The Idiosyncratic Quotidian

The Imaginary Manifesto

2006-10-24T14:25:00.000-04:00

“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
-Walt Whitman, Def Poet, “Song of Myself”

A sound ebbs and flows, dips and swells, seeping consistently through the scene. A boy is sitting on his heels. His skin is marble, his hair ebony and lank. The child’s neck is craned back; his swollen eyes peer through the musty barren red ceiling. The chin is flush and pallid in the reflection of obscured light. His gaunt arms are raised to his narrow face. The right hand is pinching his nose, and the left hand stays the wet tissue at his nostrils.

Beside the boy a man lay in tranquility, prostrate, on worn carpet of multifarious linear colors: green like grass at dusk, tangerine, turquoise blend at length. His brow is bushy and sable, beard stubble and beige skin. The man’s bespectacled eyes shut, the glasses are situated awkwardly aslant on the bridge of his nose. An expression in vain.

A woman stands next to the man, looking over at the boy. Her face is flushed, accentuating her chestnut shoulder length tresses and her amber and black spotted, mahogany framed spectacles: shades of reds and browns. She stands below, in relief of, the light, emitted from an adjacent room: cavernous, with a hint at depth. The door halfway shut allows the sound of rushing water to echo about while white porcelain is apparent between the arms akimbo of the woman.

To put it plainly: a boy has a bloody nose; he calls for help; the father arrives at his side; the father faints at sight of the blood; the child resumes his yelling; the mother comes to their aid.

To pull back categorically clean: my brother,..., burdened by habitual nose bleeds during his youth (until his nose was cauterized), upon feeling his nose start to trickle, begins crying bellicosely. My father heeds the call and rushes up the stairs to the red, elongated rectangular room. Turning the corner of the staircase, he sees [him] on the floor and goes to his side. He kneels down to get a closer look at his son. His callusing hand comforts his boy’s neck. He whispers downy words, and sees a drop of blood rush out of the corner of [my brother]'s nose, which follows the jowl down. As the red drip drops from his jaw, my father, too, collapses unconsciously to the ground. That he has a strong aversion to blood would be an understatement.

My mother hurries up the staircase and turns the corner. She utters a curt shriek till duty regains composure. She is not necessarily accustomed to such situations nor is she wholly taken aback by what she sees. She is of resilience, and offers composure to the two men in her life.

Thereby, we can muse, I am not yet in extant. This, I am not certain of. Does it matter? The basic premise of the tale has been passed on to me. I have taken in the events and added that which lacked. The original story simply states that: this one time [my brother] had a bloody nose, [my father] passed out and [my mother] had to run upstairs to help them both out. The story remains open to interpretation due to the magnitude of the severed details. It leaves everything, save the Aristotelian plot, to our imagination.

We, too, can question the accuracy of my story. For one thing, I don’t know when this actually occurred. Was I in the crib, in my parent’s room on the ground floor, or was this the year before my birth? The time period can be between 1979 and 1984. Prior to, my family lived in an apartment in Southaven, Michigan; afterwards, I am conscious of everything which takes place in the house. I set this story in the house we were living in at my arrival, a place I know, the place I live today. That I was told in the beginning that my mother and father had rushed up stairs can only mean that the story does not take place at the cramped flat, but rather at the current residence. One must infer and be attentive to the smallest details in a sparse account. Each word takes on meaning ten fold.

This memory, story, action, image, it is no more my father’s, my mother’s, my brother’s, mine, than it is yours. As many authors ere to have said, once the word is on paper, the word belongs to the reader. The truth here lies not in material proprietorship, (the book, magazine, pamphlet, whatever the median), rather the possession of an idea, and how we choose to interpret that idea. Language, simplified, is a communicated expression of an idea. This implies the existence of an interlocutor, whose duty it is to decipher the expressed idea. The effigy, here drawn by my words, is left for you, dear Reader, to interpret and conceptualize.

***

To make a philosophical argument brief, we can look to Robert Frost for advice. If a path diverges in a yellow wood, either path will lead us to a constant destination. The path controls us by guiding us; the past has plowed these same paths. The poem describes the antithesis of individuality in the physical world. It confronts this idea of independence, and demonstrates its utter absence. The Self, as the soul, can not be defined in the physical, for it does not exist there. But let us hasten, for we must in such mist.

Let us turn our attention to the imagination. Perhaps, it is the raw consequence of reality juxtaposed with memory. The imagination defines our individual view of reality, our personality, our Self. It places its distinct mark on everything; it allows us to judge every sense to thought. The imagination acts on memory by rendering details. When I picture my family before the bathroom door, I hear the sound of bathwater being drawn. Common sense would say there was no rushing water; it would have been turned off. Yet, it continues to rush forth and does not arrest as the scene plays out. After a young Brenda Miller has her tonsils removed, through her anesthetic sight she recalls, in her cooperative reference book, Tell It Slant, seeing the tonsils displayed within a liquid-filled mason jar at her bed side. Her mother denounces the existence of the mason jar, but it is permanent in Miller’s memory. “For me,” she describes, “as a writer it is not important what I remember—or even the factual accuracy of the scene—but why I recall it the way I do.” Let us assume then, the tonsil jar was not there. Her memory records the key objects in the room: she is in a crib; her mother is in a chair next to the crib; her mother tells her that good girls get ice cream. Then, remarkably, Miller’s imagination superimposes the tonsils. The tonsils, like the sound of rushing water, are anything but superfluous; they mark the allusive, but ever present, sense of Self, of which we are constantly in search.

