by Tomorrow's Man
July 2001
Sunday, 1 July 2001
Welcome to Part II, 2001. It can only get weirder from here.
Monday, 2 July 2001
She was haunted. She had the face of a woman down. She had soft eyes with muscles ready for inevitable blows. Nails chewed. Smile scared. She knew the color of her skin bruised.
She had obviously worn large hoop earrings in her left ear at one time. Then, one night, the peace failed. The fists flew. The angry, fat fingers reached, grabbed, tore. As she took the order for my sandwich, someone behind the grill called her name. Her head came around quickly, answering the question. In the flick of her head, my stomach heaved. Her left earlobe had been divided into flaps; the two longest and most ragged tears in her flesh were the closest to her jaw. They had been torn in slightly different directions. They had never been sewn. When she moved her head, a trapezoid of flesh dangling between the remaining parts of her earlobe flapped back and forth, looking like a drip of fat waiting to drop.
The scabbed, yellowy wet area covering her face from her upper lip to her nostrils was awful, looking like she had taken a cigar lit-end to the face, but the flapping chunks of her earlobe was one of the most ghastly things I have ever seen.
Tuesday, 3 July 2001
SATAN WEARS WHITE PANTS ONE SIZE TOO LARGE.
000007000004000002001
happy, to you, on this day of july, it matters more today, than before, but time is just as foggy, now, as it was, two days before, i can hear the secrets, sliding, through the dells, i can guess the trouble, lying, between her thighs, it all has that same, oppresive thick smell, the humidity of HUMAN from which I've
never been able to
crawl.
Thursday, July 5 2001
I am a nice boy I am a new toy I was a fried food I am a new wood I am a smart guy I am a tsetse fly I could be a loud fart I could be a crowd of larks I was once a curdled moat I am not a murder of crows I had tapped the beak upon a bird and it gave each and every one of these words.
Friday, July 6 2001
You know what I'd hate? I'd hate it if I bought two of these caffeine-free diet-Cokes with the $1,000,000 prize underneath the cap, and I put one in the fridge and opened the other one which, of course, would say PLEASE PLAY GAME AGAIN or DRINK COKE, and then went home and got brutally murdered by a maniac, and then someone else took my coke from the fridge the next day because I was dead and they drank it and won a million dollars. Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't like that.
I better go open that other one now.
Saturday, July 7 2001
There's nothing quite as nice as hitting a snack of 600 pieces of paper. Yum!
Sunday, July 8 2001
I have to wonder how the toilet seat got all scratched up like that. I mean, it's a toilet seat; generally soft things touch it, no?
It looks like countless insects were scrabbling across the smooth surface, which is sloped toward the bowl, using their many little clawed legs to try to prevent sliding backward to a drowning death.
Scratches and claw marks; most shallow enough to seem like the efforts were futile, some deeply scarred and suggestive of a survivor.
This might not be the best thought to have when about to use the toilet...
Monday, July 9 2001
Why do my hands feel this way...sticky smooth, like teflon...quarters and flowers just fall out of them...my rings slip off like Saturn's own gone awry...I fall and I'm helpless across surfaces...I glance from piano keys, silence...
...my hands are friction free.
Tuesday, July 10 2001
I reflect colors, but only to the developed eye
otherwise
I exist as grey, the shade of the back of the sky,
I appear as the hue of that spot on your retina,
that place
where I am blind,
Close your right eye, move toward me,
in moments I disappear, hear me breathe,
close your left eye, reach out,
I can see, and blindly,
I will catch you.
Wednesday, July 11 2001
He said, "Of all the people in the world who want to suck me off, I bet you are the least aware of it."
Not a bad pickup line -- except that it was directed at me.
Thursday, 12 July 2001
A classic cigarette high and a bumblebee on my left shoulder made for this morning's interesting ride.
He alighted to me as I entered Orient Heights Station in the hills of East Boston, the unknown suburban glory of this coast's Restaurant Zone. He sat there determined - he had that look in his eyes of hey, would you mind?, quizzical, obviously hoping he was being unassuming. I saw no reason to query.
