Inside the urn
There is a space left
For us: the dying memories.
The things left are thick and hard
In amongst the packed in ash
Of our dead loved one.
Just a small pocket
The last breathe
For you to feel
Inadequate
Scared
Alone
Lost
Or
much worse things
make the sturdy base of it.
Count Gesualdo
Filled with rage
Had his men kill
His wife
While she fucked her lover
Who, dressed in women clothes
Begged them
Not to kill him
After her.
They stabbed him in the body and head.
The count went back into the room
Saying “they are not yet dead!”
And stabbed them over and over
And half cut off his wife’s head.
It is hard to cut off a head.
Your wife’s head is harder.
Her face, her body.
Then he went back to his castle
And wrote
Magic.
The dreaded death In your lung breath In you heart reach In your soul stench Tastes like vomit When you take her hand in yours Her small hand Her little loving hand That has done nothing to you yet But has held cocks before Hasn't it? It has held a large hard cock So it's hard to love those little fingers In the same way you'd love Fresh cooked food. I feel sick As the seed Grows beyond me Growing even now Wrapping it does Feeding on my hope And smiling So badly As it grows. It kills the spine. It kills the soul that thinks the spine is important.
Madame Tussaud, no relation, is at the forefront of spiritual divinity. Her technique, her nuance, is a refreshing acceptance of everything, good and bad, not like the shysters or movie-themed-gypsy-attire-wearing-fakers that are all up and down Figaro streetselling you fortune and hope. The modestly lit gold neon in her window, on a low wattage setting, is simply spelt “clairvoyant” with a subtle lower case ‘c’, hopes to attract less of the ‘my mother just died and I am grieving, should I?’ or the ‘I am about to get married, should !?’ or the ‘I don’t know what to do with me life TELL ME!’ crowd and instead garner the more resolute, disbelieving and genuinely (as far as going to a ‘magical’ perhaps bullshit artist can be genuine) truth-in-death seeking individual. The reward is in the larger fee, Madame Tussaud reasons. (“I am not McDonalds” is one of her catch-phrases). If she could add in small neon italics underneath the sign it would read “not a mind reader” but that was apparently impossible to do for the neon manufacturer (they couldn’t elegantly join the separate words and letters and so quoted a ridiculous price so as to preclude them from possibly getting the gig, a project Madame Tussaud foresaw was technically possible). Never mind. More than thirty nine months of steady clients befitting the exact desired market kept her door open, her cat, bird, and bat fed and the landlord from telling her to stop burning all that stinky crap in the lounge room.
Simon Finkel was prospective client number 27 (and ominous number for numerologists; 9 times 3, or spookily, 3 times 3 times 3…”and by the power of 3 shall ye be bound”, “the curse shall return upon you three-fold”, the “holy trinity” and all that) who, this night walked down the steps towards Madame’s door casually, as in not overly deliberately, as in thinking himself quite smart and right-of-mind in choosing the most modest and undazzling premise on the street, finding in himself greater validity in discovering a hidden, secretive, more earnest seer. So not only does the sign work, it also fills the intended client with a certain sense of self aggrandizement. Madame Tussaud wanted that too, it helped her peer directly into the soul whilst the subject is dazed under a cloudy gauze of ego. It also helped of course make her fee, when she announced it fifteen minutes into the ceremony, that much more justified. She had been fearing receiving client number 27. She had had nightmares for 5 nights (another vexatious number, half of the sum of the total base ten decimal currency that ruled the earth, the devils simplicity to rule them all) and awoke startled at the face of a soft, youngish man with drawn cheeks, deep socketed dark rimmed eyes and a weak smile, perhaps the most horrific feature of the dream; a half thin-lipped semi-tooth-showing quivering smile that made her almost physically sick. Luckily for her when the door opened on a brisk August eve and a tanned, filling-out-his-shirt-in-all-the-right-places man walked in with a quaff of yellow-brown hair wind swept back from a sturdy brow over to the crown of his skull caused the little chimes she hangs