Damnation, devil, leave here. Yes. I see you, don’t you dare look away! Don’t you dare. Yes you. Innocent look on your face, oh we both know the truth, those things you will never tell anyone, maybe whisper something to that stranger on the street, guilty soul that you are. Flawed. Imperfect. I know it, you might fool society, but never me. I know you. I know you. I know you.
But worry not, since we’re one and the same, the fucked up norm, trying to play in placidity, but so far from our norm. How terrible, that our natural is unnatural, even if our internal Satan is something so small, tiny; it is still a cancer, which would need to be exterminated: us carrier hosts, no empathy, never. We chose to be the devil, evil was our goal. Oh the naiveté. Why can’t we be honest. Oh we should just put all the cards down on the table: know where we are, know that we are not in the vacuum of space but swimming in a school of fish, just blind to our comforting companions. Oh, to take that blindness away. To not be alone. To not have to suffer quietly, patiently, elegantly: and alone.
Christchild, how wrong was he. But that’s not how this paragraph will start, no. No, rather, our introductions should be cast aside, and we can just give a merry fuck you to decorum and treat each other with that casualness only existing between friends of the closest confidence. Why not? It is the truth. Truly, I love everyone, and then you might as well love me because in this finiteness of life how can you ever toss away carelessly someone else’s love?
But fuck! I’m supposed to be having a story right? How can there be prose without a story? I doubt there’s even a category for that, but then I never looked, and well, if I did know it would alter my perceptions and now I feel like an explorer. A writer without anything to write about! How fantastic! Who knows where this will go? I wonder if you will join me? It doesn’t sound that appetizing but be in my mind with me, deal with my frustrations as I do and maybe you will know the truth of everything before I even scratch the surface. Know my mind; know the foreign; I offer you a gift; a mirror that is not of you, and use it to see those things you never noticed about yourself.
Where was I? A story!
What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck. We fly down, from past those solarcancer waves screaming from the sun, through that thinning atmosphere of that blue marble larger then imagination, falling faster than thought with a cause: seeing a house, in the middle of fucking nowhere, somewhere foreign, where you try to imagine but have never been able to. And we see who will soon be our protagonist. Eyes wide open, earliest morning or latest night, almost gasping: what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck. Then he lies down, goes immediately to sleep, that is if he ever was awake, and we decide, after coming past stars light minutes away, to pull up a chair, chill for a few minutes, and watch this person who will soon be so important to this prose, if not to our minds.
He looks manish, maybe not much more than a boy, but certainly not old, depending on your definition of old. But we ourselves must have been exhausted, since before we’ve really come to any conclusions about anything, we see our protagonist open his eyes with a complete serenity, a serenity that is in mutually exclusive opposition to that chaos that was in his tortured confusion of his initial perception. Now, he, some propagating grain of sand shifting through the universe, suddenly gains consciousness. It is like that first time, and momentarily, until his hard drive loads himself appropriately, he is unaware of anything. Just that new moment of life, that happens at that drowsy start of a day, at that wailing first burst of oxygen of the start of coming from a mother, and that slip into true consciousness when evolution finally develops that subconscious consummate animal to have finally a conscious awareness; how meaningless the differences are. Indeed, let’s call our protagonist by three names: human kind, life time, and most simply Raven. Less simply Robert Raven, but it’s catchy, it will stick, but Mr. Human Kind or Mr. Life-Time is pretty sweet to, so let’s say they’re all interchangeable, ok?
Anyway, while we’re trying to analyze that radical burst of initial consciousness, Rave has already rubbed the sleep from his eyes, gone back unconscious for a few seconds that felt wonderfully long and murderously short simultaneously, regotten up, re rubbed the sleep from his eyes, shoved his heavy feet straight out from bed and let gravity at its constant rate make him sit like a man, and then fought gravity bravely to stand up. He stretches to his full extent. That wonderful feeling of a range of movement that’s just being remembered to explore. Then a slouch. That bastard gravity again! Well, we will fight him throughout, and maybe will vanquish that worthy foe, if, that is, the ability of prose can encapsulate such a fight adequately. But anyway, we’re distracted yes? Well, I am. But excuse me, this is just as new for me as it is for you, and whether to let decades and centuries slip by or micro seconds slip by before I interject on the actions of my protagonist, Mr. Raven, or Mr. Lifetime, or Mister Mother Fucking Time Himself, well, to be frank, I haven’t yet decided. The roulette wheel is spinning, where will it stop: where!
