written by Varenne
A life spent battling his emotion's hold over his ability to function; the brooding cripple upends another alarm clock with a flat fist of 5 AM EST reticence. One leg guides the other as the bed spread's sheets distended form flattens without a human body to keep it warm. Sitting up now with vapid eyes, Juan was as tired as any other workday morning, yet he felt a certain extra sense of helplessness as he spilled his cereal in little crushed up bits from his mouth, pallidly watching as they rained down on the Formica tabletop. Where indecipherable grumbles and mild curses once danced about in his rhetoric, now hung a languid, dejected sigh; on his best days, in his mind, he wouldn't utter a single word till well in to the early afternoon. He called himself a cripple, and with apologies to the millions who truly suffered some type of physical or mental handicap, he was right in this assessment. He flicked his pecker over the toilet, like a flower on a clown's lapel, and laughed at the exercise in futility called Friday morning. He then took to his dream journal and scribbled down some hasty notes:
I
Morning greets you with a mountain you must climb to merely make this day no different than the rest. Legs like brittle stumps of a pine tree, blood pumping slow, brains like a sieve; yet clinging to dreams of endless sleep is altogether pathetic. Pointing out the obvious is all too painful and necessary in the endeavor to connect with other human beings while your brain is ablaze with cryptic witticisms and a desire for missives that in the midst of elucidating erudition, refute themselves. If you succeed in dissuading your brain from dwelling on certain key phrases, the mantras that have haunted your waking hours, those moments of craving for something remote and most likely long gone; if you succeed in taking control of your life instead of saying yes to everyone's hopes and expectations for you, then what have you done? What have you become? What were you before you became the thing everyone thought you ought to be? Or all along has it not been love that guided the sycophant's miserable longings? The myth of Sisyphus all too often devolved in to weary retreads of Albert Camus' nuance on the ultimate inquiry that, in fact, the ur-metaphor of one accursed man exuberantly pushing a boulder up a hill only to never reach the top could be almost universally regarded as a useful metaphor for life, and that in the effort to abscond from this solemn truth, suicide may be the only true expression of free will.
Juan delighted in discussing his favorite Greek parable with total strangers; he bought his groceries once a week with the explicit knowledge that he could secure at least 30 seconds of conversation with other bulk buying shoppers on their way to the egress. More often than not Juan found himself asking, "when you look in the mirror, do you see that same man desperately trying with every last ounce of strength and focus to achieve an impossible goal?" And most would have to agree, they knew the old fable as a part of the human condition; we want what we can't have, we test the limits of our personal fortitude, and in the search for the ideal end up not far from the mere idea itself. Nimbly, he would flip the scenario, "when I look in the mirror," he spoke, "I see the boulder." This leading to further discussion, as to what he could mean. "Well," he might struggle to articulate, "can you be both vain and completely hideous?" He continued, "I am caught in between the dream world and the one occupied by worldly desires. I know I offer nothing, but whimsical musings on the whatever my middling brain can process in the moment. I'm terribly sorry to have taken up your time, but is my belief that exposing you to an essentially useless side of civilized humanity will build incalculable strength at your ability to go on enjoying your life." Strangers were often aghast, or at least wholly exasperated, by the fury at which these words flew from his mouth. Indeed, he was self-serving to the point of being a parasite. These were the best days.
With 45 minutes to go till he knew absolutely had to get out the door, Juan returned to his journal and, marking a new heading, began spouting third person blank verse :
II
Milk seemed such a strange thing without childhood conditioning to crave that ecru nourishment. A brief struggle with lactose intolerance, and occasional digestive failures has not dissuaded him from consuming a gallon a week by his lonesome as far back as he could recall. There was a seeming weightlessness, if anything at all a paucity, to his consumption; the entire process brought him no earthly pleasure. Morrissey's moribund Peel Sessions screed begged the question of what rules what within the confines of the body and mind dichotomy, the legitimate struggle betwixt mind and body's conflicting desires within a single entity. Still Ill, yes, nonetheless, it was a gas to wonder why he didn't seek harmony in his description of this singular system we all inhabit simultaneously. Creation and chaos; the vertigo that comes from knowing you are just on the ride of your life and getting off cannot change anything; Camus' coup, like John Barth's Floating Opera, is the inquiry itself eventually leading an individual to see the uselessness of suicide as anything other than a purely selfish expression; the kind of ultimate masturbatory fantasy that only adolescents and burn outs concern themselves with. You're older and wiser, but only of how blithely deranged your outlook on the world was as a coddled youth. Building blocks of life; trite twenty year pop culture trends; it is all too much to bear without at least trying to strike a balance. But in an effort to make the ledger clean, do you not have to forsake someone or something? In our fears and hopes, are we hoping there will be someone to say goodbye to?
He couldn't help but take pause and ponder the absurdity of his habits and quotidian comforts: the utter hypocrisy of continuing to exist at all in this world weighed heavy on his mind. Winsome, yet inelegant, against the backdrop of a rising sun, his legs paced with the gait of morning stiffness as he proceeded to unlock his bike. He called himself a cripple, because he felt beat the hell up. He called himself a cripple, because he struggled with things most people would find to be involuntary, blood simple.
