between moments

wasting away

2006-06-17T01:47:00.000-04:00

Tristan’s frequency floods my consciousness now; twisted strains of orchestral anarchy ...

is that Jimmy fucking Buffett?

Man, T, you are one sick bastard.

pink panther

2006-06-14T12:44:00.000-04:00

Alright, you motherfucker.

You want me to face up to this, face into it, lie face down in it until it fucking drowns me?

Fine.

I was born of a clear cold night on an island that doesn’t exist, to a man with no woman and a woman with no man, and before I was born my mind split in two and Lucy took the other half.

I was raised in the moonlight on the edge of the tide on an island that doesn’t exist, and everything I ever needed was ripped away from me. My other half was gone.

But she doesn’t exist and neither do I.

She’s a fucking doll, Tristan.

And so am I.

And so is Aliss, who yes, clearly, was always Alicia. Alicia trying to give me a second chance. Alicia kicking tango with dear Lucy, fencing nearly fearless with my soul.

And you, old Tristan, are also a fucking doll. Made of stuffing and sawdust and buttons and rope. Not that it matters; we could be marrow and flesh and hair and we’d still be what we are.

But you wanted to be a fucking Pinocchio, Tristan. You wanted it more than any of the rest of us. Cut the strings, cut the strings, cut the strings.

There are no fucking strings, Tristan!

The strings are inside us, wound around our little rubber hearts, threaded through our arteries. Web of subcutaneous fiberglass fat that rides beneath our cotton skins.

You can’t make those strings shrivel up and die by flooding the system with poison, Tristan. Biker Joe, A.P. – you’re not going to get anywhere with that. They don’t know what you think they know, and even if they did they would die before they told you.

They would die, Tristan, before they told you. Because their little doll hearts beat blacker than yours, and each and every one of them wants to be the man in the pink jumpsuit.

brokedown palace

2006-06-11T23:31:00.000-04:00

Tristan's been watching me for days now. Not even trying to hide it. The frequency squawks straight through my skull; echoes of Lucy's laughter mixed in with the electromagnetic hum. Soon there won't be anything left of me.

Or her.

Or him.

They know this as well as I do, and yet I can hear in Lucy’s laughter that her abandon is true. Ironic that she inhabited a prison much more tangible than mine all these years, when I’m the one whose always been stuck. Frozen in fear.

That was the thing with Alicia – the reason I lost her. No -- the reason I never really had her. (As much as any force could ever possess an entity like Alicia.)

She could always smell my fear. And eventually she realized it was a permanent stench. Nothing she could give me, nothing she could show me, was going to take it away.

And Tristan smelled like freedom. Christ, Tristan smelled like Teen Spirit.

Hey asshole – thanks for stealing my girlfriend!

Heh. It’s funny because I know you can actually hear me. Like, I Actually Know. You can positively fucking hear me.

Maybe if I’d been able to feel like this sooner, under different circumstances, we wouldn’t be here in the first place. Or rather, the last. Manic laughter, finger on the button. End of the world in a fit of nitrous giggles. A blaze of numb, nihilist glory.

That’s what you want, I know. And nobody’s going to stop you. Not even K3.

eternal sunshine of the waterslide

2006-06-03T18:26:00.000-04:00

This place is clearly not on Picar.

And yet, it so clearly is. There’s that whispering in my ears, above and below the thwum-thwum of the machinery: the saline shhhh, shhhh of the seashell. And just a minute (hour? day?) ago, I caught the unmistakable whiff of Lucy. Lemon and licorice, thunderstorm ozone. All my little hairs stood on end.

My vision is clearing, but only slightly. A glowy gauze remains. Sounds are becoming more crisp, though still elusive around the edges. I think I might be a bit cold.

The funny thing is, I feel okay. Like a decade of tension has been drained from me. I suspect I may be under the influence of some force that has been intentionally designed to make me feel this way, and perhaps I should be wary of such an attempt to lower my defenses. But the effect has been so comprehensive as to render me completely unperturbed by this notion. I feel good – I don’t give a shit what happens next.

