It is the necessity of spinning

1

I forgot that
The more holes you have
The less you must
Spinnnnnn...
For people to find you
Just because I am discovered on the walls
Someone's blasting through the sheet rock
Looking for me
I didn't know, so I
Repaired it
Like new

2

Oh... you've been drilling!
I can see it now in your skating path
Behind
The groove gets deeper
As
You get closer
Somewhere jumps too hard
Now you've struck oil
Down the rig
Down the rig
Ridges of sound,
like stairs,
Down the rig
fly by.
Too bad, I
I kinda liked that song

3

A humorous mess,
Life is better with fluids
Ample and exchanged
Borrowed colors that run
Fast
Where will we end up?
Follow the densest smoke
When it expires
You'll nearly be home

Just Breakfast

The phone call came unexpectedly on a Saturday. It was about 9:30 in the morning and Trevor was at the urban farm market. Sort of. Actually he was standing just outside the rows of locally grown produce merchants and waiting in line among the truck-bound vendors of premade food to order a very popular handheld breakfast. The droning sound of the engines competes with the amplified ringing acoustic strums of the hired live entertainment: a nervous doughy songwriter/cover artist with a compressed tenor voice and a discreetly balanced patch of stubble under his burgeoning chin. The carelessly drawn out delivery of the familiar lyrics reveals a sense of vanity and selfishness behind the impulse of falling in love being presented in the songs. Every note is an attempt to sing well beyond his abilities. It seems that he imagines this live performance is being recorded and will eventually be released and held in the same regard as Jeff Buckley's "Live at Sine", except without the untimely drowning. Trevor feels the vibrations on his thigh and as the ring tone fades in he realizes that it was a mistake to leave his phone off silent. His girlfriend Sandra is standing beside him and she is about to be party to a conversation between him and a prospective employer. He is considering ways to avoid this as he alters his stance dramatically for optimum pocket access on his skinny jeans, which fit more tightly around his calves than his waist, so as he reaches in for his phone you can see the top of his buttcrack and imagine how the line withers in its downward procession. He was about to try and use the momentum of shifting his stance to step aside and answer his phone in privacy, but he was positioned right between two signs that read "NO PLACE HOLDING". The phone was halfway through its ring cycle and he took a moment to marvel at the fact that these vendors actually take the time to put up those signs for their traveling meal car. He ponders the causal relationship of those signs advertising their aggressive cue maintenance policy and his 45 minute wait to have a customized breakfast chimichanga. He pretends not to notice the signs, but remains stationary anyway to take the call. He takes out a pen and notepad. It is a phone interview and it won't likely require any note taking, but he knows Sandra will think he is not taking the position seriously if he doesn't at least jot down something. The situation turns out in his favor it seems, as the pressure of the phone interview is completely eclipsed by the looming notion of Sandra's inevitable scrutiny afterwards. He hangs up the phone and tries to say something that will preclude any further interest. "Eh, they wanted to start me out in the call center making less than I am now." Silence. He responds to himself by throwing in some more details, "Yeah that must be why they called me on a Saturday... they wanted me to work the weekend shift..." She responds dryly, "Well whatever, I'm sure something better will come up," then without missing a beat, she changes the subject, "did you see they were selling squash blossoms? I think we should make squash blossom frittata!" Trevor responds carelessly. "Yeah... except we've been waiting in line so long, and I'm curious about this breakfast chimichanga." Sandra is quiet, so Trevor continues, "I've heard you can add up to 9 optional ingredients in addition to the 6 that come standard in each chimichanga." She doesn't share his enthusiasm. "Yeah but so? There is no line over there..." She motions towards the produce vendors with her slender and questionably hairless arm. "We can go back to your place and make a healthy breakfast together!" She lightly bumps her hip against his, causing his knees to unlock so he loses balance for a split second. "Well it won't be breakfast by the time we finish making it! Let's just each get completely different breakfast chimichangas and share them." She gets quiet again for a second. Then without looking at him she asks, "Why don't you want me to cook for you?" This puts him on the defensive. "It's not that I don't want your cooking... I just don't want to spend all day in the kitchen." She instantly retorts, "Why? What do you have planned?" He stares at her blankly. This is all the response she needs, as she speaks words that have clearly been forming in her mind. "You never have the patience to start anything from scratch. You start out with the right intentions, but you always get bored and discouraged by the follow through and take the easy way out. We go to the farm market to buy some fresh local produce and make something, but we beeline straight past all the actual farm stands so we can have something that is already made." Trevor attempts to cut her off, "Actually I have just heard really good things about the chimichanga truck breakfast items and really wanted to try it out. What the hell are you talking about?" His outburst at the end provides more fuel to her frustration. "Don't you dare try to make me sound like I'm crazy! You do this with your job, too! That is why you hold on to this lousy middle management position. They threw you that job because they wanted to keep you around. They promoted you quickly hoping that you wouldn't bother trying to start working for a better company. Who was it that called this morning about the call center job?" He was too punch-drunk to think of anything but the truth. "Platinum Marketing Group." "PMG!? You want to turn down a foot in the door at the largest advertizing company in the city so you can keep making... what, a few hundred dollars a month extra? A thousand? This is exactly what I'm talking about! Here is a job that, yeah, may start out like a demotion from where you currently are... but in like 12 months, 5 years, down the line... you could actually be working to your potential." Trevor's strategy during these arguments is generally to play possum, but he always ends up snapping at some point. "Alright, I get it! Look, I didn't say I was going to turn it down. I just didn't want to deal with your criticism today!" He looks around and says, "I mean seriously, are we actually having this conversation right now, right here?" Sandra has given up searching his eyes for anything comprehensible, so she is blankly staring somewhere near his face. "You are such a pussy! Do you think I enjoy having to confront you like I'm your guidance counselor... like a child about being responsible for your own well-being? I'm just trying to help you get over your myopic point of view that you're just gonna land some dream job from where you are now. And of course as usual you're more concerned with what people think than of actually discussing the issue at hand. Yes, we're having this conversation... right now! In front of all these strangers. So what?" Trevor is gripping at whatever he can find in his defense. "What do you mean 'As usual'? When else am I overly concerned with what others think of me? This is news to me! Why do you always pad your arguments with random unrelated things? And did you really need to throw 'myopic' in there?" Her arms fall to her sides with those last words. "You're such an asshole, I can't deal with this right now. I'm going home." He reaches for her, but she snaps at him, "I'll take the bus." Trevor takes one step... then back into line. He is next, and he orders a very basic chimichanga, which he takes several meek bites of as the hired entertainment adds syncopation to "Danny's Song" by Kenny Loggins and really makes it his own.