This imposition places an unconscious allegorical metaphor smack dab in the middle of things. Allow me a moment to expound on the sound of water. My family, for the most part, we keep to ourselves. Talking is unwarranted. Arguments go unresolved, swept under rugs. Emotion is unbecoming. Life passes us by while we pretend to fulfill our inherent roles. It is this reverberating noise, pent up, that wants to escape like a blade of grass splitting stone, like a tea kettle blowing its lid. My hands are not clean of these faults, and I could very well be added into my family portrait: leaning against the woman’s left leg stands a boy of slim stature, his left toes maunder atop his right foot; small hands cover a gaping mouth; astonished eyes gaze at the sleeping man’s glasses askew. There is more here than physical posture and placement. There is reasoning in everything we do, including the selection of words. Our imagination, however off-handedly, asserts this into plain view. But, you may interpret this how you will. I only ask that you do interpret this and don’t simply accept what I write as being the end all be all translation of a story passed on to me. For every story there is a myriad of others that are quite similar. The only difference is the interpretation, the voice of our imagination, our ability to possess a memory, a story, an action, an image, and pass it on if we so choose.

***

Our culture is one where we tend to define our Self from the outside in, the true art of Physiognomy. We can only mold clay so much before it dries, becomes brittle, and that is when things fall apart. We can not put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Speaking of romantic love and physical beauty, in her novel The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison exclaims that they are “probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.” It is this type of thought that ought to be reversed in direction; the definition must come from the inside out: from the mental to the physical. This starts with the imagination; for the imagination not only possesses our personality, but it allows us to understand everything outside of us. It is not important what the imagination sees, but rather why it sees what it does. In comprehending why, we can begin to understand our Self, the relation that our Self has with our culture, and even the connection to the world.

You may demand why I don’t ask a family member for a more detailed account of what happened. My only reply is that I would like to know if I know that which I don’t know. We will never know until we choose to know. It is a simple willing of volition. It takes determination and time. Answers are hard come by, and they are only as true as the time we take to make them such.

This is not a call to abandon the city squares for hospitable sea shells, or think tanks. It is rather a cry of worry, on the state of the mental health of fellow citizens. Our culture has proven itself harmful on the psychological development of the youth. Doctors are prescribing pills like Prozac at alarming rates. Our culture churns out depression as well as it produces dreams and myths of individuality. Are we even fully aware of this? That our culture is at fault? Our plague depression? Advertising chastises us to the extent we know not what to wear, and what we do wear fits us so wrong as to be cheap, because we can hardly afford a new outfit once a year, much less once a month. Those who can are portrayed by the media as angelic, with their wealth, and perfect skin, and during interviews, if they don’t have perfect skin, and tell us as much, or tell us about their pet, they, almost, become an extension of our Self. But it’s more than that: our Self tries to mesh with our idea of theirs, and it occasionally works. After all, these people are portrayed as being godlike. They appear on our four television screens for eight hours each day. For the not so lucky, we fall when we come to the realization that this is not to be our fate. Fall like Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. And then we are offered Prozac; which is akin to their back turning on us.

This turning of the back allows us, respectively, to do as well in kind, and provides the chance for change. We will never know our Self until we choose to change our viewpoint from the physical to the mental: to interpret the physical simply as an idea and the mental as the domestic point of creation. The imagination bestows the ability to create. The physical holds no meaning without the mental thought. A bird is only what we imagine it to be. A path is only as worn as we imagine it to be. When our path diverges in a yellow wood, we can choose whichever path to take; walk between the two even; walk where you wish. We must only be certain that we will be all the better for choosing the path that we have taken. Carpe diem, dear Reader.

2006-10-06T00:29:00.000-04:00

The new Tragically hip is out: World Container

...and that's all I have to say about that.
The new Beck cd has a bunch of really cool stickers as well as good songs!

A Suburban Frame

2006-10-04T00:15:00.000-04:00

As always, tell me what you think, preferably that which you dislike. There'll be three more big ones like this by December.

A Suburban Frame

“…That foolhardy laugh, that call of the mad,
How I would that seed lay but in my spleen.”

I was driving home from Oakland University in the afternoon drizzle on four brand new wheels. On reaching my subdivision, I turned onto Webster. I normally take this street, or one of two parallel streets, when returning home from school; it’s not a shortcut, but you don’t have to deal with any lights. I then turned off Webster and headed down Torry, towards my street. There was a police car parked on the other side of the road facing me. I didn’t have to check my speed, though I did, three times, within a hundred yards. When I got my only ticket it was for going 28 in a 25 zone. I don’t speed per say. I’ve been pulled over a total of five times and of the five times, only once was it due to speeding; if you can count three over as speeding.

Passing the parked car, I turned onto my street and was immediately pulled over by another cop car, a black S.U.V. It had been following, but for how long? Where had I gone wrong? I watched in the mirrors, as I dug my wallet out of my knapsack, the cops get out of the car slowly and head towards me even slower. The driver came forward, passed my trunk and then slapped it. His partner was creeping along the starboard side of my car, gun drawn, held at his crotch. I began wishing I had scissors to cut my hair, and a nice business suit to slip on. As it was, with hair down to my shoulders, covered on top with a wool ski cap, a shaggy beard, a worn flannel and jeans with holes in them, I looked the part of a stoner. The fact that I tossed out a burning cigarette butt aided me in no way. The interrogator approached my window, which I had rolled down, looked at the cigarette butt, stamped it out, and began the formal inquisition by removing his hand from the butt of his gun; though his partner still stood stock-still, gun drawn at his crotch.

The cop at my window asked for my license and registration. I felt more than obliged to comply. Do you know why you were pulled over? No, I didn’t do anything; I was forward and pushing a fine line. Well, we pulled y’over for a broken tail light. But, we’ve been getting calls about ya. Me? It seems you’ve been speeding down some residential streets. Did you see us following ya? No. Well, we’ve been staking out Webster at this time for the past week trying to catch ya. Ya’ve wasted a lot of our time! He stood glowing and glowering down at: Me?, I didn’t do anything. Well, this lady thinks otherwise and we’ve got her word versus yours. Exactly, this lady’s crazy; I kept my composure. Sir, thinking my temper was escalating, we take these things very seriously. This person gave us your license plate and was able to describe both you and the car. Just because she’s got eyes…And when you’re speeding down residential streets, we’re going to catch ya. He said a few more words, something about running my license and registration, and that I shouldn’t move. He walked back to his car, and I saw his partner turn back as well.