And I can see it all unfolding, like a stone rolling downhill. Green grass, sunshine and gravity. I’m not precisely sure of the details, but I’m heading toward the lake. I’m walking. This is where I’m supposed to be.

fractured

2006-05-29T15:59:00.000-04:00

The circle is masked to me. This is a first. The eyes that stare out from those deep wells of obscurity are hostile, unfamiliar. The energy is blocked. No flow.

Something has gone horribly wrong.

the geometry of darkness

2006-05-26T02:04:00.000-04:00

I had an uncle once – my father’s twin. Twins, twins – dig back far enough and I spect this family is prlly full of em.

Fair twin, dark twin. Twin of innocence; twin of crime. Poles and counterpoles.

But this is not true, not at all. None of us are innocent.

And what about the triplets? Do they whirl around in circles, looking for weighted circumstance to give meaning to their lives?

I digress.

Picar leads me northeast this night, along the curving western coastline. The tides are slack and silent; the inlets sparkle in the moonlight. I could stand in the dry darkness of the caves and make them echo.

But not tonight.

Tonight I head around the bend to Parallax Point, which you will never find for as long as you search. You must simply walk in its direction, and if you are meant to make discovery, you will.

If you should find the Point you will know it by these things: a flickering fire; a circle of shadowy figures. And they will chant from beneath their hooded robes just to scare you; to bring you into that wavery nightmarish place of hot sparks and uncertainty in the inky blackness of night vision ruptured by flame. The chant means nothing; the robes are mere costume. Ritual and illusion: remember this. You will only fall if it is your desire.

And tonight, again, at long last, it my desire.

My need.

gorilla-proof

2006-05-25T23:44:00.000-04:00

This island is not that small. The eco-tourists who have the balls to come here think they can hike n bike the circumference in a week’s time, and are invariably surprised when they’re still hundreds of miles from their final destination on the day they’re due to fly out. Fly home; back to the civilized world where topography plays by cartography’s rules.

Because Picar on the map looks like your average ordinary week-long adventure island. A couple hundred miles of gorgeous coastline; crescent beaches and sea cliffs and switchback trails. Sun, sand and surf.

But Picar on the ground is a whole different story. It doesn’t matter how expensive your compass or detailed your atlas, you won’t find your way unless the island says you will. Unless yours stars and moons are right.

And there’s hazard in that, too -- because chances are you still won’t end up where you intended.

But there’s nothing to be done about that. It’s out the window I go, in the pale light of half-past midnight. Slippers, robe, old red backpack filled with things we never understand.

K3 is calling again.

leaky boats sink fast

2006-05-25T14:36:00.000-04:00

The problem with Jemima (or one of them, anyway) is that she talks too much. Way too much. Does not understand the weight of silence, and how it can hold things down that need to be kept in place.

Flight has become necessary. Something I should have realized days ago. Those who wish to help can only harm, themselves and others. Possibly me as well.

Jesus! That woman …

through the looking glass

2006-05-23T23:23:00.000-04:00

I’m not really here.

That is to say, I am not where I should be.

And where I am ... I don’t think this place really exists.

It’s like an upside-down inside-out underground. Everything is kind of blurry. There’s this constant thwum-thwum humming like machinery. A computer. A giant computer.

Am I inside a computer?

But no, this place is organic. There’s pink. There’s a voice or two floating around, unmistakably human -- though currently indecipherable. Has my hearing gone blurry too?

I can smell lake water. Incongruous, I know – but I’d recognize that smell anywhere. Damp black earth, rich and crumbly. Green leaves that rustle; pine needles falling with silent grace. Absolutely – there’s a lake nearby.

Unless my sense of smell has been compromised as well?

No – the lake is in my soul. On this I am not deceived.

But where the fuck am I?

gravity rides everything

2006-05-16T13:11:00.000-04:00

There are some things that are so true you can’t believe them; you spend your whole life fighting against their weight. Any son of Picar should know his life will always be someone else’s game to play. Free will, self determination – these thing exist, for sure. But on the small island where I was born there are other forces in motion – forces that supercede even the strongest of wills to pursue one’s own reality.