Ironic Cupcakes: A Fairy Tale

Yarmond was growing weary of his self-imposed mission, which required many tedious door-to-door interactions while carrying an increasingly cumbersome sack. He was entering the Village of Pattadonna Hill, a sprawling series of uniformly cylindrical cottages with large doors made of chestnut planks and polished brass bolts. It was a prosperous town full of attractive people and vibrant landscape; even the clouds that passed overhead appeared to be sculpted by someone selected through a formal process that involved auditions and stodgy interviews.

The first cottage he visited was eclectic indeed, with statues of feathered beasts indigenous to faraway lands, folky crafts of coloured straw, and water fixtures that require far more than gravity and capillary effects to function. He taps at the door and waits patiently, his eyes lose focus around the brass bolts as he is wading through thoughts far, far away from the improvised yet somehow rehearsed tales he intends to tell. The patriarch of the Narrowmiller family opens the door and Yarmonds words are dripping with presumptions, as these conversations have become so perfunctory and rote that he can almost respond on their behalf. To enter their comfort zone as a stranger who has lost his way, he flatters and describes his first hand experience with the subject matter of their lavish exotic decor during his travels.

There is a reason these compliments of excess are being used. The rulers of this realm, the corrupt and bureaucratic Society of Wizard Overlords, noticed a lack of productivity and sincere motivation among the masses. Due to their relative lack of individual power and freedom, it seems they had given up on the traditional ambitions that the ruling class of wizards benefit from, so people began to keep modest personal goals and spend more time developing a bitter sense of humor to cope with the unbearably harsh realities of being ruled by wizards who, despite being very powerful and wise were prone to scandal. Rather than try to improve their behavior so people would become less jaded, the Society of Wizard Overlords passed a blanket spell that causes anybody who enjoyed an incident of irony to have their household transformed into gourmet cupcakes that feature characteristics that identified them. For instance somebody who was shallow but happy would probably have overly sweetened icing with rainbow sprinkles and extra spongy cake, someone who was prone to holding grudges would have stale icing and bitter fruit filling, someone who was indecisive would be made of marble cake and have one piece of several candy toppings, etc. The wizards found that the citizens were worth more as gourmet cupcakes than as lazy disillusioned workers. Since laughing ironically at failure and hopelessness was no longer an option, people were forced to take life very seriously and put all of their effort into being successful, as success was the only means to happiness.