Shit, we lost him! Empty bed, empty room. No, that’s not true, there’s some sleeping or cadaveric husk across an expanse of bare concrete, but he isn’t our Rave, we’ll meet this fellow when we’re comfortable. But we hear a splash of water, turn, see not light but moving shadows underneath the shut door which must lead to the washroom, and quickly slide through the wall to catch up to our lost protagonist. Quickly averting our gaze from the toilet lest he be there, too soon in our friendship to be this personal, we find our eyes staring in a mirror and in that mirror, Rave is staring groggily and disconnected, a tooth brush with tooth paste in one hand but there is a complete lack of momentum for it ever reaching his mouth. At current forces it never will. But things change. And the unexpected can happen! He slips the tooth brush next to the faucet, quickly takes off his pajamas (or was he always naked) gets into the shower, which is only cold, and with a silent scream controlled by that inherent law of humanity to never show weakness in the face of the terrible dives himself ankle first underneath a dripping torrent of that coldest water which a waking mind can feasibly imagine. Poor soul, we look away, don’t want to know if weakness passes through his eyes, if maybe an isolated tear passes through, missing those things which should be so easy but are so far away. Poor mother fucker. But: onward ho. He has gotten a grip, our loveable Raven, and has taken the weak but logical step of turning the water off. Is quickly soaping himself down, using that ice water which covers his body from that initial drenching, and soon builds a fine layer of suds over his entire body. He puts the soap down, raises his shoulders looks to the sky, or more specifically the shower head, and turns the water on to a faint drizzle which is the depressing full pressure of our fine functioning gravity induced water pressure. Oh, he shudders! Weakness, lets despise him! But—he never knew we were here. If he did, he may have been: would have been: braver, no shudder, more coldness. How can we judge someone for that weakness when no one is watching, for the tears that no one will ever know about. Maybe we all have these experiences, maybe we block them, know them not, forget them, but they are there, and we are just as weak as this naked Raven shuddering miserably in an ice cold shower in a place which surrounds him with that isolating foreignness .
But again, we get lost, and just by the blatant fact that Rave walked through us to reach for his towel are we awoken to again watching him. He dries himself, top to bottom, friction making him alive to the point where he, after these many disconnected words, finally seems awake. Alive. All programs loaded, all processors waiting for a task. He takes without a prior remembrance of initiation that ready tooth brush we already noted, and begins brushing his teeth.
And here is something curious. For such a utilitarian task, something done to invigorate the mouth and rid oneself of that horrendous vile fucker plaque, well, Rave isn’t acting normally for this action. No. His eyes are shut. He even seems to be unconsciously swaying. And he brushes far longer than is necessary, to a point where even the youngest child or oldest grandfather would know this is useless. And let’s cut Rave some slack, we saw his eyes after the shower, he knows that he’s alive at least, and I’m pretty sure subconsciously that he’s a pretty vivacious human being. So it’s not like he’s not noticing this brushing-the-teeth-to-long-thing. No. There’s something we’re missing. And you know what, I’ll spoil this for you, audience that you are, since as the author I got a few privileges, and while this was supposed to brought about in a different context: fuck that. Rave is praying. Yep. Young guy from a nice family in this lovingly agnostic, even atheistic age, and here he is, lost in crying to Jesus or some higher power or some shit. Weak guy, but maybe it’s habit, maybe we should, in this early, early moment, give our chap an isolated break: there could be more to this than at the moment we’re equipped to comprehend. We’re supposed to simply be watchers, wondering at phenomena, trying to empiricize a life into something tangible, something that we can understand, and maybe we’re dealing with some input or variable that at this simplistic time we simply cannot comprehend.
Well, anyway, yeah, his prayer stops. He taps himself on the chest a couple times, whispers that Buddhist universalism I saw in some cheap commercial: Shanti Shanti Shanti, then prays/brushes, taps himself on the chest a few more times, then ignobly spits, clearly god is gone, looks up, wide awake, ready to do anything, and turns smartly and goes into that sleeping room we initially found him in.
