Surrealism--Alive and Well and Living in My Brain

Baseball propellor orange tree feeds into rhubarb quiche plunges behind plastered walls reminiscent of dusk brandied in silent festering squalor smelling oregano faintly through one's petrified nostrils of promiscuous rotundness beaching whales that fly haplessly off through orange clouds of dewdrop beauty, caressing the sunholes of magnificent light coarsely on its way through the heavens.

Strained Relationship

Happy Thanksgiving, America. I hope you're doing alright without me...no nevermind, I don't care how you are, 'cause like, whatever, we had some good times but things are different now you know, like, we can't just pretend like this never happened, we can't just go back to the way everything used to be. Damnit America, I thought you'd understand, I thought we connected, that we had something special. Maybe we do, maybe...we just need to explore our options, see the world before settling down for good. I get you, I know what you're thinking, I know how hard this is, for both of us. Don't underestimate me, 'cause I'm capable of some powerful shit, you know? I know you know. Anyway, I do miss you today, but as painful as it is, I must carry on. You should do the same America...and you know what? No hard feelings.

Winter Reminiscing

Lost in thought in the middle of the park on a wintery evening, equipped with nothing but a large overcoat and a haphazardly prepared salami and cheddar sandwich, Lucy took the time to ponder how splendid being a young girl had been. She daydreamed of the love of her life, the handsome man who had sat across from her in her physics class eighteen years ago, who went by the name of Allibaster Goonhauss. How they had cuddled together on the playgrounds between classes, taking shelter from the blustery December winds in the plastic tunnel overlooking the private pond, where Madame Vrabel tended to the geese that flocked there year round. Now, munching her sandwich with a lonely expression on her face reddened by the cold, she decided to find him again, wherever he was, thinking she would be quite pleased to see his lively face again, regardless of how the years had treated it. Sadly Allibaster Goonhauss was currently serving a life sentence in prison with no possibility for parole.

Amsterdam: Chapter 1, Last Part

I longed to know what he was thinking about even though it was probably nothing. Eddie was a person who didn’t like to be bothered with extraneous thought unless it was undeniably necessary. The only problem with this theory is that I could never really know, never fully dive within his mind to witness firsthand whether or not he was thinking with the same complexity that I was now. That’s the problem with being me, I thought, is that I can never be anyone else. I’d always thought of myself as overly perceptive, catching idiosyncrasies of peoples’ characteristics that they themselves were not even aware of, processing ideas and jokes and ideologies faster and more thoroughly than most people knew; I thought I was a great thinker. At least compared to Eddie. And most of my friends. And Jessica. And Napoleon too, probably. Actually, probably not Napoleon. Dude was smart. But I would never know for certain because I couldn’t slip into Eddie’s brain to see if he thought the same way, that he was more complex than everyone else, and that he picked up on things he thought no one else did. I wondered if he thought the same way about me the way I felt about him. I wondered how I would be described in his work of semiautobiographical fiction, if he were writing one. Which he probably wasn’t. Eddie didn’t like writing at all, and hated arithmetic even more.

“What are you thinking about?”
“I was thinking that I will never be able to fully know what it is that you think about.”
“Fuck man,” but that was all he could get out before the three guys we had been waiting for barreled upstairs and saw Eddie and I in the corner, him still smoking his cigarette, me still slurping up my vanilla milkshake.

Amsterdam: Chapter 1, Part 4

“You tricked me into this conversation,” I said defensively, and Eddie just winked at me playfully and puffed away at his cigarette. Presumably the conversation was over. I sipped my milkshake and Eddie didn’t do anything. Now he had put all these thoughts in my head that were swirling around at a trillion miles an hour and I was trying to sort them out. My id was battling my superego as I tried not to picture myself fucking Jessica, or Napoleon for that matter, neither of which I was entirely keen on doing in the first place. Sadly I knew I’d probably do it if the opportunity presented itself. Not fucking Napoleon I mean, Jessica. I was a predictable male specimen then, willing to fuck an attractive female just because the opportunity was there. I wouldn’t do it though, I decided, even if she threw herself at me, because deep down I didn’t really want to. But maybe deeper down, on a primary level, I did, and at any rate the mere fact that I had been thinking about it, and her, and Napoleon for this long was probably a sign that some spark of a feeling was forming in my weak heart. So perhaps I did want her after all.