Having been invited into the Narrowmiller's home for refreshments, Yarmond is asking questions of the young couple that give them the opportunity to express their sincere beliefs on broad social issues and show off their worldly knowledge. After a while he asks them if they want to see a trick. They oblige him, given of course that no irony is involved. Yarmond says it is as straightforward a trick as they have ever seen... and he continues the conversation speaking entirely in titles of books that can be found on the Narrowmiller's shelves. Having been entertained in many similar homes, his choices are flawless. Each sentence is seamless and free flowing; it is as though no matter what question they can think of to ask of him, he can form a response using only titles of various publications found throughout the house. The conversation lasts for hours, until they nearly forget that all he needed were some directions to the best lodging in the area. Eventually he begins his departure pleasantries, and then he asks, "I forget, what were your names?" After an awkward pause, the husband started to speak his name... but the wife interrupts, "Wait... you know every book in our house... but you don't know our names?" At that moment, both were transformed into nearly identical cupcakes. They were made with red velvet cake and had lumps of toffee too large to be melted in the baking process, and the vanilla icing was unable to maintain its intended decorative formation due to all the toppings, which ranged from crumbled chocolates to pan-seared sea bass with capers. Yarmond wrapped them in separate napkins and tossed them into his sack and moved on to the next cottage.

After visiting a few homes, people start to warn others. Once the chain reaction begins, Yarmond's job becomes much easier. People begin arming themselves and dashing through the streets in a panic shouting "LOOK OUT! HE IS USING IRONY!" Then they think about what they are yelling while running around brandishing weapons, and relinquish a smile as they are changed into cupcakes. After the calamity, all Yarmond needs to do is retrieve them.

Of course even when they are an expression of an entire human life, a bag of cupcakes is not worth much to anybody. So why was Yarmond collecting them with such zeal? Not long ago Yarmond was in love with a woman named Miscellanea, and she was congruently in love with him. They spent their days nearly catatonic in amazement of every detail of one another... he of the way her hair felt between the insides of his fingers, her of his lower back and the corners of his eyes... her subtle ways of drawing attention to herself, his neurotic deconstruction of his surroundings... her vulnerability to him despite his flaws, his devotion to her despite all the worry he holds onto. Their state of reverie formed an impenetrable atmosphere, basically a new world outside of the jurisdiction of the Society of Wizard Overlords, who found this world to be threatening. Their world indeed had an actual physical presence, and Yarmond and Miscellanea entered and exited their world many times before they realized it was there. For Miscellanea this presence was a magical enhancement to her life, but for Yarmond it was a source of anxiety. What if it vanishes unexpectedly? What should they do to maintain it so that doesn't happen? What if Miscellanea betrays him? Miscellanea did all she could to reassure him that they were safe as long as the atmosphere was strong, but he was still doubtful and the wizards were aware of this. One day when he was outside of their atmosphere, a representative from the Society of Wizard Overlords wore the guise of a local merchant and invited Yarmond to his shop. After a few glasses of truth potion, masked with the flavor of a bitter local drink, Yarmond opened up about his feelings for Miscellanea, as well as his doubts. The shop was dimly lit and full of dusty lamps and pendants and some more confusing formations of sheet metal. The wizard let him know of a possible solution for his uncertainty. He reached behind him and presented a simple tarnished lantern. "Ignite this lantern with a lock of your lovers hair and speak her name into it. Then think deeply of everything that makes you love her, and when the flame burns out, everything you don't like about her will melt away." Yarmond purchased the lantern without hesitation and decided to use it the following morning.

Now, the Society of Wizard Overlords can't intervene in the lives of the people without an approved cause. They had to give Yarmond two options, and the immoral option, if chosen, justifies commensurate punishment. Yarmond collected a lock of Miscellanea's hair and spoke her name into the ignited lantern, and let his mind indulge in every one of her favorable qualities. After waiting patiently for the fire to burn out, he ran over to Miscellanea's home only to find a crowd had gathered and her roof was missing... along with her. Several passers by said there was a flash of light that projected up to the sky and outwards in all directions, and she was nowhere to be found. Yarmond located the merchant and asked what went wrong. The merchant removed his disguise and explained to Yarmond what he had done. "By using that lantern, you have deconstructed and separated all of Miscellanea's attributes and caused them to be scattered and distributed to every single person throughout the land." Yarmond begged of the wizard to break the spell. He replied, "Well even if I wanted to, I can't go against a decision made by the Society of Wizard Overlords. However, if you can find a way to bring everybody in the world into close proximity, the wizards will consider that deed a form of atonement and retrieve all of her features from the citizens and bring her back.