Now, time is a bit of a slippery slope in prose and anything pertaining to be about anything. So I want to clearly establish that our anti hero, while being in no rush, was not dawdling, and that while this prose meanders and speeds up, this has nothing to do with that constant speed that our universe Mr. Raven is travelling at. And today or this lifetime, it was clearly one where dawdling was not an option, where that few seconds of extra sleep after his alarm was one that was barely budgeted for and that no side tracking could take Rave away from his objective, whatever that is. So he quietly, with unconscious grace that is ignored on its attribution to politeness for that sleeping figure so near us that, well, we forgot about him right? But well, Rave is on his toes, grabbing a light shirt, a pair of shorts, it must be hot wherever it is that Rave is, or else he’s got the body heat of a Russian, which really isn’t so implausible, seeing him in the shower, hairy mother fucker, or was that an illusion, did we apply values to him, could he not have easily been different, and in fact I never remember looking away from his eyes. But yes, now, Rave, dressed in a light shirt, a pair of shorts, looking like a civilized human being instead of that crazed universe filled with lightning that awoke with that terrible gasp: here he is: a model, something to strut and show in front of the universe for what a human-being is. Let’s strut him. Take him like a marionette or an automobile. We are driving him, though frankly it’s all so graceful I don’t know who is in control, myself, him, or something outside that is playing everybody for the sheer sake of why not. But anyway, Rave’s left the front door, maybe taking or locking a key, I didn’t catch it but he had the time to lock the door if he wanted, and now here he is on the street: a busy street, and the first testament to the possible loveliness inherent to our protagonist is on show for on this somewhat busy street everybody knows the human existence that is passing, feels the power of its aura or already has experienced it, oh, Raven is a man who clearly has left very long trails before and after him in life. What a wonderful person to deconstruct: man, we shall tear you apart because it is so easily within our grip, and like in school dissecting a frog, we shall ultimately dissect you and that lifetime, that human existence you represent. Why? Because we are curious! But fear not, manchild who cannot hear us, we will not cannibalize you yet: but hold your guard. But what are these people saying? What is it? Hello’s and hello’s and our protagonist with universal amiability regurgitates the formulas which are expected of him, though other thoughts are clearly behind his eyes.
And due to the wonderful clairvoyance made possible by such a loose narrative let’s look behind his eyes for a moment, see those fantasies taking up so much of his rendering processes. Well, and what a sap! But, well, I suppose all our isolated fantasies should be personal, else why we not share them, and Rave never asked us to be within several universes from him. But still, what has been seen cannot be unseen, unless some painful or time consuming procedures are induced, and frankly who has the time. So let’s make peace. Rectify the little boy walking in the man’s body. But never judge, for we were not asked to be here. And here he is, in honesty:
And I’m riding, the tip of a convoy, the worlds respect and wonder and hope on my shoulders. Prayers yelled to the heavens intercepted by myself unconsciously, but knowing that it is I, but a lowly Raven, whom must fulfill the destiny that all the world is praying for. I will try, but there is never a guarantee of success. No. Never. But my people: know I will try.
Of course that tragedy war, at a scale never before imagined, swirls and contorts this entire lovely world into something which I can just barely grasp. Where is that lovely spectrum of life that I knew but so briefly, shortly before? But it is gone! Sadly, terrible: gone. Here I am, never where I thought I would be, but I will be that man I must, suffer as I must. One life sacrificed, as mine I have placed on that bloody animalistic altar, in order to save thousands: my mother, my friends, and those children I have seen playing with so much innocent potential on so many streets, in so many cities. Oh god, life, I shall miss you, but make it worthwhile, make my sacrifice not be in vain, that this life I so freely give be a force that helps buttress all that I love.
Strange, that so many people look to me, like some messianic who is truth: let them never know my ignorance, let them never know my faith in a universe that will guide me, that my shear power of will and trust in a loving universe that lets my mother and brothers and friends live happily. That is all I know. That is my only truth. And hero that I have been labeled, how minute my reasoning, and irrational my choices. But still, I will lead to the best of my abilities, and will try as hard and as scientifically as I am capable, and maybe this will be enough.
And back to me, your loveable good looking narrator. Don’t worry, I feel we’ll fall into Rave’s subconscious often and deeply, maybe even endlessly, just as the universe is inescapable and as soon as the hole in this superficiality is found we fall endlessly through laws of physics we never even comprehended, though they control us so absolutely.