nailed above the door to jingle ever so softly (the one cliché she allowed herself, sometimes clients want “the package they expect”) she was momentarily relieved. Relieved because it wasn’t the horrific man from her dreams, then instantly unrelieved because; wasn’t she supposed to be psychic? She calmed herself by recounting the Protection Spell of Ib-el-Rahim three times and reminded herself that it was client number 27 so all bets were off. She lit a red candle and laid one of her cut fingernails into the wax and went out to greet him. For the opening gambit, and a little trick she personally loves, she walks into the antechamber, extending a well ringed left hand and says
“Welcome Andreas, or is it, Simon you go by now?” and naturally there is that moment of shock-fear followed by an awkward and weird-feeling wrong-handed shake and a half step backward until she says
“Please, sit down first then we’ll talk” to reassure them that ‘yes, that was fucking weird but also yes, things can go on from here in the proper way you expect, say, from a Doctor’. Simon sits and hunches forward, matter of fact, hands clasped, came for business, didn’t the sign say clairvoyant? etc. Madame sits opposite. It’s a normal room. Two lounges on either side, a thin coffee table between them with a plain clean ashtray in the centre, a small bookcase with the usual books on it (nothing occult), a vase with dried flowers on top of that. The only give away that this is not your spinster Aunt’s house is that there is a painting of Mary (Jesus’ mother from the bible) hung upside down on the wall with a piece of burnt white cloth hung from one of the corners. That and the smell.
“So, Simon. What brings you in tonight?” Madame asks, lighting long clove cigarette.
“I can smoke in here?”
“You an have one of these” she replies, handing him her cigarettes, loose in a satin pouch.
“What are they?”
“Herbal, produced by hand at a small tribe in the Andes”
He takes one and lights it, the smoke is thicker than usual, feels like some sticky tar paints the inside of his lungs when he draws in.
“Thanks”
“You’re welcome. So, you were saying?”
“Yes, yes why I’m here. Well…well you know Falcon street, right!” he chuckles, expectantly, she waits. “Yeah Falcon street. I grew up around here, down a few blocks, on The Parade. So you know, I know, I know what you all do here and, I’ve known since I was a boy and I never really, you know I never believed in all this.”
“I know. There’s really nothing to believe in.”
“Right…right. Well, lately I’ve been, well I’ve been thinking you know and, I’m not a Christian or anything like that. I’ve been to church right for weddings and funerals and stuff, Italian friends, and it was like, like not real or anything to me. But my Grandfather…”
“Stop” Madame says, looking away and breathing in and out of her cigarette, “just smoke your cigarette for a minute, ok?”
And they sit and smoke. Madame Tussaud takes her rings off and lays them on the table, moves them around and ashes her cigarette. Simon ashes his too right after, smokes some more but starts to feel sick. They taste like bad pot and berries and burnt bark.
“You do not want to know about your Grandfather” she says finally, after half their cigarettes are gone and they have sat there for at least three minutes inhaling and exhaling in silence.
“What? Why not?” Simon asks.
“I just have to say that. I have seen what you want and I have to say that.”
“Okay…”
“So if you want to continue I must tell you how I work. Firstly, this session will be the only one you need, and it will cost you three hundred dollars. Secondly, I tell you the truth. I know this is what you want, but not everyone really wants the truth, if you understand me. They think they do, but they are usually much happier not knowing the truth. You can understand what I mean.”|
“Yes I do.”
“Good. And now then, do you want me to tell you the truth about your Grandfather, about why you came into my home to see me?”
“I do, yes.”
“Ok then. If I put these rings back on, we can start. We will go into the back room down that hallway there and begin. Do you have three hundred dollars?”
“No I…don’t have that on me…”
“That’s ok. Go and get three hundred dollars and come back, I will be ready for you then”
They put their cigarettes out and sit there for a moment, Simon looking Madame Tussaud up and down, or once over as you may call it. As he is leaving he knows he will not come back.
