something and expecting to get it.
And drinking? That's something that Frank wants. He'll just never have it.
It's all down to his wife. Ex-wife. The Bitch. The Crazy Bitch, if you want to get accurate about Frank's frame of reference.
She was always up to no good, once she went nuts. Restraining orders. Nuisance lawsuits. It got to the point where Frank just ignored mail and messages that had anything to do with the courts, police or penal systems.
His mistake was in believing that the police would never have his best interests at heart.
In his more light-hearted moments, Frank tells people that "the cops need a special envelope for good news."
He ignored the voice mail. He ignored the real mail. And now it's too late for Frank and his ability to desire that which made him truly happy.
It seems that the police suspected that the Crazy Bitch was doing business with a Russian company that exported Alcoverhaul.
Alcoverhaul is a species of yeast that was originally developed for the California penal system but which evolved into a popular additive in the traditional dishes of Eastern Europe. Introduced over repeated doses into the human gut, it is designed to form a persistant colony that resists antibiotics and subsists off of simple carboydrates. The thing that makes it attractive for those who are dealing with those who have proven themselves to be dangerous drunks is that, in the presence of alcohol, they reverse the role normally occupied by yeasts and, multiplying rapidly, transform the toxin into a selection of simple sugars. The result? A carrier of Alcoverhaul doesn't get drunk. Just jittery and hyper and, later, plain old fat.
And, while Frank was definitely a drunk, he was not the raging, alcohol-fueled typhoon of his wife's imagination.
Or at least he wasn't until the Alcoverhaul kicked in. Though it would be more accurate to say that his rage was fueled by the absence of alcohol.
Joel M.
Anyway, this is a little piece that I just pushed out now. It's a bunch of stuff that's been swimming around in my head for the last little while, but it's all exposition. I really need to work on getting dialogue and plot and stuff going on.
But, for the time being, here is a little piece of the world of tomorrow as it floats around behind my eyes.
Freedom from Desire
It's first thing in the morning. Frank's up. Right
NOW.
Full on frontal assault. Manic DJs storm his sandy pillbox. A crack-a-dawn jack-in-the-box, Frank bursts the burning membrane of another day.
Whisps of dreams trail around his ankles like a ribbon on a rock thrown into a caldera. A tang of fresh plastic, the seductive giggling of some long-ago whore, toy alien fingers with bloody stub tails trailing across his anus, crackling purple eyes and a sparking laugh.
Sleep in his eyes.
Dreams going, Frank digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. Dreams going, Frank eradicates sleep. Dreams gone, black and red cononae, after- after- after-images dance under his lids.
The smell of bad coffee wafts into Frank's tiny loft. He swings his feet over the edge of the bed. Plants them. Drops his head back into his hands for a return engagement. Feels the floor sway slightly.
A momentary hitch, swiftly smoothed. A tiny prick of the ears. A fraction of a twitched eyebrow. A reflex reflexively suppressed.
"Every time," Frank says to himself, just like he does every time.
Frank stands up, sets the floor swaying. Frank takes a step, and the floor gets closer to the drunken reel it promises.
Frank stops at the railing. Leans on it. And the floor's jig begins to ease as Frank acquaints himself, yet again, with the murky water. With the shattered edge of the floor. With the taught cables that suspend his bedroom between unwelcome water and his leaky roof, all fruit of the whirlwind.
Frank isn't drunk. Wasn't drunk. He wishes he was, in some ways. But he is free of that desire.
*****
The coffee was good. Or at least is tasted more strongly of delicious fats and sugars than of a filthy filter and water stolen from the sea by a bit of clear plastic and a metal bucket.
Cream is a luxury that Frank indulges in, for want of the knowledge that his filter wants washing. He trades for it, twice a week, from a little Chinese sampan lady with an impeccable French accent.
This, his home, this new Venice, born of a century's profligacy or nature's wrath, pick your poison, was a magnet for the strange. "Displaced people seek a place where they can keep an eye on displacement." A comment that Frank, drunk, thought profound and which he spent the rest of a night down at Dino's explaining in shrinking circles of flumoxed, sodden logic.
Back when Frank still desired drink.
*****
Now it is time to attend to his little herd of Goats(TM).
It used to be that the sound of their little cloven hooves would enrage Frank. The Goats(TM) stumbled back and forth, like little drunken lords, tap tap tapping across the corrugated metal of Frank's roof, their floor.