There wasn’t anything on my record; the speeding ticket was from when I was a minor. But that didn’t matter. I was public enemy number one: prowling and cruising the residential streets of Birmingham. I imagined some old lady or a stay-at-home mom watching the road with binoculars, peeking through closed blinds and clutching fists and smashing them down on glass coffee table tops. ‘The future’s bleak, but it’s by no cause of mine. While this hag calls the cops on me to stake out her residential street, not five miles south in the city of Highland Park, the cops working the entire city, who are lucky to see pay, are writing tickets on ketchup-stained napkins. Birmingham cops should be so lucky to waste their time trying to catch me.’ There was enough free time to send two cars to bring me down, on the whimsical claim that I speed down side streets. Tax payers’ money wasted on staking me out! They had my license plate, why didn’t they just call me, write me, tell me the situation; we’re civilized people, after all. They had my license plate…

***
A week earlier, on a chilly spring Monday morning, I was ready to head out for class at Oakland University. I had my Literature class for Fiction at 9:30a.m. and it was 9:00a.m., a half hour, and that is how long it takes me to commute to campus. I was armed with my Starbucks mug full of Meijer brand Columbian Roast and a new pack of Camel Lights. I had a few days earlier written a strongly worded e-mail to my professor about how much I despised page 280 of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses (1992), where melodrama in the Mexican outback changes the rugged John Grady Cole’s outcome for the better when he should be dead there and then. ‘But it’s good fortune, deal with it. Well, I can’t, not in a book; good luck doesn’t exist, not in a National Book Award winner!,’ I told myself. The anger was grating my quarrelsome nerves as I walked out to my car, and stood in the middle of the street for a while, staring at what was left of my tire and thinking about luck.

On the front port side there was a flat wheel. I decided to back up and pull into the driveway and change the flat there as opposed to the middle of the street. I jacked the car up and removed the hub cap, then bolts from the wheel. Still the wheel wouldn’t budge. I pulled to the extent that the jack was moving more than I’d like and still, nothing. I went to the glove box for the manual. It told me that there is such a thing as a safety bolt, which I had taken for a large, pointless adornment in the center of the wheel. The jack lever was able to unscrew the other bolts, but this lever was not near the size of this bolt. I tried our biggest wrench, the size of my forearm, it was the only one that could open wide enough, yet it couldn’t fit within the circle depression encompassing the safety bolt. I decided to confer with my father, a car connoisseur. After 20 minutes of minor cursing, grunting and: Boy, it’s cold, he concluded that the wheel was going nowhere. My only intelligent option was to have the car towed to the closest tire place, that being Goodyear, a half mile away.

So I decided to drive there, axel damage be damned; frugality has always been there to define my moment. I went at a lagging pace down side roads. People stared at the idiot passerby, the very picture of humility. As I was turning off Webster a passing car slowed down and the driver yelled, saying: You’ve got a flat tire! Yes, I was quite aware of that, but: Thank you. A minute later I turned into the parking lot of Goodyear.

In the waiting room, the funeral of Pope John Paul II was being televised. There was no more coffee in the pot and I had forgotten my mug on the kitchen counter. I didn’t feel like burdening the mechanic that would be changing my tire to also put on a fresh pot of coffee; I didn’t need anymore accidents. So I sat down and took from out of my backpack some French homework, but couldn’t quite put pen to paper and instead watched the cumbersome funeral. It was so garish. The funereal festivities, the reds and the golds, the children crying, it reminded me of a circus. I once saw at a circus an elephant pee. The urine came out like a crumbling damn and filled a third of the ring. Then the clowns skidded in on elliptical routes at high speed with bags full of sand…
***
Rolling down Webster at five miles per hour, the hag saw me, didn’t know if driving with a flat, or maybe just driving suspiciously, was illegal, but called the cops anyway and due to her indecision about the legality of the situation decided it best just to say I’d been speeding. How could she have caught my license plate had I been speeding at even 35 M.P.H.? Physically, she couldn’t have: the wave of her wattle would have snapped her neck. Ergo, she couldn’t have called the police. The only thing that didn’t fit was the difference in time, the morning versus the afternoon, a round-about of five hours. Were my assumptions wrong?

The cop was standing next to my window again, and he was tenting. When he crouched over with his right forearm resting on the top of my door, his crotch became even more pronounced. I looked down at my concave crotch and turned to the other side-view mirror and saw that the second gunman was no longer there. I was cleared. Well, we’re going to give y’a warning this time. But, if I were you, I wouldn’t go speeding, we’ll be watching you. Really? Y’ better not go down Webster either; I don’t want to have to take anymore calls from this lady, this person. I don’t want to have to deal with you anymore; ya’ve wasted enough my time as it is! If we get another call from this person, he shrugged as if it was a mild mannered threat, ya won’t be so lucky next time. Alright, thanks. I let the officers leave first.

I didn’t want to think about the precedent affair. It’s not very comfortable being on the hot seat, and what for? Who did I have to give my word to, whose bible did I have to swear on, is it I that needed to do this? Not in my eyes. I was an innocent, and the cops were threatening me not to trip up or they’d catch me. What had I done? I hadn’t thought much about the consequences of this event. Not so much that the cops would be watching me, but the fact that I knew there was a woman who lived on Webster, that had a speed radar in one hand, held binoculars to look at license plates in another, slammed her fist down on a glass table top as unsuspecting drivers passed by and then called the cops. This woman, clearly, had four arms! This was the Hindu god, Shiva, who saw what was best for her children, and my existence only stunted their growth.