Yarmond went into hiding for a while and didn't resurface until the cupcake spell was passed, as he saw this as an opportunity: Since there was an element of her in every person in the world, and people were being turned into cupcakes... then the cupcake must contain this essence of her, as well. All he needed to do was make everybody turn into cupcakes, then they would be easy to keep all in one place and present to the wizards. Yarmond was immune to irony because he had lost all joy when Miscellanea vanished... so he could speak and perpetrate all the irony he wanted with complete invincibility.

Yarmond noticed that one of the eclectic cottages in Pattadonna Hill had a flattened pillar, most likely from Village of Blott, where phallic symbols of any kind are banned. This was the final village of his quest, and he soon found himself at the town center reading the engraved pancake-shaped monument to its founders. He was reading the town's slogan: "Hidden in the genius required by necessity are the building blocks of a better future." Nobody in Blott knew what it actually meant, but the words "genius" and "better future" were promising so it stuck. Yarmond knew only the crudest irony wouldn't be lost on these people, and since they wouldn't find any irony in acts of panic the way other towns have, he needed to get everybody in one shot. Fortunately he showed up the day of their monthly town hall meetings, the attendance of which was mandatory for at least one member of every household. The main purpose of these meetings is to debate over the many interpretations of the town slogan, as well as what defines something as phallic. The town has recently banned the usage of nails, so this month's meeting is about whether buildings must be demolished and reconstructed with the use of adhesives and fitted materials in favor of traditional elongated fasteners with an aspect ratio greater than 4:1. Yarmond slowly moved to the front of the room throughout the meeting, then during the open forum he took the podium and suggested that perhaps fasteners with a 4:1 aspect ratio would be acceptable if they were less than 2 inches in length. The suggestion received enthusiastic applause by most in the crowd, but there were several cries of disapproval around the room, the loudest of which was coming from the mayor. Yarmond seized this opportunity and yanked the mayor's pants and drawers down to his ankles, and the entire town turned into cupcakes. Mostly vanilla with bi-colored sprinkles and a plastic garnish.

Now holding the cupcake of every person in the land, Yarmond begins journeying to the Valley of Power find the Society of Wizard Overlords. When he arrived, the unseen wizards opened a portal to a new land where he and Miscellanea can start anew. All he had to do was listen to the wizard's explanation of why they put him through this trial. "We gave you the option to let your love take its natural course... but you chose to turn her into less than a person... you chose to strain out the qualities you found disagreeable. We found this to be unacceptable." Yarmond scratched his head. "Wait... so you're saying that in order to teach me about the value of human life... you made me turn the entire population of this realm into cupcake avatars of themselves?" Then, for the first time since he last saw Miscellanea's wide-eyed smile, Yarmond laughed. He was instantly transformed into a cupcake. After a few moments, Miscellanea materialized inside the bag of cupcakes. The voices of the wizards told her to enter the portal, and she stepped forward to oblige. All memory from her previous life had been wiped clean, but for some reason she wanted to eat the cupcake she found on the ground next to her before she left. It appeared to be chocolate caramel... She brought it up to her lips... and discovered it was made of stone. She tossed it aside and wandered into the new realm.

Walk Through/What are you, Crazy?

Walk through
The inky blue
As though our landing gear is true
The impact is great
When in need of
anticipated repair
Can we continue as cement mixers
Relieving ourselves through eye droppers?

Will these be radiation burns
Or super powers and eternal life?

Have you seen the bottom!!??
Or is this another pane-divided segment
Of glass bottomed eternity?
What do I know of the next room
Aside from which magazines I'd read

The Balance of One Guest

Death from a chandelier mishap,
they were there in the first place.
Who made their decision ----------- (not them)
Who cleans up afterward ----------- (not them)
This was supposed to be a formal ceremony,
This is an options optional zone,
I chose to make dancing
multiple shadows.
The impact of one shadow is muffled
just before it is measured.

