Author: Barrett

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.

 

“There is roughly a fifty percent chance you will die tonight, or a fifty percent chance you will wake up perfectly fine. There is nothing we can do. We wish you the best of luck.” And with those words the doctor threw me in waves of chaos, an insurmountable wall suddenly separating itself between the me of the moment and the me of those forever moments past. How dare this be the truth, this unreality, how dare it be me that such misfortune is sprung upon. I am in shock. I am angry. I am on the street. Should I have yelled at the doctor more? Demanded something. Perhaps. But I am tired. I go to my hotel, in a place where I am unknown and unloved: alone; I meet the eyes of the concierge and give a pleasant nights greeting: no need for the threat of death to break courtesy, and then I dive into my bed. Well, what will it be like. For now, I feel fine, maybe a bit feverish but certainly not on the point of death. What should I do? It seems moderately pointless to do something as benign as watch TV, but I don’t feel particularly inspired to confront the leviathan of death. It would seem to even start scaling that goliath is to just make me buckle under my true fear of mortality. No, I think I will just lie. I am strong. So the chances are 50/50 for a man, well, fuck that, I’m a strong man, and if any sickness wants to fuck with me they’re going to have to come at me with an army, guns blazing, because I have zero intention of dying tonight. Whatever the doctor said, he is going off statistics, me, I am going off myself. I am young. I am strong. And I am determined. Sickness: do your worst, I know I can best you, I am sure of it as I am sure of myself. The doctor gave me many pain killers, but I will not take them, though I can feel pain, fever, sickness rising into my body. I don’t know what any of the symptoms will be of this parasite I have, but I do know that it is better not knowing, better not overanalyzing, seeing some small facet and unconsciously making it into something that it is not. Oh, I know the power of the psyche, and I am determined to use it to my advantage. For this fight to be mind, body and soul, and for each of these defenses, indeed offenses against my sickness to be impregnable. Time is passing, or at least has the presence of passing, and I am still in control of my pain, of my sickness: I am still the master and this is easier then what I was expecting…but, then I must not become over confident, death, she is a wily opponent, and she will catch me one day no matter what. Perhaps it will even be in a week. Perhaps, surviving this sickness, I will be struck by a car tomorrow. But that is fate, this is fight, this is not a heads or tails but rather a vicious boxing match and so far I feel like the punches aren’t landing. Ahhhhhh, but she is putting in a little more vigor, I can feel my body wanting to rebel, in some ways disobeying me, and I will accept the fact that sickness will win many key battles, indeed, I will allow them too. There is only one battle I wish to win, and that is the pleasure of another sunrise, and this blitzkrieg death is showering on my outermost defenses seems to me a waste of time. She has but a few hours to finish me, and she is so far away from beating my mind, let alone my heart. Ahhh, sickness, just because you win some does not mean I pat you on the back, I don’t like the way you make me feel, the things you make me do, and I can feel a certain exhaustion building slowly into me, but still, time is passing, still I am winning, and every extra minute I win is closer to that time where the fangs of death will be pulled and I will be victorious. Just a few more hours. I’ve managed in life to live so many hours already, what is a few more? Let me find that nirvanic spot deep in my mind where I can separate myself from the pain of my body and concentrate on simply feeding the force of my fighting spirit: go, you white blood cells, chase whatever you can, eat those motherfuckers, whatever they are. Aghhh, to think of the battle being fought in me right now. Billions against billions. Losses greater than all the wars of human history happening in the blink of an eye. Ahhhh back, you devils, I am still here. Ahhh: you shall not prevail, you can take me one day, but that day is not today: I promise you, ignoble partner, dancer I care not to dance with: back down. Flee. Why waste your own spirit trying to smooth a rock as jaggedly majestic as myself. Ohhhh, this sickness is not fun though, not fun at all, and I am twisting in my bed, rotating almost constantly looking for that perfect spot where I can just be at a comfortable rest, where I can concentrate. I move up, I move down. I move left, I move right. I feel like shouting at the bed to just fucking be perfect, but fuck it, I will make perfection out of these imperfect tools. I keep rolling, and this drives me to psychosis, since I know this is energy exerted on a task that is not fighting the death feeding off my body. And indeed, I know that I am getting tired, can feel myself getting more tired, but this must be expected, no matter what happens this battle will be a close one, and I am sure that this fucking parasite is going to bring me to my knees with exhaustion, already I wish I could just curl in a ball and be sweet nothingness: but this pain, and, of course, the knowledge that at this point in time sweet nothingness is a deathly proposal. Back! Satan. Don’t try to buy my soul yet. Back, exhaustion, you will have your place in an afterlife removed far from this unpleasant night. But motherfucker, how dare you prevail. How dare it be that I am finding it harder and harder to move. How dare it be that I am not as strong as I was at the beginning of this night. Oh, I shall beat you. God, please help me beat her, I know death must come for me sometime, I know whenever it will be I will claim the same thing, but still, I beg you: not tonight. Please, please. I know my question of your reality in the good times is ephemeral, but when I come so close to the darkness I realize it must be, must be, in opposition to your lightness. If you let me live, I will do anything for you. I will find a way to prove to the world the wonders of this revelation that I am finding just now. I will be your greatest prophet. But god, where are you! I am becoming weaker. What is this, I cannot bring myself to move my body anymore. I am here perfectly still. But I am still here. But, the pain, the pain. Eating at me, inside and out. From the inside of my bones to burning rage of my skin. Oh, and I see the way out. The great black door, promising to end the torment at any time. Where did this door come from? Was it always there? Oh, death, you temptress, this game is not fair at all. You have done this dance billions of times and I’ve just the one. Does every man, before they die, believe so assuredly that they will live? That they are special? I don’t know. But this is what death is. It is nothing magnanimous, it is just the absence of fight. It is gone from me. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Where is my strength, where has all of my strength gone?

So where is it we are? Well, I suppose I am here, at a bar, writing, and you are somewhere I can’t  imagine, even if you exist; yet, we are somewhere together: even if we are not spatially near we are brothers for we are about to dive into the unknown: myself, creating words that I have not yet made, and yourself, reading those same words which you have yet to read. Maybe we should start now, but before I dive into these current vortexes pulling on my subconscious I want to just enjoy this moment, these pretty surroundings, a wonderful night in a sublime environment. And one which I will ignore, or try to, to complete a task: this task; of writing these words which give me no pleasure, only catharsis.

Well, what shall I describe to you? There has been a haunting in my mind for the last few days, but I fear the artistic inspiration which hit me like a wave has been wasted. I thought it would be here now, when I could manipulate the world to be a perfect environment; rather, I find that it has peaked, crashed, and I am in placid waters. I fear I am going to vainly splash, to try to reawaken the monster that had such potential, but I fear even before I attempt that this feat is beyond me.

Usually when I write, I am strictly fictional; perhaps I am an often invasive narrator, my young ego still tripping you out of immersion, but the writings I create are fantasies, idle constructs I create to give visualization to those colorful emotions swirling through my mind; this shall be different; while yes: it is still an attempt to capture leviathan, that swirling chameleon who so gracefully escapes my tentacles, today, on this blank page, I will rather describe true events. Or at least events based on factuality.

I need to set the scene, which is something anathema to me, something entirely outside of my nature. I like ambiguity. Usually I believe that I could glorify this inclination and try to convince you that what I want is to set an universal scene, to try to create a setting that through its sheer lack of detail may resemble something similar to your own situation, but I am absolutely certain in the not so deep crevices of my mind that rather the reason for such opaqueness is my laziness, my lack of inspiration: unequal to create a scene in the vein of that wonderful image which passes through my mind and I think: why try? Why make a painting with stick men on a simple sketch where a real artist could create a masterpiece. So I don’t; or, usually, I don’t. But here, here, I will try. Please, forgive my stumbling. Indeed forgive me everything, forgive me all my little ticks, my little imperfections, this imperfect work which I feel will try your patience, will reveal itself as something not worth your time. At least realize I present myself as something human, something weak, something lazy, perhaps the story should be about me, the lazy man, the bad man, the man who wants to be an artist to call himself an artist. And really, arrogantly, all my work is always about me. But for now, in the vein of gaining momentum, let me try to set the scene.

