A town close to nowhere

Jaia Papitz — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:29:26 -0600

A town close to nowhere. From above everything seems close to nowhere. The steps, the dreams and hopes, the bus station or the bus itself seem to take us nowhere. The Globe itself seems to spin with a ferocious redundancy in a vicious cycle.

I know that I diminished considerably my chances to get your phone number, my beautiful stranger and drink companion, but maybe another drink would keep you glued to the stool as I slowly slip into an amorphous presence. I wish you were married, ugly, fat and a little bit more disgusting than I could ever describe so I could punish my impertinentcies by inviting you to a motel and kissing that repulsiveness over and over; and I would do that as a great lover, greater than Romeo and with more passion and loyalty than Don Juan was ever able to show; I’m very aware that the general concept about Don Juan is everything but loyalty. If our ephemeral encounter will permit, I shall develop further the Don Juan social hysteria. Anyway, once in a while I get masochistic and I tend to reprimand my antisocial behaviors with disgusting images; for balance’s sake.

You see, anything once imagined and believed, becomes as real as that house, the one with the shiny blue roof. But that’s not possible, it’s a clever way to duck the reality – they say.

I didn’t transform into a shapeless entity. Truly? I haven’t tried even though I mentioned it earlier. Of course you aren’t kept here against your will, yet sometimes good manners are a form of self-imprisonment. Good manners, which I hope they never touched your insides, because I do hate them with a vengeance that I haven’t been able to describe yet and you, are the last thing in the world I want to despise instead of growing to admire. Self-penitence is one of the plethora of behaviors that a submissive being adopts; doing that, one says: “you see ? I’m not a lamb!” I chose to walk voluntarily to the chopping block.

You are still here which, I have to admit, it’s very pleasant… I should not try to find a comparison. Would be as redundant as a stale couple repeating each morning and evening and every time they actually want to be alone, over and over again, the barren: I love you.

I will just let it be. I haven’t gotten you a drink because, yes, I didn’t expect to see you here. I drank mine on the way back. I wouldn’t have returned but I remembered that my coat is still here.

No, these are not the streets of my childhood… I moved here last year yet they appear terribly proverbial. I feel that on that particular cracked curb, that one by the flooded manhole, I lost my tooth, this one. Everywhere I’ve been throughout the years I found a great amount of familiarities with the place I grew up in. From all universal standards my life would be considered a nomadic one when, in fact, it’s nothing more than an unsuccessful try to escape a habitual world that looks the same. Yes, architectural differences – if I have to name a quick, blatant one - but the essence?

If we keep going this way I can show you at the next intersection the most radical asphalt color I’ve seen so far but that particular anomaly doesn’t represent more than a two second lasting impression. Why do I remember this? I don’t know. I seem to remember things that nobody notices and I forget stuff that most people find worthy of framing.

Everyone keeps quitting smoking these days. I don’t. In fact, I’m waiting for the day when they will exhibit at the Museum of Anthropology, actually in a Zoo, the first smoker. Then I will perspire solidarity with the banned and I will go out of my way to smuggle cigarettes into the jungle to the chimps or to any primates. A mediocre comparison. A mass murderer who, instead of committing the greatest genocide, masturbates ferociously. Thus he achieves the great murder without being trialled for it.

Perhaps your beauty strangles any form of amicable conversation left in you because it’s too busy admiring itself. I hope you don’t consider this a compliment meant as a pick up line. Even though it sounds like one, it wasn’t intended that way. It was a mere remark inspired by your reflection in the murky puddle. Now, if I could shut the fuck up for a second and analyze that comment: if analyzed with mundane tools, sounds more like an insult than a pick up line… narcissistic. You smile. In this society, for reasons easy to understand, that’s a malady or, in the luckiest cases, an euphemism. Hard to believe, but this is how the truth is now a days, hard to believe.

Because I rarely and only accidentally use the mundane, I don’t consider that I have insulted you yet.

Well, unlike in a romantic encounter, my habitual place of sleep stumbled before us sooner than yours did. I could take you to your place but I think that such proposal would be regarded as an act of undermining the capacity of the modern woman to be perceived as a man’s equal… unless you’d like to become acquainted with my realm in which, at this hour, the only phonic encounters will be the liquid traveling through the water heater for no particular reason, and the moans of my neighbor from across the hall who is a prostitute, from what she says, yet I haven’t seen any clients coming or leaving.

I must admit that I have never thought of a whore being alone as a hurricane. They both have something in common. Prayers against them, of vanishing in the most atrocious way. I never asked her how much she charges or what kind of services she offers. I wish I did so I could add a feeling of investigative journalism to this ending sentence.

