On

He emptied his business card holder into his desk bin and took out a tiny bottle of Jameson.

Two years, give or take an extra one month three days and five hours. He unscrewed the bitsy red cap and looked at the letter he’d just written, still warm from the printer.

What was next? Images of freedom and/or begging in the subway collided in his mind.

“You’re moving on?” Boss asked.

Pause.

“Congratulations, I’m happy for you!”

The butterflies landed and a thin hard shell seemed to evaporate off his back. Outside, the sky stretched wide. He should call Cheryl!

Pretend Raisins on the 49

“Righto pal, window seat?”

“Yeah.”

“There.”

“…”

“Alright now we’re gonna play that game agai—“

“Oooh which game?”

“The reading game, but I’ve got no raisins on me so I’m gonna give you a pretend raisin for every word you can read outside, alright?”

“’Kay.”

“Alright. How ‘bout that blue word over there?”

“What bl— okay. Hhhhh… Hhhhh-ohhhh… Hhhhhhohhhhnnnddddd… Hhonnndahh… ‘Honda’!”

“Good!. Now that nice big circle one.”

“Umm… The… Guhhh-rrrreeee… Guhhh-rreee-ahhhhh…”

“’Great’. That’s the Great Seal of California.”

“Oh mannn, how’d you know it said ‘Great’?”

“Secret. Read some more and I’ll tell you. Here, have a raisin.”

Hercules

If only daytime things made the same plasmic sense that they do at this hour, when a grown man can stare down the legion blinks of an ill-meaning Hydra outside his balcony window, defying her in nonchalant credulity to stick around for elderberry pancakes in the morning.

Here the dulcet growl of reason belies an intriguing nocturnal conceit: if hallucinating a mythical beast only requires poor unassisted vision, San Bruno’s streetlamps across the valley and a threefold parallax intervening (observer’s fridgebound trajectory, barometric ripplings of a veil curtain, a particularly restless eucalypt outside), then maybe reality doesn’t suck after all.

If you were suddenly to become wealthy, how would your life change?

I’d turn my phone off for days.

I’d spend more time in Chicago.

I’d read books the whole way through without ever putting them down.

I’d write a book with a friend.

I’d keep taking photos.

I’d go out for coffee every day.

I’d cancel my health insurance and pay for everything in cash.

I’d move to New York and do standup comedy 5 nights a week.

I’d buy a car. Late 90’s Porsche. Black.

I’d buy retirement for my parents.

I’d cover the check at lunch, always.

I’d make my friends famous.

I’d spend more nights abroad in hotels.

New Friends

The people I meet, they give me nightmares.

Everyone I meet. The farmer at the sunny peach stand at the farmer’s market. The bartender on the lower level at the Irish pub by the office. The Italian woman I sat next to on the subway on Tuesday.

I wake up in cold sweats. They’re coming at me. They’re humiliating me. They surround me. They know I’m weak, cold.

I wake up, go outside. The nightmare is over. For an hour I can pretend that I’ve won. And then I meet someone new, they smile big, looking deep into my soul.

Back

When she landed in Austin she felt it again — that she was ‘back, but not ‘home’. She had accepted that she’d never know the certainty of ‘home’ after so many moves. But even still, part of her always anticipated the sensation of ‘coming home’. Its absence left her feeling stranded, like someone supposed to meet her just didn’t show up. It was more of a wafting nostalgia than a sharp pang, yet it picked at the scabs of identity and belonging, and the blood seeped out. Home. She looked around, nodded at the empty bustle, and left the terminal. 

 

 

Brawl (II)

“Hey!” The first friend’s stunned yelp echoes back hollow. Cursing himself as a coward, he runs forward. Dark spaces grow in the alley.

The other is curled, hands to his side, eyes gaping, mouth slack as if asking for an answer. If there is blood, the night hides it.

And the crushed kid? He feels his face and staggers to his feet. He sneers at the friends, spits out, “I dunno who you are but that serves you right.”

“What? We just… He just…”

“Yeah? I don’t need nobody’s help. I had that dude. Fucking heroes. Go to hell.”

Southern Sumatra (by guest author Berend)

A thousand white helmets. This graveyard is a monument, a witness to my birth. The men who lie here are the sacrifices made so I could enter the world. A thousand Asian lives for the one European life. My life begins here, with a  simple ritual: a thousand men, trapped in a ring of steel, slaughtered, in five days and five nights, with ritual stenguns, ritual Sherman tanks, ritual Mosquito bombers, in what is merely a pretense of war.

The defeated hope, of a thousand men, for life, for dignity, for freedom. This is the hope I carry with me.

Prius in the Passing Lane

            When one of those goddamn go-cart hybrids, especially a Prius, clogs up the highway passing lane, I get twice as aggressive as ever. I swear, twice as aggressive, and that’s saying something.

            Makes me sound like I hate the environment. Naw. I appreciate those hybrids, they’re all fine and good. But you know what, goddammit, I’m in a truck, like it or not. Nothing you or I can do about it. Unless I get a raise. And I sure as hell won’t be driving my truck like a flaccid hybrid.

            It wasn’t made for that. Well hell, neither was I.

Accepting Euthanasia (by guest author, Berend)

Being of a technical mindset, he could not simply act out his role without preparation. He studied himself in the mirror, the way he studied tissue samples under a microscope.  Dissecting his facial expressions as he would dissect human flesh, making choices.  Affect authority, affect affection? Be God, or be human? Blue eyes: cold or radiant?  Thin wisps of white hair: designer glasses as an accessory?

‘Mrs. Naaktgeboren, what you face……. I know your feeling, but, you couldn’t imagine…. The thing that’s coming for you……… Mrs. Naaktgeboren, I’m (lie!), I’m (lie!lie!), I’m a compassionate man. Please, you must, must accept…..‘