I chase death willingly. We ride our stallions closer to doom, our wave in full flux waiting to crash and break and to never exist in such a form again. We are ready. It may not be our destiny, but at this moment we believe it to be, and the next moment will have to take care of itself. We are the embodiments of the holy deity’s of honor, beauty and love. We will save the world. We are the universal right. A light to face darkness, and even though we are stamped out, for a moment, brief, but still in existence: there was light. That can never be taken away. There can be no higher ideal in life, no greater quest then to provide a spark of light in a dark world. We ride, we ride, we…
But. Back to our riveting plot! Our lifetime embodied with the name Raven, walking allegorically through other lives who recognize him but never understand, stumbling with grace though never looking where he is going, so lost in thoughts of fantasy and what could be and what may be even though he fears it and abhors it and hopes it never comes while silently praying for exactly such a sequence of events: suddenly this huge momentum, a universe on wheels with the entire momentum of collected everything strong on its heel is paused. Dastard devil that opposition which fights every dimension of our loveable protagonist, and placed a child, maybe even a child Raven knows, right in his path: his fantasy must be interrupted. Avoidance is not an option: it would act to simply running him down, and how oxy-moronic to be fantasizing about providing salvation while running a personally beloved child down.
So what happens is what should happen. Except at the present moment I’m unsure of how to relate it since words are flying between these two peoples, and there’s an important exchange, something not to be missed especially when our prose will only last this one finite lifetime, existence or day, whatever you want to call it: we can’t miss it. But what? Well: it would seem this boys in fact had nothing of import to depart on Raven. Just a simple good morning, from an inconvenient spot on the street that paused Lifetimes momentum. He will recover it, but he will never be as far as could have been. A piece of life has been stolen.
Luckily Rave seems over it, and while we can tell the battle between good and evil is again running in his mind, there are only a few dozen percentage points of his processing power concentrating on it now, with some idling with silent appreciation of the wonder of the world, and the rest interacting with this same wonderful world. Rave, while walking, does it with a step to his gait, not quite a skip, but certainly in opposition to a trudge. No, it is like dancing, there is some beat he is moving to, and frankly, it’s a lovely scene: quasiskipping through these potholed streets, saying good morning with a genuine smile, living in beauty, and fantasizing wonder. Let’s like Raven! Why not! We’ve decided to follow him, and we can easily use him for any universal purposes. What should we choose to embody him with, what color should we paint the scenes with. So far, we’ve just described, but time has been slow and boring, nothing much has happened. But quickly his processors will be running at full speed, and we will have to selectively choose what we want this complex organism to represent.
Truly, we could concentrate on the deviant: those mean thoughts that must crop up from time to time, those sexual deviations which for societies sake we hope he has a hold on. Oh, yes, we could concentrate on this, we could really cut to the core of human existence, show the true mother fucker who is always under these lovely facades, the fact that good doesn’t exist. That this primal beast, this animal that is in every one of us: it gets loose, and will tear and destroy like any beast. Yes, yes, we could do this, and there would be power to the story, power in the themes. The terror of man, the scourge of the universe, the evil within us all.
But we could just as easily choose a different perspective on Rave being beautiful, a spirit whose flaws, which do exist, are those same flaws that everyone embodies. Simply, he is human, and suffers from what that entails, but his flaws will only make him more realistic, someone whose weaknesses are the same that we feel. And when he fails, rather than be angry or pity him, we only will feel empathy for truly, we could have failed so similarly. We can project ourselves on this fallow fellow, and perhaps what will grow will be a perception of ourselves which we finally understand, regardless of its connection to this real walking universe, Rave or Raven or lifetime or whatever it was we decided to name him.
But shit! This theorizing will have to wait, since quickly Raven is approaching his goal. His step is shorter, perhaps he is enjoying this total freedom of an idle fantasy on a sunny day. I suppose we will have to choose to judge him another day, for he has diverged from the path, dodged and waved at some children, jumps unnecessarily over a stick that truly wasn’t in his way, and approaches what must be a school. In fact it is a school: there are children, a few adults and desks, but really it was the sign stating ‘school’ that was the real tip off. Our man goes and sits on a chair next to a table, swinging his bag, that we forgot to mention he was carrying and in fact played with on his walk, well anyway he swings it with this casual gesture over his back and onto the ground, puts both elbows on the table to cradles his head, stares off into the distance for just a few more milliseconds, wrapping up his fantasy, then focuses on whatever the fuck it is that is surely happening around him at the moment.