Three hundred dollars really! Not a chance. There are plenty of these women up and down this street, most charge fifty bucks for a…and then he stops, standing in front of a cash machine. Enters his card, punches in his code and withdraws three hundred dollars, then stands back from the machine, the cash in his hand. What am I doing? Flash in his mind of his kind Grandfather’s face, another deep menacing feeling in his gut: something is wrong. He knows something is wrong. He turns around and heads back to Madame Tussaud’s. When he returns the neon sign is out and the door is open. He walks down the stairs into a darkened lounge room, sees candle lights at the end of the hall and shuts the door behind himself.
“Madame?” he calls out (pronouncing it Mad-am instead of Ma-darm), no answer. He walk down the hallway, past things only his imagination can create hanging on the wall and along the floor, little ingots and creatures seemingly dancing in the flickering candle light. “Madame?” he calls again, hears a faint high-voiced whisper return to his ear. At the end of the hall a room opens up like a womb, open and lit, a round table in the centre with Madame Tussuad with her back to him presiding over an altar of sorts with bottles of alcohol, candles, trinkets, idols and statues. She is spreading a thin ash over the pieces and chanting something in a quiet deep breathy voice, every now and then spitting mouthfuls of alcohol out on one of the statues. Simon takes a seat and puts the money on the table.
“Pleassssse…put that money on the floorrrrrr” seethes Madame Tussuad, “get it offffff…the table” she slurs, exhaling deeply afterwards. Simon quickly picks up the bundle of twenty’s and puts it on the carpet.
“Sorry…” he whispers.
“Ssssimon listennnnn….” she releases, turning around to reveal her face. Simon instantly notices she has changed, her face, her posture, her hair, everything different. He waits, transfixed.
“Jack, jacky boy, your old jack issssss…wasssss in the great war, yes?”
“Uhm yeah, yeah he was in world war two actually”
“Aaaahhh yessss, hahaahahaaa, I can see him now…..wuh!” stopping as she lets out a throttled gasp.
“What is it?!”
“Simon…I…” Madame says, putting both hands on the table and lowering her head.
“Simon I told you…I told you…”
“What? What is it tell me?!” he says, quickly desperate, reacting to what he is seeing.
“Okay, okay that’s enough” she says, slowly walking over to the wall and flicking on a light switch. The room is instantly flooded with a bright light, a normal overhead bulb changing the entire feeling of the room to one of normality and now absurdity.
“Jesus what the hell?” Simon says, feeling tricked.
“Simon, Simon, it’s ok, it’s ok. I have just, just seen what you wanted to know. It came so fast, I didn’t, I didn’t get a chance to, tell you….I mean, I know that it was….something you…wanted but should not have…pick up that money and I’ll let you decide.”
Simon gets the twenties off the floor and puts them back on the table, pushing them over toward Madame Tussuad.
“Tell me!”
“Simon, in the war, your Grandfather…your Grandfather was a paedophile…a rapist…he raped so many young girls all across Europe, again and again, village after village. He was beaten repeatedly by his captain and fellow infantrymen. But he didn’t stop. He kept raping and laughing and killing children the whole war. Simon, this is what I tell you. This is why I am here. This is why you came to me”
“It can’t be…can’t…”
“Simon, this is the truth”
Simon, sick, stands up, looks at this half witch half alive woman and turns and walks to the front door, leaving the money, leaving the candles and that smell and opening the door rushing up the stairs into the world. Feeling better when he sees the street, pavement, lights, trees in their little dirt patches, parked cars and some other people walking around laughing and holding each other up and they walk home from a hotel singing together. Yes! This, this life. In his mind flashes young girls in dresses. NO! In his mind the flash of a young girl smiling then the flash of tits and shaved pussies he’d seen on the internet. NO! Not again nonono NO! Fuck. He starts walking, head down, gets a cigarette out, lights it and draws down hard, hard so it hurts the throat and lung, hard so he feels something going in and out, to focus on. Breathes out a thick plume into the night, flash on his cousin sitting on his lap and then some woman on screen bouncing up and down on a man’s dick going in and out of her ass. No!! Fuck shut up stop it. Too much porn he tells himself. That’s it too much porn. Can’t even go to his nephews party fuck fuck. Those six year old girls playing in the small inflatable pool and by reflex it is he was looking at their asses but he didn’t want to fuck them, god no! come on! but he did go home and toss off to asses, teenagers, he googled teenagers and tossed off into his own t-shirt. Fuck Christ! Should never have gone to Madame Tussaud’s tonight, no. NO! Simon walking home, mind racing, flashing, chain smoking.