My current surroundings are Kigali, Rwanda. It is October 3, 2010, and at the moment it is 20:09. Why be so exact? I don’t know. An appreciation of the moment, it is still 20:09, some lightning just struck, I am alive, yet now, it is 20:10 and the moment is past, being filed into my subconscious, another memory to forget. But we are still here. I am at a lovely little restaurant by the nunnery where I am living at the moment; I am on a patio on a hill, overlooking a valley, and staring at an angle at the gradual rise to other hills. It is night, still early but black and the fluorescent lights of this city are rising from the valley and distant hills like constellations: making up for the invisible stars in the sky which their own brightness obliterates. There is the threat of rain, heavy drops crashing in isolated chaotic spatters on my computer, lightning burning my vision and threatening my peace, yet, now that I think of it, a curious lack of thunder. This is where I am, right now. A Sunday, though it doesn’t make a difference, a Sunday where I was at work. But the me, the me right here, who is already a memory, is trying to remember. To name a beast who has been violating my serenity for the last few days, and in the discovery of this beast, hope to name him and humanize him, to deconstruct these pangs of guilt, regret and confusion, and make peace, even if it is, as I fear, a peace built on a construct of remorse.

All we were trying to do was help, but the reality is, to often it is impossible to see the causality ahead, to realize the end domino of the stack you are pushing on. Where do I begin, the beginning, the middle or the end. When my creative inspiration was flowing over me, I was still in the middle, or at least in the middle in comparison to the tertiary stage I’m floating at now. It seemed correct to start there. But now, I do not know, things have changed, the story is the same but the feeling is different and the differences are impossible to rectify. The logical thing to do would be to start at the beginning but rather I will start at the end: a friend and me, or more correctly a co-worker and me, we tried our hardest to aid some street children. We paid for them to go on a bus outside of Kigali to where they said they wanted to go, to where their grandmother was; we also bought or gave them new clothes, shoes, even a deck of cards and a tooth brush. What heroes huh? Saving the world, two children at a time.  Life is not so simple, or if it is, my conscience will not let me enjoy it.

The reasons for my guilt are simple: I interjected myself into another person’s life, I did this without giving it appropriate thought, I did I this on uncertain knowledge of the path to righteousness, I did it on uncertain will and perhaps the wish to escape the situation altogether. I am the worst man, the man who tries to do good but may cause evil purely through lethargy, purely through an inability to give enough of a fuck.

Where does this story go? It is not a story made poignant by facts, this is no Odyssey. Rather, it is this attempt to describe a terrible color haunting my mind, stealing my sleep, morphing me into a weakling, a being I am unable to confront. I suppose the point is to try to confront myself, and in words, I feel like I am whining, trying to make a big deal out of a small little oddity. Maybe I am trying to add romance and adventure to an otherwise bland life. But I am unsure of the validity of this thesis, since in my mind I am still haunted. Maybe give me patience. Maybe, just maybe, I will be able to dredge the right combination of words to make you understand why it is that I am thrown into chaos: though, I acknowledge, that combination of words has yet to appear here.

I am white. Not just white: the descendants of English, French, Russian, German. I was raised Christian. I have a complex. I have the heavy weight of generations of culture leaning on my shoulder, ancestors who looked like me, thought like me. And here, today, in these last few days, I was like a colonialist. I was a man from another culture, a man who did not speak the local language, and I decided to intercept whatever story would unfold for these poor boys, Jean Claude and whatever the fuck his brother’s name was, and in their lives interject my own morality, my own desire for how the story should unfurl. Just like my ancestors, those evil men who through their desire to create goodness created so much evil. Created the borders that divide Nigeria and make it ungovernable, who forgot to make the borders in Congo and make it ungovernable, who claimed that making African’s slaves was bringing them into the true fold of Christ, who still create trade walls which perpetuate the greatest poverty on earth while injecting a tithe in aid and allowing ourselves to pat ourselves on the back: saviors, hero’s, the bringers of light.

Am I being too harsh? Yes and no. People who look just like me created massive harm, but also made some incredible creations. Really, there are no innocents in this world. If anyone was to be defined by the actions of even their closest confidants the world would be black: hell: just a reminder of the wonderful people around me here in Rwanda on streets that were slippery with the blood of the everyman; an easy reminder of the horrors in all our hearts.

All I wanted to do was some good. Yes, I have fear of interjection, a fear that I am powerless to define the eventual results of my actions and, therefore, I should seek to be as minimal as possible: that it is unfair to have effect in ways that I can neither entirely perceive or have control over. Yet, then here, here was two poor boys. Sleeping under a bridge. Dropped out of school. Sniffing glue. Father dead, step father used to beat them. Runaways to escape, then again, runaways of that wretched institution that was designed to take care of children like them. Are these kids liars? Want to take advantage of the foreigners who listen to the words that the locals have long grown immune too? But if they are liars so what? How can someone who is so poor take advantage of someone so rich? We tried to help them. We tried. But we could have tried more. We could have ignored the situation. Never had to deal with it. Never caused potential problems. And besides, any benefits we might impart into this foreign land, no matter how statistically unlikely this conclusion is: it is neutralized in the face of the magnitude of the problem. Great, help two in two million. Why these kids? Why them. But, then, why not these two? Why be overwhelmed, why not affect some for the positive even if it results in walking past the hoards of others. Maybe to save two in two million is the best I can do. And if I destroyed them, sent these young children into the teeth of a dragon, started momentum rolling in an unpalatable way, maybe showed them that there is a market in taking advantage of foreigners, maybe sent them to a place even worse than here? Well, I suppose those are the thoughts keeping me sleepless, making me feel guilty. Making me apologize for spending money, for taking time to help two boys, one of whose name I don’t even remember. I feel myself coming in confrontation with the evils of my ancestors, staring at them, and stating perhaps their evils does not mean that my own actions will result in malignancy; yet, at the same time, indeed by the same logic, I need to acknowledge that I am here, with the exact same emotion, with the exact same hope of goodness of my forebears. Perhaps creating even more suffering.

Is apathy the right route? I don’t know. What is the right choice? To flip a coin betting on heads? Maybe I will get heads, I win, maybe I will get tails, I lose. And maybe I don’t have to flip the coin. I don’t know what is right. I know I flipped a coin this last time, and I will likely never know if it was heads or tails, no matter how much I wish to know. I am sure that coins will be in my hands again, and now, I still do now know what to do. All I know is that I will try my hardest, test laziness, and it may be the struggle of what makes me myself. The paths ahead are difficult, yet, right now, I don’t see how to avoid them, how to simplify this complexity into a reusable formula. No matter what route I take, I will be less the man for it. All I can promise is that I will try harder, whatever that means.

Walking slowly into the bus station Jeff reads every departure and arrival. Ahhh, a Houston bus has just arrived and an Oklahoma bus is just going. Are these people, all the people on the seats, are they all going to Oklahoma? Jeff sits down in the mangy interior, unfolds a newspaper with a brisk movement and sits in the waiting room. He doesn’t read any of the paper, in fact he’d already read it this morning. Rather, he’s reveling silently  inbetween places: here people come and people go, and here he can stay and watch all the goings on with a similar pleasure as watching ducks at the pond.

Smiling a softly sad smile, Jeff watches all the going on’s over his newspaper. Everyday after work for the last five years this has become his routine. He checks the schedule everyday as he walks in, and as of yet in the entirety of five years it has only had one major route change. That was an exciting day, to see the bus come that has never arrived here before, to see all the little ticks that the staff have trying to adjust to something new when happenings of the new are few and far between. Almost everyday there are buses that are late, and these always provide exciting times.

Once, a bus was two hours late, and for the entirety of it a woman with her two small children waited for her husband to arrive. As they first arrived the jubilee of buses arrival was radiating from the three of them. Soon daddy is home, soon my husband is home, soon, again, we will be a full household. The bus was two hours late. It had to have a driver change where the driver called off sick and no replacement was found in time. Two hours is not such a long time, but it is endless when you are feeling at the top of the world and trying to maintain that euphoria. It is beyond endless when you are with two small children. Jeff watched the time pass, watch as the goofy grins gradually left the children’s faces, replaced as the time passes between look of patience, impatience, annoyance, crankyiness and finally the very worst: unending boredom. At the beginning the children were on their best behavior, by the time the bus finally arrived with their father they’d become little nightmares, the mother exhausted by trying to keep them in line and when her husband finally arrives they all hug quietly without euphoria and coldly walk to the car. The wonder that had so much potential had been lost. Jeff silently wept in his own mind watching the whole opera. It had easily been one of the highlights of his year.

