Cloaks, Drunks and Cowards

The empathetic voice of my conscience echoes through my nerves -- "Run," it pleads.

The pain was bearable, the light not altogether blinding, the colors dim and not distracting. So what induced that urge to run, the desire to hide somewhere between a rock and a warm place -- the warm, nostalgic, glazed eyes of a vigorously aged and caring mother, the kind that has nothing left to live for but the youths of those who were once young.

It wasn't fear. I had nothing to fear; I knew her intentions and they were anything but deleterious or vengeful. She was kind, affectionate and embracingly feminine. She was the kind of girl you would never lay to bed for fear of rupturing the fragile tissue that hides something so transparently (and unbearably for that sole reason) beautiful. She was delightful, and she saw something in them that, for the life of me, I could not spot. Her good nature should have invigorated me.

It wasn't pity. Although sensitive, she had no pitiable traits. She was just fragile enough to withstand any fall that humanity could toss her way. She possessed a duplicitous frailty that was not rooted in sour intentions. She knew she was fragile, she wanted to be fragile, but her artificial sensitivity only reinforced my perception of her genuine frailty. It was deliberate, but it wasn't fake. A defense mechanism, if nothing else. Regardless of her intentions, weak she surely was not.

So when she gently nudged me in my tired stupor, at an ungodly hour, to wake from the sleepwalking state that has enabled me to withstand the damned, eternal hours of the neverending shifts of my job, I shied away. I propped myself against the wall, repulsed as all hell. For what reason? Why should I be repulsed by the sensitive, talkative, friendly appeals of some girl, floating in a mild stupor from the liquor?

Her false frailty disappeared, only to be replaced by an even more severe, even more fear-inducing, even more depressing vulnerability, unlocking the abysmal self-deprecation bolted deep within and exposing it for all to see. She paid for this privilege, she paid for it. With cash she paid for the drinks, and there she was, as nude as a newborn child (and apparently as young), surrounded by herds of men, cloaked with the excusatory veil of vodka and tonic, gin and tonic, martini; anything with an ounce of ethanol.

She imitated confusion, she wandered round the room as the faceless ghouls, the cloaked devils, growing redder with that same ethanol, sputtered after her. The trail of devastation continued until the endless fountain of alcohol blurred to form a massive lake of inebriation, until the floor trembled and scattered beneath them, until the reds and blues and yellows swirled into a solid grey. They traveled vicious circles until they stopped, in unison, and she was gone. The cloaks surrounded her simple soul, and she finally obtained what she paid for. The cloaks consumed her, only to return her that evening, fueling her desire to find the "perfect" cloak, feeding her ritualistic frenzy. But her overzealous nightly desire is fruitless, futile even. Her ambitions are pointless, for she does not search for the "perfect" cloak, but for the nonexistent one. She yearns for the unveiled man, the man with a face.

And I want to run because I know she'll return, because I know she's gone but not forever, and her life will continue until, God help her, she understands her ambitions and her needs. I could run. My sneakers are just downstairs. My bike locked outside. I could flee and leave the sight.

But instead I rest against the ledge, feigning indifference. I await my paycheck. I watch her cry to me, sob for her tired, bleak future. She cries to me, and I await my paycheck.

Birth of a Contradiction (Part Two)

The nascent youths were separated soon after kind Yearning had caressed their frail souls and cried for their impending absence. Cognizant Yearning was aware of her husband's cunning, and his intentions were made quite clear in an argument that erupted several days prior. It seemed that Regret, who had become disillusioned with his wife upon realizing that it would be impossible to undermine her faith regarding the debilitating futility of idleness, stopped listening to her altogether. She would talk, and he would hear, but he would rarely reply with a coherent response largely because he interpreted none of the words that floated somewhere between the unhappily married couple.

Several days prior to the birth of their three children, however, he tuned in to Yearning's frequency, if but for a brief second, and caught the tail-end of a string of words involving "bearing, child, pregnant," and "in several days." In short, Regret finally learned the reason for the swelling that Yearning had suffered in the previous eight and one half months. The generally apathetic husband, soon-to-be father, was fuming.

"I can't believe you didn't tell me earlier!" he cried. He sunk into the deepest of temper tantrums he had ever experienced, storming left and right, eyes glazed, gesticulating like a madman, wailing about his wife's ineptitude at communicating her state, that he was unprepared and surely dissatisfied with the entirety of their household -- that he, that his entire home, was unfit for children. But most importantly, he decried the incoming youths as completely inopportune, birthed when time was invaluable to him. Yearning knew all too well that Regret's time was always priceless; he would never have "time" for a child, or what time he did have he would most assuredly reconsider spending on anything, let alone the nurturing of a newborn.