And, startlingly since so far we have been waiting on Rave to give us stimulus, but now, some unidle force protrudes on our reverie. A man, for he has a moustache, looks up at Rave with dreamy kind eyes and wishes him a good morning with a sentimentality which could not be false. Our universe looks up kindly, and stares for a dazed second, perhaps losing those last shrouds of fantasy, shakes his head, focuses on this specific point in space and time, and wishes back this ambivalent bearded force a most good heartedly good day. While personally, as a narrator who just started on the job, we have no idea who this guy is, we get the feeling that friendship is definitely in the equation. And oh, how lil Rave has expanded! An entire new universe of interaction to analyze.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. Clearly, it must be early in the morning still, or else, this is a culture that stays up late. And lest we forget, as a quick aside, that perhaps might get lost in the vacancy of plot. Rave is different. Look’s different. Sound’s different. Act’s different. Not individual different, rather foreign different. Rave is off from another world, and this world knows it, but seems to like him anyway. Lucky Rave, he could just as easily be in a society where they harvest the organs of foreigners for wizardstew. But I hope that clarifies any mental misconceptions, and in fact reperceive anything you have already though to take in this truth, albeit a truth espoused by a non-universal force. But fuck, don’t distract: it is morning still, and Rave while being amicable, and certainly being more turned on then when we first saw him, is still in that finicky stage of the fresh boot up. Sure, everything is accessible, but nothing is easily accessible because all these goddamned background processes leech everything, and anyone worth their salt would advise leaning back and waiting: doing nothing: until such a time where the running systems are amenable to touch. And while it is hard to gauge whether Rave, or a lifetime, comprehends this, it is still true that in this universal stage of awakening not much happens. And let us let existence stare emptily, there is still the infinite time until that future unconsciousness to get done what needs to get done, so let’s give our subject a break: ok?
Luckily, while we argue the merits of inertia, some petty force that was not on our radar and that we will never see again solves this problem for us. Some young boy, ageless as all of the youngest children are, asks Rave what he will eat for breakfast; there is some unacknowledged comment that the young boy will fetch the breakfast, and that this is the norm, but this breaks the last fogs of isolation from Rave, and he stands up, stretching to the very closest stars, and announces with a faint bite of challenge that he will get his breakfast himself. One gets the feeling that this is a problematic statement, but one also senses that there is such a culture clash that really, everyone just goes with the flow with whatever is dominating around them, and Rave really doesn’t seem to be judging any status quos as much as acting as he deems personally correct, not morally correct.
Hell, this seems like as good a time as any, on that one hundred meter walk from the table to the food stall, which engrosses a milli of a milli second of travelling light, yet untold trillions of electron radiuses, to slip again nonchalantly behind Rave’s eyes, to try again to get comfortable with this vehicle we are test driving. As the universe picks up its momentum, and cells die and are regenerated without and conscience notice, we listen to that fantasy flashing through Rave’s mind.
And of all things he’s thinking of a girl! Typical, I suppose, the whole maleness and all that, and how it’s supposed to pop up in a man’s mind however many times a minute, which could be a lot or a few depending on how long that minutes feeling. But don’t worry, Rave’s at a school, and it’s early in the morning, so while we have yet to get into Rave’s libido, now it just doesn’t need to be a topic, and his thoughts are purely innocuous; or at least sexually innocuous. What’s he thinking? Well, I guess that sort of cruise control thought, not even a real personal fantasy, those take mental effort: having to think of what it is one wants to have, to hold onto, to exist as. Rather, he’s just fantasizing in the reverse of watching shitty TV: like one escapes in TV by interjecting themselves on these actors going through fake situations, Rave is the actor, and simply going through those situations that he’s been told are lovely. So as we stare into Rave’s almost vacant mind, we’re hit by this sappy montage that I highly doubt he would ever tell his friends about; it’s worse than that daytime shit. But hey, an escapes an escape. So what is it Rave is thinking? Well, at this exact moment, it’s some beautiful girl, she may even exist, or at least Rave thinks she exists, maybe would even say he knows her. But this is a dream right? And really, anyone who spends anytime at all really thinking of someone is polluting that persons true identity, and Rave has contaminated this girl so that she’s an entirely different substance all together then that which is actually the reality. One would wonder who she really is? But Rave has her really like a talking Barbie, luscious and sensual. And she’s stroking the back of his head looking at him. And he can feel her love for him: it’s boundless. She is so lucky, so. He is exactly perfect, and how lucky of her to find him. There’s six billion people, three billion woman, and maybe seven hundred million people who are culturally similar enough to interact, but she got the lottery. Now they’re on a beach. And running, or walking, it’s all the same. People are looking at them with quiet envy, never jealousy for a couple so pure. And they are in love. Forever. Or at least as forever as an imagination where one never worries about flatulence and misogamy, where someone gets drunk and says something unforgettable, or someone is sober and doesn’t live up to perfection. Maybe Rave’s on the right end of this stick. Have the girl in the mind. Create your fantasy and live it, who cares if it’s tangible. This quiet contentment that is coursing through Rave as he walks for food, milliseconds of such tranquility: priceless: feelingly endless: may they last forever, maybe they are lasting forever. Time may have stopped.