I glared at Eddie, at the very least more than slightly annoyed with him for shoving these thoughts into my susceptible brain, and I wondered what he was thinking about. I wondered if he ever second- or third- or fourth-guessed himself over matters of the heart, or cock. Sitting across from me now he appeared to be nothing but a hefty, foolish oaf, incapable of such internal conflict. Besides, he had a girlfriend anyway so it didn’t even matter. Still, he had been thinking about our friends and which one he’d like to fuck, otherwise he wouldn’t have brought it up in the first place. Or maybe he hadn’t thought one way or the other about it and just wanted to say something that would stir things up a bit because he was bored; or perhaps words simply tumbled out of his lips when he wasn’t paying attention and he wasn’t even aware of having said them at all. I wanted to ask him if he had any recollection of our conversation, just in case maybe it hadn’t ever actually happened and I had made it all up.

Tidbits Of Wisdom From This Summer #3

"I can feel it all over my face. I'm fuckin' Lady Macbeth over here."

Ideologies To Live By

"Every guy should see his sister's naked body at least once. I'm just sayin', hypothetically, if someone said you could fuck any girl you wanted, and gave you a line-up, but you could only see their bodies, like their faces weren't visible to you, and your sister just randomly by some crazy coincidence happened to be in that lineup, you'd wanna know if you saw her in that lineup that you would NOT pick her."

--S

Amsterdam: Chapter 1, Part 3 (sorry about weird formatting, too lazy to fix it)

“It’s only 10:15,” said Eddie, before I could finish describing the architectural features of the tired restaurant. “There’s something going on, no question. We just gotta wait for the guys to show up.”

            That could mean hours. I couldn’t wait that long.

“I’m trying to meet up with my friends tonight, man.”

            “What, you mean girls?”

            “Yeah, my friends are girls,” I said, more snidely than I meant to sound. “They said they were gonna call me and I wanna meet up with them.”

            “What, you wanna bang one of them?”

            “What? No,” I said, not ready for that one. “We’re just hanging out. No one’s going to be banging anyone.”

            “That’s a shame,” said Eddie, lighting a cigarette, “’cause I’d totally like to fuck one of those girls.” I must have thrown him a distasteful glance because he followed that with, “they’re cute man. You got good taste in friends.”

            “Don’t you have a girlfriend?” I asked him accusatorily, wishing we could just change the subject and move on.

            “Between the three of them, which one would you fuck?” Apparently Eddie wasn’t keen on changing the subject just yet.

            “You mean…”

            “If you had to choose between Katie, Heather, and Jessica, who would you sleep with?” He took a drag of his cigarette, I took one of my vanilla milkshake. Silence. Six thousand light years away I could hear an old hermit crawl into an icy cave and moan to death.

“Jessica, no question.”

“Really,” Eddie said, interested but trying not to sound too interested. “Not Heather? She’s fire.”

“Heather’s my sister’s name. It’d be too weird. Jessica would be chill, you know, and I think she’s pretty, you know, good looking. Even the name is so appealing. Jessica. Just listen to it. Jessica. Jessica.” I grinned at Eddie, who was shaking his head at me solemnly.

“Who cares about names, man? That should not be a deciding factor.”

“Even if Heather’s name was Jessica and Jessica’s name was Napoleon, I’d still choose her.”

“Who?”

“Jessica.”

“Jessica-Heather or Jessica-Napoleon?”

“Jessica-Jessica. I’d choose her. Hypothetically, I mean, if I had to choose. I don’t want to fuck any of them.”

“Really, because it sounds like you really want Jessica.”

