Month: September 2015

My mind turns on. Where was it before? In sleep. Will this be death, one day, that blackness that was me a moment ago without this wake up? Where am I? My eyes are still shut. Something doesn’t feel right. Maybe every waking up feels like this. Maybe this is that moment of time that I forget in the morning every day, my brain being for a moment like a new born babes as it restarts. No, this is not normal. Why am I sitting? I don’t ever sleep when I’m sitting. What the fuck. Shit, this has nothing to do with sleep. I’m awake now. Fuck. I feel empty. I don’t want to open my eyes. I’m covered in something. Christ.

1. Let’s be a man. Where the hell am I? Let’s open my eyes. Ok ok. Ok ok. My brain isn’t clicking into gear. Am I thinking rationally. I’m being a baby. I just don’t want to open my eyes. Well, fuck it, now they’re open. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. Oh fuck. I’m covered in blood. Jesus shit, is it mine, am I dying, am I in pain? I don’t feel hurt. I feel kind of awake and a bit out of sorts but not hurting. What is going on? What happened last night? Yeah, I was at a bar but where did my night end? I can’t remember. Did I drink that much? Christ. I should have been smarter. I should be smarter. OK. OK. Just let everything be ok today, let all of this just have some simple explanation and I will be better. I’ve learned my lesson right? I cross myself. OK. OK. Where am I? I’ve never been here before. What a fucking shitty room. OK. I’m sitting in a corner and it looks like a studio apartment. Where is this? I’m covered in blood and there is blood covering the room. What has happened? The room is small, cramped and squalid. I don’t want to be here. Empty beer bottles line the kitchen counter. Pictures of long ago celebrities in cheap frames cover the wall. There are boxes full of clothes and paper cluttering every corner. Oh god. And what’s that in that corner. Oh my god, it’s a person. A man. And he’s covered in blood. Oh god oh god. What happened here?
2. I stand up. Oh shit what a head rush. OK, I’m in a weirder physical state then I thought. Is it this panic that has flooded my mind? I can’t stand right now though. OK. Let’s crawl over and look at this man. I don’t recognize him. He has been stabbed. I….I……I should check for a pulse. Oh…o….oh god. He’s dead. He’s dead. There is no pulse? Am I sure? I’ve never had to check for a pulse before, could I have done it wrong? Maybe I did it wrong. OK let me do it again. No. No. He’s dead. Look at him. Holes all over his body. Blood everywhere. Who is this guy. Oh my god, where is his killer? I need to get out of here. I’m going to be killed next. OK. Let me stand up for real this time. OK. Three, two, one. Here I am. I’m up. Let’s get out of this shit hole. Let this scene just dissolve into some nameless dream, let this not be real. Could this be a lucid dream? I’ve had them before. How did I get here? Maybe this is a dream? I don’t remember getting here. I wish I hadn’t drunk so fucking much. Christ. OK. Well. Well. I can’t pretend this is a dream because what if it isn’t? Let me get the fuck out of here right now. OK. OK. Which door is out. That one is just a door to another room. Where’s my wallet? Just let me get out of here. Wait, there it is. In the corner. In the corner with a fucking bloody knife. I know that knife, that’s my pocket knife. It’s covered in blood.

I’m back on the ground. How did I fall here? Why didn’t my legs keep me up? Why is my knife covered in blood? How would this killer have gotten my knife? Is that the one that he used to murder this fellow? Brain! Fucking work. Fill in these fucking details. Fuck. OK. OK. Let’s get out of here. I’m covered in blood but that’s ok, I’ll get out of here and call the police and they’ll capture the fucking murderer who did this.

No! A flash lights something dark in my mind that I won’t want to see. I don’t want that thought to bubble to the service. Let me look at other spots of my mind. Let me distract myself. I don’t want to confront this idea. It is not something that should be brought up. Oh, but I can’t  keep it at bay. Please, please, please. No, no, no. Oh here it is, like a light switch in pitch black I’m blinded. Could I have stabbed this man to death? I have never committed a crime before in my life, I’ve never even been in a fight. The knife is just for cutting fruit. Yet, there is a man dead here, in the room with me. Here I am covered in blood, carrying my knife that is covered in blood. It can’t be true. I’ve never seen this man before. I’ve never been in this room before. Why did I drink so much? Why would I have gotten so fucked up? Last night was a fun night but what happened? Where are my friends? How could no one have taken care of me? What the hell.