Jeff is somewhere in the middle ways, the sorry type of man that so easily gets lost in a society that only prizes the individual, the successful individual at that. Is there a point to summarizing a life in a sentence? Even the grandest life would seem truncated, empty, yet, we will try since to understand Jeff you need to have his context. His children have come and gone, a part of his life that at the time seemed like such a head ache but now he looks back as the happiest time of his life. He was not close to his children. He has been divorced for five years, around the same time his children moved away. It was a silent point of pride in his life that they stayed together through so much personal indifference to each other until his children became adults. Jeff was ok with his kids being so much more close to their mother then him, it just seemed like the natural order of things. Now, five days a week for fifty weeks a year he wakes up in his inpersonal condo, has a large cup of black coffee and goes to work as a car salesman.

Being a car salesman is hard work for beginners, however, Jeff was no beginner. He’d been in the industry for over thirty years and he’s made peace with the ebb and flow. On some days you make a sale, on most days you don’t. Most days were boring, sitting there always needing to be turned on, always watching, waiting, hunting, yet, it was just that, waiting.

There was a high burnout rate for the new guys,   you can watch them show up at the beginning eager, ready to make money. Then, watching as the smiles break, the hunger becomes cannibal: they have to make the sale, they need to eat, it’s a slow month, they have to have to have to. These new guys, they were like new farmers, thinking every month would be harvest time and never preparing for a dry spell. Well, dry spells happen, and they can break even the strongest. Jeff was friendly with the new guys, but he never became close, it can hurt your soul being near someone who is breaking, and many of these guys over weeks, months, even years, they break. For Jeff though, he was a veteran, he’d survived though sometimes he looks back with a grin and thinks all it cost him was his relationship with his children and his marriage. It’s a pretty ironic grin. Jeff had no secret in the industry but an easy smile, a professional manner and above all patience. A few years before he’d been watching a nature documentary and he saw a man fishing for wild salmon with his bare hands. The man would let dozens slip through his hand, not moving, barely breathing until BAM, suddenly, one that to an ordinary person would look the same as all the others to the hunter would look perfect and he would grab it perfectly, dinner would be had for the night. You don’t need so many salmon to feed a man, and you don’t need to sell so many cars to make a living, you just need to make sure that when the right one comes you get it.

While it never consciously crossed Jeff’s mind, he was purposeless. He’d accomplished those things that he was going to accomplish and now no one had a need for him anymore. Sure, this idea never consciously verbalized itself to Jeff, but if one was to watch him for any amount of time it would become very evident that he was aware of this fact. Even more, he seemed to be at peace, since for some having nothing to look forward too was a nightmare, but for Jeff it was wonderful: it meant nothing to fear. Everyday could be the same, it made no difference, the clock was ticking towards something, some type of end. Jeff was not a hunter, all of his bills were cared for , he was no artist. Simply, the world had no need for him and equally he had no need for the world.

Except, of course, for his daily trips to the bus terminal. Simply sitting there, sometimes in the same seat, sometimes sitting wherever there was many people, sometimes sitting away from the others.. Here, not at his home and not at his work, one gets the feel that Jeff is most alive. His head is like a young sparrows, flitting each and every way to see all the happenings. He loves it all, absorbs it all. Some people arriving just on time, some people arriving just late. Long, passionate goodbyes and cold cure get-away-from-me’s. With a child like glee he absorbs it all.

Perhaps Jeff subliminally accepted that the tree of his life was to bear no more fruit, however, this is not to say that there was no magic in witnessing the art of life being acted by others. Some might go to a restaurant, some a movie theatre, Jeff chose the bus station. A place where people come and go, a place that is always out of the routine, either the beginning or the end of a new chapter of life, something that Jeff had long lost the ability to imagine.

Sometimes Jeff thought of buying a ticket. Go to one of the clerks, all of who had long ago become used to his continues presence and finally go somewhere, anywhere. It was a nice fantasy. He thought that he wouldn’t tell anybody, just blitz off. At work he had years of unused vacation days prepared, he was sure that he could leave without a note and just tell his manager that there he had to leave immediately for personal reasons. Nobody else would really care. He could go on the bus without a suit case, get off on the other side and be whoever he wanted. New name if he wanted, but even more a new personality. He could be the joker, the romantic, the drunk, anything he wanted to be. While in Jeff’s secret heart he knew he would never leave, that he had made his bets in his life and now just had to play out his hand, nobody can blame a man for mindless fantasy. In fact, if only there was the ability to actually talk with Jeff, to tell him that ‘Yes,’ he really  can leave this life, he really can recreate himself, turn the vehicle of his life a new direction, a more honest direction. Life does not need to be measured by the route you have been on or the route you are going, everyone is the master of their own destiny. Jeff is the master of his own destiny.

However, it is Jeff’s life to live. He is happy, in a way that pleases him if perhaps it wouldn’t please everyone. Things are good, perhaps things aren’t great, but to have things be good isn’t something to be lightly sniffed at. Those few moments each day at the bus terminal is not the sign of a man wishing to escape, it is more a reflection of a man watching television, fantastizing about a story that he doesn’t need to live to love. Days pass, pass and pass. This is a life. It may even be a good life.

 

Placed just over the shoulder of our man, the man whose perspective will imbue this story with any poignancy it may transmit, we see him reenter the company of his fellow man after a long departure. Where was he? We don’t know. At this point, we don’t even know who he is, though we do hope to discover more about him very soon.

He is nonchalant, maybe even happy. You get the feeling that perhaps if no one was around he would be skipping and clipping his heals. Maybe this sense of exuberance is not as marked as it would immediately seem, since the utter despair firmly imprinted on the faces of all those people surrounding him sets a somber scene in which our protagonist is most definitely an outlier: a flash of color in a secondary corner of some monochrome scene.

Not noticing the melancholic sea he is lithely flying above, our man keeps making his merry way: even going so far as to be jubilantly tipping his hat to the elder women that he passes. Is he rude? I don’t think so. He seems to just be lost in his thoughts. However, his rapture does not exclude his merriment being noticeable by others, and there is a palpable feel of malcontent percolating through the crowd bordering our man.

Eventually, after one too many ‘hellos’ with a bit of a wink, an elder gentleman confronts our man. He asks why he is happy. In fact he goes “Why are you so happy?” Except he said it in a manner both more cutting and more formal.

Our man seems unperturbed, not thinking anything of this incursion into his privacy. Our man said something along the lines of he was happy just because it was a beautiful day, and in his opinion there was no reason to not be happy. He said that he hoped he hadn’t done anything to offend the elder gentleman.

The older gentleman was emotional. Restrained, yes, but more emotional then such a simple statement could propagate. He was mumbling those words to himself that our man had just recited: no reason not to be happy; no reason not to be happy; no reason not to be happy.

This scene is not a normal scene. There is something off that is not impossible to describe, but just difficult. The scene is normal, just an average street scene, likely on a weekday; the day is even wondrous for its summer charm: flowers blooming, blue skies, and that sublime smell of fresh cut grass. No, it is the people infecting this scene with a noxious air: a hollowness to their eyes, a leadenness to their step. They are broken. Standing side by side to our man, it is very much the difference between seeing Dorothy entering Oz for the first time, radiating color and playfulness, and beside her the bleakness of depression era Kansas bathed in black and white. Our man is alive, but no more alive than any other of that endless yet endlessly joyous breed of people. No, the problem is not in our mans joy, or even in the sourness of the crowd around him. No, it is  the fact that our man is the only joyous one. Where in the normal spectrum our man is represented by an entire range, here, in the spectrum of this crowd, that entire range is missing; all the shades that would normally be represented by this shade are missing too. There is an absence of joy, of even that which has one upon a time touched joy.

The elder gentleman is emotional. Our man is unhappy of causing this. Not unhappy as a person, or with himself, simply with this situation. The syntax of this story may become difficult. Our man tells the elder gentleman that his words mean nothing, that he was just joking around. Inside the head of our man there is confusion. He is unsure of what he said cause this drama, maybe there was an offhand remark that this elder gentleman is taking out of context, maybe there is some meaning to his words that he did not connote when he constructed the sentence. He wished to make it very clear that he wished nothing but good cheer, kindness and respect towards this elder gentleman, yet, much to our mans consternation, it seemed that the more he tried to communicate his kindness the more the elder gentleman became disconcerted. Finally, abruptly, the elder gentleman gathered control of himself. He looked our man right in the eye, and said a thanks for the kindness, but that the kindness was undeserved. Then, he said something startling, that he, our elder gentleman, did not deserve any such kindness. And that he would have thought by this late date that our man would have realized the futility of expressing such empty kindnesses. Then, after a balefully remorseful glare, the elder gentleman turned on heal, perhaps he was once in the military, and paraded in the crowd.