Fixie

The customer recognizes my ragged youthfulness along with my chosen profession and interprets it all to include feelings of revolutionary resentment towards more traditional ambitions. "Most people don't choose a career path based on what they enjoy. The decision is a noxious combination of fear and convenience." This is just one of many generalities he preaches at me with exaggerated conviction because he wants me to agree with him with the same vigor, like we're suddenly going to feel a warm kinship because of it. Like if you underline a few common interests with enough enthusiasm, you could bypass the years it takes to form a real friendship. I own a garage and sell miscellaneous refurbished goods (appliances, tools, bicycles, etc), and I have these conversations with lonely idealistic souls new to downtown often enough to know that he is about to say something even more riddled with jagged camaraderie bait. "...and fear and convenience ought to be abolished in general." He's just another hack in a fedora who has mistaken my dusty shop for a drawing room in some Russian novel. He's been checking out my one bicycle, and he's touched his wallet several times in the 15 minutes he's been rambling, as though he's still trying to decide. I have no doubt that he is going to buy this recently repainted cerulean blue fixed gear Schwinn with the visibly marked-down price. He knows it to; it is the only thing in the world towards which he feels no ambivalence. Meanwhile I struggle to find the balance of being cordial enough not to alienate the sale but curt enough to get him to complete what is really a perfunctory transaction that requires no such declamatory statements. I turn 90 degrees to the right and tinker on my workbench as he tells me about how primitive it is that the city lacks proper bike lanes on its arterial boulevards, and how the city should adopt a filtered permeability model. While I may not have an associates degree in urban planning, I know that a several hundred year old city is not very likely to repossess its storefronts so the citizens with the highest smugness-to-profitability ratio can save their knees a few statistically inevitable scrapes. He takes the hint when I break eye contact and apply my Dremel to some lightweight titanium tubing.

There is a reason I tolerate vexing hipster rants to sell a cheap used bicycle in my otherwise surprisingly profitable shop. I keep track of all their inclinations so I know where they may be found. Within two weeks I will have stolen the bike I just sold them and sold it to somebody else, and it helps to have a general idea of where they'll be. Urban cyclists tend to conglomerate at the same few cafes, but daytime is difficult to work with. From the conversation I glean whether they are after indie music, poetry, slutty art school girls, jazz, DJ's, terrible punk shows, etc. After they basically read their Facebook profile to me, I know which venues to stroll by every Friday and Saturday night to find my bike. Sooner or later, it ends up on the rack, and I retrieve it.

Once the bike is at my shop, I am sure to repaint the frame and obscure any recognizable dings and scratches in case they return to buy a replacement, which is usually what happens. I stole my bike from the same guy three times in 2 months. Eventually I sold him a used Vespa for three grand, which he's had better luck with. He stopped by to tell me this, and he introduces his friends to me when I see him drunk swaying in front of clubs late at night. Many of them know me already.

Today's customer didn't give me any good leads... if I had to guess, he spends most of his time with the lights out watching Zeitgeist drinking pure grain alcohol. He wore a wrinkled white dress shirt with suspenders, so my first stake out is either Ellis Island circa 1921 or the jazz clubs. Given his disdain for the bourgeoisie, I avoided the places that charge admission and feature Pat Metheny covers in favor of the seedier venues. Places with names like The Rusted Oleander and Brazen Blue seemed like his scene, but I hung out all night and all I got was a free preview of tinnitus. After that I winged it for a while, hitting up all of my usual spots until I realized the one clue he gave me with his words. He spoke of career choices and civil engineering... so I scanned the 24 hour library at the university religiously for two weeks until I gave up.

Having exhausted all other options, I toured the cafes where all of my former clients have Sunday brunch. I found him at Merci Beaucoup sitting alone at the bar next to the spinning cakes. I sit down on the other side and order something to drink. Within three sips he recognizes me and starts a conversation. I ask him how the bike is working out and he says, "It needed a little adjustment and some new parts... and that color was hideous, I don't know who owned it previously but it was just awful." I paused to wonder what type of person takes such issue with cerulean blue, then asked if he had it with him today. "You know to be honest, I sold it to a friend. I needed something with more gears, y'know?" So my bike was lost, but there was one more thing I was looking for. I asked how he was acclimating to the downtown scene, and he replied, "I spend most of my time at home or at the library studying for classes." I didn't have to ask him which college or at what times he could be found there, I already knew I was right enough about it. So right, in fact, that I needed to close my shop and find a new city, somewhere I can hopefully never become so familiar with as I have with this city.

