Fiction – Page 3

What the Why I Oughtta

I’m going for broad strokes here, don’t need no fancy-ass sophisti-ma-cated doohickey telling me why not or what for (what the why I oughtta).

Forget about all that untrustworthy noise being split and spattered as hats drop all across this great nation of ours. Am I a politician? No, I’m the version of that public servant who couldn’t be arsed into devoting so much time to such fruitless labor, only to end up making most people I know either hate or envy me just based on what I picked as my moneymaking methodology.

No, I’m a free-range consultant. No cages involved in the creation of my livelihood, I just move from place to place with a pen in hand (and hopefully some form of paper), keenly aware of my place within the echelon of idealists who couldn’t just sit by while creative liberties were being stripped away left and right through the illusion of choice that’s being perpetuated by the umpteen media concerns who mainly just seek that bottom dollar, any progress to be made coming in secondary as long as the people responsible for the immense success of these moneymaking machines are satisfied with the level of financial wherewithal gained through their various transactions aimed at creating a consumerist welfare state.

People, mostly, seem to have lost the innate ability to make something from scratch and take pride in it. Well, that’s not entirely true. People find their various outlets for pent-up creative energy, many times leading to unwanted pregnancy–or wanted, you never know. So having incredible sex, cooking a delicious meal, taking in a provocative documentary–you get the picture–are all lovely pastimes, but rarely do they get to the heart of the issue that pokes and prods us through every threshold of our very finite lives: what can I do as an individual that can be considered mine and mine alone? Sure, I make an excellent lasagna and fuck like the wind, but there just has to be more to this whole dog and pony show we all find ourselves swimming through (even though there was no prior mention of any aquatic activity whatsoever and we’re all stuck here looking like fools while we contemplate whether to strip naked, down to our skivvies, or just jump in, shoes and all).

When I was confronted with the infinite above-ground swimming pool of “reality”, I did my damnedest to avoid even dipping my toe in the water. I was and always have been a perpetual procrastinator and particular perfectionist, and I’ve learned to adjust expectations and accept when situations are out of my control. All well and good, you say, until I mention that the other 90% of all scenarios I’ve encountered have come as a result of the anxiety regarding my personal development and negotiation of this absurd pool metaphor that is becoming more and more apt the more I’m thinking about it.

I used to be perfectly content to drive headfirst into that pool for OTHER people, but when the time would invariably come to jump in there for my best interests, I would always shy away and make excuse after excuse, up to the point where just the act of making excuses became so humdrum that I didn’t even bother telling myself those convenient little mistruths. I would typically still be able to string those thoughts together, in order to satisfy questions by concerned parties (or nosy neighbors), but I’d run out of the energy to pretend to delude myself, because the only person I’d succeeded at confusing was ME!

And now none of that even matters anyway. I’m fixing to move to Albuquerque and start up a tombstone business, a good ol’ brick and mortar joint. That’ll teach ’em.

Whackadoodles

Charlie’s stifling influence couldn’t possibly affect me today, you can bet all your marbles and even some lesser mechanical components on that. I have half a mind to bust out my old soldering iron and go to town. I’ve been shopping around for motherboards to house in my new homemade personal computational device, for crunching numbers and the like. I’ve heard that there are some more sophisticated uses for them now, like finding a life partner and pissing away all your money on fake virtual coins, but that’s not my prerogative. Now food, that’s something I’m never tired of exploring. What a brave new world of culinary concoctions we’re in these days, I can’t even keep track of all these new fusion joints being put together by trendsetting chefs in the chic corners of the world. It’s just as well, I can’t afford to be jet-setting around just to try some cannoli wonton soup or petri dish gelatin dessert that costs $75 and you can’t even use a fork when eating it. Seriously, you have to just slurp it down like a jello shot. A $75 jello shot. Kids these days, I swear. We in the previous generation appear to be on our own now; the youths don’t seem to have the same kind of rapport with the common man as we do. I mean, I get it. There are more depressed and violent whackadoodles out there than ever before, and if you’re not an expert in sociolinguistics such as myself, you sure could feel like a quivering little leaf falling from the top of one of those monster eucalyptus trees. Everyone just seems to be craving personal time now. Gone are the days where I could just sit in a café and strike up a conversation; everyone is plugged into some whozit or whatzit. I don’t know, I always thought I wouldn’t turn out to be one of those stick-in-the-mud kind of guys, but now I understand the allure of the “ain’t what it used to be” paradigm. I’m just having trouble dealing with the old grouches to happen to share my viewpoint. Miserable old pricks. Well, we all have to get started on living our best lives at some point. Jeez, have I been talking this whole time? Sorry, kid. Can I have a club soda and some of that deconstructed fondue? I mean, I thought fondue was already decon–eh, forget about it. Just go ahead and put in my order. And don’t worry, I’ll tip!

Superficial

If bears could write,
would they choose that pastime
over climbing trees?
I’ll let you ponder that for a minute.

A can of whoop-ass overshadowed our biweekly WoundFest; there are only superficial injuries detailed in the most recent meeting minutes, no instances whatsoever of skin being broken. An average WoundFest should typically entail deep flesh wounds, mainly for the purpose of scaring away enthusiastic and misled newbies. The WFers are a tight-knit group, can’t have fair-weather harm-infliction hobbyists just jumping in and out all willy-nilly! What would say about WFers as a group? I’ll tell ya right now, it would make them look desperate! Soliciting the pain of complete outsiders and kicking them to the curb when they balk at the notion of losing a pint or two of blood… those despicable near-masochists need to stick with their own kind, so we don’t even broach this conversation in the first place, airing out our dirty laundry for the world to see.

