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Archive for the ‘novelish’ Category

Somehow Morris and Zeus have something to do with one another…

In novelish, Post Script on October 25, 2010 at 10:15 pm

I’d rather not get into the details of how I finally tracked down Morris Maxwell Firm. These words I write, they are many things—a history, a confession, a tribute—and most of this is for naught if the exactness of details is imperative. Long story short, Morris cohabited a small room in the basement of an abandoned church, a block or two off one of the main throughways of The Fissure. He would have been impossible to track down were it not for my connections at the CSA, who had connections with the polling company they employed, who had connections with the pollster company they employed, who knew which sect would have been responsible for Morris’s response, based on the bar code verifying the poll’s authenticity.

Even after these channels, it took some good old fashioned investigatory journalism to track him down.

When I entered his room, which he shared with three other mates, he was slumped over in his bed, a dirty, little round lump of a white man, asleep to the side, wearing scruffy shorts with his feet on the ground. He snored like a mammoth.

****

…and on a tall mountain, far, far away, an old man was slumped over in his throne, pensively stroking his long, grey beard, and wondering what it was, exactly, about that town oh so far away that brought him such ire…

So I enter this room, and God’s there, just chillin

In Dreams, novelish, Post Script on October 21, 2010 at 7:55 pm

Here’s what He said:

“Go away.”

Me? I said.

“No,” He said, motioning his hand towards the rest. “Everyone. Everything.”

I went to leave.

“And you will,” He said, nodding. “Soon enough.”

You’re certain? I said.

He shrugged. “Soon enough,” He said. “Eventually everything goes away.”

So I started for the door.

He grunted and said something softly, too soft.

I turned. Huh? I said.

“Nothing,” He said. He looked in my direction, but His gaze was slightly distant, like He couldn’t think of the right way to put something.

Again I went for the door.

“You should know something,” He said.

I let him finish.

He sighed. “You’re one of the good ones,” He said. “If people ask, let them know how you really feel about things. Don’t hide anything, just tell the truth.” He paused. “Maybe when people finally stop bickering, they’ll realize what’s really important.”

What do you mean? I said.

“Nothing,” He said and shook His head.

What’s important? I said.

“I have no idea,” He said. “You tell me.”

How The Journalist feels about his lack of motivation.

In non-fantastical, novelish, What people are on October 14, 2010 at 6:03 pm

In an earlier life, I constantly battled against the feeling that my life evolved in a series of events and actions I undertook, if only to prove that I could live a prosaic existence. At no point did any particular thing define my life, and—if I had ever been asked—I would have been extremely hesitant to acknowledge that my being was the sum of any of its parts.

I belonged, no doubt, and I produced—somewhat—but only because I willed myself to have that impulse. In other words, my motivation—my ambition—was, more or less, a choice.

Now I stand before god almighty, and I proclaim unto thee that I am not a machine, I am not programmable, that I am everything that I will ever be and, forevermore, shall accept.

If I lack ambition, it is because I do not care enough about the end. If I lack motivation, it is because I have not set my goals high enough.

I am my own engine, and I will puff and huff when I reach a hill worth climbing.

Why you should make a fuss about things.

In Complaining, novelish, What people are on October 13, 2010 at 8:50 pm

Brenda’s real name wasn’t Brenda, but she went by “Brenda” because it was easier for everyone to pronounce. Introverted and bookish, Brenda generally did the best she could to stay out of everyone’s way. The worst possible thing to be in the world, she believed, was an obstruction. The world was a tide pool, and her role was to keep things as calm as she could.

The only decent way to live, she thought, was to let everyone else live as they wish—and to never, ever complain. She went great lengths to ensure that, if she had occupied a room, that she left it exactly as it had been. She never took anything from anyone, only asked for something if it was a dire matter of clarification, and only walked across the street when it was perfectly clear that no cars would slow on her account and no person would have to move out of her way.

She lived by herself, kept to herself, and when someone tried to start up a conversation, she’d smile and put her head down—unless really pressed, in which case she would say as little as possible before changing the subject back to silence.

And she did such a good job at all of this that she lived her entire life without anyone ever bothering to care that she existed.

XX does things like eating oranges like apples.

In Food, novelish on October 11, 2010 at 8:34 pm

XX ate oranges like an apple, skin and all. No reason to wash them, he said, same reason there’s no reason to wash apples: we breathe air every day, he asks—the shit they put in there can’t be no worse for you than whatever they put on this shit.

Bugs live in the air, Rudd said to him. Pests live in the air.

So, XX asks.

So, Rudd said, they don’t live in apples or oranges because of the shit they put on them.

XX shook his head. That’s just because the shit messes with their chemical receptors—ain’t like they’re allergic. They’re just confused.

How’s that make it any better, Rudd said.

XX shrugged and said: ‘Cause I ain’t confused right now.

How doodling could lead to un-existence

In Kilgore Trout, novelish on October 1, 2010 at 8:20 pm

As the man had rambled on in neutral tones, the journalist couldn’t help but doodle in his notebook. Attention finite, he made an indecent habit of commingling importance and tonality. In a general way, he was aware of his flaws as a human being but—as in times such as these—often only in retrospect. After the interview, he would deride himself for not having caught the location the man mentioned, for not taking the man’s name, bud number, etc. He had, as he often did, commingled presence with importance.