But Rave has not stopped and he approaches the food stall. I apologize for the narration, I was sidetracked, I saw the pictures of Rave’s reverie but I didn’t catch it, it was sand through my hands and all I really gave you was a summary of the introduction. But while time might be endless for Rave, our analysis for him is constant, and we have to keep up not just to his mind, but to the world around us and our own ability to communicate the sadly incommunicable. Rave slips to the back of the line, but the children, who Rave hopes feel genuine affection for him since he truly loves them all with that same transcendent love he feels for open skies and rain pattering softly on tin roofs, well, these hopefully affectionate kids certainly act affectionately and let Rave slip to the front of the line. And while Rave might not make kids run for him, he accepts this with just a glimmer of shame; he is a teacher, he is older: Rave can rationalize, but like most rationalization it is centered on fear, greed or laziness, and the factor here is easy to determine. Rave orders his food, his mouth watering subtly, unnoticeably, but it is true. He has ordered this before. And the ladies running the food stall joke with him, asking what he wants while they give him what he orders every day. And this is our first hint, so subtle as to not be there except I know because Rave is my creation, but it is there. Rave is ordering some weirdassshit food. Something not found wherever it is he’s from. And maybe, well, maybe something. There’s something suggested here. And I don’t know what it is yet, I have no idea if it is important, but just as I notice a river if it is in my way, I notice this. Whether it is the river that will lead us to the sea, or just a brook that needs to be hopped over, only momentum will tell.
Now Rave is walking back. His mind is quicker than before, the alluring smell of food serving for him to speed up his perception of time. Perhaps he is not running, but his mind is quicker, and he arrives back at his seat in just a fraction of perceptional time it took him to walk to the food stall. His mind is off and animalistic. The bestial desire for food: and here is the savory. He isn’t looking at anyone and no one looks at him, with perhaps a universal if unstated understanding that the beast sometimes walks among us. But oh this delicious food. Our mouths too watering through our empathetic communion with Rave. Oh, it is nothing that normally we would want, but his desire for it is infectious. He has a routine, a formula, a ritual. He is slowly mixing things together, cutting pieces to be the perfect edible portion. There is this reek of masochism, the fact that he is forcing himself with his prize so close, inches from his blooming taste buds, to take a little longer. His body is silently quivering. He dips a soup spoon into his created mess, and with breath drawn puts a large bite in his mouth. He chews. His mind is at a sensual peek, the highest high of the day, and this day a gift he wasn’t expecting causing this high to be nirvanic in its unexpected plentitude. He is sitting there, normal as can be, simply chomping on that gasoline of life, but he is happy. Oh so happy. And it is just food. How strange that many claim to boredom, or even despair, when food has the potential to provide such pleasure. How should the mind perceive the world? Why can’t everything be a gift, unexpected? How transcendent, to live a life in bliss at the casual. To appreciate that one has taste buds, unlike stars, and unlike animals, the human being has the revelatory ability to lean back and appreciate. How dare anyone speak of boredom! Take another bite of food.
Yet, as such with any economy, as the supply meets the demand the pay-off is lessening. The world named Rave is adding less food to the spoon, that lessened amount is providing even less pleasure, and so quickly, though the pleasure has not been forgotten, Rave no longer has the will to lift the spoon again. Too bad so sad, but this is ok. The allure of pleasure did its job, and maybe this food is just gasoline, maybe the pleasure is a cheat, but at least now our little machine has a full tank and we can ride him for a little with little expectation of his tank running dry. No one’s fault, indeed nothing bad, just a quick reminder of the earthly creature that man embodies, and a question raised between holiness and the random universe.