Jagged Angles of Comfort

Vic felt a bit hesitant going to Tanya's viewing. They had been dating for two months, and the relationship had taken a turn for the serious in the weeks before the car crash claimed her life, so while he couldn't imagine not going, he knew most of the attendees mostly through her stories about them. Vic had met only a few of her friends and, very briefly, her sister. He imagined that her ex-husband would be there, and he tried to stifle inappropriately trivial thoughts of awkwardness, but he couldn't help himself from the occasional speculative glance around the room. He'd never seen a picture, so he had to guess by the composite sketch in his imagination. Anybody in the 30-40 age bracket was suspect, and his mind would rattle off several features to scan each face for before his conscience called him out. This cycle of internal struggle disturbed him, but it also kept his grief at a safe distance.

Glenn had been shifting in his seat at the back of the room speaking into a mobile device with both hands cupping the receiver. He approached Vic and solemnly introduced himself as her ex-husband. To cut the unbearable silence short, Vic asked how Glenn's band was doing. Glenn tightened his brows, "What band?" "Tanya said you were in a cover band..." Glenn seemed on the verge of laughter. "I was in a cover band in college. It paid for grad school!" Vic stares blankly as he thinks to himself, "Grad school?" Glenn continues, "I'm a writer and producer for TLC." This distracts him even further from his grief. Not only is Glenn successful now, but it seems that he has always been resourceful with his creativity, which is distinctly at odds with what Tanya told him. As the conversation continues, Vic tries to figure out why she lied to him. It seems like she was trying to give a more palatable impression of her choice to move on, as though she divorced an inept struggling artist for a more stable lifestyle with Vic. Was she trying to make Vic feel better for being less interesting than Glenn, or was she making herself feel better for not being able to handle her husband's ambitious lifestyle? Or maybe he cheated on her! He instantly feels shame for being relieved at that thought. The resulting insecurities would explain some of her bedroom acrobatics though.

While Vic was lost in his thoughts, Glenn turned to the side and spoke into a small recording device and mumbled the date and time a few barely audible sentences like "Reality series of what French women do on their 2 years of maternity leave" and "The secret lives of feral cats. Cats are all over the internet." Vic couldn't let this opportunity for some personal vindication pass. "Don't you think that is a bit inappropriate?" Glenn talked over his last few words into the device as though he wasn't listening, "8 episode series about the authenticity of celebrity pizza endorsements in New York". Vic was going to let the question drop, but Glenn turned to him and said, "I do feel a little self-conscious, but when ideas come there is no excuse not to record them. It would be a disservice to my staff if I didn't capture every possible idea. It's not easy..." Glenn's delivery of those lines is well-worn and rehearsed, as was his dismount. "It was nice meeting you, hopefully under better circumstances next time." He might as well have put a netspeak frowning face at the end.

When Vic arrives at the open coffin, he sees an attractive stranger. He places his hand beside her cheek as he often did in intimate moments and stares into her closed eyes. People around him probably thought he was restraining tears, but in reality he was trying not to say "Why did you lie to me?" His mind replied for her that she wanted to start over with someone who was unremarkable but attentive. This left him feeling even more unfulfilled... He walks away wondering if she ever existed in the first place when her voice rang in his thoughts, saying "I just can't believe Chelsea would be so short-sighted." Chelsea was one of her coworkers. This is the phone conversation she was having with him immediately before the accident. He absently agreed with her. Glenn is pacing next to the doorway saying things like "Chinese soy barons are the next oil moguls" and "The development of bacon into the phenomenon that it has become" as he replays the dialog. This is what he has for closure.

It's a Fucking Shark!