Now, what these here WFers need to do, if they’re in the business of enlisting new members, is go out to the woods and rustle up a few bears. That would definitely take the unrequited writing ability off of their minds for a little bit, while practically guaranteeing worthwhile flesh wounds in the process (bloodlust is a hell of a drug). I can only imagine how excruciating it must be to possess the ability to manipulate something as complex and abstract as modern language with absolutely no ability to record it, aside from rudimentary scratch marks on tree bark that could never be appreciated as a contribution to the literary canon. At best, they’ll be confused with the cliché summer camp gouge marks left behind by horny pre-teens.

Begs Ennedict

Begs Ennedict was once (and hopefully will soon once again be) a friend of mine. I met him after the turning point in his life where he legally changed his name to resemble the popular breakfast dish. To this day, I’m still not sure if he meant it to be a statement, a joke, or a cross of the two. I may never get the chance to find out, either. He moved away one day without telling anyone. He left his things behind in the apartment. He must have gone off the grid too, because he broke his lease with seven months to go.

Of all the people he let into his life, I was likely closest to him. He didn’t even talk to his parents, and they seemed to just understand and accept the circumstance. When Begs left, I called up his mother. She didn’t know he left, nor had she spoken to him since her birthday from a few years back. She didn’t seem surprised to hear it, and, frankly, I wasn’t surprised by that lack of surprise.

The only surprise I got as a result of Mr. Ennedict taking an indefinite leave was the letter he left to me on the kitchen counter in his apartment. He’d given me a spare key for emergencies, and knew I would be visiting his pig sty once he left. Oddly, he left it much cleaner than I’d ever seen it, a la boy scout camp. He was always a strange sort of gentleman.

I could go on about my various impressions of the man, nut I’ll just read you this letter. It will resonate his voice more strongly than I ever could.

——

Dear Chippy,

I’ve given her all I’ve got, and I can’t take her no more. It is now time to uproot and look at myself in this world, weigh my flaws against the flaws of our esteemed brethren. I can’t say what brought about this sudden consciousness shift and grinding conscience. Honestly, this has been an unwieldy last several years, and all I can do at this point is thank you for your thankless work. I will leave it at that, in case anyone reads this before you.

You know I’m not one to express fondness, so I choose instead to share with you my state of being at the time of writing this. I can only tolerate city living for so long, and I’ve reached my long-overdue breaking point. It’s a marvel that I held it together for as long a period as I did without having multiple meltdowns, and I’m cashing in my chips while I’m still beating the house.

So what does that mean for my immediate future? I can only say so many things without incriminating myself of betraying my new location, so I will instead give you my impression of what I hope will transpire (and indeed what mind frame will put me there) in my coming passage of time on this planet, written as a monologue filled with non-sequitur. You know as well as I do that I am best able to express my purest intentions and subconscious developments through this medium. Frankly, that is the reason why I’ve always trusted you so much.

The Dew Drops of May

Heaven told me one day, “It’s as clear as a rose in an egret’s beak that you may fly away from here, and returning will be dictated by the phases of the moon.”

So I packed up my bindle and planned my marching orders, step by step. I accumulated about seven pages of detailed itinerary, then ripped it all up into incomprehensible shreds and sprinkled them out the window, victorious. No road map can exist; you may only bring your conscious mind with you wherever you go, and the great floating consciousness in the sky will take care of you.

All of this pondering brought me back to that famous God question again, but I chose to drink a liter of water instead. We are as we have been and will be, built from the fungus that made life possible, designed by accident over billions of years, a happy mistake that somehow pushed itself along, defying extinction with nothing but separatist intentions.

Now that we (myself specifically) have reached our peak of evolution by default, I must do something new, something that will impart to you and the rest of our peculiar species a glimpse of that purest form, a streamlined vision of the cosmos translated into abstract symbols as a means of enlightening as many as possible. You may choose to share this, or you may choose to destroy it (after all, it’s only paper), but you would likely regret its destruction.

Sheik shrieks siphon belly aches through tubes of transient melon baller coordination, and the audience stands in confusion. Has the performance already begun, or are we still just warming up? Will there ever be a time when our instruments will be perfectly-tuned, or is that a futile concept altogether? We’ve roughed it and toughed it out through epochs of predetermined insignificance, assuming a finish line exists just over that next horizon of indeterminate luminescence. I may say with utmost confidence that stellar inoculations numb us from the pointlessness, and indeed create determination, an invention that will allow us (eventually) to sample the infinite wares the cosmos has to offer. We are living, but have reached a collective bargaining agreement with fate. We sold our souls at the railroad tracks to pretend we call the shots, and have been met with mixed results. On the one hand we have art, and on the other we have genocide. Out hubris causes confidence that exists nowhere else in Nature, and we never stop to think how that’s even possible. Thus, we continue improvising with untuned instruments, hoping to one day strike a chord that rings with harmony in perpetuity across all of existence itself. We’ll never make it with that attitude, boy.

Chippy, please join me on my solitary journey. You know what I mean. It has been a pleasure spending time and space with you, and I will think of you often (and for you, if necessary).

Love,

Begs Ennedict
(AKA Begsy, Begs-E)

——

I still have not shared this letter with anybody (well, until now), but I have vowed to accompany Begs on his journey across time and space, to be a good steward of evolution and, most importantly, to honor his wishes to the best of my ability.

I do not know who Begs Ennedict is, and I’m not sure if I believe in reincarnation. Would a more sentimental person call him a great spiritual leader? Would a more conspiratorial person call him a changeling? Begs would discourage any labeling anyway, but I enjoy pondering those intangibles nevertheless.