The few SIPs (Somewhat Inteliigent Person(s); they run a ratio of about 1:8 on the MBTA) along the Blue and Red lines bemused from their newspapers and novels at my passenger; but the real interest for me lay in the Usual's faces, masks of xenophobic terror: me in my tall black boots, short black shorts, black tee and dark glasses, with a hefty bumblebee on my left shoulder, alighted. The problem may have been that he (she? I can't remember if bumblebees are gendered) did not put out his wee cigarette...I'm sure at the opposite end of the train it appeared my shoulder was smouldering. No wonder the riders seemed jumpy.
Departing the train at Harvard Square Station, he stayed with me along the upward escalator rides (still free in Boston; so far). At the street, he beezed away, off to find the particular deciduous petal he sought.
It was strange. A bumblebee smoking a cigarette. But I have to say, I was more impressed with Nikon; I had no idea they made cameras that small.
Friday, 13 July 2001
We came out of the restaurant and the sky opened. They elected to stay in the square and wait out the downpour engaged in shopping; I chose to run for it.
I made it a fifth of a block before seeking refuge in the Dunkin' Donuts on the corner of Eliot Street - I was already soaked; the 10 minute run back to work would have qualified me as piscean.
I bought a coffee. It was really coming down. I decided to run across the street to a pub and call my boss - I was going to be back late from lunch. I made it to the pub slightly but not slightly enough, wetter. I left Boss a message and walked outside under the pub's awning. I sipped my coffee, watched the cats and dogs drop. Saw the Dunkin' Donuts across the street - and realized that I had left my sunglasses on their service counter.
I held my breath, ran again.
Wetter.
I walked into the D 'n D. As soon as I saw the spot on the countertop where my sunglasses were not, I remembered that I had put them atop the pay phone, back in the pub.
God am I stupid I thought accurately.
Sipped coffee, held breath, ran again.
At my arrival back beneath the bar's awning, I knew I was just as wet as I would have been had I simply hoofed it back to work.
Went to the payphone. And remembered that since I started the Atkins Diet (204 to 174 thank you very much) and now put Equal in my iced coffee instead of sugar so always stopped at the trash counter to add the artificial sweetener and dispose of the little empty blue paper packet on my way out and often put my sunglasses down on that counter that that was exactly what I had done this time which was why my sunglasses were not on the payphone in the bar.
Friday the Thirteenth eats my brain, I thought; accurately.
Didn't bother holding my breath or running. I got half-way across the street when I used my left hand to wipe my sodden forehead and of course found my sunglasses, perched atop my head.
The minute I touched them, the sun broke through the clouds and the rain ceased.
The storming clouds' deluge had lasted about three-and-a-half minutes. The Charlie Brown Cloud over my head lasted well into the evening.
Saturday, 14 July 2001
Someone drunk or I don't know chucked a honeydew at the back of the old grey church. It was a two-pounder and hit with the force of five, a splat like nine.
A moment's silence was just begging to be filled by uh-oh golly giggles and some obliged; but they faded with the flapping.
From above, from behind, from every tree and flagpole and live power line came the crows.
You shoulda seen them pecking and preening, getting sticky, a caw party. It was or musta been like a damned Crow Christmas.
Sunday, 15 July 2001
I woke up at 4 AM to relieve the bladder, one of those nights when we fell asleep after a carbo-loaded dinner around 10, lights and telly still blaring.
From the bathroom, I heard her scream. I ran back to the bedroom - to see her sitting stock-straight up in bed, eyes glazed with terror...and staring at my pillow.
"What?!?"
She didn't have to answer - before the 't' left my lips, a two-and-a-half inch centipede crawled out from beneath my pillow and bee-lined beneath the sheets. She was out of the bed, quickly.
It was tan, it was large, and it BRISTLED. No other way to describe it. A scorpion would have been less menacing; at least on those, all the nasty bits are pointed right at you, unwavering. This thing - the size of a mouse - had lashes and limbs flailing in every direction, the body moving horror-story fast along a multitude of invisibly quick connections with the floor.