I'm at a table somewhere in 2002 with french fries that were dissolving in ketchup and brown gravy, coffee where the cream was separating in psychedelic patterns just below the surface, and Matt is pitching an idea to everybody: he wants to create an online archive of vintage video game music. Everybody is excited except for me, but I keep my mouth shut because I'm at a table of lazy idealists, and there is nothing on my mind that their ex-girlfriends haven't already broke up with them over. I've already started siphoning contempt in my direction by saying that 90% of tattoos are stupid. I only know one of the six people at the table, and statistically I insulted everybody, but they all probably assumed they were part of the 10% with cool tattoos and called it optimism. It doesn't matter though, my lack of enthusiasm is enough to get me called out. Matt says, "You're not on board for this one, are you?" I cannot lie. The subject changes a few times as the night goes on, but inevitably he brings up his brilliant idea again. This time he puts me on the spot. "You're getting a business degree, right? Well isn't it advertising that pays for these websites? Don't you see the opportunity?" He cuts my reply off before any possible meaning could have been gleaned and he continues, "You know what your problem is? You never make a choice. Ideas, you know... they're like picking a girlfriend. You can spend years waiting for what you think is an ideal situation that may never happen or it may not turn out the way you wanted it to. Me, I like to run with whatever I think is a good idea until it fails." Everybody agrees with him as they start talking about people they know who are closed minded like I am, and I decide to take a stand in a way they would possibly relate to. I say "Have you ever looked around you and wondered what other people are thinking? Well I always had the idea that we should consider the opposite." I let that sit for a second to make sure everybody is paying attention. I continue, "I think that the sharpest tool for self-assessment is to imagine the people we care about and even random strangers suddenly had a membership to our library of thoughts." I suggested that we try it right at that moment at this almost empty diner at nearly 4 AM. We sit in silence for a while as we all imagined that people of varying personal significance were browsing our thoughts and memories. I imagine a frenzied entity taking a tour of my memories presented to them in 12 pt Arial font, and my current thoughts over a PA. The entity was drawn to thoughts I considered shameful, but once the two parties met I realized how silly shame is... Everybody began digging up shameful thoughts before they even decided who was sifting through them, then deciding who would be most affected by it. Incidences of petty racism, chunks of inappropriate lust... all revealed to everybody at the table, and anybody else we could summon to mind... they pass through us and take a souvenir before they dissipate. In the end, I am left with equanimity. We break concentration when the check arrives, and I am the only one who feels no need to speak, for though my fries are still untouched, I am not hungry in the least.

Close Encounters

My leg hair felt like the innards of a golf ball digging their way out of a life sentence on my thighs as I make my way through the alley entrance to my apartment complex on a summer evening. I am having very practical thoughts about the capacity of my mouth. If I didn't have teeth, imagine how much more food I could fit in it! I take several steps past a homeless guy collecting bottles from the dumpster and through the gate to my complex before the guilt sets in. There is usually somebody in one of the alley dumpsters at this hour, but I'm not usually having such lustful thoughts about food, which will most likely be covered in cheese and hot sauce and other unnecessary enhancements, while the guy in the dumpster will probably be testing very different limits of his digestive system than heat and lactose tolerance. Thus imbued with a sense of moral obligation, I burst into my kitchen to heat some mediocre leftover beans that I was suddenly glad to have kept around. I crudely fried an egg and sliced some sharp Tillamook cheddar and designated even portions of each with intention to deposit them into several corn tortillas that were heating in the oven. While I'm waiting I poke my head out my bedroom window (my apartment is at the end of the building nearest the dumpsters) to make sure the guy is still there. I yell out to him, "Hey! Uhh, are you hungry?" He looks up and without hesitation says, "I'm ok, but thank you!" He sounded crisp and content, albeit distracted by the new bag he was tearing open to search. I refused to believe this, so I press on, "Uhh, are you sure? Y-you're in a dumpster..." He says, "I know..." then pauses and looks down at his next bag. He looks back up at me and continues, "...but I'm not hungry." I go back into the kitchen and package his meal in a sealable bag with napkins and a wedge of lime. No way is he telling the truth, but I didn't want to insult him by continuing to state the obvious. Even though I'm sure he's probably not paying attention to my every action as closely as I am, I find an excuse to go outside and "coincidentally" walk past him. I decided to wash my bath towels. As I leave the laundry room with my bag of egg and bean tacos with a slice of lime, and which I at the last moment decided to also add a sprig of fresh cilantro to, I call to him over the fence, "No seriously, I am not going to eat this. I'm going out of town tomorrow and this food is going to spoil, so I'd rather it not go to waste." He smiles, "No really, I'm not hungry right now and I ate well earlier." I pressed on, "Well perhaps you'll want them later on. Please take them!" No wonder he's homeless, the man doesn't know how to plan ahead! "Look man, the shelter really takes care of me, and I think I'll be back on my feet in a few days. But thank you anyway." He pushes his cart to the next complex, and I leave the bag on top of a car, hoping that if not him, someone else will be humble enough to accept a free meal.