Releasing a general sigh of relief, the crowd feeling that this anomaly that had broken its immersion has been exterminated carried back along with the busy nothing of living a life one responsibility at a time. However, the equilibrium was still perturbed: where before it was our mans exuberance disturbing the crowd, now it was the crowds complacency towards the bizarre scene with the elder gentleman that was perturbing our man. He was standing still, where the old man left him. He was not in shock, but rather seemed to be replaying the preceding scene in his mind, trying to put a puzzle together that he was not sure he had all the pieces too. Why had the man said he did not deserve kindness? Why had he questioned the sincerity of his remarks? His confusion was radiating into the crowd, subliminally attempting to catch the help of another, but now that our mans anomalous character had been checked it seemed that the crowd had stonewalled his existence.

He continued walking. The farther he went, the stranger the world. People were universally dismal, this he now noticed, and the air of despair was trying to invade his soul. His genuine good cheer was still strong, keeping the melancholy at bay, yet he was now conscious of the lack of a resonance similar to his own in the wake of his walk. Where was the happiness, where was the exuberance of life that need not be universal but one would hope may make a butterfly out of another kindred soul in all of this. Answers flooded our mans mind: maybe there was a loss of a particularly hoped for sporting event, perhaps there had been the death of some famous personage. Our man was aware that he had been away from society for some time. The world can change.

An easy solution could of course rectify this entire confusion! And our man, brave in ways such as this, bit back the bile that all brave men fight through and blatantly fished for the eyes of a casual walker by. He made his stare unavoidable; he was ignored. Then, he was even more brave and lightly touched the sleeve of a young girl walking by. She had large innocent eyes. They caught his, and she was his, though one wonders to what extent this casual engagement was a breach of some subliminal social etiquette. Was our man a bad man maybe whispers through our mind. After all, we do not know him well yet, and watching a happy man be happy gives little insight into the sort of things that might supply his pleasure. We all have our secrets, and we will let our man have his for now. But right now, we must deal with this young girl. If it makes a difference she is lovely, as only the almost full bloomed flower can be. Let’s get to her. Let’s stop keeping our man and this young girl waiting.

“What has happened to make everyone sad, to make the world grey on such a sunny day?” Our man asked with his eyes while phonetically inquiring if this young girl knew the way to a certain park that I’m not sure existed. Our girl looked at her feet and said some response that may have been a truth to one or both of the answers, yet, was tragically so soft the words were lost even before they left her lips, let alone before they travelled through that treacherous void of space and entered our mans ear. He of course said “pardon” except he didn’t. He saw a scene, a scene I have no problem admitting I have never seen, one which our man could not ignore, and which this young girl could not pass off with a mumbled breath either.

The scene was this, or close to this. Our man and this young girl had come to a busy intersection with some form of parade on it. Bisecting our mans street, the multitude of the parade like gathering marched perpendicularly in front of them. Maybe I can give this scene a color: it is green. Does that make a difference? The parade is ramshackle, like that which suddenly apparates around the murdered body of an innocent in war. Indeed, there was even a body at the centre of this beast, yet instead of worshiping the fear of death, it was a newborn in a hamper who was being deified. Wearing pink swaddling clothes and a blue bonnet the newborn was wailing loudly for a mother who was far away or refusing to gift comfort. The crowd walked with the enfant lacked boisterousness; rather, this was a parade with a serious agenda: a parade that meant something to each of its participants. The seriousness of this scene was undeniable. People coming from our mans street had fixated gazes to the innocent wailing child. Many persons consciously joined the throng and others or were so lost in the sight of the enfant that unaware of the motivations of their feet became active participants to the parade. This scene meant something.

Our man watched the unfolding with a sense of wonder entirely different then the cultish worship that everyone else bestowed upon the scene. He did not join the adoring throngs, nor did he stare captivated and lost at the scene; rather, he went back to looking at this young girl, who was staring at our young man with a questioning gaze which implied something which this narrator at this point is unable to communicate.

She gave him a look questioning his confusion. He gave her a look of questioning, and made a motion to touch this young girls hand before shying away. She asked him in no certain terms why was he so confused. He answered in very confused terms that he was nothing but confused, and suggested by the terms that reality was constructed in his interpretation of the world anybody would be confused. He also added that he had not been in society for a few days, and he mentioned this particularly thorny subject in a manner which would not suggest anything but a plausible excuse for the normalized chaos confronting him.

This girl looked at our man with those large eyes, those eyes that were undergoing a sea change from hostility and questioning to one of understanding. She said, “oh” and that the last few days were transformational in the world, that she did not know where to begin, did not know if she was the right person to even begin telling our man of the devilry that had saturated the world in recent days. But, she said, she would do her best. She took a breath, rubbed, her elbow, fidgeted for a microsecond. Then, she met our mans eyes, asked him to give her time to give a story known to the universe but not to our man in a manner uninterrupted, then, upon an accepting nod from our man she began a recital which I don’t think our man broke once. However, for clarification of scene, they did gradually drift to a spot more off the street from where their conversation was initially instigated.

“I was walking down the street, six days ago. Well, and this sounds stupid, but, well, it is not stupid, it is what happened. Rapture. Yes, like in the Christian bible. No, please, don’t look cynical, I am not reciting to you any of my beliefs, simple the reality of what has happened. You see that the world is different: think that I am joking? Ask any of these others if my words are true. Please, if you want the truth, trust me, I am no liar, no matter what sins I have committed. Rapture happened. I was walking down the street when suddenly, just like the evangelicals prophesied, certain people walking past me on the road began to levitate. A light imbued them much like they were a mild sun sprouting rays in all directions. Suddenly, with a noise like a mixture of an amen and a thunderclap, various people were being awarded haloes. There was no question that this could be anything but rapture: the bringing to heaven of the worthy by a just god in the last days. I was..I was not an unbeliever, yet, there was no doubt that the beliefs I held were wrong, that all the other religions were wrong, that science was wrong: just like the depictions in those stained glass windows that you have seen in every church, or on so many cheap postcards, here was the reality. Cynicism be damned, it was just like the sermons promised”

“Myself, I have considered myself to have lived a good life. I was by no means perfect, but I believe that I lived a fruitful life, the sort of life that the secret god of my heart that I prayed to would have thought valid, valuable, and soulful. During rapture, people were not ascending simultaneously. Rather, there were gaps between some and others. Maybe there was some hierarchical list to which some angel was calling in descending order. I waited, thinking I would be called. I watched many around me both ascend, and wait for ascension. Many times I thought the light had chosen me, that the thunderclap of amen had spoken for me, and I would look above my head to see that there was no halo and look below to see that I was not levitating. I waited in this state of frantic anticipation for a substantial amount of time, until much like one cannot ignore the rise of the sun once it has reached noon I had to acknowledge that I was not one of the chosen. The knighting  had stopped hours ago. There was still a multitude, truly, a vast majority of us non alighted standing on the street. Some of us collapsed on the street. Some of us cried. Some of us continued standing, waiting for something that was emphatically not coming. Me, myself, I just stood staring. I may have cried, or I may have smiled, I don’t know, but what I do know is that the thought so firmly entrapped in my skull was ‘what did I do wrong? Why was I not one of the chosen? How did any god see me as a sinner? What did I do wrong? Had I not lived a good life?’ My brain was flooding, weeping, transforming. Yes, I am speaking incoherently, but please understand that I have not shared this with anyone. I wish I had not shared it with you, it burns me so deeply; but the words have been said and I want to follow them through. You see, what the truth is that I am a sinner. I am a sinner. I have had the examination of my life marked. It did not suffice. I am a bad woman, a monster in the eyes of the creator whom irrefutably exists. I am a monster. That despair you feel weighing in the air is the acknowledgment sprouting from all of us left behind that yes: we are all sinners. And you, my friend, the one we’ve decided to call ‘our man’ you are a sinner too. You are still here, yes? Let your jubilation be finished. Appreciate the despair that is within the rest of us left, your fellow sinners. You have failed. You did not pass gods tests. You are a sinner, hated by god, doomed to whatever truth there is to the wretched idea of hell. Join us all, waiting to discover hell, realizing wretchedly that if god has taken those he loves to heaven, then what has he for his unchosen?” And this girl was stammering, speaking faster, impassioned, even gesticulating with a infusion of drama which was of an entirely different tone of the bright joyfulness of our man and the drab grayness of the other.