Stunned. Good word for the moment - until it ran out of the bed, making a break for the far end of the room. I think I let out a squeak. I could hear the ever-so-quietest tapping, so much tapping.
She grabbed a glass and slammed it down in a vector that should have trapped it; but it turned at her shadow and she caught it across the middle. A tiny twig snapping, then the rest is Stephen King territory: black ichor (now I know why that word is used in horror writing) gelled out of it's mandibled end, pooling into two luminous eye-like balls where the face of its crushed body had split with the pressure; and the legs, the fronds, the antennae, somehow, for some ghastly reason of nature's own, exploded off of the body. When I lifted the glass, there was a four-inch radius of twitching, writhing joints and limbs, still running, still running.
We watched Comedy Central for a while. Standing up. I was not in a rush to get back to bed. Especially not with Loretta, my fat black cat, staring intently at a hole in the bottom mattress, his ears cocked, listening to somethings....
Monday, 16 July 2001
When the three of us had passed him earlier in the day, he was corners by three tourists, anxiously fingering their cameras and umbrellas at this live-action close-up of "Boston." He was a young squirrel, an adolescent, his fur still downy and thin tail shedding. He was pressed twitching against the abutment part of a low brick wall surrounding one of the Harvard dormitories. I heard them say to each other, "Is it hurt? I wonder if we should call someone! Did you get a picture? Did you?" Only by looking over my right shoulder as I passed did I see the frightened little beast, quivering against the bricks, tail snapping as if he wished for a whip.
I stopped, returned three steps, and said into their midst, "He is not hurt, he is afraid -- because you have him surrounded. And if you don't let him be he is probably going to bolt either into traffic or right at one of you, teeth bared. No telling what those critters carry." I moved away. I felt I did the little guy a good deed, and it's always satisfying to be able to make people slowly back away...from a squirrel...in fear of their safety.
Later that afternoon, when I left work for the day, I passed by the same corner. He was in the gutter, dead. There is no way for me to know the how or the why.
I felt ill. People, pets, any animal; the ambulatory: seeing something alive and then dead, just dead, murders me. I die a bit with them. First seeing that little guy in distress -- whether caused by his insensitive accosters, a speeding car, or otherwise -- made his death hurt me more. The knowledge that I never could have helped him did not cure the burn, the pitting feeling that consumed my evening.
I was crippled by helplessness.
Tuesday, 17 July 2001
If fishes had wishes they wouldn't want for sea, we'd all be pearl divers and cheer breath-holding teams as baseball recedes, concerts would be played with natural full-bellied flange (for thousands of miles we'd all listen for free), and earthquakes would become holiday events as we picnic on the bladdered green nostrum of Count Mattei from the Caspian to newly-formed Arizona Bay.
Wednesday, 18 July 2001
Insects and spiderwebs visibility sneaking below ten feet I wander with them to the lake in this mist and watch the swans and their new babies three -- one white, one gray, one solid black -- the perfection of a natural spiral complete my steps echo their rhythm as their wings pat the lake then the sky and with them turning on heel I spiral away.
Thursday, 19 July 2001
Maybe it's just me, but I think the bathroom should be a safe haven; a place of contemplation. Whether you're going in there the day after Thanksgiving with the Bible in hand or just headed in to relieve the morning's first trickle of processed coffee, it should be an experience that removes you from the steady rush of the day-in-time.
In other words, there should not be all these scratch marks on the toilet seat. And when I lift it, there should certainly not be fresh splashes of blood on the bottom of the seat and the top of the bowl. And by no means can I accept as part of bathroom tranquility the quite large black dragonfly on the ceiling, a good three inches in length, wings twitching. And the moans coming from under the sink where I can just see the bloated plastic of a trash bag pinched between the doors (which strangely enough are bound together with rubber bands) do not do it for me at all.
I think I'll hold it.