The following night I am passed out on my couch with a melted bowl of ice cream on the armrest and, courtesy of my ex-girlfriend's Netflix account, some horrible documentary about life on other planets on loop on my laptop. It is 3AM and my sleep is interrupted by the sound of that bowl of melted ice cream falling off the arm rest. I am slow to react because I am not surprised, as the arm rest is very thin. In fact I passed out expecting the bowl to fall, but I didn't care enough to risk interfering with the prospect of robust sleep. I'm still not fully awake, so I try not to concern myself with how much of it spilled on the floor. I decide to remain on the couch for the night. I hold on to sleep in my hands like a jello mold that wasn't quite set all the way. These are my thoughts as I debate snipping the last thread supporting consciousness or if it is worth it to write down the line, "Ribbed Tupperware shape is gone; now I am grasping onto the largest lump" in the nearest notebook in the hopes that it would become a poem. Then I shift to my left and a warm sneaker kicks me in the shoulder. It is at this point I scream and jump and notice someone climbing in through the window behind my couch. Abandoning his attempt at stealth, the intruder falls into the room and says, "What are you doing here?" I wield my fallen ice cream bowl as a weapon and turn on the light... it's the guy from the dumpster. "What do you mean "What am I doing here"? I fucking live here, get out before I call the cops!" He sits on my couch and says, "Yeah, but you said you were going to be out of town." For some reason my first thoughts when he sits down are "So I guess it was he who knocked over my ice cream bowl?" and "Now that I'm awake, should I write down that line about the Jello mold." Too distracted to tell anything but the truth, I say, "Yeah, but... you said you were gonna be on your feet in a few days!" He nodded and said, "Yeah, from robbing your house!" Against my better judgement, I ask him, "Don't you feel bad trying to rob someone who tried to give you food?" He fixes his posture and says, "Nope. You fit the profile of someone who deserves exactly this. You live alone and judging by your meticulously chosen attire and that satchel you carry, you're an artist of some kind. You were eager to offer me an elaborately crafted meal that took at least 10 minutes to put together. When people do this it generally means that they're more interested in sharing the product of their labor than actually helping someone." My guard down, I try to ask several questions at once, but he interrupts me and says, "Not that I think you don't care at all... I mean, everybody cares somewhat, right? But just because you care doesn't make you some sort of selfless hero." This puts me on the defensive, "You may be right, but at least I chose to act. I mean, other people-" He interrupts me again, "You really miss her, don't you? The girl... or the guy you used to cook these meals for." I reply, "WAIT... you can tell all of these things about what I do in my spare time and why I made food for you based on casual observations... but you can't tell if I'm straight or gay?" He stares unfocused over my shoulder at the fruitlessness of that topic. Knowing that we both understood one another, I felt a bit more at ease, so I continue. "Ok, so if you knew that my offering of that meal was so important to me, why didn't you just take it? ... Oh wait! Are you trying to help me by not encouraging my lingering emotional attachments?" The homeless man says without hesitation, "Hell no, I'm not your shrink! I didn't take your food because I didn't want to give you the satisfaction. You're pretentious and small-minded, and the cultural and philosophical minutiae you obsess over shows that none of your priorities are right because you have had it way too easy in life. I broke into your house, and you seem to have completely forgotten this fact simply because I started talking about your favorite subject: yourself!"

I wake up as the bowl of melted ice cream falls to the floor and shatters against another bowl that had previously fallen off the narrow arm of my couch. In my dream, the man from the dumpster grabbed my laptop and smashed it on the floor where the bowl landed. My first thought is to lock my doors, but I am also pulled towards my phone. I was going to make a phone call. I stopped myself not because there was nobody I ought to be calling at this hour and in fact had nobody in mind yet to call. I stopped myself when I saw the time. 3:07. I was asleep for only seven minutes. I toss my phone onto a nearby table, then take two steps towards the door. Then three steps towards the couch. Then a step towards the table. Then to the shattered bowl of ice cream. Then my bed. I should latch the door, but what would the implications of latching my door be? What am I really scared of? I should clean up the ice cream, but then I'd need to put on shoes so my feet don't get cut on the glass, and the whole activity would preclude the notion of going back to sleep at all. I should not be calling anybody at this hour, regardless of their time zone, but for some reason I want to. There is no way I will sleep well on the couch. I shouldn't try to go to bed until I make a decision about the phone and the door and the broken glass. As if pushed, I sit back on the couch and poke my laptop out of hibernation and wait.