Sometimes College Feels Too Much Like 8th Grade

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah drone drone drone drone drone drone drone on and on and on and on and on drone drone on and on. Slight pause. Continue, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah (as the lecture seems to be in no way near to ending, and since the enormous clock which holds our freedom in its hands is situated directly behind me making it impossible to calculate precisely how long it will be until our eventual escape, I dig into my thoughts as a means of avoiding...) drone drone drone "oh what's going on here Jimmy!" (what?) blah blah blah blah blah blah (...this tedious cell of a classroom. I glance outside the window but even before I do I can hear the lashing of rain against the thick glass and the harsh sound of unrelenting wind wailing away at atumnal trees. The rain falls hard and constantly, a blatant reminder of the world outside; waiting, waiting, waiting for me to run into its open arms, away from my cage of a half-desk/half-chair, a hideous piece of manmade architecture that has no place in this world.) Silence. (Have I been found out?) "A cafe." People groan their agreement. Approval. Pause. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah (Try not to listen, or at least give it no second thought.) drone on and on blah blah (I cannot decide if I have an overwhelming urge to run out into the elements and proclaim myself as free, primal, fulfilled at last! Or whether I am lucky to be confined here, protected, with a front row seat to a spectacular show of nature itself, a melodramatic film from the perspective of a lonely student not knowing what to wish for. It will be some time before I am allowed to make the choice.) blah blah blah blah blah (and finally) "Right that's all, see you next week."

Amsterdam: Chapter 1, Part 2

“It’s vanilla,” said Eddie triumphantly, and instead of saying “I know” and killing his spirits, I nodded slightly, probably too subtly for him to notice, and took another sip. I would probably be annoyed with me were I Eddie, I had time to hear myself think before Eddie finally got too annoyed by my prolonged silence and forced himself to speak again. “How was outside?” ended up being his choice of sounds to start me tuning in with him again.

            “I don’t think there’s anything going on tonight,” I said, and then took a long drag from the milkshake as if to enhance the moment of my self-inflicted dramatic pause. I smacked my lips together and cold vanilla liquid slid through my throat. “The street was totally dead.” As well it should have been, since we were situated so far away from the center of town, in more of a quiet rural neighborhood than a city side-street. The only reason we were here really, was because inexplicably it was Eddie’s favorite spot. I’ve no clue how he found it in the first place, but once he did he kept coming back. The first time we went in there he had muttered something about knowing the owner, but that hardly seemed a reason to burden ourselves with going so far out of our way to have a quiet place to chat, smoke, drink, talk, think. It was weird, his obsession for it. Sure, it was quiet and comfortable, but I didn’t get the massive appeal. Apparently neither did anyone besides Eddie, either, because the entirety of the upstairs area in which we now sat was void of all other human life.

Blanket Philosophy

"No one likes who they are if they really sit down and think about it and are completely honest with themselves."

-a friend of mine

Amsterdam: Chapter 1, Part 1

The street was empty, save a slender man several yards up the cobblestone path who wore a tattered fisherman’s hat and a brown corduroy jacket, meandering contentedly past a small café that had long since closed but which had presumably forgotten to take in their patio chairs because two of them sat outside, rusty and dejected, on the side of the lonely road. A moment later a bicycle clinked by, and then the alley was quiet again. The sun had set and no one was afoot.

            I popped my head back in from its previous position outside the second story window and slinked back to our table. Eddie must have ordered us another round of drinks because a tall milkshake frothed in front of my vacant seat. We’ve been here all day, I thought about mumbling, and afternoon has turned into sunset and hours have passed before allowing us to grasp one and wrangle an adventure out of it as a means of finding a purpose in this hopeless utopia we’ve surrounded ourselves in. Don’t you see our precious time has been wasted?

            I didn’t say anything though. Instead I slumped into my rickety wooden chair, the same one I had been in for who knows how long, and took a sip of my milkshake. Vanilla.

Turtle Fog (what?)