Friday, 20 July 2001
Here is my smile, tight but true: I place it in a bottle and skip it to you across the waves; I label it POST and send it PAR AVION; I start the small plane and write it in thick loopy smoke script across the cerulean blue; I tie it in the delicate strings of a silkworm's travail and attach it with a gilt clip to the leg of this cooing dove and throw it into the air, soaring; I buy it a beautiful pea-green boat, wrap it in a five-pound note, and hide it for you in the owl's madolin; after he falls asleep, seek it within, wrapped in the red rice paper of ages.
It is for you.
Saturday, 21 July 2001
In the pictures of images are the infinite colors of the thoughts that I see as movies in my mind while dreaming and flying (lucid) above the sand, gazing down to the patterns of wind-whipped silicate that form pictures of images and infinite colors of the thoughts that I see...
Sunday, 22 July 2001
I live my life by the keys in "The Simpson's Theme."
No I don't.
Yeah...I do..............
Dough..................nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuutsss..............
Monday, 23 July 2001
You...you didn't know I was watching you? I have been for so...for so long now. You're the reason I got the binoculars. Yes, the ones with night-vision. Because sometimes you come out at dusk. I can, on occasion, see letters from my name traces by the drifts of sand kicking into the wind from your feet as you cross the beach, your head down in contemplation, or maybe just watching out for the cut of mollusk shells. I see the line of your neck in the dusk. I see the smile on you; in July, the pink of the sky matches your lips. I began watching...when you began watching me...
Tuesday, 24 July 2001
Pieces of puzzles, I can see where they'd fit, make this picture painfully clear, this diorama of my conscience lodged with great friction deep in my throat; I can not speak unless I bleed, I can not know until I deny I Am America: I bend to bruised knees for everything I am, for everything I believe; and, choking, by choice, I cough, I gasp, muzzled.
Wednesday, 25 July 2001
A silent revelation, our zero-sum equation, large black bags empty of their bodies that smiled for this: capitalism: the best example of our worst collective dream, keep sucking so the blood will flow, keep the tubes clear so I can follow the rest of you toward my own laughing black bag now emptied but for my ancestor's crusted resin, emptied and open and waiting.
Thursday, 26 July 2001
Ron does not look like Noel Gallagher. Richard does not look like Noel Gallagher. Karla certainly does not look like Noel Gallagher, nor do Marianne, Jen, Jess, or Michelle. Hank does not look like Noel Gallagher or his brother Liam. Kat and Steve, nope, bear not even a vague resemblance to Noel Gallagher. Carrie and Chloe, Elaine and Evan, Brenna and Brett and all of the Mikes, even that Briton down at the pub; none look a jot like Noel Gallagher. I know no one who looks like Noel Gallagher.
Nate. Nate does. A little.
Just a little.
Friday, 27 July 2001
Our infrastructure can dissolve into the tide, metropolii succumbing as scattered pebbles sliding into the shush of the sea, everything we know can be devoured by the quiet click of a virus, every light can eyelash-bat into the darkness of spaceís imploding collapse, yet still with this sense of sound I can hear the voices of angels, true human angels, singing with their flesh into the middle of my brain.
Saturday, 28 July 2001
The distance between silent spaces: Rhythm. The distance between silent spaces filled with a clang, a beat, a pop. The distances between the silent spaces fill with a snare, a tom, a crashhhhhh. The rain falls, listen. The rain falls, rhythm. The silent spaces between the drops get shorter, are shrinking, the silent spaces between the drops are smaller, decreasing. Hear the rhythm. In rain drops. Hear the rhythm. In rain dropping, falling, hitting, filling the silent spaces with rhythm. Each drop, a snare, each drop, a tom, each drop, a kick, a boom, a bong, a crashhhhhh...
The rain stops; then the smell
of a match
going out.
Sunday, 29 July 2001
Not looking forward to going to work tomorrow, not after such a lovely warm weekend of laughter and love...I can already tell it's going to be one of those Mondays where I find out at 4:53 that my clock, for no Earthly reason, somehow glitched ahead 13 minutes.
4:40 P.M. Monday. Just awful.
Monday, 30 July 2001
Her laugh is light, her company great, we get along like siblings as co-workers, and the story she tells shows my teeth in smiles; an email reveals my lover loves me; my mother is fine, my boss is on vacation, and it is sunny and 80 degrees outside; perfect.