Juan pedaled slovenly; 2.5 miles to the call center's guarded gate. His bicycle was a dismal display of human engineering; in spite of his disabilities, ever proud of what little functionality he could eke out of his bones, he maintained his own equipment and the squeaking sounds of his gears and chain would make a more sophomoric passerby think of an old box spring plying two morbidly obese newlyweds. This daily commute brought no shortage of angsty sweat to the back, taint and feet of our quixotic cyclist. Amidst the blissful moments in the men's public washroom, assuaged by an oddly angled mirror, Juan would loudly mind to his smelly frame in the hopes of making today the best day yet. And who could blame a young man for holding out hope at all? Amidst the atmospheric unawareness so much of the opulent craving that fills our waking hours, there are moments when the spell is broke and the world is one the wiser.
Live alone, die alone; he held no grudges against those who may have given him quizzical or concerned looks in line at the grocery store upon noticing a basket full of various hand cremes, frozen vegetables, toilet paper and a lonely gallon of whole milk. Yes, it was better to make people turn inward and wonder what they had just seen, rather than bleed in to their world with his examinations. Yes, he was handsomely deformed, he was able to walk that finest line between blending in to a crowd of people and the dizzying precipice of total social isolation that geniuses, misers, misanthropes and the disfigured know all too well. And oh how he traipsed about that arbitrary border that our minds create to deny us our those wishes which we know in our heart of hearts will never materialize! Trying to teach the world to laugh at wish-fulfillment; seeing their selfish desires, that so celebrated goal, as arbitrary as what they would eat for dinner that night. His responsibilities at work had to wait a few more minutes, while he eked out another entry:
III
We hold up the corpse of another dead martyr, another bright white genius, a man of his time. Might it work to cut up the cadaver in to tiny bite size morsels and dole out samples with a toothpick and a napkin in the effort to distill his brilliance? Ought we extend this metaphor in to the realm of the written word and rework the already complete thoughts of someone who took the time and effort to create cogent analysis of this world we live in? Will his visage burn in to the canon of the greats? What was written in those tomes at the Library of Alexandria? What did the world lose that day? What did a dying man whisper to his aging canine companion while choking back salty tears? All these questions fill these fleeting, waking hours. I hold up a candle to the attic's ceiling and see a moth clumsily flutter it's way towards the light source...
A life spent battling his emotion's hold over his ability to function; the brooding cripple upends another alarm clock with a flat fist of 5 AM EST reticence. One leg guides the other as the bed spread's sheets distended form flattens without a human body to keep it warm. Sitting up now with vapid eyes, Juan was as tired as any other workday morning, yet he felt a certain extra sense of helplessness as he spilled his cereal in little crushed up bits from his mouth, pallidly watching as they rained down on the Formica tabletop. Where indecipherable grumbles and mild curses once danced about in his rhetoric, now hung a languid, dejected sigh; on his best days, in his mind, he wouldn't utter a single word till well in to the early afternoon. He called himself a cripple, and with apologies to the millions who truly suffered some type of physical or mental handicap, he was right in this assessment. He flicked his pecker over the toilet, like a flower on a clown's lapel, and laughed at the exercise in futility called Friday morning. He then took to his dream journal and scribbled down some hasty notes:
I
Morning greets you with a mountain you must climb to merely make this day no different than the rest. Legs like brittle stumps of a pine tree, blood pumping slow, brains like a sieve; yet clinging to dreams of endless sleep is altogether pathetic. Pointing out the obvious is all too painful and necessary in the endeavor to connect with other human beings while your brain is ablaze with cryptic witticisms and a desire for missives that in the midst of elucidating erudition, refute themselves. If you succeed in dissuading your brain from dwelling on certain key phrases, the mantras that have haunted your waking hours, those moments of craving for something remote and most likely long gone; if you succeed in taking control of your life instead of saying yes to everyone's hopes and expectations for you, then what have you done? What have you become? What were you before you became the thing everyone thought you ought to be? Or all along has it not been love that guided the sycophant's miserable longings? The myth of Sisyphus all too often devolved in to weary retreads of Albert Camus' nuance on the ultimate inquiry that, in fact, the ur-metaphor of one accursed man exuberantly pushing a boulder up a hill only to never reach the top could be almost universally regarded as a useful metaphor for life, and that in the effort to abscond from this solemn truth, suicide may be the only true expression of free will.