The bus is overcrowded today. The taste of her sweat makes the spiky elbows traveling ticketless on my ribcage even less enjoyable. The emanation of her soft, calming skin is fetid. Hard to believe. To the left, the opaque window reflects the metropolitan inertia. A strange window. A common street during a new day. An impersonal voice announces a stop request by a legitimate passenger while the Earth maintains its furibund twirl. It’s Monday. This day is engraved on people’s faces like their name will be carved on their tombstone, revealing an unwished beginning yet perennial.

The bus stopped often but I didn't leave this vehicle meant for public transportation. Once I was aboard I decided that I didn't want to go anywhere yet I must be on the move. Tides of lives carried along by citizens, flood-drain my sight and my toes systematically, with an exceptional precision. Scents of pain and joy drift through our bowels constantly, overlapping like polished pebbles in the riverbed, chipping themselves with their dullness. This city, even viewed from the bus, is no different.

Now I remained alone. The ebb and flow has stopped which inspires me to think that I'm near to complete my orbital drift thus I decide to change my redundancy with a different one. A cigarette. As I inhale the smoke with nonchalance, the driver shrieks like a titmouse that just felt the eagle's claws caressing his spine and liver. I told him to intercourse with himself but I immediately realize that it would be an improbable fact. He would have never been able to reach in between his belly and the steering wheel.

From the sidewalk I conclude that he could be a she. A hermaphrodite driver of self-made eunuchs. I waved at him benignly and indifferent as he continued his assigned rotation.

As death row life is. That’s the truth I like to be lied about. My surroundings are not bars, keeping me away from the voluptuous shapes and smells from outside. No. Life it’s full of attainable fragrances. Abundant. I shouldn't have opened the back window. The thought was overscented, the coffee will burn on the stove undrunken while a gang of stray dogs is defecating under my window sill like they were carrying Hades in their intestines. The repetition in a brand new century, thrown out my back window to be dried by the nocturnal sun.

As I was indolently watching my irreversible seconds passing by from the rocking chair, in the distance, the other war was starting. The screams of humans loosing what they never owned, their life, sounded amusing. I was doing the same thing without yelling.

As far, I have always been close to nowhere. Today, I am in the middle of it. The similarities and differences are tumbling like young twins in the playground. Indistinguishable.

Le faineant

Bradley Hislop — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:25:55 -0600

Le faineant se leve au coucher du soleil, a l'heure ou les ombres s'etirent dans la rue, le visage pale, les cheveaux en desordre sur le front. Comme d'habitude, a la tombee de la nuit, il s'approche du miroir en trainiant les pieds. Il observe son reflet avec degout. Derriere lui s'etale le desordre de sa chambre. Il s'habille dans les vetements sales. Le faineant est pret pour sa sortie de chaque nuit.

Les rues sont vides cette nuit comme d'habitude, sauf pour les petits rats qui l'observent, les yeux brillants. Les le considerent l'un de leur espace, une personne qui fouille dans la nuit. Dans sa poche il y a une echarpe en dentelle, tres delicate et douce. Les nuages obscurs bloquent la lune claire et la nuit s'obscurcit. Le faineant regarde la scene, les yeux durs. Son coeur est toujours comme la nuit, sa lumiere bloquee.

Il arrive a sa destination. Une grille se dresse touchant les etoiles. Il eneleve l'echarpe de sa poche, tres delicate et douce. La grille, froide et dure, separe le fainenant du cimitiere qui s'entend derriere lui. Voila la taniere du chagrin. Il entre dans le cimitiere aux pas lents. Il peut sentir sa destination qui lui fait signe.

La petite echarpe en dentelle tombe a ses pieds. A l'imterieur, une force de faiblesse commence a monter. Le faineant s'effrondre a al vision de sa tombe. La pierre est cachee, les letrres difficiles a lire. Il crie d'une voix faible," O! Ma muse de tristesse! Ou etes-vous? Ma vie est devenue vide. Vos promesses sont vaines! Revenez-vous! Revenez-vous aupres de moi...." La nuit adsorbe sa voix. Il n'y a rien, ni personne. Le faineant est encore seul. Le visage pale, les cheveux en desordre, il regarde la lune, les yeux durs. Sans pleurer, sans emotion, tout seul. Il reste dans le cimitiere toute la nuit.

Le faineant ramasse la petie echarpe en dentelle. Le veille devient aube, il retourne chez lui comme d'habitude. Les rues sont encores vides. C'est le moment crepusculaire, la transformation de chaque nuit. La petite echarpe en dentelle reste dans la main, le seul symbole de sa sombre vie. Il s'approche du miroir et observe som reflet avec degout. Le visage pale, les cheveux en desordre comme d'habitude...

Prose

A town close to nowhere

Le faineant