It is November 9th, and those sausages I bought from Sainsbury's last week are due to expire today. I wonder when my expiration date is? "Best if used by..."


While the sun turns quickly to winter malaise, feelings, like molasses, dribble down a wind-battered cheek.

Remembering spring doesn't make the weather warmer, in fact it's due to snow sometime next week.

Mixed Feelings

Warning: This is a long post and not really very entertaining...don't feel like you have to read it.

Maybe it sounds silly, but after reading of only a sliver of what must be mountains upon mountains of adventures my distant friend is currently living in China and Tibet, my heart sinks, and I wonder what I’m doing here, in a foreign-but-not-too-foreign country, surrounded by people just like me, doing things I’ve been doing my whole life, at a time when it’s supposed to be okay to topple out of your comfort zone at any available moment.

 

At first I am jealous that he is doing what I am supposed to be doing, that I have come up short in my Great European Adventure as I let endless possibilities end with what is familiar to me. But my feelings of discontent grumble deeper in my stomach than just that so I am forced to pry deeper into my mind and soul, something I am sadly uncomfortable with doing regularly.

“I wish I had gone to China” I think, or Russia, the home of my distant ancestors and an opportunity that was actually conceivable within the confines of my college program—four months in Russia studying at the legendary Moscow Art Theatre, the origins of many of the most famous and ingenious actors and playwrights of the last two centuries. I told myself I could take Russian courses the year before, figure out the specifics, and forever be that guy who did something unique, had a life-changing experience, and came back as a newer, better version of himself.

 

Since I’m not especially keen on being an actor (because presumably I lack the dedication, ambition, self-confidence, and talent for it—an all-too familiar trend in my life, comparable to quitting…let’s see…drawing, piano, baseball, jazz trumpet, and singing, among other less important self-defeats) I convinced myself it didn’t make sense because I’d be studying almost exclusively Russian acting techniques, and would not gain as many credits necessary to graduate on time. Fair points, to be sure, but ultimately if it’s a life-changing experience you’re after, some things are more important than not having to take summer classes in order to graduate.

 

But it’s not quite regret I’m feeling, because that’s a different type of pang one feels below the stomach, and, being familiar with that, I recognize it when I feel it. I think more carefully about my friend’s experience, and I realize that if put in a similar situation, I would have more trouble surviving. He has many advantages on his side that cater to his journeys—an outgoing nature but comfortable enough with himself to survive alone (a fatal flaw in myself—though I enjoy having personal time I feel anxious being by myself for any extended amount of time), and the gift of communicating through music. In his stories this seems to play an important role, which makes sense since it is something that is truly universal, and many countries inherit American music into their culture—that’s just the way it is. Equipped with a harmonica, guitar, vast knowledge of funny or obscure or classic songs, and an amiable, affable and unflappable personality (I realize I boast about your qualities too much, friend, but these are things I respect you for), not to mention a keen sense of poetry and turn of phrase with which he reports these stories, making me feel all the more awe-inspired and envious, he has the tools necessary for connecting with nearly everyone. Though I have many qualities that I am grateful for, the ones I’ve listed are not prominent among them (my clunky phrasing and run-on sentences in this passage serve as only one example among many) and I fear had I subjected myself to less familiar areas of the world I would have found it more daunting, painful, and isolating.

 

I do not mean to say that I wish I were he, or possessed his qualities, though I am sad to think that perhaps I am not cut out for such epic adventures, and would do better in a cozy home surrounded by loved ones, never leaving my library save for the occasional excursion to a quiet restaurant or an evening of theatre. I’m afraid to put myself out into the world, meaning literally the world that I am so greatly unfamiliar with, the distant regions of our planet, the inexplicable situations most of the population finds themselves in that I will most likely never experience.

 

I only use the comparison of my friend’s travels to emphasize what I wish I were capable of doing. I didn’t mean to linger on him so long because he’s not what I’m really trying to talk about, but isn’t it easier to talk about others than yourself, at least on sensitive matters of personality, fears, ambitions, shortcomings, and the like? Still, the fact that someone I know well is living something I thought I was trying to live makes my failure all the more real.