You can escape these forces for a while, but only because they let you. Which is, of course, no escape at all. And eventually you end up right back where you started: drenched in an ocean cave, tides turning ebb, draining your life force back to the sea. Vampire tides.

There will be moonlight on your face, as you lie flat on your back within the arch of the cave. Chest heaving, hair matted, patches of sand clinging to your chilled skin. There will be a presence all around you – a presence you cannot see (of course) but can most certainly feel. And those childhood ghost stories – all that legend and campfire bullshit -- will suddenly be true. K3 will have come for you.

It doesn’t matter if you’re of native or colonial blood; karaii or karaiia -- you can see from the words themselves how unimportant such a distinction is. What matters are your moons – the ones you were born under – and whether they can tap your tides. Conduct you like a circuit board; an electrified marionette.

And yeah, there’s power to be had in going with the flow, especially if your tides are strong. You can surf it, kinda. It’ll get you high. Riding that cresting wave of energy, hundreds of thousands of years of everything K3 has come to be. Not one man – not even a king. So much more than that.

But there’s always a wipeout in the end. An ocean cave, ebb tides. Gasping for breath as the rippling moonlight takes everything away from you. And each time it takes more than you thought you had, until you find yourself inhabiting negative space. You no longer exist.

Boo.

nine tenths of the law

2006-05-15T00:18:00.000-04:00

No, I don’t think Aliss is one of them. I think she’s mixed up in it now, somehow, and if I discover it’s my fault I’ll probably try to kill myself all over again.

What am I saying? Of course it’s my fault – if it wasn’t she wouldn’t be involved. She’d still be here. Or ... wherever she is when she’s not with them.

Which is most certainly where she currently is. With Them. Fuck. And she probably has no idea what’s going on. How could she? Aliss knows a lot about a lot, but who could ever grok K3 unless they were allowed?

I can only imagine what kind of scenery they’ve painted for her; what the hell they’ve said about me. Have they cast me as a twisted monster? Pathetic nutjob? I guess neither is far from the truth if you’re standing in a certain light. But neither one is accurate without the proper context, either (is anything?) and if she believes them I’ll never be able to reach her.

Fucking Lucy.

She ... oh, SHE – she’s been with them all along. I know this now. She didn’t just show up on my doorstep. She was sent. And she didn’t need my help to find her way back to Picar. K3 could have deposited her on Jemima’s doorstep anytime she wanted. Or at least, anytime they wanted.

Maybe that’s how they p0wned her.

things fall apart

2006-05-13T02:06:00.000-04:00

The new “nurse” has disappeared (no surprise there) but her visit has been memorable. Heh. Fuck. To say the least.

She was in my room last night, all moonlight on the edge of the bed, and maybe it was just a crazy lucid dream like I used to have – I don’t know. Maybe they’ve started cooking my meds into my jello because they know I’m not fucking taking them.

Anyway. I wake up and her tart little face is in mine, slanting angles and a strange softness, and her bony fingers wrapped around my wrist. Cold hands.

“He needs to get out,” she whispers, dark eyes shining. “Please don’t try to stop us.” The look on my face must have been saying something, because she smiles then, a hint of menace, and squeezes my wrist.

And I get a flash – like a video montage – of the whole damn thing. From the beginning. Cochrech’s easy smile, that first day in class, feet up and chair tilted back but eyes oh-so alert. Camping at crater lake: firelight, rustling underbrush, snapped twigs, that blur in the woods, terror and exhilaration and acid shakes in the sleeping bag all night. The knives, the blood, the scars. The freefall into sweet, all-seeing oblivion. And then graduation, K3 in the shade of the greening maples, smoking his damn cigar. So fucking cliché, all of it. Which is exactly why it worked.

And I had forgotten it all – all but Tristan’s name, Tristan’s face. And a hazy narrative in my head that matched not at all the truth I’d just remembered. How the fuck did that happen?