While questions like this niggle your narrators brain, our Rave is now in the midst of a conversation. But you know what: fuck him for a moment. Let’s not listen, assume he’s doing the social pleasantries and try to collect ourselves. Get ourselves in the right perspective. Give our heads that little shake and just double check that we’re focusing on the right aspects of this complex equation. We have very little emotion so far. Very little actions. Very many asides. But, I think, the day is still young, our way is still smooth, and the day feels infinite. At the moment, I believe, things can go on similarly. But this will not always be the case. Nothing will happen but everything will be different; eventually.
Rave was just shooting pleasantries, and is in the midst of them, and frankly I hate pleasantries, but with that same action of fast forwarding through the opening credits of a film just to arrive a few too many seconds before the scene actually starts, I’m stuck. Should I fast-forward, or just let it play? Should I side track, maybe ingratiate myself with my reader, throw a clever quip, or just let the scene unfold, acknowledging that my conversational tone has already caused me to miss so much, and pretty soon it will not be pleasantries but rudeness.
The pleasantries are done, and there is silence. A bell rings. It rings again. It rings again. A boy, younger than any man but older then a baby, is banging a bell. Banging it hard. With passion. It must be a prized job, something to be proud of. He is bellowing for students to form their lines, and like a shepherd herding sheep the entire student body listens to this one tiny fellow and fall in line, no questions asked, no stones thrown, no violence threatened. Rave sits staring at the scene but staring at nothing. Maybe fantasizing about that girl, maybe about that food, but let’s not invade him at the moment, let’s see a scene.
Every student is standing in some logical order, though the logic escapes us. It must be grades, that’s a proper assumption, but the vast mixture of heights, sexes and uniforms gives us little concrete clues. A student walks before the collected ensemble, with that spring in the step of a captain proudly displaying his troops, and in a bellow in that same vocal range of a general readying a legion for war this student announces attendance is about to proceed. The collected group of students bush together illogically. The front student shouts commandingly for all to go back to their places. Is this how all this usually happens, are these little details the fine lines of the script? Who cares. At the front of every line a student appears, and seems to have the task of arranging attendance. It would seem that something happens to determine attendance, but Rave is looking at a barrel of rain water, stagnant and full, and it distracts us from the details of the proceedings. Somehow that drill master head student, cocksuckerignorantpowertrippingcock, or not, has all the attendant sheets from his prefects or disciples or what have you. He glances at them with a look of concern which we’ll consider contrived, though we have nothing to base this on. Then he marches with that tight ass and light feet of somehow who expects to be watched. He walks to a teacher at Rave’s desk. The teacher has his head in his arms, likely fantasizing about something interesting, or maybe also just staring at the rain bucket, but this students absolute concentration on his task imbues it with a certain importance which grabs at the teacher much like a marionette, and while there is little emotion the teacher stands with back straight, stares the student in the eye, and asks for the attendance report. The silence in the yard is complete. Who the fuck cares? Clearly, either dire threats have been communicated or there is some cultural whatthefuck but everyone is giving this banal ritual of attendance far too much credence. Not Rave. The teacher and that stickintheass head student look over the results of the attendance together, both with a face of givefuckery and an appropriate number of hmmmmmmmms. Then, the teacher announces the results satisfactory, though with great many more words and an unneeded number of threats shouted, and the bellboy, on some invisible cue, starts ringing his bell: announcing everyone to class. The silence is broken. The kids are kids again, all trying to fit in a last jab in a friends rib and whisper in a cute girls ear before they reach their class desk, and one is thankful that the quiet is dissipated and noise is in command again.
Rave takes the scene in with a Buddha’s smile, and truly it is one of those lovely moments of sheer overwhelming humanity that make life such a wonderful endeavor. How wonderful it would be to continue to follow Rave’s day, to appreciate the completeness of his life. But, at this moment, your narrator is taking a break. Deciding either to say a ‘to be continued’ in the hope that he will come back, or else to have Rave hit by a car. But no matter what, sadly, at this moment this story is most definitely over.