(a) Enhance Knowing
Look around you, look closely, look at the faces you see everyday, or in fact even the faces you see anyway, by the by. They are all humans, they all have the same hopes and dreams as you. They want Gucci bags (maybe not), they want a delicious cocktail they’ve never taste before (maybe not), they want a perfectly tailored suit fitted to your exact body shape and who gives good god damned how much that costs (maybe not). Look closely, you are not them, they are not you. You may hate each other.
(b) Explore Knowing
Pointless to discuss politics, the supporters all yell things at you, things they don’t know, things they have been brainwashed to say. Verbatim media slogans written by people of my age, as in, my actual age. The funny thing is they are written by people who are my age who don’t really believe in the dogmatic policies of the party but like being paid to write highly persuasive sentences that get right in the brains of the common folk and then it’s funny when they spout them for free (not paid) out into the world. Ha.
(c) Impart Knowledge
(Fuck this one is hard and not at all flippant, okay…) The way in which you have exonerated suffering has made you better, the way you behaved (!) at a funeral, the very sense of sickness being the barest of humanity, as in baring humanity, baring the child within us, then, of course, overcoming patheticness, for that is the way we see adults behaving as children. In our hour of need there is always pity, and the subsequent reverence derived from overcoming childish pity makes the scene complete.
(d) Bringing a Better World
There is hope left within small communities, living apart, living within the knowable realm; parents, grandparents, children in strollers…it gets lost, they have jobs, the mother and the father, the nanny brings their children up, in love in her arms the children know love, the love Nadia the foreign aunt and after twelve years the family, the family who wants so much love and continuance with the values of their parents this love, this, love wish, is gone because they fire her and try to take over when their children cry and ask for Nadia.
There is nothing left in this world that can make you forget or forgive. There are only the choices we have made and what those choices mean and what the fuck I am gong to do to you because you made those choices. The Case For Suicide is clear:
In lieu of a purpose, a driving force, a reason to continue with this incumbent life that has reared its head again and again, whether you were a servant, blacksmith, maiden, assistant or Prince, it pays no bother. What does it mean now, right now, in this quasi-classist society? Much better than a hundred years ago yet still not so free as to arrange us all in equal footing? We are so lonely, we are so fed up, we are so fulfilled, we are so useless (cleaners) we are so pointless (teachers), we are so lost (lawyers)…we heal the sick. Doctors are gods always.
The dread from inside
Keeps coming out
To remind you
That the beautiful love you feel
Can not last.
The head will be cut off,
The rabbit will run
Half headless
Into the darkness under the ferns
To die there alone
Panicked and starving.
But that little rabbit
Held trembling
Alive
Kisses your fingers and looks at you
So honestly
Because it needs you
And you can feel its small body
Breathing and shivering
And settling down in your lap
It forgets that there is a world
Away from your lap
That wants to eat it
And boil it
Or put it in an oven
Because its better that way.
That's how you eat a rabbit.
Didn’t you know?