The fact that Regret did not yet learn of the potentially sobering knowledge that Yearning was especially heavy this late in her pregnancy -- with three children, as opposed to a single "time-consuming maggot," as her husband had eloquently put it -- was conspicuously absent in Yearning's response. She merely apologized for not enlightening her husband earlier (although she knew damn well that she had notified him on her status at least every day for the past eight months) and walked away, leaving him to fume at the tables, wall, chairs, bureau -- anything but her. She was tired of their arguments, which luckily had been laid to rest after he had stopped listening to anything she had to say. Her fatigue was continuously exacerbated throughout the next few days until, finally, her exhaustion culminated in the birth of three startlingly unique children.

Yearning made it a point to perform the birth in secret, away from the sometimes maniacal hands of Regret. Later that day, she was elated to learn that several individuals had responded to her ad in the newspaper, which read "Adopt a child: must travel, love children, inspire achievement and MUST detest inactivity." Coincidentally, three kind, friendly and appropriate couples approached mother Yearning, and each returned to their home ecstatic at the imminent prospect of raising a child. Yearning had no regrets in releasing her children, for her intentions were wholly good. She knew that Regret had a furious temper (for which he apologized profusely later), and would never let the birth of their children pass unnoticed. The youths’ lives were at stake.

When Regret learned of kind Yearning's actions, he was even more furious than several days before. He fumed and yelled and kicked, and two days later Yearning was at the bottom of a three-story stairwell, no longer breathing. Such was the bittersweet sacrifice that the selfless mother of three was compelled to make.

Birth of a Contradiction (Part One)

Regret is the father of Indolence. Do not regret lest you succumb to the morbid torpor of indifference, where idle hands degenerate to idle minds!

Do not regret, BUT do not fear to miss, for Yearning is the mother of Art, the muse to the creative powerhouses that are our minds!

Regret and Yearning were once wed, and although satisfied with their raucous and passionate evening escapades, they argued incessantly over trivialities such as the meaning of life and the speed of time. Their marriage was rocky at best, and was cut short by the allegedly accidental death of Yearning. The report dealing with the incident implied that her death, caused by a fatal fall down several flights of stairs, was not altogether the fault of Yearning's clumsy nature. Still, the allegations implicit in the report were never brought to public attention, let alone substantiated under a court of morality. In short, Regret was left to rein the kingdom of humanity alone, without a co-president to counter his often detrimental actions.

Poor Yearning's demise did not come before the turbulent couple's evening ritual produced several fruitful results, however. Several heirs to the throne had been produced, all squirming and screaming, already seeming to muse, "I wish I had not been born!," while another reached for mother Yearning with a determination previously unseen in such newborn youth, crying for her company -- and already learning to communicate as a result. The children (of which there were three) were, in short, an overwhelmingly awkward combination of the most basic of human emotions. Finally, their parents found a decision on which they could confidently be unanimous: the three were named Indolence, Creativity and, the most beautiful, talented and adaptable of the three, Dayea.

Untitled

nothing here --
no chaste enigma for my yearnful scrutiny;
no cute riddle to breeze past my insatiable brow;
no paths laden with the warming embraces of youthful affection;
not even the empty terrines that once held maddened, overflowing seas.

gone is the love that once raged beneath that brow, within those once insulated, protective vessels, now surrounded by the damp decay of my tired, lonely organs.

Akira's Blob

Sparks flew, we caressed and there we were, sitting on the street, alone again, together, but completely, invariably alone. There went our possessions, there went our friends, over the bypass, past the hills, too far for us to reach. We were alone, embracing ourselves and the solitude like pigeons on rooftops, so completely and incomprehensibly lonely, squawking for food and shelter and God only knows what.

We had each other for a fleeting moment, until we spliced and the decay of loneliness again set in. We turned into one whole thing, a glob of pointlessness desperate to find a reason for itself. And so it multiplied, no matter how many relationships we formed, no matter how many people we met, we were a decaying, perpetually unwinding ball of twine. We looked for others, and once we sucked in the rest, once the black hole sucked in all the people, the objects, and all the light, we were still an insignificantly small speck in space, in complete solitude.

So we ran. Away from something, to something, we weren’t sure. We fled from solitude, rushed to find the kind of entertainment only company can provide, driving on and on in a mindless way. Temporary solutions, temporary connections, temporary associations. The voyage, the journey, was our company. Our goal was running, and we were under the misinformed assumption that our goal was something definite, as though running were merely a means to an end.

Our road was relationships, our road was friendships, sex, late night talks and incredulous morning yawns. We were on a directionless, avenue-less journey, one-way, forever turning left. We came full circle, again and again and again, and we never stopped. We never stopped because we knew stopping meant forfeiting, succumbing to the will of nature -- to have us die alone, with hardly a funeral marking the failed Zippo lighter we placed a $100 bet on that was our aggregate life. We never gave up.

And because we thought we were running a victory lap round the fools that were secure in their lonely homes and tired families, we ended our voyage not of our own will. The voyage ended for us, the spark of life we had once ignited blew out just like that Zippo, but instead of betting 100 bucks, we bet our lives. We risked our necks, and our necks snapped. We wallowed in our torture chambers, we jumped in our cars, connected the fatal tubes from exhaust to within, windows closed and all, and we sat and drove while death crept in.