It's 4:40 on Monday.
Okay. Not so bad.
Tuesday, 31 July 2001
I could have sworn July had 30 days. 30 days hath September, April, June and November; when did July slip out? Was there a vote? Some sort of trade deadline reached, July trading off three of its warmer days for two of November's cooler ones? I guess I'll have to wait for November and see if it has 29 this year. Show February a thing or two.
Wednesday, 1 August 2001
Recovered and transcribed Texticity from drowned notebook, dated 04/01/01:
Okay, I have no confidence that I will hold onto this pen. Salt water. It is 6 AM. I have heard my thoughts make red the dreams of [unreadable] sleepers.
I dance with the bats, [unreadable] on the fears of soberers.
[unreadable] with the lice of lovers. A family, we.
These lyrics...they say a storm is coming. And the sky is the grey of rabbits that certainly don't seem to be in a rush to hold off carroting down into their comfy holes. I don't blame them. It is cold out here, the cold of a thumbs-up to being born with fur.
The salt water is bashing at my knees, scything waves leaping in gouts that eschew the stiff state of ice; and this pen, the felt tip that it is, impressively writes on, crackling.
Thursday, 2 August 2001
Some things are worth waiting for, she said.
Like a sandwich in your pocket. A bolt of sunlight through the rain, warming your kitten's fur with a rainbow. A check in the mailbox. The snowman melting outside, beyond your window and hot chocolate. A dream of flying, of love, of joy. More and more music. Waking to the susurrus of the sea each morning. This coming Saturday, and the next, and the next. The kiss of your lover united at your heart, a kiss from the stranger united at the mind; a kiss, a kiss, a kiss.
Friday, 3 August 2001
The bass-Clef on my screen sings to me in tones that shake my bones, a 3/4 time that trip-hammers my heart with spirals and the desire to reach out and in, I grasp at the white and feel chalk grease my hands, I hear it slipping behind my oblique mind that used not to see what I mean, but now understand; that the bass is a voice, the words a prayer, and even if you dream without this tonight, tomorrow the world, to you, will sing.
Saturday, 4 August 2001
I have cried enough tears to fill your skin.
Sunday, 5 August 2001
In August, the red dragonflies begin to hatch in the cool crevices of the huge boulders along the beach. The boulders look bowled as if by giants. The boulders line the concrete beach wall to bolster coastal storm resistance. The boulders retain much rainwater and morning dew in their deep, dark hollows; you could lose babies down there.
If you stand by the boulders long enough, let the days bleed away into the hot red sky, the hatchlings will emerge for you. With their six-packs of sharp insect-feet they climbs from the stone belly and into the late afternoon light, their red bodies and fire-veined wings glistening. Dragonflies.
Their wings need to dry before they can fly.
But in the late afternoon 'round here, the seabreeze tends to kick up its velocity, becomes a Harley Wind, and speeds toward the red setting sun.
If you stand by the boulders long enough, you will feel the pricks of mini red crucifixes with an extra cross beam (Was there an insect Christ? Were the dragonflies as Romans?) as they bounce off your cheeks and get confused in your hair. The Harley Breeze is too tempting, and the red riders must lift their quintet of damp wings, perhaps never wondering if they will dry in time to land vs. gravity.
In a strong enough breeze, even we don't need wings.
Turn your back, open your eyes, let them find their own way out of the tangle of your hair. It does not hurt much. And the experience is one worth telling. You, the red setting sun; You, and the Harley Gusts; You, alone, in a Hail of Dragonflies.
Monday, 6 August 2001
It's got a warm plate of voodoo
and I'm melted in the curd's skin
I'm tasty as a salt lick with razor blades, ooh,
watch out watch out watch your thirst there, doe,
watch where you put your tongue, little doe,
'cos you just might get bled
by this salty me in a man's curdy skin
you just might get served
up
a plate of warm voodoo.
Tuesday, 7 August 2001
Everything: What you believe, when you believe it, and why, why, WHY right now, right now, you need it.