The man had been so bland, so uninteresting, what he had said, he did so without confidence or qualification, he had been soft-spoken, humorless, often unintelligible, and mumbled. His clothing had shown wear, his glasses scratched, his shoes scoffed.

These were the sorts of things the journalist had noticed.

So, naturally, when the man approached the journalist, engaged the journalist in a discussion about the cosmos, about events there yet unimportant, unforeseen, the journalist—introduced, as he had been, as a man of record—played the role, doodling as he would.

It was only as the man trailed away, his final sentences before parting, that he said even one thing that stayed with the journalist, something that the journalist would later wonder why it was that it stuck with him, then it would then click, days later, what had been implied, what had been said, and he would remember back to what he had been doing when this man—who he remembered only as details—was talking to him about things he couldn’t possibly know.

Doodling.

What had been said: “At least that’s where Morris said it would be…”

Why Rudd is scared of commitment

In novelish on September 22, 2010 at 9:09 pm

To Rudd, far worse than any potential outcome of the conversation was the keen awareness of how much the necessity of initiating the dialogue required him to talk like a chick.

“Look,” he said, “We need to talk.”

She laughed in his face, which was exactly the point. “About what?” she huffed through heaves.

“About us,” he said, which didn’t make her stop giggling.

“Well fuck me,” she said. “Here I was, thinking you had no feelings.”

“If this is going to work, there needs to be some bare-ass minimal lines we each need to cross.”

“ ‘We,’” she said, pausing. “ ‘We’ is an excellent argumentative device to make me feel like I should give a shit.”

“You don’t?” he said.

She thought for a moment, still giggling. “I suppose I do,” she said. “But not as much as you.”

“Yeah,” Rudd said. “That’s basically the problem.”

A bit about Rudd

In Ancillarious, novelish, physics-nature-etc., What people are on September 20, 2010 at 9:30 pm

There were a number of times, in particular, when Rudd seriously considered killing himself.

Most recently, he stood 65 floors above the empty sidewalk, looking out over a balcony that’s railing eyed, flirted, teased, seduced him. He wasn’t depressed or angry or even annoyed. He wasn’t worried or tense or stressed or numb. Moreover, he was curious what it would be like to fall, to let go, to be bound only by gravity, and to know that, for once, one’s fate is truly, utterly, determined.

Perhaps, then, in this sense, the act of jumping to his death was less about the end as it was about the means. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t considering killing himself as much as he was considering the act of jumping.

Or falling.

That it would end with a splatter was ancillary.

He wasn’t scared, and that’s what made him—on a wholly different level, a far more self-aware, less-instinctual level—a bit nervous. His brain, fighting instinct against instinct grew tired, and the prospect of jumping became less interesting and more terrifying, if only slightly so. He decided that the best thing to do might be to go back inside.

He wondered how people could survive living so high above the ground, always tempted by the sense that destiny was just a lift and a kick away.

CHAPTER TITLE — “Number 16″

In Ancillarious, Kilgore Trout, novelish, What people are on September 15, 2010 at 6:32 pm

Shortly before everything went up in a ball of fiery molten hell, a poll was conducted by the Census and Statistics Authority that, ostensibly, was intended to find out how the government might better spend intranational defense funds.

At least insofar as the public eye was concerned.

In a poll distributed to nearly 3,500 consenting adults, auditors asked a number of preliminary questions ranging from socioeconomic status to education to knowledge of current events.

They even asked what brand of bud they wore.

Then, they were given a list of fifteen potential ways that the world might end. Number 16 was “Other.” Below that was the question “How?” and a few blank lines for free response, at the bottom of which was a small line of text reading “If more space is required for response, please write on another sheet and attach.”

Respondents were then asked to rank the cataclysms in terms of perceived likelihood.

The results of the poll and the implications therein were disputed within media for weeks. Many respondents failed to rank “Other,” while others ranked “other” without giving explanation of what “other” might be. Others misunderstood the intent of the “How?” and wrote, instead, explanations of why they ranked such and such wherever or discussed what they were thinking about or feeling or, simply, “Because.”

Many people in media pointed to the vagueness of the poll, discussing it as just another failure of a malarkey administration, another failure of a corrupt government entity, an indication of a broader public ignorance or a general disregard for testing in the schools, another reason the CSA is unreliable, etc.

The results became a punchline. Extra terrestrial alien invasion was third. God was fifth.

Incidentally, media called the poll “The End Day Survey.” Its actual name: “Public Poll A039281-29: Requested By The Department Of Defense At The Urging Of The Secretary Of Intranational Defense.”

The Fall

In Ancillarious, novelish, Writing on September 17, 2009 at 7:54 pm

Something happened and then the midnight sky bled with the embers of a burning city.

Below, a stale crimson fog lavished and hung. The sewers flooded through broken pipes, a viscous water that stank of dog and rot and sweat, an earthy dew that salted the seas of crumbled grain.

Within minutes, they grey remains of death covered the streets, inches deep in a mid-summer blizzard, each unique flake a piece of something that used to be. Leaves, stone, people, birds, glass, metal, wood, rubber, plastic, tile, bugs and worms and grubs. All soot and ash. Crosses, apses, domes, pillars and pews and pulpits. All soot and ash.

Within hours, waves washed the streets. Mildew corpses moldered in fish stew, a fecund boil that begat a fine green salt that dried in clumps and lined the rubble with undulating stencils that parodied the tide…

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