Jonah’s older brother was mean. Mean like when they were kids, Jonah eight, Mark ten, they had baths together still and even though Jonah would cry and cry and yell ‘no’ their would put them in the bath and close the door to the bathroom. Now, as we know bathrooms echo a lot. They are probably the only room in the house that shouldn’t echo, really, but there we have it, we’ve made the most embarrassing, bodily function-centric, gross room the most cacophonous vestibule for us poor we-don’t-want-to-be-animals-animals[1]. So locked in that chamber Mark would begin at first pushing the bathwater back and forth in a tidal wave, just for fun at first but greater and greater until the water caused Jonah to move about and for great amounts of water to be displaced. Jonah hated both aspects, the mess and the fact he was not in control of his small body rocking back and forth in the bathwater[2]. Tossed about with Mark laughing, he felt sick and alone and his crying out was over-shouted by Marks fun yells, as if the two brothers were having fun together, playing, having bath-time fun with games and splashing and all of that. After some of this, and not every night but often enough, mark would stand up and start pissing on Jonah, in his face as much as possible and Jonah would try to avoid it under the little water left in the bathtub. Coming up for air like a whale he would just get the rest of the piss stream in his mouth, tasting his brothers piss and trying to breathe, not really drowning properly but no really able to breathe properly either. When Mark had finished pissing on his bother, and had nothing left like that, he’d soap himself all over, throw Jonah the soap and fill the tub up with more water. Just hot water. Jonah would try and turn it off but Mark would hold his hand under the hot water coming out and Jonah would cry out and Mark would yell “Muuum…..Muuuuum” and she’d come in and see the mess, the water, the hot water pouring out and set it all right, as in, get Mark out and hand him his towel so he’d leave and close the door and the mother would wash Jonah properly in the small amount of three inch hot as hell water and Jonah would give up, his legs as he knelt there burning in the hot hot water and his mouth full of salty tasting piss his brother pissed into his mouth almost three or more times a week, more and more as time went on.
Sitting in his room drawing a lot, Jonah, 11 years old, drew scenes from the bible, Exodus, Job, New Testament Mathew Mark Luke and John stuff (it’s all the same). Drawing Moses with his staff commanding the Israelites, commanding God’s punishment upon the Egyptians. Drawing the boils on the skin, drawing the fire coming down on them, drawing really drawing with a red pen a lot the fires and the burning dead of those who opposed God’s chosen. In Jonah’s class he heard the story of Jonah and the Whale, imagining himself getting stuck in the belly of a whale, praying in there, waiting in there. His teacher put on an animated video of Jonah in the whale; making a little room for himself and staying in there, talking to the whale and the whale answering back apologetically and eventually releasing him. Mark is like the pestilence, coming in, pushing all his work to the floor, pulling him over onto his back and hurting him really bad by twisting his arms and legs together and saying things like “you love god now?” and “mum doesn’t love you because you are so weak” and as Jonah calls to his mum and nothing happens Jonah starts praying like he has been told and actually says the words of the lord’s prayer out of his mouth which makes Mark hurt him more trying to get him to stop saying that stuff.
In the family home there now lived Jonah, his Mother and Father. Mark was gone, living by himself in some house with a few friends. No one had heard or seen Mark in over a year. Jonah was happy and free and not scared for the first time in his whole life. He heard his mother worry about Mark and his Father console her but he was happy that this person was gone.
The local church was, not really a church thing per se that he had been brought in, more like a hall thing with a whole bunch of people that seemed normal and cool and happy and god-loving. Jonah liked these people, their openness, their honesty, their acceptance of the words he said and the other words they had that added to what he said. He said “yes!,…,yes!” a lot at the end of their sentences, sat listening to the preachers talking about a god they believed in and he cross-referenced what they were saying with all the stuff he had read. It didn’t make sense a lot of the time, sometimes they were talking about things that did not match with what he read written in the bible. A few times he said to them things like “but really do you believe that?” and they always pretty much said ‘yes’ and he quoted other bits; “passages” they corrected him and “um yes” he said and went on and told them the other ‘passages’ and they were solemn faced and said things like “that was the old testament” and “that is not really god” but Jonah knew it was, that was god, that was really god, in the bible and they were talking about the things that sounded good, just good and that was when he didn’t go back anymore[3].
Working was, of course, unreal at all times. No one knew of the soul inside, they were all smiling and busy and talking in words like “fiscal year” and “debt recovery” and “final transaction”. Jonah, surrounded n these concepts and words was sick, at lunch he rode his bike far away from the office where he was working in customer service at age 22 to a lake, on the edge of the lake he would cry, for himself mainly and he felt bad about that and then praying, started crying then for the human faces he saw every day. The sales reps, the older lady desperate to keep her job, the sexual young women smiling and flirting for money, the male managers gross, tucked into their business suits and moving about with papers in their hands, half smiling, going in rooms, small rooms, talking and laughing and not doing anything, just talking and laughing and staying late doing it. Jonah’s life was empty in purpose but he prayed every night for his brother Mark; that he would come back and be redeemed[4].
