less than zero

The only thing that you cannot affect is eventuality. She whispers that without looking at me, instead she stares ahead at a mirage that begins to form in the middle of desert. She's lying back on one of those long deck chairs, sipping away at her drink. There is no one else on the balcony and the sun is beginning to set. This is what we do to ourselves, we scrutinize the past details of our lives in order to obtain a sense of clairvoyance about the future. We are all unreliable journalists, our columns contain no traces of truth which our readers can discern. I turn to look at her but her eyes offer nothing. They are vapid and washed over with an expression that has advanced sadness. A nonchalance that has been my doing. I make my way down to her neck, my eyes following her till the curve of her shoulders. In the middle of her solar plexus just below her breasts something begins to form. A black hole which is widening before my eyes. I have helped it grow larger and larger with every word and half formed gesture. Soon there is nothing left of her except this void which I have filled with objects impure and hidden. I am in love with my kidnapper but my Stockholm syndrome is wearing off. I stare ahead as the mirage becomes more and more vivid. In the middle of the sky two words form within a bracket. (disappear here) / There is nothing I can do but oblige. Every cell in my body dissipates into the desert air. I am all too familiar with this disappearing act and the parentheses closes removing me with it.

au revoir simone

An idea I have for my room: 

Chalkboard paint over one wall to create a canvas of sorts for when I want to write. Did you know that words in your head and words on paper have totally different meanings? The borders of the wall will retain the original colour of my room so the chalkboard will look like its framed. Also, the problem of dustiness will be solved with ChalkInk! 

sunday smile

Contrary to the title of this post, this has nothing to do with Sundays or smiling for that matter. And with that out of the way: A friend once asked me why we should try for anything when we know that everything will end eventually. I think the only logical answer is that we should try because the world does not exist in our head. In heads everything is structured and planned according to your hopes and expectations but these dreams rarely make a safe transition to reality. We should try because after countless years, after our bodies catch up with our minds, all that will be left for us is what we did and did not do. All our memories will work like foreign imagery; cities we have vague recollections of, polaroids we have to shake in our hand. And when we grow old all our experiences will be transmuted into little snippets of dialogue, our retinas will fire countless images, our hearts will exist as uneven shards, each one belonging to a different person. So everything will end in the end. We cannot affect eventuality. There is nothing we can do to preserve permanence or life on earth. But there will be no more regret left. We will look for it but we will never be able to find it.

-

writer type

Writer Type
(a short story)

     Let me write this down before I forget. I have a friend named E. This friend of mine is a writer or at least he thinks he is. There is a reason why E's writing should be privileged over other writers and this is because everything he writes in his notebook becomes the equivalent of literature gold. The way this works is that when writing in the notebook, creative and neural pathways in E's brain are so stimulated that he can write a draft for a novel in a day.

      Don't inquire about the logistics of this or how his notebook never runs out of pages but what I do know is that this notebook would be coveted by artists and writers all over the world. Anything they envision in their mind would be automatically enhanced and given form through the notebook. This position that E finds himself in cannot be attributed solely to himself however, it is the notebook and not the writer that causes this dissension in the time-space-logic sphere.

      All writers want to leave something tangible on the facade of this planet, a strain of beauty, an outcry of controversy. So of all people this chance has fallen to E, whom some would argue possesses more insecurity and pretense than actual talent.The notebook provides E with an easy existence, he has molded a life for himself - that of a highly successful author who is well respected in critical circles as well. His first novel, The Transsiberian was described by the Seattle Times as "a profound inquiry into the nature of human emotion which blurs the line between prose and poetry". David Foster Wallace called E the "Jack Kerouac of a feeling deficient, ADHD generation" shortly before his death in 2008.

      All this works out very well for E because all he really does is scribble in his little notebook for a few frenzied hours and the following day after some editing he has a book so important that literature courses all over the world scramble to include it in their syllabus. Now you must be thinking that my friend here leads a pretty swell life - a financially secure and distinguished existence. However like all things that sound too good to be true, E's notebook also comes with a catch.

      The more he writes in it, the more he forgets his past. Only the other day he was telling me that an unknown woman screamed at him, claiming to be his wife of 7 years. You can imagine the shock my friend must have been in, even more so when he found evidence of this apparent marriage in the family photos he has at home. This forgetting had never been much of a problem before because it only used to erase memories that he felt he would be better off without - he forgot about the girl in college he never really fell out of love with, he forgot how estranged he was from his father, he forgot the numerous promises he made to himself about self-worth and artistic integrity. But now the notebook was erasing gigantic portions of his memory and the worst part was that he couldn't stop writing.

      So my friend flees in a panic from a wife he doesn't love and a daughter he does not recognize to this old motel a few miles outside the city. What an existence it must be, to have a seemingly perfect future yet not have any semblance of a past. Can you even make any meaningful progress on this long linear line they call time when your line is slowly fading away from back to front? Do you cease inhabiting this world and slowly transform into a wraith? We are but products of history and when history gets washed away the minutes in our lives may tick on but we stop travelling forward. I shudder at the position he finds himself in, the past and the future cannot exist independent of one another. I worry greatly for my dear friend and it saddens me to say that when I called him yesterday he showed even more signs of deterioration. I am surprised that he still remembers me and he leaves me with something to muse over before he hangs up: "The writer types all turn half-crazy in the end."

      I plan on visiting my old friend soon but I have problems of my own. I do not know why I've been clutching the same book close to my chest for the past hour. It is titled The Transsiberian and I'm holding it as if it is supposed to mean something very important to me. The walls around me are grey and unfamiliar but I am not bothered because I am too busy scribbling away on this notebook. It is important I write all of this down before I forget.

-

etymology

I wonder sometimes if dreams are the glimpses we have of our alternate lives in other universes. So often I see a face in my dream that is so familiar and foreign at the same time. Maybe we do know these faces, just not in this life. I woke up feeling the youngest I've ever felt. I used to think that I was an old soul trapped in a young body. I guess that comes when you generalize the little you know about the world to everything you come across in life. I have great designs in my head, but the person I think I am does not correlate with the physical that inhabits my place on this earth. Writing is the only connection I have with myself. Writing is just a way of guiding my dreams. There is so much to see and feel and learn about the world. I have spent too much time thinking and rationalizing. I feel that the further I travel, the deeper I go within myself as well. This post may or may not be an attempt at honesty, I have tried my best to filter out the unconscious which seeps through these lines. I have already said too much, I shall stop now for there is much to live for. And I am filled with excitement.