Numb, we drove and drove, and we thought we were getting somewhere. Little did we know that we were on a road that led nowhere, and even if it had, the carbon monoxide reached us long before we had a chance to catch a glimpse. And so our voyage, our goal and destination, was over before we had a chance to place any bets. Our necks snapped, and we were gone, off the face of the planet, in a tiny car, smoggy and confused, a speck the size of the dotted lines on our roads, and moving just as fast, with only corpses inside, just driving and driving and driving.

And they pulled us out of the wreckage, all of us, the entirety of the world pulled out from the tiny, vapor riddled speck on its surface, but by then it was too late. We were gone, we’d destroyed ourselves, we’d destroyed our surroundings and our hearts and our lives, everything that was dear to us, and we’d ended up nowhere. After so many years of driving, we were the ones who needed to be saved. And always, always, our rescue was too little, too late.

Crafting Reality (Part One)

“Flourescent strings, we were connected. Incandescent skies, neon signs, empty
homes, lonely highrises, cold and anonymous crowds. We dive in, dive out,
but somehow move nowhere. Neither here nor there, as they say.”
-- John Dillanger

***

The night was breezy and comfortable. Any other author would describe it with a welcome and familiar appeal, as so many have done before. But on that night John felt mischievous. He grabbed a set of spectacles from a drawer cluttered with scribbled and abused papers, obviously worn from age, and stared at the fresh paper before him. He craned his neck to catch a sudden gust from the window to his right, window shades fluttering in the romantic way you so often see in movies.

Any other author, he thought, would take into consideration the waves of shades, the cool breeze on his bare skin, sitting nude at a table, the only object occupying the room, dead center under a meager twenty-five watt bulb. Not this author. No, he was far more creative than that.

And so, pen lifted, back arched, he pushed his head toward the paper, its vast landscape reaching past the horizon, the stars lighting his white path as though his direction was of divine origins. Pen to paper, man to earth, it all seemed natural. Wild, even. He was running through fields, a bull chasing red, a fly zooming toward a fly zapper, a man running toward a woman. He was home.

He thought he would write about solitude, about the poor travels of an insignificant and inadequate man, that tale of all men, the ultimate allegory. But the white below and ahead and behind and to the side shattered any preconceived notions he had of his glorious content. No, the endless clichés of solitary nights and romantic agonies were not in store for him. Divinity provided for far more grandeur than that.

***

John stepped down. He was completely surrounded by white; from the depths of the landscape all he could perceive were white plains. Kneeling down to touch the ground, he felt nothing. His hand traveled as far as humanly possible, as though no ground existed below, and yet John was standing, fairly steadfast save for his normally awkward composure.

John felt he couldn’t just stand there. So he walked forward in the hopes that he would reach a final destination, but in truth he realized that his hopes were no more realistic than the hopes of a toddler crawling toward the sun. Nothing existed.
So after several hours, John decided to give up on a task that he knew was futile from the beginning, kneeled to the ground, and thought.

“This is probably a dream? Ow, that hurt. Very realistic dream…”
And so he contemplated for a little bit, fairly trivial, getting more and more thirsty, hunger eventually compounding his suffering. John scratched his head, fantasizing about cascades of water pouring from all directions, effortlessly flowing in and out of his body.

“I want a lake, a river, a fountain, a faucet, a cup of water, anything!”

The white John was so familiar with began to contort, change colors, mold into shapes, erupt and deflate and inflate and finally produce a result. Shades of green and blue fizzed and popped and boiled, and finally streamed from the eternal whiteness. A few minutes later a lake, a river, a fountain, a faucet, and a cup of water appeared before him, all on varying vertical levels. A monstrous river the likes of which he’d only imagined was at his feet. He kneeled, cupped his hands and poured its liquid on his parched lips. This was water, without a doubt.

***

John’s hand ached. He dropped his pen, letting it fall to the floor, and glanced at his paper to see what he’d written.

Nothing. The paper was completely blank. He was surprised in a dishonest way, as though he’d just started to believe his own lie, and then, when the time came, his belief never materialized because it was, after all, a lie. It was more disillusionment than surprise, but he convinced himself otherwise.

The once comfortable breeze transformed into a numbing hurricane, icy and detached. Under the meager light from the weak bulb above, John’s ghastly profile was surprisingly intimidating. Surprisingly because John was a timid guy: he had few friends, not much money, a menial job at the local hardware store and an empty, lonely, but warmly familiar home. He would often sit in the center of his single, furnitureless room he called home and digest thoughts (he rarely ate); he would often claim that contemplation was his favorite hobby, and always made a great effort to put his thoughts to paper. Everyone who read his work was left largely unimpressed, but somehow he still managed to take great pride in his writing, forever replying to the intimidating question “so what do you do?” with the usual “I’m an author, but have a job on the side just until I get my big break.” He knew, although he’d never admit it, that it was the other way around.