1. Let me calm down. Time is precious right now. My brain is subtly telling me that I was the one who stabbed this man. I know because unconsciously my fear of a killer barreling through the door and killing me is gone. I must know at some level that I am the killer. Oh my god. I killed a man. I killed this man. Who was he. Ugly wasn’t he? That’s a terrible thought. What’s the difference? I killed this man. I’m a killer, I’m a killer, I’m a killer, a murderer, a sinner, I am Satan I am the devil I will never go to heaven. I am going to go to prison. How could this have happened. What should I do? Can’t I just make this so it didn’t happen? Can’t this just all go away. I am not a bad man, I am not a killer. I may not remember last night but I know myself. Maybe this guy started the fight? Why am I in this apartment? Is this his apartment? Maybe he invited me over for a drink and he wanted to rob me or kill me or something and I just protected myself? OK. That would be less bad. Would I still be a killer? No. No, I would have just been protecting myself.
2. So what should I do. Should I just call the police and throw myself at their mercy? There must be some evidence that this man was a bad man. But, what if there isn’t? This could destroy my life. I’m supposed to go to work tomorrow. What would my parents think? What other options do I have? I remember seeing on TV a criminal feeding bodies to pigs. Or there is that show where the drug dealers use chemicals to melt a body into a sludge. I can’t do either of those though, that’s not me! What do I do? I don’t exactly have a feed lot of pigs and I’m definitely not some chemist. What do I do? Why can’t this just not have happened? Ok. Ok. Ok. I need fresh air. I need to get away from here. But I’m covered in blood. What if I killed this man in cold blood? What if my drunk self just killed this man for some drunken reason and that would make me a murderer. My life is ruined. I couldn’t have done that. My life is ruined. Why did I drink so much? This all didn’t have to happen.
3. So what should I do. I want to make this go away. What if I just change my clothes, there must be clothes in the closet. Then, well, well, well let’s be honest brain, what are my options? I could burn this building to the ground and get rid of the evidence and maybe everything would just disappear and be like it was before. What if there are other people in this building, what if they were to become trapped? But there has to be fire escapes and fire alarms. How do I burn this building down if it has fire escapes and fire alarms? What if all I do is draw the authorities attention to here? Could I just clean up the evidence? I can’t remember how I got here though. I must be on some video camera somewhere. Where is a phone? It seemed smart not bringing my phone out last night so that I wouldn’t take the chance of losing it. Who should I call? I only know my mother’s number offhand. I can’t call her. What do I do what do I do what do I do?
4. Let me be a man. Let me be a man. Let me call the police. Let me tell them the truth, that I was fucking drunk and just don’t fucking know what the fuck fucking happened. Let me be a man. Let me be a man. Let them try to piece all of this together. Fuck it, fuck my life, let it be ruined, whatever, fuck it. If it turns out that I did kill this fucking guy, well, let them lock me up. I should be locked up if I could have done this. OK. Ok. Where is the phone. Let me just act now without thinking this through all the way. Let me just act. Here is the phone and I am dialing and and and, what will happen?

Barrett Nash goes to the bar across the street for no particular reason other than the fact that it is close and it has vegetarian chicken wings. What is a vegetarian chicken wing, he wonders. It’s made out of seitan, but what is seitan? He’s in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, just for a day and a night and a day, killing time before taking a late night bus to New York.

The bar is called Remedy and Barrett is familiar with it because it was used as a landmark that took him to “Not a Hostel,” the illegal hostel that’s been set up in the neighborhood. While he’s never been to Pittsburg before, he’ll leave it with fond memories, mostly due to the time he spends at Remedy.

When he walks in its busy. It’s a Saturday night, of course it is busy, but Barrett forgot that it was  a Saturday night. He’s been on the road for a few weeks and time has a habit of disappearing when you’re on the road. He was looking for a quiet night but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be in the cards and before he gets two steps away from the door a man blares into his ear the question, “Where you from.” Barrett tells him he’s from Canada and the man, who introduces himself as Keith, maybe because he is a bit drunk or maybe because he is just excited to have an out of towner to talk to offers to buy Barrett a drink. Why not, Barrett thinks, a drink is a drink and he sits down.

While Keith is yelling to the bar tender to get Barrett a beer, the name of which doesn’t land into Barrett’s ear, Barrett takes a look around the bar. All bars are the same aren’t they? Sure, there’s a superficial layer but once you scrape that away a bar is a bar, it is just a reflection of the people sitting in it. This bar is full and raucous, a full bar with a line of older men watching baseball backed by maybe a dozen smaller tables where small groups of men and women talk to each other with serious gazes.