Juan delighted in discussing his favorite Greek parable with total strangers; he bought his groceries once a week with the explicit knowledge that he could secure at least 30 seconds of conversation with other bulk buying shoppers on their way to the egress. More often than not Juan found himself asking, "when you look in the mirror, do you see that same man desperately trying with every last ounce of strength and focus to achieve an impossible goal?" And most would have to agree, they knew the old fable as a part of the human condition; we want what we can't have, we test the limits of our personal fortitude, and in the search for the ideal end up not far from the mere idea itself. Nimbly, he would flip the scenario, "when I look in the mirror," he spoke, "I see the boulder." This leading to further discussion, as to what he could mean. "Well," he might struggle to articulate, "can you be both vain and completely hideous?" He continued, "I am caught in between the dream world and the one occupied by worldly desires. I know I offer nothing, but whimsical musings on the whatever my middling brain can process in the moment. I'm terribly sorry to have taken up your time, but is my belief that exposing you to an essentially useless side of civilized humanity will build incalculable strength at your ability to go on enjoying your life." Strangers were often aghast, or at least wholly exasperated, by the fury at which these words flew from his mouth. Indeed, he was self-serving to the point of being a parasite. These were the best days.
With 45 minutes to go till he knew absolutely had to get out the door, Juan returned to his journal and, marking a new heading, began spouting third person blank verse :
II
Milk seemed such a strange thing without childhood conditioning to crave that ecru nourishment. A brief struggle with lactose intolerance, and occasional digestive failures has not dissuaded him from consuming a gallon a week by his lonesome as far back as he could recall. There was a seeming weightlessness, if anything at all a paucity, to his consumption; the entire process brought him no earthly pleasure. Morrissey's moribund Peel Sessions screed begged the question of what rules what within the confines of the body and mind dichotomy, the legitimate struggle betwixt mind and body's conflicting desires within a single entity. Still Ill, yes, nonetheless, it was a gas to wonder why he didn't seek harmony in his description of this singular system we all inhabit simultaneously. Creation and chaos; the vertigo that comes from knowing you are just on the ride of your life and getting off cannot change anything; Camus' coup, like John Barth's Floating Opera, is the inquiry itself eventually leading an individual to see the uselessness of suicide as anything other than a purely selfish expression; the kind of ultimate masturbatory fantasy that only adolescents and burn outs concern themselves with. You're older and wiser, but only of how blithely deranged your outlook on the world was as a coddled youth. Building blocks of life; trite twenty year pop culture trends; it is all too much to bear without at least trying to strike a balance. But in an effort to make the ledger clean, do you not have to forsake someone or something? In our fears and hopes, are we hoping there will be someone to say goodbye to?
He couldn't help but take pause and ponder the absurdity of his habits and quotidian comforts: the utter hypocrisy of continuing to exist at all in this world weighed heavy on his mind. Winsome, yet inelegant, against the backdrop of a rising sun, his legs paced with the gait of morning stiffness as he proceeded to unlock his bike. He called himself a cripple, because he felt beat the hell up. He called himself a cripple, because he struggled with things most people would find to be involuntary, blood simple.
Juan pedaled slovenly; 2.5 miles to the call center's guarded gate. His bicycle was a dismal display of human engineering; in spite of his disabilities, ever proud of what little functionality he could eke out of his bones, he maintained his own equipment and the squeaking sounds of his gears and chain would make a more sophomoric passerby think of an old box spring plying two morbidly obese newlyweds. This daily commute brought no shortage of angsty sweat to the back, taint and feet of our quixotic cyclist. Amidst the blissful moments in the men's public washroom, assuaged by an oddly angled mirror, Juan would loudly mind to his smelly frame in the hopes of making today the best day yet. And who could blame a young man for holding out hope at all? Amidst the atmospheric unawareness so much of the opulent craving that fills our waking hours, there are moments when the spell is broke and the world is one the wiser.
Live alone, die alone; he held no grudges against those who may have given him quizzical or concerned looks in line at the grocery store upon noticing a basket full of various hand cremes, frozen vegetables, toilet paper and a lonely gallon of whole milk. Yes, it was better to make people turn inward and wonder what they had just seen, rather than bleed in to their world with his examinations. Yes, he was handsomely deformed, he was able to walk that finest line between blending in to a crowd of people and the dizzying precipice of total social isolation that geniuses, misers, misanthropes and the disfigured know all too well. And oh how he traipsed about that arbitrary border that our minds create to deny us our those wishes which we know in our heart of hearts will never materialize! Trying to teach the world to laugh at wish-fulfillment; seeing their selfish desires, that so celebrated goal, as arbitrary as what they would eat for dinner that night. His responsibilities at work had to wait a few more minutes, while he eked out another entry:
III
We hold up the corpse of another dead martyr, another bright white genius, a man of his time. Might it work to cut up the cadaver in to tiny bite size morsels and dole out samples with a toothpick and a napkin in the effort to distill his brilliance? Ought we extend this metaphor in to the realm of the written word and rework the already complete thoughts of someone who took the time and effort to create cogent analysis of this world we live in? Will his visage burn in to the canon of the greats? What was written in those tomes at the Library of Alexandria? What did the world lose that day? What did a dying man whisper to his aging canine companion while choking back salty tears? All these questions fill these fleeting, waking hours. I hold up a candle to the attic's ceiling and see a moth clumsily flutter it's way towards the light source...
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