Wednesday, 8 August 2001
Maybe I just imagine writing this. Maybe the spit on my hands isn't mine, maybe it's viscous, not lubricating, maybe it has another motive, Maybe it got on me somewhere else: in the taxi from Cambridge, on the plane from Madison, on the train from Providence.
Maybe I didn't tell you that mixing concentrated frozen orange juice with gasoline and funneling the mixture into your enemy's computer monitor during the night causes a deadly, brutal murder by way of explosive [there are other keys to this; don't try to unlock a door with your shoulder my friend, you'll just get the rest of your torso eaten by fire, charred like marshmallow, remorseless] should that be your vein.
Maybe I just imagine writing this. Maybe this is my imitation, selling my twisted truths.
Wait. MY twisted truths?
I guess I can't fault them.
Or yours, heh.
Sucker, fucker, murderer, deceiver; these and those you may be. I guess, to prevent a further layer of hypocrisy from settling on my soul like bacon fat, I should listen to the voices I call myself.
I am listening.
And I am speaking.
Oh boy.
I am speaking.
I imagine...nothing.
Thursday, 9 August 2001
Hot. Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot 100 Degrees Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Effing Hot So Stupidly Armageddonly Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot Hot and yes I typed every one of these Hots by hand just to bloody-mind the point across about how Hot Hot Hot it is.
Friday, 10 August 2001
See this? It's society falling apart. A five year old and an eight year old beating the living hell out of each other on the train, 7:45 A.M., two unsupervised boys engaged in ultra-violence. Twenty-five of us adults sit around them, poorly ignoring the younger child's screams. I turn up my walkman, but even Marilyn Manson can't drown out the wail of the younger as the older twists the small arm behind the small boy's back. Just before I leap to my feet teeth bared, fissts clenched and unsure of why they are, a woman standing next to them whirls and turns beet red screaming that she's going to murder them if they don't cut the everloving shit.
I'm shaking. Music loud and hurting. Society, falling apart. Must be this heat.
Storms're coming today.
Saturday, 11 August 2001
I don't have anything in my head. Empty, echoes, cavern. There's a shadow on the back of my skull; it's me, walking around in the cranial twilight. There's nothing in here. Empty, but for me, and my echoes, my heartbeat lub-dubbing off of the walls of my skull. My hand is small on this inner surface. It is rough, like the inside of an avacado skin. You could slough your face clean with the inside of my skull. Odd thought, but true. These are the kinds of things that float around in here when there is nothing else but the big empty, the echoes, and you.
Sunday, 12 August 2001
Apples bananas and cherries, apples bananas cherries and limes, limes and thyme we make a pie, with bananas and cherries and limes, bananas and mangoes and limes, mangoes and limes we make a pie, with mangoes and pineapple and time, with mangoes pineapples and thyme, ginger and nutmeg, cardamon and thyme, and apples and cherries, bananas and limes, with time we make our pies, with time we make our pies, with time.
Monday, 13 August 2001
Spam. Not the email; the meat.
Tuesday, 14 August 2001
I am about to be married. 17 days, less or less. I think I am handling the "stress 'n reality" quite well.
Some men will run screaming into the night when the ol' "s 'n r" hit, jibbering like they're on muscle relaxants and blowing a digeridoo. Usualy, they're naked or baked (notice only a one letter difference in those words).
Some men stare blankly at a comic strip. Some men get REALLY INTO sports, any sports, even CURLING is to die for. Some men just pull their teeth out with pliers and blather like Jim Carrey.
Some men blame the gods. Some men blames their moms, or their dads, or, most often, their exes.
Some men wonder just what in toasty Hell they are doing; then run screaming into the night, or screaming into the hills, or screaming into the ocean; naked. Or baked. Of course.
Some men consult their best friends - all married - about the stereotypes of marriage, the best friends who say oh ha, and ho ho hee, oh hee hee ha ha, we hope you like porn. Want some? and smirk over their high-proof libation.
Some men just drool. Some men cry.
Me?
I did none of the above. Well, I borrowed some porn. Just in case.