Finally, though, Frank made a breakthrough deal. A seller of hay, who peddled his wares from the upturned, lacquered roof of what looked to have once been the merriest red barn outside of Wisconsin, happened into the neighborhood with a load of his wares. Now Frank trades him chunks of the mysterious rusted scrap machinery that hunkers redly below the waterline in his former warehouse for fresh roof-loads of wispy mountain hay. Nobody has ever claimed the stuff, and by this point Frank has consigned the hazy mental outline of some lost owner to the watery grave shared by so many of those who lived too close to the coast.
Now, the Goats(TM) sport and defecate in the largest offshore barnyard on the West Coast, and Frank sleeps deeply enough not to spend sleep's hours reflecting that he is a sport, come to ground on water, come to feed of the dead.
And today, the Goats(TM) are off their feed.
*****
Now everyone knows that goats eat most anything at most anytime. But not Goats(TM).
But what is a Goat(TM)? Decades ago, some bright young fellows with labcoats and expensive brains realized that there were some interesting similarities between the glands that goats used to produce milk and that spiders used to produce silk. A little tinkering here and there, a little DNA from there goes here, and voila! It looks like goat's milk, it tastes like dog crap, and if you pour a bucket of it through a rusty noodle strainer, you get enough silk to make half of a lady's glove. A bullet-proof lady's glove. A lady's glove that could suspend a steel girder over a room full of toddlers.
Naturally, the Goat(TM) was patented. Naturally, the Goat(TM) was copy protected. Naturally, some messy cousin of the software pirate managed to suture all of the necessary tubes back together. And, quite naturally, Frank came to be the proud owner of a small herd of Goats(TM) that he had to lie quite strenuously about, or which he would have if anybody collected taxes on this dump.
And, of course, the Goats'(TM) swollen milk glands puked out useless shit and then they quit eating whenever they didn't get just the right B Complex vitamins, whenever they needed more fiber in their diets, or whenever Frank needed money.
*****
It took most of the morning to figure out that the Goats(TM) needed another shot of antibiotics. The broad-spectrum ones that cost two weeks of silk for a bottle.
By that point, Frank was a little upset. It wasn't bad enough that his Goats(TM) were off their feed. It wasn't bad enough that the little pizza joint he liked capsized last month.
Oh no.
The worst thing was that he had to have integrity. He had to live here. He couldn't slap his little herd into a U-Haul, drive across the mountains, buy a little patch of dirt, and then hook into some of the sweet subsidies that had all of his Goat(TM) farming peers holidaying in Tahiti just so the petro-synthetic factories could keep employing people making horrible yellow rope and frightening species of polyester shirts.
It was enough to drive a man to drink. If only he desired it.
*****
In his more reflective moments, Frank will admit to himself that his lack of desire is, perhaps, something of a conceit. His friends call him on it constantly, but Frank always falls back to define desire as the state of wanting something and expecting to get it.
And drinking? That's something that Frank wants. He'll just never have it.
It's all down to his wife. Ex-wife. The Bitch. The Crazy Bitch, if you want to get accurate about Frank's frame of reference.
She was always up to no good, once she went nuts. Restraining orders. Nuisance lawsuits. It got to the point where Frank just ignored mail and messages that had anything to do with the courts, police or penal systems.
His mistake was in believing that the police would never have his best interests at heart.
In his more light-hearted moments, Frank tells people that "the cops need a special envelope for good news."
He ignored the voice mail. He ignored the real mail. And now it's too late for Frank and his ability to desire that which made him truly happy.
It seems that the police suspected that the Crazy Bitch was doing business with a Russian company that exported Alcoverhaul.
Alcoverhaul is a species of yeast that was originally developed for the California penal system but which evolved into a popular additive in the traditional dishes of Eastern Europe. Introduced over repeated doses into the human gut, it is designed to form a persistant colony that resists antibiotics and subsists off of simple carboydrates. The thing that makes it attractive for those who are dealing with those who have proven themselves to be dangerous drunks is that, in the presence of alcohol, they reverse the role normally occupied by yeasts and, multiplying rapidly, transform the toxin into a selection of simple sugars. The result? A carrier of Alcoverhaul doesn't get drunk. Just jittery and hyper and, later, plain old fat.
And, while Frank was definitely a drunk, he was not the raging, alcohol-fueled typhoon of his wife's imagination.
Or at least he wasn't until the Alcoverhaul kicked in. Though it would be more accurate to say that his rage was fueled by the absence of alcohol.
Joel M.
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Here's a story I wrote a little while ago. Just a little super-short one to get some juices flowing. It's super-compressed, but I kind of like it like that. Nothing superfluous.
Ants
There's a cool show on.
It's about ants in the jungle. Bad mothers, those army ants.
Anyway, these things can cross water.Not swimming, or on a bridge. Even I could cross water on a bridge.No, these guys cross it by kind of glomming onto each other.More and more, just keep latching together, until there's just a big old ball.