I turned the engine over and passed ten houses on either side, thinking entirely of proprietors behind blinds and shades, watching me, wondering if they have a dangerous criminal living on their block. I couldn’t block it out, the imagery was manifesting. The paranoia was contagious. I felt everyone’s eyes in my direction. The streets were empty, but hordes stood at bay, as I pulled into my driveway. I was ready for doors to burst when I opened mine; I expected a citizen’s arrest, and then a mock trial, with a neighbor, to whom I never said hello, to be the judge. This was all possible in the world of Webster’s femme fatale, and now mine, too. She had reeled me into to this life of paranoia over control. I had crossed into her boundaries, and she had tagged me like a dishonest farmer with his neighbor’s calf. This was what happened to those that stood as public enemy number one and get out of a conviction. The crazed droves take justice into their own hands and create, what could be called, an equilibrium. This was my conviction as I raced into the house to tell my mother everything and to avoid the rain.

Upon entering, she stood at the top of the stairs, in the kitchen, looking at the phone mounted on the wall. Hello, she elongated with a flighty pitch. Now, how does this thing work?, as she pushed buttons with great emphasis. Her finger, visibly trembling from those nerves that I inherited, flew off the button, showing that she had pushed it, yet nothing had occurred. So, how does chili sound for tonight? Mom, I was just pulled over for doing nothing. I went on to tell her the story, but didn’t get near the reaction I was hoping for. I wanted tears and hatred to be blending. I wanted the questioning of authorities, the questioning of unchecked powers; I wanted support, but all I got was: So some lady called the cops on you because you were speeding or because of your tail light? I didn’t doubt my mother’s maternal affection, but I did doubt my oratorical ability. So, I ran through the story again. Huh, that is weird. Indeed; they were staking me out over some lady’s idea of exacting righteousness or ideal of suburban monotony; this is insane! Huh… I started down the stairs, still displeased. Well, chili sound good, are you going to be here for dinner? I don’t know!

I thought about telling my father. He would have heard about the broken tail light and then say: Well, James, we’ll just have to get that tail light fixed; they had right to pull you over like that ((I heard this the following evening at dinner.) And for fact’s sake, there was no problem with my car’s tail lights).

To hear that this situation had been pure lunacy or that I should be guillotined with the four-armed lady as the executrix, how reassuring that would have been.

The Compendium of My Space for My Sake

2006-09-23T02:36:00.000-04:00

A sketch and a musing, a sketch is amusing, askance upon using

On reading Flaubert's 'Bouvard et Pecuchet'

Lifting his eyes from the tome, Philos squinted and in frenzied speech exclaimed: "Perspicus! We have forgotten to eat! It has been nearly three days!"
His companion rose from his creaking rockingchair; the cushion escaped between his legs falling to the ground. He bent over picking up the padding and straightening out his knees cracked. "Surely," he said, "it has not been that long. I feel as fit as a fiddle." His voice began to tapper. "Literature has sustained my nourishment."
"That may be, but you're as wan as a ghost, you have bags under your eyes, and, my word!, you're trembling so!" Philos got up from the divan to aid his dear friend. His right foot, however, was fast asleep and he crashed to the floor in a gasp. His arms flailing about upset the tray with the tin tea kettle, two china cups, an old tobacco tin containing sugar cubes and two teaspoons causing a raucous to be heard. His forehead came down directly on the coffee table, to which he responded with a distinct "Ughh." Philos lay sprawled out on the ceramic tile floor.
Perspicus looked on in dread. The shock of such rapid events caused a sort of paralysis which he shook off by tossing Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil" to the corner of the room, smashing a grecian urn like a load of bricks. Rushing to the side of Philos he found that he could not lower himself, his knees would not bend.
"Perspicus," came a whisper from the prostrate Philos. He raised his upper torso on his elbows. "Literature has proven too dangerous. We must turn our studies elsewhere." Perspicus agreed and lent his friend a hand to help up. Once again his strength failed him and he too landed on the ground strewing aside the broken pieces of china.
"My dear," said Perspicus, "I feel like a boy again, all this wrestling."
"Indeed, if only I hadn't spent all my energy on the way down! Perhaps... we should take up the fine art of cuisine. Afterall, it is the lack thereof that has caused our misfortunate situation."
"Truer words could not be spoken! Those vile books transplaced my mind to another place and I forgot that which is most important: nourishment, sustainance for the body. Yes!
"A moment later the maidservant entered. With sugar tin in hand, Perspicus said, "A sugar for my sweet?"
"Don't you know you should offer ladies first? I say, where are your manners?"
"They died along with Arthur. Forgive me dear," said Perspicus as the young lady lifted him to his feet. "That is much better. The world is once again right ways up. Would you care for a sugar cube?, it is not much, but even Atlas shrugged. Aliment is very important."
The lady offered a polite refusal and lifted Philos up on his feet.
"Merci, mademoiselle. I was beginning to think a life led horizontally could be interestingly led. Only, how would I drink without drowning; water is just as needed as food, for nourishment you know."
*************************************************
The deaths of the muses

Nine pyres burned high on a riverbank, flames of impenetrable black smoke rose blending with the celestial twilight. The acrid odeur intoxicated the maenids circling the fires. With each breath a shudder of excitement swept through the bodies of the baccantes; their eyes dilated so, their irides were no longer distinguishable. Harsh voices postulated threateningly in repetitive unison: 'Your time is going to come.'
For hours the women danced and wailed, their naked drumming feet trampled the grass as their bodies covered in loose black peplos, writhed to the rhythm of their feet; arms unhindered, bare and dark, jerked about in apoplectic convulsions; diadems of ivy crowned their heads under which flowed dishevelled black tresses; a slack necklace of roses pricked blood that trickled down their belly and spine commingling with sweat.
As Dian rose to her acme above the billowing smoke, the maenids concluded the funereal ritual by picking up their staffs adorned with ivy and vine shoots intertwined, surmounted by a pinecone, which they placed in the burning embers and used their staff aflame as a torch as they headed back into the forest for the bacchanalia.