Brightness still infused our man. The wretched news of this girl entered his heart, yet for reasons as of yet he could not communicate he did not feel the self abhorrence that was clearly the dutifully directed point of this girl. They stared at each other for some moments, short or long in time not meaningful because it lasted just the length of time that it needed to, this girl bug eyed trying to break the news of our mans sinning nature, and, then, our man staring balefully at this girl with eyes that were very emphatically devoid of the despair which this girl very much thought would fill our man. What was there in his eyes? I don’t know yet, am not even sure if they really contained anything, maybe the news had so surely shattered the man that there was nothing, just the screen saver of that joy that so recently permeated them laying an opaque screen disguising the vast tracts of nothing that this news had decimated our mans mind into. Yet, this was not the case. No. No what was here, or there, time slipping in such an ephemeral pace that what is and what was is difficult to grab a hold to, no, what was there in our mans eyes was something that this girl did not expect to see: continued joy. You could still say that if he was moving, alone, that he might be skipping: maybe even clicking his heels.

How could this be? It was a question that clearly confused this girl, clearly confused myself your narrator, and indeed even confused our man. He was standing being thoughtful. The thoughts behind his eyes I wish I could jump into but their current was running so fast that it would be dangerous to jump in mid process: who knows what mental rocks might be exposed, what mistruths might be realized passing by at such speeds. No, we must wait for our man to come to certain epiphanies, to show himself in his dynamism in his ability to change in front our eyes, or even more truthfully to remain static, to retain that awe filled merriment that resonates in his every step: to communicate the joys of his existence despite the harrowing despair that sought to invade his heart.

He said to this girl that he was not an evil man. He said that confusion filled him, yes, but that he still loved himself. That in the litany of his life, he did not know what he would change to more assuage a god that clearly deemed him unworthy. He admitted the acknowledgement that he shared the pain of his fellow men, that he felt a vacancy through his mind that some higher power had not chosen him, had watched him emphatically doing his best to live a life that he would classify as beautiful and deemed his efforts unworthy. Yet, still, again, this perversion had not pervaded his heart.

“How?” asked this girl. And again our man was silent. The answer was not given to our man, just the confidence in the eventual righteousness of whatever that answer is. Our man tried anyway. “I once watched a young boy on glue trip over his own drunken feet, hit his head on the tumble down and lie there immobile, maybe dead, maybe fine. I looked at him, wept in my heart, walked on without helping him, without looking back. I make no claim to be anything but a sinner. My life is littered with moments where I look back and self-loathe the demagogue that I was. What I proclaim is happiness, not that happiness of a sadist who takes pleasure in his own maliciousness, but rather that of the ambitious man, the sort of man who understands the limits of life: that one has to take chances: to roll the dice, and appreciate and deal with the absolute eventuality that mistakes will be made. I was ambitious. I climbed mountains from whose summits I could not see any land that I knew, but rather made my way just following my feet and the survival skills inherent to my humanity. I was told the way of the lord. I knowingly deviated from it. I supposed my punishment is at hand. But so what? I did not spend my life enthralled to the mantras of others, repeating words, actions, and days in the service of the already discovered, the already experienced. I believe that those people lifted up into rapture are happy, but their happiness is very different from that which infuses me. I know no fright of the hell which you proclaim is before me: I greet its eventuality with the same moderate curiosity that I would greet that heaven which was not gifted to me, or to the turning to dust which I thought was my eventuality. Will they torture me with pain? Is that the fear of a hell, pain? I will master pain with the same curiosity I would ponder a fresh summer day. I am my own master, I am no slave to god even if he is the true god. Death provides me no fear, life provides me no fear. The only thing I fear is not being true to myself. Of compromising those axioms through which I live my life by trying to conform to some system which does not have the ring of truth sing sweetly in my ears. The others were right in their beliefs? Yes, they were risen. But so what? Eternal life and the pearly gates of heaven to me seem a poor reward to not appreciate that we were in heaven anyway, an ability to live in the infinite moment and appreciate the visual splendor of light playing off a poorly painted wall. Maybe these people will find the meaning to life in their immortal incarnation, but, I pity them. Pity those days on earth where they lived for the glories that they have now attained rather than those glories which were before them. I lived my life true. I will continue to live my life true. I am at peace, much like a mountain, star or running stream: those forces of nature which do not operate in the hope of some different life but rather operate with the same intensity, day in, day out, until their existence in their present form no longer exists. Upon my death regardless of where my soul goes I will be forever happy thinking that those molecules that once created my flesh will now be a part of some different mountain, some faraway star, some young bubbling stream. I care not what is the reality, all I care is what I make out of my perception of reality, and under the guise that I am true to myself I will be forever in praise of the wonders of life. Yes, I have sinned in the Christian sense, walked past that poor boy who tumbled. You don’t think his fate has filled my mind, those others sorrows that buffet me every day: but I have chosen a higher morality then that of the eternal gods: I have chosen the way of compromise, the undeniable infinite of shades grays. That tumbled boy an equation whose eventual causality I could not encompass, and I made the cynically realistic choice to avoid the situation: a choice I live with, though now I believe it may have been the wrong choice. Life is full of mistakes. To me, it is not the avoidance of mistakes that is the witness to a holy life, but, rather, it is how we interact with our mistakes, learn from them, learn to be their masters and finally, to rise above them. These men, surrounding us with their despair, they are not sad because they were not brought to revelation but rather because in their hearts they feel like they were caught. They thought they could keep secret those deviances in their hearts and are depressed that god has found them out. Myself, god has seen me as unworthy, but I showed him with honesty everything that makes me, me. To hell with a god that loves me not! I love me. I would argue with god in every decision I have made, in all their vast complexities, and I believe I could prove in every case that I took the course most honorable, one not filled with the laziness of not attempting to tackle the complexities of life nor one defined by a fear of misstep. I have misstepped; I have gone astray; but at least I attempted to walk towards something magnificent. Judge me as you will, girl, your insight just as important as any gods. Just as likely to make me question myself, just as I believe in the strength of my own position being able to carry me through the harrow of your contempt no matter your loathing of me.”

Well, that was long, neurotic, and not overly cohesive. Clearly the reality of a pure thought passing through the killing fields of verbal expression. But still, if perhaps those words meant nothing concrete the impassioned tone and fiery eyes spoke their own language with this girl. She looked at him while he talked, saying nothing but never looking away from his face, his eyes. Both of them were as rocks in the flowing river of the malcontents flowing around them, that malcontent threatening at any moment to break both their spirits: our mans spirit being tested in its virtuousness as never before and this girls spirit having a flower bulb so ready to bloom, just needing respite a little longer, a few more moments of sunshine on a quickly fading day.

She told him that his words did not make sense, that she disagreed with him and that he was in denial. She said this while staring down, staring to the left, staring to the right. Human weakness, it is how we know there is no true god no matter what he who lives in heaven might proclaim: weakness pervades our souls so deeply that there is no way it can be separated from the model that gave us genesis. Pervades us so deeply that those who claim to holiness are doing nothing but hiding a truth, shying away from honesty. Monsters, all of us: can we not accept it, make peace with it. This girl, she took a step back from our man. Said she was sorry to be the one to carry to our man such unfortunate tidings: she looked him right in the eyes, rainbows sprouting from her sad gaze, eyes that showed a luminosity which was always there and would, we hope, always be there. Then, she slipped into that quiet river of despair floating around the quickly disappearing island of their conversation. She was gone with such an abruptness that our man did not think to reel her in, to thank her, to do something incorrigibly human that would make him exist in her heart as anything but a moment in a day which was quickly fading from her conscious mind and, even that of her subconscious mind. These two had shared something palpable, but no more palpable then those interactions undergone thousands of times in a life that we ignore. Those little resonances that are the answer to the true holiness which our man proclaimed to adhere to.

Our man stood in the street without that girl for a few moments. His face underwent a certain number of facial expressions but none of them extreme. Then, in the face of glowering humanity and mournful gods our man continued walking down the street. Continued looking like if there were no others around he would be skipping, even clicking his heels. Continued trying with all the power of those infinite universes which constructed the vast labyrinth of his existence to live life as truly as he was capable.

Well Miss Pouwer, I’m in a bit of a pickle. I’m in the mood to write you a letter but I just talked to you on the phone. I was thinking I could just fill up the piece of paper, talking just for the pleasure of talking, then I thought instead hey: maybe I can kill two birds with one stone. I wanted to write this little story I remember from India and maybe I’ll write it for you. I think India meant something special for both of us, maybe you’ll feel the emotion I put behind the words, even if I don’t get them out properly.

