05/13
The same yellow sun falls upon hands as bandaged fingers work together a tea bag, the little folded paper itself reused from an old store-bought brand and filled with scavenged plant or food parts—heads of spring flowers, bits of tree moss, crumpled fallen leaves, old coffee grounds, crushed sugar cane—to be soaked in boiled water with the morning sounds of whispering wind, talking birds, and an early drum-and-synth Kraftwerk record (one of the three that never made it to an official digital release—not that I would have bought it on CD anyhow; the decrepit music industry deserves none of what little money I do have). Seth is upstairs, still asleep. Work's not for another couple hours, but I like to prelude the day with a process of body-and-soul rejuvenation, so that my withering human parts have a slight chance of withstanding the rigors (ie: thought, labor, stress, social interaction, drug use), they soon will very likely be put through.
           With the tea poured and the LP flipped, I clear a space on the book-and-ashtray-covered table to set the bird's-egg-blue typewriter; I haven't felt this clear-headed in some time, and fleeting moments like these must be taken advantage of before they are forever lost.
           Through the kitchen's sliding glass door, in the back yard I see a pair of deer, moseying through tall grass, lounging in sunlight, munching on the heads of dandelions.


05/12
          The neighbors squeal through the street in dark cars, leaving clouds of melted tire.
          No energy remains.


05/11
Go down town at any given time—well, maybe not as early in the morning as it is now—and around the busier parts you are likely to spot a number of houseless persons standing about, often smoking cigarettes. There aren't too many spangers, but come by in the evening and you'll hear the buskers, their acoustic strings (guitars, banjos, mandolins, fiddles) and voices echoing through city streets. One such bum taught me the exquisite art of pissing in an alleyway; his name was Mike, and he's from California.
           There also was Micky, the sixty-year-old Polish-Canadian-drunk Seth and I met outside as he was getting booted from a bar. “Hey, you kids,” he said, in a slobbery Polish grumble that reminded me of my grandfather, “you're young guys, so you must know; where can I get more beer, some drugs, and a strong woman?” We didn't know what to tell him, but he ended up buying us a pitcher anyway. The rest of the time he was singing—growling, really—songs by the “Polish Beatles” while we tried to pawn him off to someone else so we could play some pool. His full name was Mieczyslaw Szczygielski, and he likes German women.
           Of course, there too are the straight and sober people who crowd the streets during peak hours, flocking to shops, to cafés, to eateries, to theaters, spending money on ephemeral distractions. But I don't get the chance to talk to those people very often.
           The bums, the drunks, the students, the snobs... they're all part of the same town; they walk the same streets and live under the same trees whose sides are made yellow by sunrise.


05/10
          A promising trigger for change would involve a shifting of perception. Though eyes and minds have certainly not been static for centuries (of course, no one sees and thinks the same things in exactly the same ways, and the knowledge gathered by our shared consciousness has not ceased to accumulate), our methods of seeing and thinking have remained confined within virtually the same boundaries of our natural human bodies and of our surrounding physical environment. We exist in a reality made up of decrepit one-dimensional (text, history) and aged two-dimensional (image, audio, travel, social interaction) informational texts; these are the tools through which we learn and perceive the world — because we have placed upon them the responsibility of “transmitting information crucial to society and to individuals” (...Technical Images 5) — and, since “the structure through which information is carried exerts a decisive influence on our lives” (5), these are the very tools we must rethink and reconstruct (possibly from scratch) in order to achieve not only a shift in perspective but also to begin the progress that will bring us truly into the future of humanity, that is, bring us further “mutation of our experiences, perceptions, values, and modes of behavior” (5). Traditional informational texts are merely “observations of objects,” recordings of “depiction;” Flusser's suggested technical images are not regurgitation of experience but rather “posthistorical, dimensionless,” “mosaic-like combinations” of synthesized information (6, 10).


05/09
A girl I recognize, her mouth moving: “Hey, Jack! Want to get some coffee?”
           No time for that now—I fly past, mumbling unrememberable words, on through the doors of the nearest building, down white halls, and into a men's toilet room, the best place. Someone comes in behind me, but no matter; I reach for the drugs in my jacket pocket and for the handle of a stall door, and—oh fuck! Some half-Indian fucker sitting on the shitter, a hand each on his cell phone and his cock. I slam the door in an instant and flee the room, muttering “Jesus Christ” and rubbing my brow all the way up the stairs, down another hall, and into a second toilet room, which I find unoccupied. Success.
           Back in the courtyard, waves of people continue to bustle. Little fish, flittering in their reef; those who pass through alone or in groups, those who claim tables to study or play chess, those who lie in the grass bullshitting or fiddling with acoustic instruments. All around: shorts, skirts, sleeveless shirts, shoeless feet, sunglasses, smiles... and me on speed.
           Among the mass of people near the courtyard's center sit and stand a group of average-looking humans, not so dressed for spring with their wool checked shirts and long pants, one of them holding a picket sign, upon which are the words “WHAT'S YOUR VERDICT ON FAITH?” beside a black pictogram of the scales of justice (it seems they forgot Lady Justice's sword and blindfold). They were definitely here yesterday. Have these people nothing better to do with their time than lounge around, holding signs with banal messages, floundering in the self-importance of having chosen what they believe to be the “right” path (indeed, few people think themselves incorrect), pretending to be arbiters of humanity? Not that I care. But before I realize what I'm doing, I'm standing face-to-face with the sign-wielder (words are weapons too, you know). Shit, ought to say something; can't just stare at the poor girl.
           “I've decided my verdict is that I do indeed have faith,” I say.
Her eyes perk up and her face scrunches into a smile. “That's great!” She sticks her free hand towards me, expecting a shake. “My name's Erin. What's yours?”
           “Ralph,” I say, taking her hand. “You see, I have a lot of faith. I'm really faithful that God does not in fact control the universe”—she tries to say something and to free her hand from my grip but I'm not quite done yet—“because He sure sounds like one son of a bitch!” and then off I fly once more, flapping my arms like wings for emphasis of lunacy. As for God, well, we can only pray He didn't actually create mankind in His own image, because if so, we've been making Him look bad. He's probably pretty damn embarrassed. No wonder He's always so pissed at us.
           I reach the bus in the nick of time and, sitting down, rip a book from the bowels of the rucksack: Does Writing Have a Future? by Vilém Flusser.
           My God—a sudden, strange blue tint overcomes all my vision. Am I going blind? Sinking into an early stage of epilepsy? Or am I just a raving lunatic?
           I slap my face and turn the page.


05/08
It was when I met this Spanish girl that things got really interesting.
          First, she asked me to coffee and I ran away, but let me explain: I was at the time worried about the possibility of me losing my job, my only source of income, and because of that I was quite worried about getting kicked out of my house and having to find a new place and pack then move and hopefully not forget any of my shit or lose anything important and then finding a new job god-knows-where only god knows how, and so when Hada -- the Spanish girl, we'd a class or two together years before -- called my name, first and last, from across the parking lot of a store in a town where I never would have expected to hear my full name shouted at me while I walked to my car thinking about how I was probably going to get fired, I was really flustered and not at all mentally prepared to be yelled at, and of course it didn't help that I have bad distance eyesight and only saw a human-shaped blurry blob waving its tentacles in my general direction, and decided it was best to get away as quickly as possible.