The beer comes and Barrett tells Keith it’s fantastic, even though it just tastes like every other lager he’s ever had. It’s been brewed in Pittsburg and it’s polite to cheer for the home brew. Keith is with two other friends, he’s introduced to them and they form a bit of a group for the night but neither of them remember his name and he never really catches their names. Maybe one of them was called big Tom? Big something. Or maybe he’s just a big guy. The big fellow tell Barrett not to even look at the menu, just to order the honey mustard chicken wings. Barrett figures why not, but the big man nearly falls off his seat when he hears Barrett order the seitan vegetarian chicken wings. “Why would you want to do that?” Big Tom grumbles. Barrett says he’s a vegetarian and Big Tom mumbles under his breath a bit but he just seems to enjoy grumbling. He’s buying everybody drinks throughout the night and you get the feeling that he’s all bark, no bite. That he’s having a great time. The other fellow, let’s call him Pony because of his long Pony tail, defends Barrett for being a vegetarian. He doesn’t really seem to care, he just seems to want to be jumping into the conversation.

The night carries on like this, with Big Tom, Keith and Pony talking to Barrett. They’re telling him about what makes Pittsburg a great city, they’re telling him about their favorite sports teams and what makes them great, they tell him about America’s past, present and future. They seem to be talking for a love of talking, for a love of what they’re talking about and a sincere pleasure of giving their opinions to someone to whom these opinions are still fresh. The conversation is good, Barrett is having a great time.

Keith in particular is talking a mile a minute, full of passion. He works for the railway, yet, he says he used to be an artist. One might wonder if this duality is the reason why he is talking so fast, perhaps he is trying to prove something. The conversation is good, soon Pony and Big Tom fade away leaving just Barrett and Greg to talk one on one.

Barrett is listening as Keith describes what makes Pittsburg such a great place to live. “You see,” says Keith, “Pittsburg is not a city. It is all these neighborhoods. Sure, it’s a big city, but it’s a big city made out of small neighborhoods. You get to know each other.”

“It does seem like a really friendly city. It doesn’t feel like

Bike riding down the mud road, I am lost in my mind. The fertile green hills surround me, where am I? I am lost and that is a wonderful feeling. I know I will be found, the world is not such a large place, but for the moment let me be lost.

Pedal pedal. Pedal pedal.

I wonder what I was thinking about on this day? Strange that memories can be incomplete. I imagine I was a bit hungover that day, why else would I bike around for hours and hours. Where was I? Luang Prubang. Was that this life. Let me not get lost, there is something here I want to capture. The story of jumping off the water truck.

I saw it from a distance, it looked like a gasoline truck. Parked half way in the water, women and men clustering in front of the little dam at the front of the lake. They are fishing? Cleaning? I can’t remember. There are these really beautiful boys jumping off the roof of the water truck, lithely climbing up the hulking frame to jog down the curved roof and leap into the water: canon ball.

They are beautiful for their freedom, for their communal humanity, for the fact that they are having fun for the sake of fun and that is all the purpose they need. I remember watching them with envy: what a terrific amount of fun. Then, I remember opening in my mind a thought, unveiled to me like the first rays of sunlight at dawn: I am free too, why can’t I join?

It’s dangerous, the water is shallow, what if there are rocks, what if I slip. Death and its spectre always choking me, the shuddering fear enters my lungs. But I am free. Let me die, let me slip, fuck the world and fuck myself: let there be action, let me be my own master.

I grin and I grinned.

I stripped down to my underwear and the boys see me and start cheering me on. I wonder if they will steal my phone? Let them, but let me trust them, for a moment let me not be me, let me be one of them. I start climbing up the ladder to the top of the truck. It is taller than I thought, I am high up. Shit shit. Do I go to the edge and look? No. They jump, I saw them, let me just do what I need to do.

I tell my feet to run and I do not think, for a moment my brain is weightless, without thought. I was alive for that moment, how wonderful it was. The water embraces me and its crisp temperature reminds me for a moment of some forgotten memory. I was with my brothers, that is the only thing I know.

I come back to the surface and am greeted by smiles. Not just from the boys but from all the others, looking up from their laundry. I don’t mean to smile but I do, I crack a huge grin. Just… the pleasure of life, the meaning of life, this did not have to happen but it did and I love it. I laugh for a moment.

Then I get control. I put my clothes back on, give a kinda curtsy thing with another big smile, but this one a bit phoney, just to show respect, let me share my pleasure with all these others, may we enter each others heart together. Then, I hop on my bike and continue being lost