Let’s start then. Let’s introduce out protagonist and hero, the one and only Barrett Nash. He’s got a funny hair cut an easy smile and is searching for something that he’s not totally sure he’ll find. In this story let’s have him go by his first name, Barrett, because things are a little different here than in reality. Maybe I don’t remember things perfectly, maybe I want to make some small changes. Should we do past or present tense? How about past tense? OK, good. Onward.

The scene, the scene! It’s an Indian train. You know it don’t you? A thousand people, all eyes on you, your eyes on one of the million sights fighting for your eyes attention. Barrett was just sitting looking out the window. He’s got a book, a computer, a phone, an ipod and a tablet with him but he just stares out the window. Maybe the best time to think is when you have nothing to think about and Barrett is just letting his thoughts flow. He’s been doing this for I swear to god thirty hours already, while the train is a crazy 54 hour trip.

So far it has been pretty good. There was that group of Jain women that invited him to take dinner with them, very nice food though Barrett isn’t sure how he feels about being fed by a stranger as if he was three years old. There was that old man who didn’t speak a word of English, but his eyes danced as he gave Barrett a shaving of a nut he was peeling. His eyes roared with amusement and good cheer when that nut froze Barrett’s tongue and conquered his brain for a few minutes. What was that nut? Who was that man? Was it a good thing the man gave Barrett the nut? This story isn’t about the nut. It’s not about the family that he watched a Salman Khan movie about. No, this story is going to be about the men who sweep the floors.

I wonder if you’ve seen them, these men who clean the floors? Sometimes I feel like I’m blind to a lot of the bad in the world, I look over it unconsciously just wanting the world to be perfect. Then, these men, these untouchable dalits, they try to disappear as well don’t they? You remember my apartment in Udaipur, there was half a dozen dalits working there. They cleaned my room every day, yet, I never saw them. I never learned their names. They break my heart. People lower then dogs, sinners in a past life spending their entire accursed existence atoning for something that they didn’t even do in this life. Life should have hope, life should have opportunity, what a tragedy for these people to live life’s where they feel compelled to suffer, to be shit, to be less than shit. The train cleaners are these type of people, not the hardest lives, India doesn’t let it’s foreigners see the true bottom, but not the top dalits either. Usually they are old mean, pulling themselves on hands and knee as the scrape with their bare hands the garbage, waste and general gross shit heaped on the floor without regard by the very friendly and very blind Indian masses. The well off of these sweepers might have a little skateboard they’ll drag themselves on, most just drag themelves, skin against the floor, day in and day out. This is their life, this is what they do, this is their livelihood. After digging into every corner they humbly put their hand out, not meeting any eyes, hoping for a rupee or two. They usually get that, I suppose it’s enough to not starve on. That means something, I guess.

This trip Barrett was on was long enough to need to be swept three times at the point this story starts at. It was always an old man, ageless in his wizened feautures, maybe 90, maybe 50 and broken. Barrett doesn’t know if it was the same man each time, he can’t remember. I’m going to move to the present tense, it just feels more natural for me right now. The train cleaner is coming again, dragging himself, his darkened back shirtless. Barrett see’s that he’s coming, feels in his pocket for a few rupees and gets a little tip ready. He just wants to get back to starting out the window, get back to fantasizing and dreaming. The old man crawls through the compartment, comes to clean underneath Barrett’s legs, looks up at Barrett and shit, it’s not the old man. It’s just a boy. Maybe he’s fourteen, he can’t be older.

Well, let’s say this just kind of breaks Barrett’s heart right now. There are so many hard scenes in the world, yet, you build a wall, you build emotional calluses, there is too much pain in the world to let every scream pierce your serenity. This, however, is unexpected. A punch to the kidneys from behind. Just a young boy whose life flashes before Barrett’s eyes. This young boy will become one of those old men. He will spend his life crawling on the floor of trains, dragging himself. He will know the careless feet of people forever better than he will know even his lovers eyes. This is not a life Barrett would wish on anyone. And he is a child. He should be free, he should be playing video games, fantasizing about girls, getting into trouble. “The world is unfair, yeah, of course, but fuck, couldn’t it be just a little more fair,” is what Barrett is thinking.

He gives the boy the few rupees, he gives a smile that maybe still has a splash of innocence in it, then he carries onto cleaning the next compartment. And the compartment after that. Barrett looks back out the window, but his mind can’t stop thinking about the boy. He wants to save him, to take his suffering away, to change his life, to give him hope, to give him happiness. He thinks, “How dare I have so much when he has so little,” but Barrett, well, he’d tell you to your face that he’s a cynic. He cynically thinks that to change a life is not as easy as a lot of people would want to think. Maybe there’s something to that Chinese idea that when you save a life you are responsible for it, to change someones world is never something that should be done casually. Yet, today, Barrett’s icy cynicism melts under his anger at the unfairness of the boys life. “Fuck it,” he figures. He’s not going to change the boys life, but, just maybe, he can give him a little something. He can give him a little bit of money, not much, not even enough to throw his budget off for the day, but enough that the boy would think it special. Enough so that even if his life wasn’t changed, at least he might be able to have a fun day or two just to be a kid. Enough so that maybe he’d realize that there can be some good and good luck in the world.

Wrapping the notes in a piece of paper to disguise them, since people are evil everywhere and would think nothing of robbing a penniless dalit slave boy, Barrett chases down the boy. Without looking into his eyes he gives the boy the money, nods his head with the faintest splash of a smile, then goes back to his chair. He’s no happier, his heart is no more at ease. He wonders if he gave the boy money just to hide his own guilt. He doesn’t know. A shot of whiskey would be nice for times like this. He wrote a poem, maybe I’ll try to find it and put it at the end of this story.

Time goes on. Some people heart that Barrett gave the boy some money. He eyes them with a ‘who the fuck are you’ stare and tells them that it was his money and he can do what he likes with it. No one supports him for doing it, someone tells him to never do that again. This is how the heart builds its calluses. Time goes on. More hours unravel. Does the boy leave Barrett’s heart? No, but it is fading away into another color that builds the spectrum of his life, the immediate shock and pain fading away in that dirgeful symphony that fills Barrett’s mind through his waking life. He is enjoying the train ride.

After about another five hours of looking out the window, wondering how a billion people can live in the land on the other side of this glass, a man comes up to Barrett. He has the demeanor of importance, you can tell that he is used to being listened to. He says commandingly” Are you the foreigner who gave that boy all that money?” Barrett thinks this is just another person trying to butt into his business, then he sees the insignia that makes this man recognizable. He is the conductor of the train. Barrett says yes, he is the one that gave him the money. The conductor says, “That boy was bragging to other people. Word got around that he had all that money in his pocket and some men beat that boy up and threw him off the train.” The only word that Barrett gets out is, “Oh” and there is no sympathy in the conductors eyes for the pain in Barrett’s. He says to Barrett, “Don’t worry I have taken care of it. Don’t ever do something like that again” Then he marches off. What does ‘he will take care of it’ mean if the boy has been thrown off the train? There is a breaking in Barrett’s heart. There is another callous made. There is a certain amount of his faith in the goodness of the world taken away. There is a sadness that buries itself deeply that will not be forgotten. Then, with eyes that refuse the tears that the heart begs from them, he stares back out the window and carries on watch the unfair world unravel in front of his eyes.

This coffee tastes like shit. Why do I feel like I need to buy a coffee to stay in a coffee shop? I should have just bought a juice, I even saw bananas by the till. I would love a banana, when was the last time I had fruit? Could I feel like I could work for a few hours here with just a banana though? Would people look at me and judge me? It’s not so busy here but it is a money making establishment. What’s a banana cost, a dollar? Maybe nobody cares, maybe nobody thinks about things like this, or if they do they only focus on themselves. I’m not looking around at other people, wondering it they have earned their place to stay in this coffee shop. Still. Buying a coffee in a coffee shop, I guess it just makes a certain sense. “Hey everybody, look at me, this is a coffee shop and here is my coffee. I’m doing exactly what I’m supposed to do here. So fuck off.” Yeah, I guess that works.

Ughhh. What am I supposed to do. I’m just not in a working mood. Ughhh. My head hurts just looking at this excel worksheet. Come on brain, start. Let’s go. Ok, so let me get my set of raw data from last month and compare it to last month and last years. I’m sure there’s growth, we’re making a good profit, why do we care? Does my partners even care? I sit here for hours and it looks pretty and there are these lines going in all the right directions, but is it just an ego boost for my partners? No, I think the physical affirmation means something. I’m just feeling lazy. Maybe it’s good I have this coffee, maybe it’ll jump start my brain a bit.