“Alicia,” I blurted out – surprised the both of us. She looked excited but scared. Glanced around in classic paranoid fashion, then leaned in close.

“Leo,” she said, but it became a kiss before it was ever fully a word, my name, her lips, her hips pressed hard against mine, sliding over my prone body, knees to either side, but she kept sliding and then she was gone. Nothing left but a trace of cinnamon and me to wonder if I’d just woken up – or if I was still sleeping.

Alicia.

Tristan.

Good Christ, is that what this is all about?

Then that makes Lucy ... and Aliss too?

Oh, hell.

dropped?

2006-05-12T23:12:00.000-04:00

What the fuck? New Nurse just came in and snatched the Adidas off the trunk. Looked me right in the eye as she squeezed it in her firm little hand. “Tristan needs this,” she says. Struts the fuck out.

Tristan?

If she means Tristan Cock-Wreck my whole sideways world just went upsidedown.

buns

2006-05-10T21:55:00.000-04:00

New nurse today. Weird. Curvy little brown slip of a thing, breezed in with my tray of fucking jello and wafted out again on a cloud of ... cinnamon? Twitch of the hips in her tight little uniform, underneath which she was clearly not wearing granny panties. Come to think of it, none of the other nurses dress like that. They all wear scrubs. It was almost like this chick’s getup was ... a costume?

Christ, I hope she didn’t poison my fucking jello. I’m the only one around here who’s allowed to kill myself, and I’m done with that gig. Things are getting way too interesting.

waiting

2006-05-05T12:58:00.000-04:00

Woke up this morning and the sun was shining in.

Wait, that’s not my line.

But it was. Shining in, that is. Nice change after four days of rain. Spring and all.

Still, it’s hard. The air smells like home, like childhood. Like something I’ve lost that I won’t ever get back. I let my eyelids drift down and reduce the room to shapes and light and it’s almost there. Hardwood floors and white cotton curtains instead of speckled old lino and cheap plastic venetians. It flickers into place for a moment -- a signal in the static, and then the nurse squeaks in on her thick white sneakers and it’s gone. Bitch.

No – it’s not her fault. What the fuck do I know – she may not even exist. Even if she does, she is apart from all this. She knows nothing. About Lucy, about Aliss, about the strange shoe sitting on top of the trunk when I woke up this morning. It looks like a vintage Adidas, brown with white stripes. Pretty beat-up. Maybe a size 10? Anyhow, the nurse didn’t give it so much as a glance when she came in. Like it wasn’t even there.

Heh – maybe it’s not.

I’d think maybe I wasn’t either, except for the jello they keep fucking feeding me. Christ – at this point even Jemima’s burnt toast would be an improvement.

cryptical envelopment

2006-05-03T21:41:00.000-04:00

When I was younger and wiser I tried to kill myself. Some days I think I succeeded, and all this is just electrostatic afterglow. Magnetic fields of memory; asynchronous sensory extrapolation of a disembodied soul.

Maybe I never actually left the hospital. Maybe the last seven years of my life have been a shadowplay – vegetable theater.

But why? Why Lucy – why Aliss? Why would a dead, dreaming man conjure himself a twin sister and an absent lover? And why in the hell would I let one of them send me back to this place?

Aliss, Aliss – don’t trust Lucy. Don’t let her near the mollydoll, if it finds its way back to you. Which I know it will.

banana moon

2006-04-20T21:24:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I wonder if any of this is real. Me, Lucy, Aliss, this place. Lucy convinced me to come here when I started questioning whether she was real. Started questioning aloud, that is. Aloud, aloud.

Or did I ever?

If you knew the story you might be sympathetic to my doubts. Two years ago, warm August eve, Lucy shows up on my doorstep. Long-lost twin. Moths pinging off the porch light, smell of wet earth on the air. Her long dark hair catching glints of moon; her white teeth; that perfect, confident smile. What man wouldn’t want her for a mirror?