Uncomfortable place, but of course, they had expected that, Jonah and his girlfriend. Jonah had wanted to impress her by going to what he thought was a fancy restaurant. She said “wow, this is amazing” and they had only sat down and had napkins placed on their laps. Jonah looked at the prices on the menu and felt a lump in his throat because it was really expensive and it seemed sacrilegious and he didn’t want her to think he was shallow like this, like he bought food so expensively. “You now, this is….this is..”
“I know” she says “this is too much. Let’s just hare an entre and a main, really, it’s ok”
“No, no it’s not the money it’s the…waste…oh, sorry…not a good date thing to say” and he is blushing and shy and trying to laugh and express how he really feels, who his is.
“I agree Jonah, its to much.”
“It’s ….oh god, it’s…”
“Shhhh. It’s ok Jonah, really” and they sit and order one entre and one dish and she orders a glass of wine and he smiles at this and orders a coke.
“What the fuck you been up to?” Mark says, Christmas lunch, getting there late, bringing his wife and three kids in the door while the rest of the extended family are already on the lounges and around the place, on the floor. Mark’s father stands up and says “Mark, don’t you talk like that today” and Mark says “Calm down old man, we’re all adults here and these kids, Christ, they wouldn’t know what the hell is going on anyway, would you, you little cockheads?”. The kids don’t even look at him, everyone else looks at everyone else in some way or another. Jonah gets up and walk over to his brother. “Mark, how are you?”. “Good as shit mate. Fuck look at you, you been working out?” ‘Yeah I have been a bit Mark. Good to see you”. “Shit yeah man you look fucking good. Hey, you met my latest bird? Hey, Stacey, check this shit out, my little bother is cut as fuck…hey Mum, get me a beer, huh”. “Mark, hey, come on now, this is Christmas, you can’t keep going on like that?”. “Huh. Jonah come on, what the fuck are you talking about?” “Mark, come on…there’s kids here, man:”. ‘Kids? Whose kids? Oh shit look at them. Dumb little cunts haha. Fucking cunts haha right?” “Mark!” his mother says, shuts him up. There’re all sort of sit downs in various spaces and getting drinks in their hands, sip them. Jonah looks at Mark like he’s waiting. “You want to say something Jon-ah? Huh?”. “No Mark”.
In ward E4, bed 103 Jonah lies watching TV, has three channels to pick because two stations haven’t signed the proper copyright agreements that allow patients in hospitals to watch TV shows. The ultimate copyright law that comes down to affect people that have absolutely no intention of breaking mere copyright laws. But here in an establishment it applies en masse. Been there two weeks, had his blood cleaned four times, had his head scanned by fMri three times, had his pancreas and a kidney removed, the fucking thing cancer it is, moving around being a prick and taking bits and pieces here and there. Jonah has told his wife to keep the kids way until he is looking better. Jonah’s Dad came by out of nowhere and was crying too much about losing a son before he was dead himself. Jonah couldn’t say anything because that was right. You shouldn’t die before your father. What could he say. Another week, he spoke to his wife on his iPhone she bought him. He mainly payed games on his iPhone really, a good thing to have when you are dying of a cancer doctors can’t find. In the pieces they cutting away, Jonah imagines himself a half human which is living with almost half his organs and big chunks of flesh missing. He imagines a leg or arm or both missing. One morning when he wakes up Mark is there, sitting there reading a newspaper. Jonah closes his eyes and Mark doesn’t see him wake up. He holds his eyes closed for a few minutes, starts counting up from one, gets to two hundred, keeps counting, trying hard to count higher and higher and, even though this is the last days of his life, would rather count up and up the numerical scale rather than talk to Mark. Seven thousand, eight hundred and sixty seven he gets to.
[1] There is most probably a religious-based reason for this.
[2] Bathwater: yet anther gross term,. Though it shouldn’t be. Some families these days take that water for the garden. How do the children feel after having cleansed themselves in the same water feel about this stuff going out to water the crops they will eventually eat?
