(More) Very Short Stories

Mask IV, John Stezaker


____1. Lost
As though an inanimate harbinger or ominous token- my left shoe divided itself into two unequal parts: sole and body, separating at the heel, two hours before my flight. Over the next few days, my body followed suit: a dull ache in my left buttock and a correlated sharp shriek in my neck from perhaps reclining in awkward positions for three months of reading in bed like a newly disabled young man unprepared to venture beyond the pages of books or sheets of a darkened room to face a world too bright with daylight, too riddled with change and riddling its memoirs into our moments in ways we'll never spot like Hitchcock cameos, (and here gracious fate, who gave us a small gesture to warn us, turns back towards the camera and smiles mischievously), and the food i consume sits calmly in a pit somewhere in my stomach and i worry that perhaps it is true: there is a black hole in the pit of my body somewhere. I sleep through the whole of the first flight and dream of bedrooms morphing into aquariums.


____2. Bedroom Soliloquy
He is unimpressive. He is quiet, and moves in phases: fumbling his body until he his happy in a position, then he is easily mistaken for a massive seashell. He still is suspicious of us, he is uncomfortable in our comfortable bed (the pink sheets, the purple bedspread disorient him: he doesn't know whose body he is waking up to in the mornings). He stares at the set of drawers, obviously a castaway from a more comprehensive bedroom set. He has a crate lying on the floor, a box, the Art of Algebra and Calculus 8th Edition (which he uses to prop his computer on) and a suitcase of clothes- foreign materials as far as we're concerned. At first we had hoped for a partner in crime, someone we could befriend: but this may not be our man. He is too self-consumed, he cannot be satisfied with us, he hates the empty nails on the walls, he his disturbed by the single half-open drawer (the one on the top right)- but will do nothing to close it. And we are more patient than him.


____3. scatter tinsel from rooftops and see if it's not rain or cotton candy when it hits ground
1) scatter tinsel from rooftops and see if it's not rain or cotton candy when it hits the ground
2) i spoke to your prophet, he assured me- a loss of faith is requisite in determining the precise nature of watch-faces, uneased transitions, brushed aside graces, untied laces, worn-to-nothing braces (the pain in my back) time's ungentle embraces, loved unloved dreamed to undream you to nothing but this mean (average) face that faces me in our faceless transitions from soul to human to soul again (yet not yet)
3) deliver messages you were never given by people who never asked you for anything in tones that make it clear you know nothing but untimed truth (misery)
4) boo.
5) continue to fidget with small pieces of paper (cinema ticket stubs and fat-width.ed receipts) in your hands till they soft and broken and more lined than octogenarian faces, mumble with the wind of the atmosphere that exists there: you are our god and we are geology


____4. gossip boy
"always though"
"always?"
"everytime without fail"
"you're saying every single time you walk together all the pedestrian crossings go green?"
"yes."
"and?"
"and?. And?, you don't think that's odd?"
"what does he think?"
"he barely notices, he just walks, he doesn't even really slow down, he just keeps walking-
"what da ya mean? he doesn't know it's going to go green?"
"it doesn't go green at the same time ya know?, sometimes it's green when we get to it, sometimes we pause just for like half-a-second and then it goes green, othertimes it's already flashing when we get to it- but
"but you always cross without waiting"
"that's it"
"everytime?"
"yeah dude. ___every_single_time."
"it is... "
"?"
"it is."


____5. fee fi fo fum(ble) future foray
i'm here. i see you're just ahead of me, waiting, you got into the room a second before i did... fine, fine, two can play at that game. two can play at alone-games.


____6. the straighttalk-express
yes i am in gold coast, yes i am was-excited, yes i am less-now because it is soo just is, yes i think too much, yes it ruins everything- everything in fact, and i cannot tame it tame it the brain that needs blood now but dreams of tomorrows i haven't had time to make yet (move the drawers, change the bedsheets, navigate mom's annoyingnesses, get a bookshelf, buy a car somehow decide how much to spend on it because of the great unknownness of not just the future but also future-me, future-world, future-family, future-prospects, all aspects of futureness that make it really hard to manage now, must have tomorrow too), yes i do feel ill in the body- which is annoying because i am trying very hard to be a new man and have postponed it (yet again) until my body feels new to match my shiny new life-opportunity but this wretched stomach grumbling and the lack of movement because no one realizes i can't sit still another moment even now at 11:48pm Monday night it is torture here i must break, make, remake, restructure, organize, list, categorize, construct, analyze some thing, time is running out even now there is no time, why can't anyone see that time is something that we have in unequal amounts and what is ready-to-drink for you is viscous as black-honey to me, and sticks to my chin so i cough and can't get a spoonfull down without crouching over to gag? also, i am living suitcase-style again because i cannot make unstable stable till it is ready to be stabilized and no one's as red-hot as me for this and so i'm all alone in this.


____7. the (more) straighttalk-express
i do not feel like: writing in my notebook on this blog on walls in toilets on the computer at all; thinking; thinking and planning simultaneously; thinking planning dreaming hoping conjuring praying simultaneously; eating; walking; moving; exercising; pondering how to shake the headache; sitting outside; sitting inside; sitting (levitation is probably what i do feel like); reading epic novels; reading blogs; reading anything; looking at pictures; having my eyes open; having my eyes closed; having eyes, memory, body, soul, existence, a disfaculty of time; calling friends; calling contacts; using my fingers to call; using my mouth to speak; defending; attacking; living in other people's homes (the thing i hate most in the whole universe today); looking at this screen; knowing what color grass is; not knowing what color the dust on the moon is seen with real eyes in real time because i'm really there and you'd think it would be so fresh and you could breathe easy there but it's not true it's the most breathless place of all- breathing; not breathing; holding my breathe; showering; bathing; dying; being relieved of life; living life; making decisions; making indecisions; taking a toast (and tea); not eating snacks ever again; swearing alot; using good language; using language; knowing language; being a solid object; being transparent; finishing this list