The details are tedious; they could be real, they could be not. Real –- whatever that means. Real like the narrow bed I sleep in? Like these stiff institutional sheets? Or real like the steamer trunk at the foot of my bed, stuffed full with random crap? Dusty old remote controls (no batteries), plastic shopping bags, cords and rope and lengths of plastic sheeting, a plush-toy cat wrapped in shredded rags, blocks of dried-out molding clay. A sharp little pile of cut-up credit cards. A plastic samurai sword. A busted old transistor radio, a yellowed stack of weirdly childlike newspapers. A goddamn motherfucking gorilla suit. That seals the deal – I am crazy.

The trunk has no markings on it; it’s not mine, but it doesn’t appear to be anybody else’s. I’d like to say (mysteriously) “It just showed up one day,” (as things in my life apparently are wont to do) but I don’t recall it going down like that. The trunk did not arrive, so to speak.

Wasn’t here when I moved in, though. Not that I recall.

And yes, some day I’m going to climb into that fucking gorilla suit and bust out of here. Plastic sword. A man needs decent bed sheets, you know. Everything else I can tolerate.

Everything except the missing mollydoll.

I’m starting to wonder if they took it. Might have to see if I can get that radio working.

pocket change, rearrange

2006-04-12T22:07:00.000-04:00

The mollydoll is missing and I’ve had a blinding headache for five fucking days. Lucy’s dropped out — she never went to Vegas. I got a flash of her briefly, before the pain swept through like a canyon flood, and then she was gone. Now it’s just me and the bad wiring and the flickering lights, echoing footsteps down cold linoleum halls. Even the nurses have stopped talking to me. Something strange is going down.

...

When Aliss and I first met she knew things I never even thought about not knowing. Things it never occurred to me to know.

Over time she showed me how to find some of those things; where they lived and how to bring them home. I took lots of pictures at first, studying the landscapes and their objects. Deciding how I wanted to renovate and redecorate. If I wanted to.

But you never know if the couch is going to fit, etc.

If the curtains will argue with the rug.

And that’s fine, that’s fine. A lively debate never killed anyone.

But sometimes it makes it hard to sleep,

when the tension never slacks.

You live with it, but you can’t ever really concentrate.

That’s the trick, you know. Live in it, not with it.

That’s what Aliss would say.

It’s what she did say.

Aliss could integrate dichotomies – she was good at it. Very good. It’s the crazy people who can’t do it. You either live in one world or the other; they can’t both be true.

Because they’re not two worlds, Leo. It’s not a coin.

It’s a sphere it’s a sphere it’s a sphere.

I know, Aliss. But you were always better at it than me. You were a natural.

Why am I talking about you in the past tense, like you’re dead?

Because the mollydoll is gone. Fucking disparu.

...

Aliss never explicitly said, “Here, you hold this.” I just looked around one day and discovered it was there, in the corner of my mind. A satisfying heft; its smooth, waxy coils. Compact, but loose. Latent potential. Mysteries in plain sight, obscured only by the limitations of the beholder. The infinite fucking mollydoll.

I know that’s not its real name. Real Names have power. And I was too stuck to grok it, she said. It would have only made things worse.

I’ve never entirely agreed with her, but these things can’t be forced. They tend to only get more stuck.

So I held it, beheld it, grew to love and beloved by this neatly tangled presence in the back left corner of my brain. And now it’s gone, and I don’t know what that fucking means.

Aliss?

Lucy?

Fuck, it’s cold in here.

seven sisters and a broken compass

2006-04-03T12:31:00.000-04:00

You see, it's not like ...

it's not like ...

What.

What am I trying to say?

Aliss and I have never actually met, in person.

In the flesh, so to speak.

Which is not to say I don't know her person, that hers and mine have not met.

They have met in public; they have met in private.

They have met in spaces only we know how to find.

It's been years now -- don't believe her if she says it's only months. Aliss don't have a real good relationship with time. :)

Which makes me wonder -- did she just ... wander off? Wallow away into the mist and forget where she went? No note on the proverbial kitchen counter; no breadcrumb trail; no soaring aurora borealis safety flare in the deep night sky.

