Thursday the 22nd of July, 2010
Lesson learned.
I wanted a puppy. I begged for a puppy. But my parents said I wasn’t responsible enough, so instead they got me an African child.
Not a real one, obviously. Looped footage of this tiny little boy, playing on the TV in my room 24 hours a day. They made me sit there and watch him. He didn’t do much. I remember thinking that his eyes were glazed, like donuts, and then I felt bad because, dude, inappropriate.
You could see all of his ribs, pressing against his skin, a bone cage around his heart, making him a prisoner of this hungry, hungry body. I wanted to hold him, and make him feel better, but he wasn’t real, he was just on my TV.
I watched him for a long time, and Iay awake at night thinking about him. One day I asked my mother if there was anything I could do to help him, and she smiled, and said that I had obviously learned my lesson, become more responsible. When my dad came home from work he brought with him a golden retriever, and took my African child away.
So now I take my dog for walks, and play catch with her, and groom her golden fur, and let her lick my face when I meet her after school. And the whole time, I am thinking of how many children she could feed.
Thursday the 22nd of July, 2010
Fairy tale.
The town was in chaos. Full, mad, literal chaos. Nothing was the same twice. We would tie our shoelaces, or try to, and end up barefoot, in the loft, with a straw hat on our head. Or we would try and spoon cereal into our mouths and end up in the bathroom, trying to fix the toilet. Neither of these cases were anything special. They were part of the scenery, really. Nothing ever happened the same way twice in our town, and nothing ever happened according to logic.
We were losing our minds.
Then, one day, a man came to town. A stranger. I went up to him and tried to explain what was happening, but I ended up unfolding a map and pointing to Paris. It didn’t matter, he seemed to understand anyway. He looked at me with kindness.
“Your heart isn’t beating,” he said. And then he walked away. I saw him sidle up to others in the town and speak to them, too. Later, much later, I heard reports of what he’d said. Weird things. Nonsensical things. Lies. “My mother is from space,” he’d declare. “The Great Wall of China is made of sponge cake.”
For days, he did this. I didn’t pay much attention to him, not at first. But then I started to notice that sometimes when I went to do something — brush my teeth, for instance — it actually happened. Others noticed too.
As weeks went by, I saw more and more order return to our lives. I was able to sleep when I closed my eyes, able to run when I moved my legs. One day, the stranger came up to me and said “I’m going to stay here forever.”
And then he left town. And the chaos slowly returned.
I cursed the stranger’s absence, and tried to get him back. I called the police, and they managed to get out to their cruiser to go look for him. They made it half-way down the road before they found themselves plucking chickens at Worgret Farm.
I didn’t know what to do, so I copied the stranger, and told a lie. I walked over to the mirror, looked myself right in the eye, and I said “Everything is going to be okay.”
Thursday the 22nd of July, 2010
The Candidate.
“All Tuesday, all the time!” was his campaign slogan. None of us knew what it meant, but I guess enough of us thought it was funny, or cool, or interesting, and we voted him in. It was a landslide.
And then it was Tuesday. All the time. Every day we woke up, and it was Tuesday again. Calendars, computers, even the newspaper — everything said it was Tuesday.
So we all just did what we would normally do on a Tuesday. We went to work, or sat in school. And we waited for a break, for some rest. We labored every single day, hoping that soon it would be the weekend.
We became tired, and depressed. We would lay in our beds at night and be unable to sleep, dreading the tomorrow that would be the same as today.
It was like this for years.
We became angry enough to storm his building. We were going to put it under siege, until he made Tuesday go away, forever. But he was waiting for us, and he had a small army, and suddenly there were guns in our faces.
Most of us were skipping work.
He came outside, onto the balcony, and addressed us.
“I have heard rumors that some of you are unhappy with the job I’ve been doing. This, of course, saddens me to a deep extent. In an effort to rectify the situation, we will be holding elections.”
He smiled.
“On Wednesday.”
Thursday the 22nd of July, 2010
A minute of your time.
When does the opposite of cliche start to become cliche itself? Does the purposeful avoidance of expectations trend towards boredom? How many times can you do extraordinary things until that is all you are, a mundane wonder, a life too large, a show-off with no audience — at least, not one that cares.
Anyway, I broke into prison last night. You see, it’s funny because normally people break out.
No, please don’t g-
Thursday the 22nd of July, 2010
In case of emergency.
“To listen to your jumpsuit, dial five now” the voice said, and you did, and the switchboard connected you, and you heard nothing. That’s always a good sign, when you hear nothing. It’s what you’re looking for. The jumpsuits are kept in a vacuum-sealed pod, and the only reason you’d ever hear anything is if the seal had broken, or if there was a tear in your suit. You don’t want that to happen. That’s why you call, and check.
Those first thirty seconds — after you hear the silence and hang up the phone, after you walk away from the booth — those thirty seconds feel full of possibility. You make plans to go back to your room. Maybe eat a little. Do some work on the station. It’s looking a little run down lately. In fact, it’s been looking a little run down for as long as you can remember.
But then, that reassured feeling wears off, and you start to worry about your suit again. What if something had happened to it the second you put the phone down? What if your suit is ruptured? What if an asteroid hits the station and your suit is ruptured and you can’t get any air, oh god, your lungs need air so much, just a little, please?