Maundering, I'm just maundering

I am to write an obituary for myself, in the first person, for my creative nonfiction class, as if I were writing it from the great beyond. So here it is. Let me know if you think I'll get a decent grade. I had to write my obituary in a certain way though because writing it posthumously doesn't gell with my ideas of death.
I regret to announce pre-posthumously the death of myself: dead the morning of the 12th of September, 2006. I will be found depending in limp form from a ceiling fan in my family room. I will be missed by most kith and some kin.
Before the birth of my nephew, I fainted at the foot of his mother's bed. I was 19 years of age and a month away from commencing my collegiate erudition at Michigan State University. I woke as if I had blinked and came to realize the meaning of death. How can one speak of death and not examine and expose his fears. As for death I do not fear it; an absolute end comforts me the way in which religion comforts others. I do not believe in souls. I fear the death of loved ones. I pitied their hope in beliefs that mostly varied from mine. And I wanted them, depended on them. I was greedy as in the social construct: cupidity, avarice, need. They are everything I based my life on, and now they have all passed away. I had few and loved them all the more for their acceptance. I fear the wherewithal of death, the pain that is produced before the final gasp, then nothing, nothing at all, nothingness. I fear the pain of cancer as they must have feared the plague not knowing where it lay. But I smoked to my lung's content and rarely wore sunscreen. My actions continuously differed from my fears, an exacting spite tendered at my own expense against a no extant 'man'.
I visit my youth during moratoriums of thought and every night in my dreams. I had problems socializing in my childhood (as in my adulthood) and so spent a majority of my summers at my grandparents' farm. I would spend hours gazing out over my personal Elysian field, a corn field that seemingly yielded infinite bounds, where the gold shined so brightly emitted in the grasp of the green husks, at the top it radiated white past the hem of the physical and upwards to the sky. I often reminisce of my golden Labrador mutt. I lavished him with attention and played with him at every chance. Once, I tossed him a tennis ball to fetch and grabbed his collar. His forelegs flew forward and his back legs pushed off. I was horizontal with the ground, watching the grass below me pass by. The time I spent so posed, like the fields, felt infinite. But my dog has since died and I have gone back to the farm each year to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas. I found the farm to be more compact, to be precise, 2.5 acres. Stretches of gloomy overgrown crops and hollowed ground by moles, once boundless, could be traipsed in a matter of steps at a maundering gait.
At the age of 25 I decided it was time for change to rule my life; my habits were the only thing preventing this. I packed up and studied abroad in France for six months. I looked for new experiences at all times, but found the same in a different language. But the culture was different, stronger and openly quarrelsome. The world slowed down and I could finally enjoy my every breath. For a time I forgot that my grandmother had died three weeks prior to my leaving for France. I took everything in as a neophyte indulges in his new religion. And I started to miss those dear to me back home. I thought about staying longer in France but made excuses of why I had to come back. So I came back, and then my grandfather died, two days after I saw him for the first time since the funeral of his wife, nine months earlier. A majority of elderly men who lose their partner die within a year of their dearly deceased.
In life I took each curve in turn, chose friends to family, reserved happiness to voyeuristic tendencies of idiosyncratic charms and regretted and loathed each decision made. There was no action that could not be critiqued, for better or for worse. To death do I part.

We're earthlings, let's blow up earth things first!

There is an unwritten law in the suburban regions of Metro-Detroit, it goes something like, the streets must be clear of all persons by 11:00 pm, indulge yourself with television until you go to bed. This is, as with all rules, made light of by the youth, which I still count myself amongst; they will not do away with me so easily. Given this unspoken creed, you are free if you so wish to wander the suburban streets without the fear of jalopies running you down and drivers cursing your existence. Even with the hype of a dream cruise down ole Woodward Ave, you are safe in the residential alcoves at night, not a block off the gallant rue. I prefer walking in the street; it is the path less trodden by feet and the asphalt is better for your back. Here the roads are numerous, like winding tributaries in a delta. On this particular night the air outside is as thick as inside. The stunted clouds are a wan mahogany, an eerie pallid brown with a hint of rouge. The street lights seem more lucid as if the trite air only catches your breath. I can see much further than most nights. What a night for an epiphany, oh, night of all nights. But it is just electric light in humid air. Sounds, too, carry as by the sea. The congruency of boisterous insects clicking and chirping all seems within reach. A light green cicada floats by, silent, and falls to the concrete with a clamour, while a black cicada has decided my shoulder makes a fine perch. They remind me of Dean Moriarty, ephemeral in life, loud, beautiful, and melancholy, lonely. Behind this haze roars engines unpleasant to the natural ear. After writing this down I wend my way across the school playground over the woodchips past the swings onto the grass by the soccer field through the fence gate and back to the street to take me back home. Good night.

The garish lizards copulate on stools!