 

Even now as I sit at my computer in my flat I am glad I am not out with my friends here, because this is what I prefer. I should be willing to open myself to many other things yet when I start to I always find myself wishing I were back here. It might be an unchangeable part of my nature, that I am a home-dweller, that I am more interested in philosophy than actual experience and therefore am doomed to speak of everything in hypothetical terms for the rest of my life. But I think that people are meant to change, and I have witnessed this myself, and always been jealous that it was not me who came out the other side as someone new, though I hope I am different than I was three, four, five, ten years ago. I can remember myself back then and judge, knowing full well that in ten or twenty years I can look back on myself now and do just that. But how much have I really changed, and what was it that brought about those changes?

 

All that being said, I enjoy it here very much. I think of it more as a place to live than a place to travel to, but I could only learn that the hard way, and in some respects a stay of four months constitutes living. It is easy. I am learning how to act like a grown-up (though I’m 100% positive I will never actually feel like a grown-up, I can only put on my best performance as one as I get further and further away from childhood), how to take care of myself (sometimes poorly), how to cook (always poorly), and various other little life-lessons I pick up on the way but could just as easily have figured out in America. This has proven to be more of a jump-start into adulthood rather than an independent experience of a foreign land, one of those stories you tell from “when I was in college”, looking back on fondly and thinking how silly you were then. Maybe that’s good, and maybe it’s what I need, but sometimes (namely now) it doesn’t feel like enough, so I’m left with a twinge behind my heart, thinking of what I could have been, where I could be, who I could become when I inevitably return to the places I already know.

Nothing To Do With Election Day

Breathing heavily, her dragon heart could hardly remain within the confines of her chest cavity. Swallows in tree-trunks glanced back and forth, examining a tennis match between heart and ribs as they battled into the dusk. All the while the dragon roared with unexplainable rage and whipped her spiked tail about furiously, toppling over snowcapped mountains in its wake, as the heart tried to liquify itself to escape through the mouth, perhaps, or the veins, but this only made the blood pump faster, harder, more fiercely, which angered her more and more as the pain became unbearable and the skull pulsated rapidly, infecting the brain and turning the eyes lavender with death, as the dragon scratched her thought-beard and came up empty, like grains of rice passing through grubby fingers.

Soon, the shouting of all the world, for the dragon was indeed approximately the same size as a world, echoed up into her cavernous ears and uncomprehending blood-injected brain, as scaly and grotesque shimmery skin began ripping apart at belly-seams, the swollen heart protruding into atmosphere, gulping down breaths of toxic particles as it enlarged itself further, tearing the dragon in half as it flopped out onto heavenly concrete, beating all the while, dripping and covered with the dragon's familiar silver-splotched purple blood, which flowed out of her in a mighty waterfall of guts and soul, until after several hours she remained nothing more than a vacant, heartless shell, doomed to sprawl out amongst the universe eternally; only her dragon heart remained, dejectedly beating for six thousand eons until one day, during a cold December chill, it vanished into oblivion.

Mortality Approaching

I thought about jumping onto the tracks again tonight. Only for a second. I pictured the impact of the train on my unprotected body, the sparks flying up from the wheels, the screams of the shocked onlookers in between whispers of "he just leapt...I can't believe it. He just ended it." My heart raced with excitement, sort of, and only a little fear, as the implications of this one momentous decision flickered in front of my pensive eyes.

When the train approached and I didn't jump, just like all the other times I hadn't jumped, and the wind rushed past me in a hurricane of things I'd never do, I was relieved, sort of, and only a little disappointed.

Whilst Walking

Why do I so often find myself alone, left to the mercy of my gruesome thoughts, apparently boundless in the amount of absurd and grotesque machinations they allow to flow through my uncensored head? How much do I crave, in these moments, any superficial conversation?