Sounds Like A Migraine, But We'd Best Have An MRI

A numbness started in my fingertips and spread into my hand. Soon the right half of my lips had the same sensation, and I could feel it move slowly back into my gums and then around onto my tongue.

Later, at dinner, my eyebrows started hurting and when I tried to tell a story, I couldn’t remember what the right words were. I said “shark” instead of “water” and “boat” instead of “squid”.

A line of bright crosshatch later appeared in my right eye. My mind functioned, and I found it absurd and fearful that I should remain observant throughout.

Why Licensed to Ill Might Be the Best Rap Album Ever

The facts: it’s by the Beastie Boys, 3 middle class Brooklyn Jews, and it’s the biggest-selling rap album of the 80’s.

It shows the value of not giving a fuck. They don’t care about conveying an image they aren’t. They rap about what they know about - White Castle burgers, porno mags, bein’ hated and confront-ated, and the right to party. You won’t find them faking it in a single line. Their beats are the same way, original stuff made out of whatever sounded good at the time - rock music samples and their voices and blaring bass and xylophones.

Amelia

I’ve been living with this lady, Amelia, in Spain for the past quarter. She cooks all of my food. Her Spanish rice is beyond words so I won’t try. She’s lived in the same neighborhood her whole life but she’s travelled all over Spain. She has a sharp sense of humor that I love. One day I got home from school and she had organized absolutely everything in my room, including safely stowing away my condoms in my retainer case. She’d rather wait for a bus than walk 3 blocks. She thinks she’s too old to travel but she isn’t.

The Music

38.7 days.

That’s the length of my music library, start to finish.

I can show you the winding canals of indie rock. I’ll take you on a tour of hip-hop from its scrappy beginnings to stuff that doesn’t come out until next month. We’ll put on some electronic and pump the bass until your heart beat matches the music. I’ll show you the 60’s without ever opening a history book.

If it’s rainy, I have music for that. If you’re having a barbeque, I have music for that. If you’re tired of listening to music, I have music for that.

Vices

She knew that after this moment, she would never feel the same ever again. And it wasn’t because of the sex or the booze or the assortment of technicolor pills scattered on her coffee-stained coffee table. Or maybe this was everything. What was this “cleaning up” thing supposed to do anyway? She didn’t believe that it was even possible to be quote-unquote clean this day in age. Well, what it came down to is that her future husband-to-be did believe it was possible, and not in this moment, but after—that was what was important.

She snorted a line.

“You’d make a good lawyer.”

“You’d make a good lawyer.”

The only people who ever tell me that a) are older than me and b) have just lost an argument with me.

You say it like I’m a kid: “It’s remarkable that you construct effective arguments on the fly. You could do something with that someday.” Listen bitch, I know. What you’re really saying is you’d pay me hundreds of dollars an hour to do what comes naturally to me. And that I just reasoned you into a corner where the most constructive thing you could say is a backhanded compliment unrelated to the topic at hand.

Portland's Architect

His studio is scattered with brightly colored drawings of bridges and buildings. The proportions aren’t always quite right, and though he’s entered many architectural competitions, none of his ideas have been made into a physical reality. He does it because he loves it. All his buildings are covered in solar panels and all his bridges have parks built into them. His head is full of ideas, and for each idea he has had there is a sketch or a miniature model lying somewhere in the studio. Though he knows no building contractors, in his studio Portland grows bright and green.

Abandoned Bandit

She was probably a bandit lying in abandonment beneath the highway’s shoulder. Her hair filled with grass and a bent knife held in her left hand. We watched her in fascination as she rolled over to smudge her other cheek with tar-stained gravel.

She would not look at us. Scouring her pockets, we found nothing. Ants crawled from the tops of her torn boots and she held her hair across her eyes.

We left her there a monument to the highways crossing our great nation, another piece of trash discarded and dirtied on the smoothed route from here to destination.

Slumped Shoulders

He was a tall man, heart full of plum pits. Under his jacket was a worn collared shirt, and under that a yellowed tank top. His shoes were new but his shoulders were slumped.
At the supermarket, he read each label entirely before setting something in his basket. The checkout lady knew him. “Would you like a bag for your labels sir?” The joke passed him. Later in the car he would think about it.
His path unfolded through stop signs and crosswalks. He thought of dive-bombers as he drove. Each hour his watch beeped from inside the glove box.

Yell

I stand in the darkness where two shadows cross and begin to yell. My voice grows hoarser as my yell drags out, but I do not run out of breath. For minutes the gravel depths flow out of me and into the night. My knees feel weak and my head floats off into lightness. The pigeons grow accustomed to the noise and peak over the gutters high above. Hours pass and the streetlights are replaced by sunlight; still the yell comes. My ears become numb. My whole being is wrapped into that yell, until finally it fades into a groan.