And then they float across!
Of course by the other side half of the ants have drowned. But that's not important. I understand. What's important is that the colony got across. They made it. By and large. Got where they were going. On the whole.
I wonder how much comfort a drowning ant takes in that?
*****
I was on the couch when it happened. Of course. I wasn't lazy, couldn't be with two to feed, but lately my back was killing me after work. I just had to lie down. And twleve hour shifts had me nodding off when I did.
She came in late. Every year later. Thesis. Papers. Tutorials. Research. Volunteering.
School's tough. I understood. And she was so serious. Do it right or don't. I understood.
Different this time, though. Usually she's tired. Hits the shower and then bed. Makes me sleep on the couch half the time.
I snore.
This time, she rode in on a black cloud. Like exams again, but that was over weeks ago. Why did she have to stay so late now anyway?
Back in high school, exams were the end of it. For her, school never seemed to end.
Bad day honey?
She stood there. Angel with a firy sword. Something was up.
*****
And it was up. The game. The jig. The kit-n-kaboodle.
Everything.
She called me lazy. Told me I was wasting my life. Said I lacked ambition.
Wouldn't listen to me when I told her that she was my only ambition. Called it pathetic. Said she needed an equal, not to be put on some pedestal.
*****
So I left. She knows what she needs. And me?
I need a swim.
Joel M.
Ants
There's a cool show on.
It's about ants in the jungle. Bad mothers, those army ants.
Anyway, these things can cross water.Not swimming, or on a bridge. Even I could cross water on a bridge.No, these guys cross it by kind of glomming onto each other.More and more, just keep latching together, until there's just a big old ball.
And then they float across!
Of course by the other side half of the ants have drowned. But that's not important. I understand. What's important is that the colony got across. They made it. By and large. Got where they were going. On the whole.
I wonder how much comfort a drowning ant takes in that?
*****
I was on the couch when it happened. Of course. I wasn't lazy, couldn't be with two to feed, but lately my back was killing me after work. I just had to lie down. And twleve hour shifts had me nodding off when I did.
She came in late. Every year later. Thesis. Papers. Tutorials. Research. Volunteering.
School's tough. I understood. And she was so serious. Do it right or don't. I understood.
Different this time, though. Usually she's tired. Hits the shower and then bed. Makes me sleep on the couch half the time.
I snore.
This time, she rode in on a black cloud. Like exams again, but that was over weeks ago. Why did she have to stay so late now anyway?
Back in high school, exams were the end of it. For her, school never seemed to end.
Bad day honey?
She stood there. Angel with a firy sword. Something was up.
*****
And it was up. The game. The jig. The kit-n-kaboodle.
Everything.
She called me lazy. Told me I was wasting my life. Said I lacked ambition.
Wouldn't listen to me when I told her that she was my only ambition. Called it pathetic. Said she needed an equal, not to be put on some pedestal.
*****
So I left. She knows what she needs. And me?
I need a swim.
Joel M.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
I've been thinking about improving the generally crappy layout of this site, but I've been much too busy playing Half Life 2 (best game ever!) and being on holidays for X-Mas.
Anyway, this little story was written for the creative writing class I took between September and December. The class was a little too low-level for my taste, but I think I will take the next one since it forced me to actually do some writing. I like the story, though. It's something that I've been wanting to write for a while.
Stephen
I run a register selling liquor. I have a lot to say, but it's always the same: "How are you today?" "Can I help you find something?" "That'll be nineteen twenty-five."
The words pour out like mouthfuls of smooth river stones. Behind a cash register, it's never the first time.
One never new thing is my reminder: It's their choice. These decrepit hobos. These wage slaves. These affordable housing habitués. Their choice where to put the rent money. The handout. The tiny fixed income. They'd go somewhere else. It's legal. Their choice. All that.
They come in waves with their telltale scents. Cheap cologne or greasy fried hangover smell oozes from pores. Beer breath, or vodka, or rye. Homeless smell, like a turd wrapped in an old coat and marinated in cheap sherry and urine. And the special, sickly-sweet smell that they all get near the end: Diabetes or just Dying Drunk Guy. The smells spell failure, and I dish up a little more. Future failure dulls past. A cycle without end. Amen.
Most have no name. Vermouth Lady. Stinky Beard Hobo. Wine Guy, Merlot Guy and Wildcat Guy. The Troll and The Hobbit. Lonely Old Guy, Sketchy Guy and Dogs Guy.