Aliss, are you lost?

Are you scared?

I can't feel you any more.

take me out to the beach and i'll tell you my secret name

2006-04-02T23:11:00.000-04:00

Aliss and I have the most wonderful dreams.

Or at least we used to, before she went missing.

Poof.

Gone.

Like smoke from a cap gun, evanescing on a twilight breeze.

Where did you go, A? We were having so much fun.

Weren’t we?

they might be giants

2006-03-27T23:11:00.000-05:00

Lucy says

fuck me!

one fucking post!

This is hopeless.

Possibly pointless.

So why fight it?

Do your battles even have meaning any more, Leo?

This could be so much easier, if you just ... gave up.

Gave in.

No!

But for now, yes.

It’s just easier this way.

And I don’t have a lot of energy at present.

So. Lucy says she has a new gig. Won’t talk about this one, though. Been a little strange in general lately.

She flew out to Vegas two days ago, which I find perversely and unspeakably funny. Lucy in Vegas. Lucy The Showgirl. Lucy in Go-Go Boots; Lucy Will Kick You In The Balls.

There’s a show I’d pay to see.

Not really.

But it’s still funny.

Or it would be, if I didn’t have a creepy feeling about this one. We had a shit connection so I missed half of what she said, but she wouldn’t stop talking about the gig manager. Kept calling him Rabbit and laughing. That bad Lucy laugh – the cackling, hysterical one. Things usually end up going sideways pretty quick when Lucy starts making in-jokes with herself.

But that’s where we’re at, for better or worse. I’ll have some breathing room for a while -- now that Queen She is out of my hair. Off on her own personal tangent.

But guilt! Why do I feel guilt for wanting to bust out of this prison while she’s gone, pick up a six-pack and head down to the beach with a tent?

Because that’s My Way, and I promised I’d at least try to see things Her Way.

You win for now, Lucy.

But only for now.

the ocean breathes salty

2006-03-22T23:44:00.000-05:00

You want to believe that the physical doesn’t matter – shouldn’t.

And when I say “you” I of course mean I.

You want to believe that a man can be locked up with only an electronic tether to the outside world and still live his life. That the material incidentals of such an existence are just that: Food arrives, food consumed, detritus removed. Piss, shit, sleep. Pass another day.

You want to believe that what happens inside your head can be as real as what happens all around it.

Because right now your head is the only thing you have.

How do you unlock it, Leo? How do you become free? Do you agree to stay here, forgo silk sheets and ocean swims forever? Determine the essence of your desire and learn to craft it from atoms and molecules and the thunderstorms between synapses?

Or is all just bullshit and crazy talk?

My biggest fear: that’s it’s all just bullshit and crazy talk. That the walking, talking automatons are more real than me.

Than you, A.

Than Us.

My entire life has become a love letter to a woman who may or may not exist.

Here’s the question: Does it matter whether she does?

the A train

2006-03-22T23:11:00.000-05:00

Goal: Go three posts without mentioning Lucy.

Dammit.

Maybe next time.

You’re not the only woman in my life, you know. She’s still out there, and she orbits closer to me every day.

We are Zeno’s paradox; we will smash it. I will hold her in my arms before I die.

mellow drama

2006-03-17T23:11:00.000-05:00

It's Lucy's fault I'm here, trying to babble my way back to sanity all naked and shit. She designed the template, bought the domain name, mapped it, etc. etc. The grunt work, thanks. But sometimes having a twin is claustrophobic, you know. She thinks she can't be healthy unless I am. That somehow my illness holds her back.

Lucy, how can I shrink my own head when I know you're reading every word? Huh?

Maybe this is a bad idea...

red candle, black candle

2006-03-17T00:34:00.000-05:00

Here I am again.

Entirely, entirely again.

All over again.

All over

again.

What the fuck, Leo?

*sigh*

Have to start somewhere.

Start over.

Start,
over.