[3] He went back a few more times of course, just in case these new amazing loving all good all nice god did exist. It turned out he didn’t and they were all so stupid and simple and amazingly false. They kept asking for money for one thing. Over and over. God…
[4] And he never wanted him to come back. He didn’t want to have to try and help him redeem himself, and he didn’t think it was possible. He hated himself for thinking that. He hated not wanting him back. He had read the prodigal son, didn’t agree with the message, felt bad about this disagreement.
1 2 3 4 daddy’s gone and fucked a whore
5 6 7 8 I can hear him ‘jaculate
9 10 11 12 will my daddy go to hell?
13 14 15 16 if he does then I’ll be leadin’
17 18 19 20 I’m'a make sure we got plenty
21 22 23 24 ain’t gonna need him no mo’
I hold your hand and you thrilled with conviction you are, so long before I knew that any true urge was basically false or pretend, and I didn’t know then you were pretending, I thought you were magical and amazing and holding your hand was as if I was learning and getting to know something, getting let in on something which really is what we all want and I know now that is what your power is and after all these years I still think you have this power and at any time can come and take my hand again.
The point of living:
There are those of us chosen, born, made to teach (gross, as if there is any way we can actually talk or in any other way effect all these people oh dear god, really! They don’t listen, they all do their own thing and they love ‘their own thing’ and we have to get into their ‘thing’ thing and from the inside turn them over and over and tell them the truth and oh god my god it’s so hard and long and getting worse over time, I mean, these days sure I am still loved but the window is closing and pretty soon I’m going to have to scream “fuck you, kill people, fuck school” in order to have any kind of coherent respect influence) so you have to get your ass equipped like angels to get these morons smarter, right, that’s the goal. So we can’t fake it, we can’t wear the clothes and ‘blend in’ because these kids sniff that shit pile from a mile away…they know more about psychographic marketing then anyone…they could analyse how shit house the latest campaign is top to bottom. They like what they like. Full fucking stop.
Didn’t you know:
The time comes for your body to be put into the ground or burnt and displaced hence forth in verdant fields of green or else in concrete holes, wherever in which you wish to be desecrated/consecrated. That other time when you, so troubled, so selfish, so self-fucking-centred you…you decide you have to do it for yourself, you have to do it from nothing. It is open and clear, there is no reason to do anything, you have to have a reason, you have to make it up, you have to make it up and believe it and then you have to do it and go on doing it as if you actually really believe it and then say “this is who I am” and that voice inside then says “this is bullshit!”, “this is all an act!”, “I am not this thing!”, “I am not this person”…but you have created this person, you are the only one, you are alone and you have created this person and when you look around all you see is yourself reflected in the eyes and minds of others and how they treat you and you hate them as much as you hate yourself for having/letting them see you like this and the bottom of the pit stuff is where you think you can’t get out, escape, change yourself that you hate and so after fifteen fucking years you are, you really are that external thing, that created acting false thing. By god how hard and disgusting is it to keep living like this: alone, alone on the inside with all these smiling faces who ‘know’ you or at least have learned how to know you in the way you have wanted to be known, because what, because it was easier for you to navigate life being this invented digestible version? This handle-able product, this known entity…this…thing that you are, this shell, this approachable malleable, understood, talkative all-round proper clear cohesive unit thing that you are now?
What devils want:
They give you something, its what you want, it’s a certain kind of, I don’t know, power? No too much (because hey look at you, you are still wearing clothes); but it’s the people. The people: Smiling when they meet you, wanting to be around you, wanting you tell that story or do this thing. And of course you aren’t stupid enough to not realise you are being either a clown or an entertainer, but what it gets you is far more than an entertainer or clown would get. You get; people, money, security, trust, sex, desire, tears and so many other human things. It just comes and sits on your lap and you think ‘why is this happening?’ and then you remember. And then it’s ‘oh, fuck…did I make a deal…did I say the word ‘yes’? Did I say it by not saying it? What then now what do I owe, if anything? If I was so flippant to not care then what happens now?’. Stuff like that. You become scared. And then it’s The Oath to Love.