I didn't really expound on my dilemna with bars, or the hip bars let's call 'em, eh. Dirt, grime and garish lizards fornicating on stools was and is my problem with bars, but here is the reason for the lizards part, besides Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
I was at the Rock in downtown Royal Oak, from 7-10 there are $1 beers, with 3 friends, one had just left, the other two are at the bar, on a mission to find men. First off I hardly think you're going to meet the man worth more than a night's lack of rest at a bar, and the same goes for women as well; I've been wrong before; but, I might also add that the former has already garnered evidence from previous trips. So upon the departure of one, I was left alone in the mist of swirling mayhem, or was that testosterone, either way, a suffocating scent. On the television, there were four screens I could see from the middle of the floor looking to one wall, two had pugilists pummeling the very lives out of each other, and the other a compendium of the best hits of this week in sports. The jukebox was so loud I could barely hear myself thinking, a key element in the art of the hook-up apparently, deters people from saying no I guess. Fortunately my eyes work as video surveillance, and my brain the rewind and replay, and I would not deny the accusation of being a voyeur, that is taking pleasure in viewing other's trivial pursuits of ordinary life.
At 9:30 I had ordered two beers, therefore creating a comfortable surplus to last me past the 10:00 deadline. It was now 10:15 and I was beginning what would be my last beer for the evening. The waitress comes by and asks if I need anything and I say no, and she replies What? I can't hear a thing. I yell Me neither, I'm good, thanks, and give the universal negative nod to help matters. She smiles and mosies on, she knows my routine. The noise is something like a million people simultaneously screaming phrases like aarg, grrr, yeah, nooo, weee, yelp, and to top it off Paul McCartney comes in overhead saying that in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, singing words of wisdom, let it be. Finding none, I switch off the aural sensors and focus on the visuals. The table before mine is littered with three guys and a girl. All three guys have on blue and white striped shirts with a white collar. I go to look under the table to see if they are all wearing the same pants and shoes, but a girl comes running through on my right and sits down on the girl's lap nearly knocking her friend off her chair and immediately commences a lap dance. The girl is stradling her friend, putting her ass in her face; her friend massages her breasts and plays with her turquoise mini-skirt... and this continues for a good three minutes. For such an action with such a crowd, the attention is minimal. The guys at the table are making lewd gestures, and some girls and guys next to the action are laughing and staring, the dart players, too, are gawking. I can feel lines and wrinkles in my face form from the repugnant visage I'm expressing. Should I do something, spit at them, no that's gross, though it would convey the message, no, throw a dollar, no that's a beer, and it might encourage their future path, but if I have some pennies, euhh, no, no pennies, should I say something, You're going to create a retrogression in the women's movement and you'll soon be back in the kitchen slaving over every meal, no I won't say anything, let it be. So I sit and admire the ceiling tiles and wonder why certain areas don't have any tiles that don't have a vent, and they finish to a meagre applause. The dancer looks at me, the vacant chairs around me, realizes I'm alone (swig, swallow, swig, swallow, quick man you're almost free), and comes and sits down across from me (shit!). Is she looking for a compliment on her form or something, if so friend... what is that on her lip. Do you have any cigarettes she asks me. It looks like a mole, oh how I wanted it to be a herpes vesicle. Nooo, sorry and I give her the universal negative nod. Thanks anyway. Maybe she doesn't deserve herpes, she did say thanks. She gets up and returns to her friends. I swig and swallow one last time and go to use the lavatory, where nobody wiped their hands. I did, then said goodbye to my friends and left en route chez moi.
Decide for yourself if it is worthy of garish lizards fornicating on stools.