You panic. You walk faster away from the booth, towards the back of the line. You walk past all the other people waiting, thinking the same thing. They mutter to themselves. You know what they are saying, because you say it too. “I just need to check it one more time.”
You start to wonder why, if there are so many suits, they only provide one phone, one check-booth. You realize that you’ve never seen your suit in person. You realize that nobody has.
You dismiss these thoughts. You join the back of the queue. You dial five, and you hear nothing, and you breathe.
Thursday the 22nd of July, 2010
Science lesson.
The thing everyone always forgets about lightning is the fact that it doesn’t fall down from the heavens. It shoots up, from the ground. It’s been a stormy summer, and I’ve had my hi-speed camera, and I’ve actually seen it happen. And if lightning can go up, I figure other things can too.
I started with small stuff. Some books, an old CD, a jar of preserves. I wrapped them up in foil, went out into the field, and put them on top of my tree house. And then I waited for it to rain.
I didn’t get any confirmation at first. All that happened was my stuff disappeared, leaving only a black smudge on the tree house, a silhouette in ash. But then, that night we went to the movies — do you remember? It started raining, absolutely pouring it down. You and mom and her new boyfriend ran to the car, and I calmly walked, took my time. Not a single drop touched me.
That’s how I knew the sky was grateful.
Mom’s noticed, I think, how much of our stuff has been going missing. How she has to keep buying more aluminum foil. That’s why I don’t think it’ll come as much of a shock to her. But try and be calm when you explain everything. There’s really no need to panic.
I’m borrowing your jacket, by the way. You’ll get it back, I swear, and I’ll take all the foil off. It might not be for a while, though. I’m going to be gone.
I have to finish this letter. I can hear thunder. I’ll see you later, after I visit the sky.
Wednesday the 21st of July, 2010
My struggle.
I don’t trust anybody who was born after April 30th, 1945. That includes almost everyone I meet, except the old people I hang out with on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Sundays. I like to spend time with them, because they are the only people who you can be sure weren’t Hitler in a past life.
The odds of any single person I meet being Adolf Hitler’s reincarnation are, of course, six billion to one. I know that. But there’s no way to test for this kind of thing. It’s not like there’s some mystical chant I can utter or some spectrometer I can wave over every stranger I run into. I just have to be wary of everybody. Because that Hitler was a pretty mean dude.
I like to play it safe, show some respect. If someone asks me to do something, I’ll say “sure thing” and then, under my breath, follow it with “mein führer.” When I wave to people, I try to make it more of a salute. And of course, I have nothing but nice things to say about Germany.
The thing is, all this caution could be for nothing. Because I’ve started noticing things about myself. I’m parting my hair differently. I’m growing a mustache.
I have been painting horses.
Wednesday the 21st of July, 2010
Super hero.
Sometimes when I’m bored at work, I talk to Wolverine in my head.
One day, I said to him that it must kind of suck to be Wolverine, and he disagreed and asked me why I thought that. And I told him that being Wolverine means being Wolverine all the time, and that there is never any room for him to take up stamp collecting, or watercolor painting or something else normal, because he has to go around killing things all the time.
And then he told me that it must kind of suck to be normal, and I disagreed and asked him why he thought that. And he said that being normal means that there’s no time for fighting, or maiming, or killing, because you have to go paint a watercolor, or collect a stamp, or go to work, or something.
And I thought about what he said, and I agreed with him. And then I went to the break room and looked at knives.
Wednesday the 21st of July, 2010
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Here are some things the game likes.
The game likes it when you play by the rules, it likes it when you don’t cheat, and it likes it most of all when you take the long way round to get to where you need to go. The game understands that many people worked hard on these levels, and that doing them slowly, doing them right, is the only way to truly appreciate them.
The game likes it when you take frequent breaks. To stretch your legs, or eat some fruit. The game has heard that fruit is especially nice. It is moist, apparently. And sweet. The game likes to imagine what “sweet” means.
The game likes it when you push harder on the buttons to try and make the little man run faster, or jump higher. The game would never tell you this, but it likes to actually make that happen, just a little, not enough that you’d notice. The game thinks your enthusiasm should be rewarded.
The game likes it when you play it with your friends. The game is very lonely.
Tuesday the 20th of July, 2010
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Division of assets.
The day we broke up, somebody sent us a book in the mail. It arrived at our house, and I looked at it, and I thought “from now on, they’ll have to send two. He’ll be somewhere else, and I’ll be here, and if we each want one, they’ll have to send two.”
I thought about all the things we use, all the things we own. I thought about how, now, we would need two of each of them. The world would have to make another tea pot for you, because I was keeping ours. And I would have to get another Breeders album, from somewhere, because you were taking our one away.
I imagined our possessions picking sides. A television angry with me, a pillowcase begging me not to let you take it. I thought about replacing things I’d used for years, and that made me cry more that the thought of replacing you.
After a while, I realized I was being shallow. And then I realized that this would not work. Because if we couldn’t share a toaster, how could we share the planet?
I have sold all your crap, now. I am using the money to build a rocket ship.