My eyes keep drifting around the room. Come on. Come on. Time slips away. How long have I been here. I haven’t done anything yet. I just want to daydream and float. I just want to put my laptop in my bag and put on a pair of head phones and drift through the streets, disappearing in my mind. Yeah, that sounds nice. Let me be free. Let me be free. But, I’m not free. I said I’d do this. What am I if I’m not my word. Eyes stop drifting.

Who is this girl that just sat down next to me? She just has a banana, good for her. I should do that next time. I should be more healthy. I should be better than myself. My eyes creep up from the banana to her hands. Why do girls always have such elegant hands? As if they were designed to play the piano. How stupid that we shove cocks in their hands when they should be making art? But maybe that’s why it’s so nice, their delicacy compared to all our brusqueness. She has a nice black nail polish on. Is she a punk? Nah, let me flash a quick look, no, definitely not. I guess wearing black nail polish isn’t the major stigma it used to be. Besides, she’s brave enough to buy a banana and take a table at a coffee shop, maybe she just doesn’t give a shit, maybe she is just herself.

She’s cute. How am I supposed to do work when there’s this cute girl next to me? What’s she doing? She’s got her computer out too! With only buying a banana? Is that really fair. I wonder if anyone will say anything. I wonder what her voice sounds like. I wonder what she dreams about. She really is cute. Look at her, staring at her computer, so determined. Is that a condescending thought? I wonder if I’m sexist. Whatever, the world is more complex than the words we associate with it. I don’t look down on her or anyone, isn’t that what sexism is? No, I suppose it’s not. I don’t really feel like thinking about it right now. I think I’m just going to keep looking at this girl out of the corner of my eye. Let me enjoy her beauty like a flower. If only I could smell her. If only I could be close to her. Do I want to fuck her? Maybe. I think I would rather wake up with her. Am I lonely? When is the last time I woke up and had another human being, eyes wide and beautiful and brown, are these girls eyes brown, waking up and being stared at. Just quiet, not a big deal, but having someone stare at me. Makes me feel real. See that look that they really see you. To wake up feeling close to something, to someone. Is that love? I don’t think I’ve ever known love, but maybe that’s a type of love that means something to me. Spare me all this bullshit about lightning bolts, I just want to feel close to someone. I want someone to feel close to me. To make each other be real. To be close. To be able to reach out to another human being and touch them. To be touched by another human being.

Her hair is short. I love short hair. I love the feeling of putting my hand around their neck and feeling their bare skin. To run my thumb up and down and to stare at those brown eyes again. To be close. I would like to be close. When was the last time I was close with someone? When did Stacy and I break up? She was beautiful, for awhile there we really made each other exist. I wonder how that feeling disappears without you even really noticing it. Is love like a bottle of wine, when you finish drinking it there is no more, it’s just empty, what was there is now gone? I wonder. I wonder if I will ever fall in real love. I wonder if real love really exists.

I should be working. This work isn’t going to do itself. Do I have time to complete it still? Yes, but it will be a rush. Fuck. This is just one thing on my to-do list anyway. I wish I could catch up. There are all these responsibilities. I want to be better than I am, I wish I was better than I am, I will be better than I am. I will be, I will be. I can achieve my dreams. And here I just spent ten minutes thinking about this girl. Maybe love is like a bottle of wine, but so is life. Maybe I could share this finite resource that is myself with all these different specters that I dream about. Give some of the nectar of my soul to love, give some to myself, give some to living a meaningful life. Then, maybe there is just not enough of me to go around. To dilute myself means that I will never actually use that potential that I have. Everyone would be drinking, but no one would be getting drunk on the magic of myself. Sorry to the pretty lady and sorry to myself, I need to be committed. I need to think about nothing but work. I need to be better than this time I am spending thinking right now. Let me dive into this spread sheet. Maybe this is not the only way to live a meaningful life, maybe this is not even the life I want to live, but this is the life I have committed too and I will not back down. Back to work.

Besides, she probably has a boyfriend anyway.

Today I am fast. I can go faster than anybody. I wish Tommy could see me go this fast. What if he could run faster than me. Where is Tommy? What did mommy say he had to do? I wish he was here to play with. I hope he’s not doing something secret that I’m not allowed to do. If he doesn’t want to play with me I will tell mommy and she will yell at him. He has to play with me. I bet that I am faster than Tommy today. He is bigger than me but I am growing faster. Mommy says if I eat my broccoli I will become big and I eat more broccoli than Tommy. I should time myself with a watch and see how fast I am. I have a watch somewhere, I wonder where it is? Maybe I should time myself, then have Tommy do the same run and not tell him that I am timing him because I would be timing him secretly. Then, I would know if I am faster and if I am I could tell him “Tommy I did this faster than you.” and he would turn pink and know that I am better than him. I wonder if I ran fast enough if I could fly? That would be so scary but maybe I would be the first person to do it and I would be famous like Einstein and mommy and daddy would watch me flying and the entire world would think I was so great and I would be a famous celebrity. Let me try running even faster.

Zoooooooooom. Zoooooooooooom. I like to make that noise and flap my arms like an airplane. Zoooooooooooooooom. I like how it feels on my arms as I run, the wind, I feel like I’m close to flying. If I could go faster. I could go over the fence, I would look down on the apple tree, I would see mommy through the skylight and she would look up at me and Tommy would join her and his face would turn pink and mommy wouldn’t say anything mean but Tommy would know she wanted to know why Tommy couldn’t fly.

My backyard is so big. It’s one of the biggest in my class. James says his is bigger but I counted my yard all the way around with my feet, then at James birthday I did the same to his and mine was wayyyy bigger. He called me a liar but he’s the liar. He’s just jealous. Mommy says that jealousy is a sin so I bet James goes to hell and he will burn there. Zoom. I wish Tommy would come out and play. I’d like to fight him. He always beats me but one day I am sure I will beat him. I eat broccoli even when mommy says I don’t need to. I am going to be the biggest baddest boy in the school. All the big kids are going to look at me and think “Wow, this guy is scary.” And then they will be scared of me and they

“Mhwarellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll”

What’s that noise? I didn’t make that noise? Oh no! What could it be. The backyard is safe, daddy built the big fence, he says nothing bad can happen here.

“Mhwarekkkkkkkkkkkkkk”

I don’t like that noise. I don’t like it, I don’t like it, I don’t like. Let me run home into my bedroom and watch television I don’t want to play our here any longer I’m tired.

“Mhwarekkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkl.”

Oh no the noise is close and I don’t want to know what it is but I see it and oh it is nothing scary it is just a tiny puppy. Oh it is ugly. It has no hair. It is gross. I don’t want to look at it. All the girls in my class would be so scared of it. I could put it in Missy’s desk and she would scream and everyone would laugh. I don’t want to touch it though, it looks icky. It’s pink like a valentine’s day card. Good thing Tommy isn’t here, he’d make me touch it and laugh and I would hit him and hurt him and then mommy would be mad and I would be in trouble and wouldn’t get to watch my TV.

The puppy is not scary anymore. Now that I know what makes the noise is just the little puppy the noise is not scary anymore. It is funny! “Mhwareheeeeeeeeeee” hahahahaha, it sounds like a fart hahahaha. I can make the noise too. “Mhwareeeeeeeeeeee.” Hahahaha.

Why is this puppy so ugly? I get my eyes as close to it as I can. My nose is almost touching it but I don’t want to touch it, it looks icky. It’s so small. Maybe it is a baby? I wonder why it has no hair? I have seen puppies before and wanted them but I don’t want this one because it is so ugly. I would any use this one to make hilarious jokes with, like “Hey Missy you know what your face look like, it looks like this dog.” That would be so funny even the teacher would laugh.

Why is it making that noise? I wonder if maybe I get a stick and poke the puppy if it will still make that noise. Where is a stick. Here is a stick. Oh it’s a good one, strong and long. I can poke it from a far distance. Not because I’m scared because I’m not but maybe the little puppy will transform into a big dog or a monster and I need to be smart like daddy always says. I poke it in the side, right in the middle and it makes an even louder noise. This is really funny. I poke it again and again and again and each time I do a little harder to see what the noise will be like. Haha. It is becoming quieter now each time I poke it and I don’t like that. Even when I poke it as hard as I can it doesn’t go louder anymore. The puppy is stupid. Now it’s not making any noise. Why isn’t it making any noise? Oh no what if it died? Oh no oh no oh no oh no. Mommy would be so mad at me. Even though I didn’t do anything wrong she would think because I was poking it with this big stick that it was my fault and I’d be in trouble and Tommy would laugh at me. He would tell everybody in school that I killed a puppy dog and everyone would laugh at me. Oh no oh no oh no.