Catharsis and affirmation

A few things to spout beforehand: guys don't wash their hands in the bathrooms at bars, it's really disgusting and I will never shake a guys a hand at a bar. Another thing about bars, whenever I look around at people there, I'm not sure if it's an ego-thing or what but, all I can see are garish lizards fornicating on stools, it's like an orgy of bacchanal proportions, minus the grapes, wine and wreaths of ivy. I think it's safe to say I'm done with the cool bars, too much dirt and grime.
This leads me to my test results I received from undergoing some serious career councelling. I'm an AIS and an INTP. AIS stands for Artistic, Investigative and Social. Which means that I prefer lying about under the parasol of les beaux-arts, having to try and work out problems/problem-solving, and working for the betterment of man. INTP is Invertive, Intuitive, Thinking and Perception. This just means that I spend entirely too much time in my head thinking, and with Perception as opposed to Judgement, I go with the flow and work my problems out as they arise to contrast scheduling everything I do. These tests, the Meyers-Briggs and Holland tests, are rather sketchy, seeing as how you fill in circles if you like something a lot, a little, don't care either way, hate, or despise its very being. So, as with oh so many things, you have to take it with a grain of salt. For instance, the occupation it said I would be greatest at is as a performance artist. I would faint if I were to stand in front of more than four people singing, speaking, or even standing still as an asian cowboy extra. Sorry Jeremy, I'll never take your true calling, but the stage, it calls to me... But there is that bit of me that wants to conquer that forsaken stage fright and sing like I did in my early years. I want to stop shirking my youth, for that matter, which seems almost nonextant. I want to take it back, I wasn't very strong then, but now I feel I have the power, the control, the understanding that I lacked so before. I grew up in a place I had no affinity for, I had no relations I would call close, even familial, the scars are still apparent today. The black tepid waters of Birmingham streets run deep.
I had an interesting run-in with some recent graduates of the same high school. For the past few weeks I've been spending my nights, usually after 11pm, on the grounds of a school, a block over from where I live, they leave a light on outside and so I go there, sit down for a while and scribble some lines. Two nights ago, I'd been there for about a half hour and then some guy walks by talking on his cellphone, to a high pitched voice on the other end, saying that he's going to be joining the army. She tells him to wait there in the park for her. He sits down on the swings some twenty feet from me, says hey man, what's your name. To which I responded by asking if he knew me or something. He says no. I say what's your name. He says John W_. I say Jennings Perks, nice to meet you. He says where do you live. Over yonder. He gets off the swings and comes over by me and asks to sit down. I say sure but there's spiders and cicadas on that wall since its got the light. He says he'll stand, and that his parents just kicked him out after finding his bowl and weed stash. I ask why'd they kick you out. He says they're as christian as christian goes. I say that seems like an overreaction, did you stoke the flame. He says man I hate spiders, I got a phobia of them. Oh yeah, arachnophobia. Yea. So I hear your going in to army. Yea. Why do you want to do that. Well since I was real young I've always liked to shoot things. And you think army is the place to be for that then. I also want to learn problem solving and team work. You can't do that where your life's not in danger. Well I really like adrenaline. You should be a professional wrestler. So, he thinks for a second, do you know ___. No. Do you know ___. No. Do you know ___. No, I don't know any high school folk. Oh, well, do you know ___. Dude. So what you don't like people from there. Not for the most part. Yeah I know what you mean, all the girls are whores and the girls that don't dress like whores and don't think they're whores, they're whores too. I doubt it. So what do you do. What you see; he had already been eyeing my pen and paper suspiciously. So you're like a writer or poet or something. No, I'm unemployed. So what are you writing there; at which point he grabs my notebook from off my lap. With my left fist ready in case, I rip it out of his hands with my right hand, No, it's all about trust. What. Because we're human I should trust you, but we are the choices we make, and our actions can say otherwise... His friend, a guy, can't recall his name, arrives and takes a seat next to John W. along the spider, cicada and moth wall. They begin to talk amongst themselves, mind you, I am two feet away from them. The newby, we'll call Dan, is talking about Joe, the drummer in his band, and packing a bowl. John W. is already stoned from prior to our meeting, possibly from prior to upheaval from former residence? Dan, you're in a band. Yea. What do you play. Guitar. (Now I know he's got more info in him, he'd already made a few well phrased sentences pertaining to Joe, and during our introduction John W. said This is Jennings Perks, Jennings got a gun. No, John wants a gun. It's nice to meet you Jennings. So I figured he needed some warming up or just a toke maybe, so I stayed quiet while they cashed the bowl.) John W. says We should take a picture, Dan brought his digital camera, this was obviously some sort of spectacle. No, he says, this isn't for a picture. Well take a picture of me doing a weird face, he gives a classic myspace pose, looking to the side with his jaw resting on his fist, a true-to-life Rodin model. Dan first objects but finally gives in after a few pleas and poses. Are you still shooting your video. Yea, I shot a scene down in Joe's basement, when Cherry was running all around. You're making a movie with your camera. Yea, it's really cool. What's it about. Well it's a bunch of random shots and eventually I'm going to put them together as a sort of montage. Right, cool, but what's it about. Well it's really hard to say, I mean it's really mind blowing and I don't think words can really do it justice. Oh yea, so what kind of music does your band play. We play it all, but that's what everyone probably says. Yeah. And that's where we'll end this, it would go on only for another few minutes; the dialogue is nearly replicated, but you're missing out on the whole why don't I smoke weed man segment, only John W. was extremely rambunctious talking about fucking a girl/whore, who was getting on his back and he also sported a huge hickey on his neck, which was not in the photo. The high pitched voice of a girl never showed and John W. and Dan took off to see what Joe was up to. I left twenty minutes later after making some crucial notes and finishing other works left undone.
I've been looking for some affirmations that my youth was totally fucked up in an Edward Scissor-Hands sort of way. That it wasn't just me mentally breaking down, freaking out at the word 'like' or the phrase 'that's so random'. I found another blog that implies agreeance, and it's so strange thinking of other people that went to the same high school and that went through the same thing. And the question lingers where were you then, it would have been nice to have fellow comrades in arms; to which my reply would be, in my basement, spending time in my sanctuary, my head, but, you know, you can be my head, and I'll be yours. It would be great.
At number four for recommended professions it said editor, and this is something I've been looking into for a few years now. I don't really want to be an editor, rather, I'd like to submit stories to an editor. But maybe I'll never have what it takes to write the way I feel writing should be done, and don't they say writers who can't write are editors. I don't know. Maybe I just made that up. Anyways, I'm tired.

I know one day...I'll be a winner!

I went to the library today and borrowed three books. I had to lie in order to take them out seeing as how I no longer live in the city of the library. It's just a white lie, harmless, I'm not about to steal them. On storming the check-out line I got this feeling that I always get no matter where I go, or what I'm getting. The feeling asks me this: "Did I get the right items for the prize?" I've always thought that if you buy, rent, or borrow the right combination of what-have-you(s), you'll receive a prize upon check-out. What this prize is, I'm not sure. I usually hope for some balloons and confetti, however, a pat on the back and some recognition for shopping well done and well timed would do. I feel it in my bones I'm going to win this contest one day. It's my destiny; I will go to check out and a festooned banner will drop down saying in bold black letters on a blue drape, hemmed with silver borders, it's gaudy like that, "JAMIE, YOU'VE WON A FREE RENTAL!" Ooh, and I'll cry and make a scene and whip out my list, because I'm prepared for this. This is my dream and my fate; fatalism is grand when you've got it good.