If you have a name, you're doomed. You're homeless or almost there and just want out of the wind. You're lonely enough to overcome the shame of your daily pilgrimage to chitchat with the priest who dispensed your foregone communion. You're desperate enough to try to bum money from the guy who sees where you spend it.
Stephen is such a name. A name to conjure with. He takes his poison by delivery, pays in twenties and takes exact change. Five bucks per, plus another one for smokes. Sometimes I take it and sometimes the service does. A special bond. A million years old, the smell of his hole is otherworldly. All of the above, but Dying Drunk Guy most of all. The heat and odor and oppressive lightlessness hit like a wave. Like a huge, damp fist powering straight out of hell. The man is dead, lingering only for 'a case a Club an' a pack a smokes.'
I take the call. Raspy, mushy voice. Accent. Stephen. His desire known only by repetition. There are two of us tonight, so why not? Six bucks means a six pack. After discount. If you drink like Stephen.
It's only four cold blocks to Stephen's patch of heaven, so I walk. First to the gas station. Ten bucks for smokes. The price went up a dime weeks ago and I've been eating the difference rather than open lines of laborious communication with Stephen.
I drag, but too soon I'm at the door. It's open. A scrawny stoner holds it for me, "hey man, what's happening," and I head up the stairs toward an awkward moment on hell's threshold.
I knock on his door, and something new happens. It opens by itself, just a little. The smell jumps out, I almost gag, and then, as I step back, I see something on the floor inside.
A hand.
Stephen's hand, thin yellow claw, lying on the floor with money in it. I nudge the door, but it stops. Something hard. His head, I guess. No sound. No motion.
His choice.
I leave him his beer and his smokes. His exact change.
Joel M.
Anyway, this little story was written for the creative writing class I took between September and December. The class was a little too low-level for my taste, but I think I will take the next one since it forced me to actually do some writing. I like the story, though. It's something that I've been wanting to write for a while.
Stephen
I run a register selling liquor. I have a lot to say, but it's always the same: "How are you today?" "Can I help you find something?" "That'll be nineteen twenty-five."
The words pour out like mouthfuls of smooth river stones. Behind a cash register, it's never the first time.
One never new thing is my reminder: It's their choice. These decrepit hobos. These wage slaves. These affordable housing habitués. Their choice where to put the rent money. The handout. The tiny fixed income. They'd go somewhere else. It's legal. Their choice. All that.
They come in waves with their telltale scents. Cheap cologne or greasy fried hangover smell oozes from pores. Beer breath, or vodka, or rye. Homeless smell, like a turd wrapped in an old coat and marinated in cheap sherry and urine. And the special, sickly-sweet smell that they all get near the end: Diabetes or just Dying Drunk Guy. The smells spell failure, and I dish up a little more. Future failure dulls past. A cycle without end. Amen.
Most have no name. Vermouth Lady. Stinky Beard Hobo. Wine Guy, Merlot Guy and Wildcat Guy. The Troll and The Hobbit. Lonely Old Guy, Sketchy Guy and Dogs Guy.
If you have a name, you're doomed. You're homeless or almost there and just want out of the wind. You're lonely enough to overcome the shame of your daily pilgrimage to chitchat with the priest who dispensed your foregone communion. You're desperate enough to try to bum money from the guy who sees where you spend it.
Stephen is such a name. A name to conjure with. He takes his poison by delivery, pays in twenties and takes exact change. Five bucks per, plus another one for smokes. Sometimes I take it and sometimes the service does. A special bond. A million years old, the smell of his hole is otherworldly. All of the above, but Dying Drunk Guy most of all. The heat and odor and oppressive lightlessness hit like a wave. Like a huge, damp fist powering straight out of hell. The man is dead, lingering only for 'a case a Club an' a pack a smokes.'
I take the call. Raspy, mushy voice. Accent. Stephen. His desire known only by repetition. There are two of us tonight, so why not? Six bucks means a six pack. After discount. If you drink like Stephen.
It's only four cold blocks to Stephen's patch of heaven, so I walk. First to the gas station. Ten bucks for smokes. The price went up a dime weeks ago and I've been eating the difference rather than open lines of laborious communication with Stephen.
I drag, but too soon I'm at the door. It's open. A scrawny stoner holds it for me, "hey man, what's happening," and I head up the stairs toward an awkward moment on hell's threshold.
I knock on his door, and something new happens. It opens by itself, just a little. The smell jumps out, I almost gag, and then, as I step back, I see something on the floor inside.
A hand.
Stephen's hand, thin yellow claw, lying on the floor with money in it. I nudge the door, but it stops. Something hard. His head, I guess. No sound. No motion.
His choice.
I leave him his beer and his smokes. His exact change.
Joel M.