What do I do? I wish I was strong enough to lift a big rock off the ground and put it on the puppy so it would be hidden and I could watch it become all gooey. But I’m not strong enough yet to do that. What do I do. I don’t want to get into trouble. I will pick him up with the stick yes and I will hide him over here on the other side of the yard where no one goes. Let me dig a hole for him and put him in here. That’s good. No one will find him here. Let me go back to running, playing with this puppy is boring.

 

“Hey you fat fuck get out of the way. The streets supposed to have room for more than one elephant.”

Oh who said that? Who the fuck said that? I stop and I look around blood rushing to my face just in anger, just in anger. Oh I want to kill that little asshole. How dare a person say something like that to another human being? Sure I’m fat, but does that make me less human?

I spot the little creep that shouted at me. He has a mischievous look in his eyes. My heart drops. Who am I fooling? What am I going to do, eat him? He sees both my rage and its fading away. There’s no one else around, maybe he gets a kick out of picking on the vulnerable.

“Hey mother fucker, when you eat Christmas dinner, do you get a turkey to yourself? I bet you do! I bet your mother is fucking fat, and your father is fucking fat, and all your brothers and sisters are, and you all have your own turkey. People like you make me sick. Pigs. You’re what’s wrong with our country. You’re why the Chinese are winning.”

I keep walking. I stare at the ground. He’s shadowing me. Why would one person intentionally be cruel to another person? What have I ever done to this man? Doesn’t he know how much it hurts to be this fat? That every day the first thing I think when I wake up is how much I hate myself for being like this. Is this voluntary? Yeah, people like this always tell you to go hit the gym, get life sorted out, but it’s not so simple. They make it seem like we don’t try. All I do in my life is try to not be this disgusting blob that I am and it doesn’t make any difference. I hate myself. I hate myself. I hate myself.

“Oh, don’t want to lose some calories by talking back to me? I understand, wouldn’t want you to waste away to nothing. Oh ho! You really are something. You really are something.”

He turns to go away and I feel so good to be left alone. I should shout something out after him. I should tell him how evil he is. I should call him on his arrogance. But why would he listen to some fat piece of shit like me? Why would anyone listen to me? Let me just get out of here.

It’s a sunny day and there is no city in the entire world as beautiful as Vancouver on a sunny day. Alicia is about to go on break from the little coffee shop she works at on Broadway and Laurel and when she opens the door to sniff the new outside freshness she knows she wants to spend her break looking out over False Creek, downtown Vancouver and the still snowy mountains. Today is one of those special February days when snow is still in the air, there has just been a week of grey clouds and rain and there could easily be another week. For this one fleeting moment, between shifts at work, the world is sunny and rich. The world seems to be a better place. Alicia doesn’t want to squander this opportunity.

Her break is only thirty minutes. The too early evenings means that Alicia wakes up in the cold darkness then gets off work in the cold darkness. That truth often weighs her down, but not now, not at this moment. For this moment Alicia’s mind is singing. She barrels down the hill, over the pedestrian overpass that bridges the ugly concrete of sixth street and is in the faded glory of Creekside Park, which is gleaming like a polished penny in today’s perfection.

Without actively thinking Alicia just allows her mind to flow. She breaths in deeply the wonderful air and feels alive in a way that is impossible to feel at work, that is impossible to feel on a grey day. Moments of life are always so compartmentalized and Alicia without even realizing it is for the first time in too long of a time actually having a moment of true freedom. She has about twenty five minutes left of her break, where should she go? She thinks about it. She’d love to go to Granville Island or the Olympic Village but they are just too far, so what is closer? She thinks she could maybe just walk the seawall until she needs to head back to work but then she sees an empty concrete bench, in memoria to an Annabel Deschutes, and feels like the only thing in the world she wants to do right now is sit on this bench in the shadow of the glass forest of downtown Vancouver with the icy depths of False Creek at her feet, and to think about nothing.

She sits with a contented sigh and begins thinking about nothing, which is of course that space of time when a person thinks about everything. Like an inactive machine suddenly brought to life there are suddenly a swarming of moving parts sirening through her brain. We don’t need to know the details of all this clatter. Suffice is to say that Alicia is a sweet girl. Yes, she has her faults, maybe she should be more ambitious, maybe she should be more brave and maybe she should try to take more control over her life. These frustrating depths are always below the surface of Alicia’s mind, yet, she is so in love with the act of living these thoughts only get her down when she lets them get her down. She thinks life is how you spend your moments and perhaps a lot of the moments in her life are imperfect, yet, this is a perfect one so she shouldn’t squander it.

With an unconscious smile tickling the sides of her mouth, Alicia sits with pure contentment on the bench. This is the sort of moment that will be forgotten in a day yet whose halo provides some of the sweetest memories of life. Alicia would gladly of spent the rest of her break like this and gone to work fulfilled, except, a man interrupts her reverie by asking if he can sit next to her. Without really looking at him or thinking about it she says, “Of course.” The bench, after all, is for everyone and there is plenty of space.

However, once he is already sitting, Alicia feels like a grey cloud has dampened the scene in front of her. She even looks to the sky before realizing it must be the man. What is he doing that effects her so strongly, she wonders. Sometimes a man just being a man spoils the day of a woman, just as a man being a man can make a woman’s day special. This is not the case though. No, what is drifting like a plume of smoke from this man right into Alicia’s face is a profound sadness. He does not look at her, his face is expressionless, yet, a simple glance at the ashen face of the man sitting next to her and Alicia knows that in a weaker person tears would be flowing.

What should I do, wonders Alicia. It is hard to be around someone who is suffering. Alicia does not know him, she does not understand his plight and has nothing to offer him. Yet, he is suffering. Isn’t there something universal in trying to ease the suffering of another? What if Alicia is wrong, what if he is actually not sad? She doesn’t want to be rude. Then he looks over at her and she is shattered, a piece of whatever has broken inside of him falling through his eyes and cutting her. The beauty in fragility makes him for this moment the most handsome man Alicia has ever seen. Their eyes are locked. Alicia cannot look away, while the man is not trying to capture Alicia’s eyes, the emotions blooming from them are just so strong that like magnets they do not let go of Alicia.

After a split second of this the man opens his mouth to say something to her, then stops himself before letting a single syllable falls into the air. He breaks his gaze with Alicia to stare back at the perfect weather that seems to be eaten out of the air into the dark crevices of this man’s face, into the dark crevices of this man’s eyes.

Alicia wonders what he was going to say to her. Her break is almost over though, she knows she has to leave. She stand to gather herself and again the man looks into her eyes, this time however he looks at her to see her. He looks hard and Alicia is paused for a moment. Then, in a strong voice that wavers just a touch, the man asks Alicia something that seems to make all the beauty of the day shatter into a million bits, leaving only the broken cracks disguising what was just a moment ago perfect and transparent. He asks her if she could tell him that she loves him. He just needs to hear the words. Something like this has never happened before to Alicia. She has never told a man that she loves them, yet, why has she kept the words so sacred? Perhaps by keeping love trapped so tightly we forget that everyone is worth loving, that love is universal. Perhaps this man’s sadness is simply because in the coldness of our world he has forgotten what it is to be loved. Like a flower wilting without sunlight this poor, poor man is losing a leaf at a time, blaming himself instead of the sky for his bereftness of love. Alicia looks at him. She wants to touch his face, to kiss him, to be a ray of sunshine in his life that will let him know that the world is more than it is. Yet, she has to go back to work. Yet, language has never been an easy thing for Alicia. If only words could unlock the true emotion of her heart. She tells the man that she loves him. Then, she tells him that she thinks he’s worth loving. He smiles sweetly, the cloud that circles him maybe not dissipating but for a moment sunshine sings through and he thanks her.

Quickly walking back to work to not be late she thinks for a moment of the man. She feels like they shared a moment of understanding, giving to each other something deeper than either of them knew. Alicia feels happy to have met the man. Then, letting the memory slip out of her mind like water from an open bottle, she thinks again about going back to work and is again conquered by all those little cares which own our souls. The memory of the man disappears, and Alicia is ok with that.