Things That Seem Profound At The Moment

When we imagine stories, we don’t seek to find examples for truths we believe in, but create instead our own mini-truths.

Since the entire truth would encompass everything everywhere, our search for the truth is futile; instead we approach the truth by expanding our minds.

The truth lurks everywhere. Even in experiencing things that are false we might grow in our comprehension of the truth.

My leg itches.

We’re naturally communicative. When we have an idea that opens our perception to new channels of thinking, we feel we must either tell someone else or write it down for later.

Heavenly Duties

The priest skipped his tea and evening hour of reading. He went straight towards his straw-filled bed, where he collapsed without a sound. The day had sucked the vigor out of him. In the morning he had spoken of helicopters at mass. After, while the people rearranged the chapel for a wedding he was to perform that evening, he had been summoned by a whisper to a house on the periphery of town, where a dying woman talked to him as if she had never talked to a human before. After, at the wedding the applause lasted for several minutes.

No Food Or Drink In The Library

The librarian came in furious and snatched the student’s half-eaten banana.

“I’ve told you and your whole class! No food! No water!” The student stood, and the librarian jabbed his forefinger into his chest. “Leave this library! I will not have you making a mess!”

The student said quietly, “Please don’t touch me.” Five days in the library had worn his mind and patience down.

The librarian shoved him towards the door, and the student grabbed him by the front of his shirt. He held the smaller man up against a wall. “Don’t try to tell me what to do.”

Talking

“I’m craving something that tastes so good it could have won a blue ribbon.”
“Watch your step.”
“The set-up seems intuitive, but I can’t seem to figure out what to do next.”
“The other day I saw a plane do an emergency landing in a field.”
“Where do you find these?”
“It reminds me of what Lucy said in the Wizard of Oz.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Certainly.”
“How about Nancy Pelosi? Or Donald Duck?”
“Or how about this, we split it half and half.”
“I saw you walk by the other day.”
“That hairpiece looks so great on you!”

Bad Writing

This is bad writing. These words don’t add up to 100. They waste the reader’s time; the writer’s too. I’m changing the oil and this is the old gunk that needs to go. I’ve got more important things to write, and this is my dirty dirty practice run, though I’d be lying if I said it was a draft; none of this will be in the finished product. This bad writing is repetitive and goes nowhere and you’ll catch writer’s block just by reading it.

Done. Phew. The fear of bad writing is a sham. That wasn’t scary at all.

Madrid

The security guard in the Metro has his shirt halfway unbuttoned, with a small jesus piece resting in his grey chest hair. It matches his wedding ring. He flirts with his coworker, the lady selling the tickets. When I ask her, a woman beautiful for her age, for a receipt, she says that this station doesn’t do that, and she isn’t sure why. At the train platform, a couple on a bench protests social standards of public decency.

I’ve seen this before. The days blend together, and when I’ve been up all night in the city, today is still yesterday.

Cutchum

Cookles and sprocklets. When I was young I had a puppy. I named it Leotard. It changed from a puppy into a dog, so I renamed it Carnivar. That dog I had for many years, until something went terribly wrong. Blunderbush. How many moonscapes did I cry in? But I was young then. Sometime later I found a kitten in a roof’s gutter, though I hate cats. I named it Porcelainpine. It tried to learn to fly, and I gained a certain respect for it. Barnababy, juckle. What’s a pet anyway? Throw names at them; sometimes they retrieve. Othertimes, no.

pompidou

I left with a numb buttcheek after chilling 45 minutes on the stone floor bumming internet. Hopped on a metro that was steamier than a hammam, then folded down the flip-up chair in a full train car. It's okay because I'm a cripple. While everyone else pondered their existence in the Moroccan Baths tour of the Paris underground, I slept retardedly until I was woken by a fat man's fart an inch from my nostril. Quelle chance, my stop.

Got home, passed out. Three hours later woke up high, hungover. Hadn't smoked or drunk, culprit: nap. Now to start work.

The Clumsy Goat

Once upon a time there was a very clumsy mountain goat. He felt bad about himself because while all of his cousins were running up and down mountains, he had to go slowly or else he would fall.

One day he played tag with his cousins. Before long, he was it. As he chased a younger goat, for the first time he forgot himself and felt free, as if he didn’t have a body. The rocks passed right under him.

Until his foot hit a loose rock and he tumbled down the entire hillside, crying before he hit the bottom.

Trippy Space Alien

This story is about a trippy space alien with cowboy boots. I say he is trippy for two reasons. First of all, humans trip out when they see his perfectly reflective and somehow pulsating body. Mostly, though, he is trippy because he is wearing cowboy boots, and he is not a cowboy. They always make him fall flat on his face-like area.

Well, if that isn’t an introduction to make you curious, then I don’t know what is. The trippy space alien with cowboy boots is sitting next to me and he seems pretty curious, though it’s hard to tell.