The scientist speaks:
The room was too small, the walls were so close, making it hard to breath in or out. In was fine, he could fill his lungs and hold it, feeling large, and then after holding his breathe for thirty seconds breathe it out and feel empty, feel as though there is a space available. Then again, looking around the walls, there and there and the roof just there again. He isn’t a tall man, isn’t an obese man, he is a small man sitting in a room feeling trapped and finding it very hard or at least finding the only thing he can do is breathe. Deeply in and slowly out. Closing his eyes and doing this over and over. Seeing the stars and the bright fireworks behind those closed eyes and feeling the chest expand and contract. Feeling the human body taking in air and letting out air. Sitting and breathing trapped in the room he lives in. A glass of water with ice next to him. The ice making popping sounds as it changes. He breathes in again because in this world you live in you breathe and live and drink water like life like breathing. He lets it our feeling the lungs like bags empty out, the body emptying and closing. He drinks cold iced water. The ice slinks and makes a life affirming sound as it pushes its way towards his lips and then slinks back down n the glass. His breathe is shorter and the cold water cools his throat and gut and the lungs now take in more air and they fill up. His legs are short, his arms are short, he breathe deeply and holds the breathe again, arches his back to push the lungs to capacity, spits out a little air as he forces the engorged lungs to their limit and spits out the sir bit by bit through his nose and then mouth. Hunching over the expel all of the air the man is not a large man, he is on a holiday. The room is small and has the essence of ;life. The things you must need. An empty fridge he wanted to put food in but of course he has been sitting in this room watching television and breathing. His legs are skinny and his arms are short and his neck hurts a lot and this time he strains his neck back over the bed waiting for it to crack, thrashes his head left and right and opens and closes his jaw full of effort. Tomorrow he has to talk about stem cell research and how we need to create these blastocysts in order to cure cancer and spinal cord injury. He will say things that will be argued against on the newspaper. The bar fridge has three beers, a mini bottle of wine, a bottle of water and a juice. He drinks a beer and writes it down on the card that you write down what you had from the mini bar on. He opens the nuts on the table and writes it down. He stands up straight and tries to touch the ceiling and breathes in hard and hold his breathe reaching up with his toes to try and touch the roof and collapse on the bed exhaling and sore. The beer is cold, he takes out his phone, looks at it, drinks more beer. The presenter takes out his notes and lies them on the bed, looking at the room, a movie, he is a man in a room preparing for a presentation. He is a man in a room who is trying to breathe. He is a man in a room who will drink the mini bar. He is a man in a room who now walks back and forth in only ten steps saying
“Today we discover a truth, a truth we all know but have been unable to voice, I want to voice this now. And I will tell you there is something deep inside of me that comes from, it comes from perhaps my upbringing. And I can tell you that it makes me feel sick, in some ways, to create, to play with these forms, these little forms of a life. I have experimented on rats, lab rats, I have seen them squirm in fear or thrash in pain. I have attached electrodes to the exposed brains of primates, I have dissected dead or dying bodies of every living animal including human. I have seen them twitch, I have seen them react. But today I am talking to you about the ideal subject. The immoral yet moral subject. The unformed human, the small creature we want to get our hands on”
He sips the rest of the beer and throws this draft into the hotel room’s provided small waste paper basket. He lies face down on the bed and pulls his arms up over his body and interlaces the fingers and stretches. There is a space enough to live in, it is paid for by the university. He pulls his socks off and throws them over near his bags. He has to pack it all up in the morning. Tomorrow he will leave and take all his bags and check out and take his bags to a small room annexed to an auditorium and tell all those people what he thinks. What he has been paid to say. He is paid to say what he thinks. He draws in a another long breathe and tries to hold it as long as he can. In his mind the medical reasons, the spiritual reasons, the kind on personal in-the-body sense stuff of self healing. The feeling that making unborn-not-really-babies-yet things to dissect, the feeling that making embryos to extract dna from, the feeling inside that tells him he is wrong, he is evil, he is disgusting. His chest is full of air, quitting smoking three years ago is working, the air coming in pure and full.