France

It's now been a little over a month since I've returned from France. I now feel fairly confident I won't start balling thinking of the folks and locales I came to know there during my six month stay in the city of Orleans, which is two hours due south of Paris. Orleans is located in the Loire Valley, which is known for two things: wine and impressionism(painting). Orleans is known as where Jeanne d'Arc commenced the retreat of England. Today the National Front, which hates immigrants and wants only pureblood French citoyens - kind of like Lord Voldemort now that I think about it - uses Jeanne d'Arc as their symbol. Oh, the sad ironies, muse, of misuse.
I resided in the downtown area, in the university Residence Dessaux, named after the inventor of vinegar (and that's such an easy joke), in the historical section of town where there used to be the old university. The new one being about 30 minutes south by tram, or above ground subway like public transportation, I prefer to say, rather, tram, like the L, no? I would say the People Mover, but the tram actually works, at least when the drivers aren't striking, which is of course, the French national past time, or else revolutions... It's relatively modern, l'universite d'Orleans. Which is apparent when you compare the architecture to any university in a downtown setting.
This was the first airplane I'd ever been on and I was lucky enough to sit next to a bloke named Daniel, like 'Danny boy, oh, Danny boy.' Daniel is a native Londoner and was visiting his girlfriend Ashley in Claire for a few weeks and now he was headed to Aberdeen in Scotland. Which reminds me that Americans need to work on their geography, because I was getting some stupid ass questions like: where's Egypt? And I stayed with a family whose daughter, Angele, came to Wichita to study, and a friend of hers, who was also in the study-abroad program, told their classmates that he was from Bolivia, of which nobody knew where it was located. What really gets my goat is that not a single american even went up to her to say a single thing, nobody tried to make friends with any of the foreign exchange students in Wichita. How fucking kind and we're talking about a university setting, and americans like to say how the French are snotty and high minded! And, don't get me wrong but, she's cute as a button! But the really cool thing for her is that she got to meet a bunch of people from varying parts of India, she's French-Indian, and all sorts of other countries throughout the world.
Daniel, as I was saying, is a cool chap, and even after I had finally fallen asleep (eight hour plane ride there), and then woken up almost immediately after and threw my arms out as if I was falling and smacked him across the chest, he said no worries mate. He was also a struggling musician, looking for his way and amid a sort of post-partum depression upon leaving his dear lass Ashley, and so we talked about music and movies for nearly the full ride. When we were preparing for the landing the sun had begun to rise and I remember one of the most beautiful stills I have ever seen. It is comparable, but far superior, to Matrix: Revolutions, when Neo and the dominatrix fly the hovering machine above the clouds and you see the sun peeking out atop the clouds and the colors are so vividly vivacious and visually vexing for you know you should not be looking at them. And so we arrived in Paris, France and upon exiting the plane, Daniel was taken away in a van to an awaiting plane to Aberdeen. I waved and yelped a goodbye as I had gotten swept away with the other folks aiming for the bus. Daniel had been much more fleet of foot and wisened to the routines of air travel. So marks the first 'goodbye' of my travels; I hate 'goodbyes', there's nothing more nerve racking for me.
The bus was to take us away from the runway to the main building, a mere 40 minute drive. As for the route the plane took during its flight, I did not guess it. Rather than a straight shot to Paris, from Detroit we headed over New Foundland, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, England and then cut down south-east to Paris. The reasoning being that if the plane has any problems, you won't have to 'land' in water. After picking up my luggage, which was no easy task seeing as how every piece of luggage looks the same (handy tip: tie a scarf or some fabric about the handle, much easier to distinguish), I met the family I would be living with for the first week of my sejourn in the Old World, la famille Radjagobal, with a mad cornucopia of ambivalent emotions boiling over within me.

Wrap your troubles in dreams

I woke last night with the laconic and lucid idea that "there's still time to run." I had just killed a man, a friend of mine it seems; two shots fired, he was squirming, inching on the street, to no end nor relief, save death; his knees at his chest, his bowels in relief, strung out behind him. I took a wary satisfaction in watching the pangs of agony accentuate and pulsate the vein on his forehead. His throbbing vein matched my every racing heart beat. He felt more dear to me than ever. Who he was I know not, and he was no longer; the reflected moonlight blinking upon his brow had failed to keep pace and soon after quit completely, and his entire profile now layed engulfed in shadow. I can still see in that darkness, where yet darker lingered inside, a wrathful countenace, one twisting and writhing, ripe for avengence, an abyss swelling of fear and hatred: ready to purge itself upon me.
The air had taken on the stink of raw sewage at the sound of the first firing, when the wind took stock and stood still. Standing just inside the gate of a city I too took stock of my surroundings and my body for what felt like the first time.

Diary of a Superfluous Man

...His feet situated peculiarly: heels in the grass and toes on the concrete. He stared down at the callous cement, his head looming over his legs akimbo, and saw his shadow. Jutting out of his silhouette were branches dancing with life: leaves fluttered like hatchling birds practicing for their first flight. One by one the wind swept the awaiting leaves from their perch. His eyes focused on loose individual grains of cement, like dry upturned dirt, the pebbles, the leaves, and the twigs, strewn over his body. A fly enjoyed a brief moratorium on a pebble becoming an excressence on his lower abdomen. The insect, perhaps prone to empiricism and the threat of security and a nervous twinge, took back to flight, or perhaps prone to fatalism and the threat of famine, had been mistaken. A light came abruptly through his left shoulder and pounced as if keeping time on his chest. He looked over his right shoulder to find an old man carrying a grocery bag some yards away, headed towards him. The old man, walking, was hunched over, circular; the bag recurrently scraped the sidewalk emitting metallic clangs, and the old man, each time: pushed the weight of his world back as he leaned on his heels, and his hump, now a foot behind his hips, to his head a hilt to his gnarled and beaten shiv, and his knees shook and he gazed ahead as in his youth and his knees to his mouth a grimace of pain and the weight of the world fell forward on him and the bag crashed to the ground. He only noticed the old man's left hand, holding the bag, adorned with a watch that left purple spots in his eyes when he blinked. He returned his eyes to the doppelganger only to watch his pulsating heart acutely narrow and his body fade into the stone as the earth will satiate in the forthcoming rain and the excess would return to the clouds and the cement would dry...(tabula rasa).
I used to see this old man everytime I drove to school, which was everyday, and he'd be carrying a plastic bag and staring at the sidewalk immediately in front of him. He always looked so brave. Some would say he was just getting groceries, I like to think of him as a knight-errant, keeping chivalry alive and well, providing safe passage for all, cross him and you'll take a bag full of campbell's soup to your grave (did you know the original label had the colors black, blue, gold, red, white and yellow, which is nice to know if you ever take a quiz on the normalities of everyday life, and don't forget Bashful, and pencils have six sides, not five, and venetian blinds have a handle on the left in order to open them, and ah yes the ace of spades has the symbol for the deck of cards on it - so don't forget) and I called him Malory le Grande.