fragments (thoughts)

leave the sun behind me,
and I watch the clouds as they sadly pass me by
n' I'm in perpetual motion
and the world below doesn't matter much to me

____This Time Tomorrow, the Kinks











rappin granny by ye rin mok


in another life, one i don't really care to remember, i walked down a street just outside the old-city of Vienna. i passed Joseph Hayden's church, which annoyingly was never open when i strolled by. there was a little cinema and i watched everything. anything. (i do that when i need to get my mind off things). anything with english subtitles i'd watch. and Once was playing, and Gol had raved about how great it was and forgot to mention it was a pseudo-love-story, a pill best not taken with a broken heart. so unslept and cold and overcome - Vienna is a far too romantic city, it's dangerous if you're flying solo, just skip it, if you can't hold someone's hand don't bother - i sat and watched and afterwards nearly stopped to throw up besides a Turkish restaurant i ended up eating at, not really admitting it to myself, but secretly because kebab reminded me of Israel and at that point that's the only place i wanted to be.


*___*___*

i can't think beyond green apples and tshirts. i've bought a million of both. tshirt after tshirt. an apple and redbull for breakfast, snack and dinner. (my grandmother shakes her head: a monstrosity! shakes her head: a travesty! disapproving). in the opshop (thrift-store)(2nd hand store) i sneeze and cough - presumably from the dust - my mother gives me a disapproving glance because she assumes i'm up to something. i keep walking, piles of shirts and cardigans and ridiculous things i'm trying on for fun because i'm half-gay falling in my wake. i walk past a half-dead piano with a paper hand-written SOld sign and as if by impulse my left hand falls to my side and runs the arpeggio of A-major across two octaves it sounds clean and instinctual like maybe i'm someone who once played the piano pretty decently an elderly black woman with short greying hair and large glasses looks up at me quizzically. i'm too sad to throw her a sad smile, i just walk on towards the sign that says pantalones(pants).

sometimes i think beyond green apples and tshirts. last night i had a nightmare about failing an exam. the night before about some family drama. over dinner i say
__- when i get home i'm getting back on the pills
__- i thought you said you were through with them.
__- mind changed mind.
__- speak normally.
__- changed my mind.
__- why?
__- nightmares. got sad for no reason in Seattle one night. had a freakout in the bank today that we'd be late for your 3 o'clock.
__- you seem fine to me.
__- i am.
__- chirpy, if anything you talk too much right now. always joking.
__- give it a few more weeks. matter of time.
__- you're sure?
__- yeah.
__- so control it.
__- that's like telling someone with back pain to control it.
__- you're just spoiled. [this particular statement disproportionately angers me]
__- you're just retarded.
__- don't be mean Q!
__- sorry. _you should know better. 10 years of this crap you should know better. [she stares at her salad quietly]
__- so what'll happen?
__- the robot i guess.
__- don't you rather... aren't you happier being... you?
__- __yeah. [said sadly]
__- not willing to take the good with the bad?
__- guess not [it's cause i remember it and it scares me. i don't wanna be that again]
aside from tshirts and apples sometimes i look through photography blogs and see pictures of half-naked women. i remember those. oh yes. those are lovely. lovely indeed. in the summer i am rarely concerned with women. it's too hot.


*___*___*

it's hot. the incessant sound of fans taxes my patience. wet patches on bedsheets and pillows and i've taken to sleeping in boxer shorts which is usually fine. occasionally i adopt a strange sitting position and find a few moments later my penis lying against my leg airing itself. usually catches me off guard and i just stare at it a few moments thinking who let you out?.
__sitting in cars it's the worst. a sort of existential tragedy - a reminder of all things Dante's Inferno. and we drive and in the distance i see dusty hills with smoke rising from the bushfires. mom says don't you feel like you're in jahanam q? and i nod. the cars all stopped, bright red taillights winking occasionally. purring of so many engines - sounds like machine-animals feeding. the air is napalm. the LA highways are the backs of cement-skinned snakes with neon red and white bristles. a truck makes a massive racket as it rolls to a stop besides us. a huge noise. oh goody, here's Charybdis.
__god dammit mom, i don't f*cking wanna go to Walmart i want to get in the car and drive to Santa Monica where there's air and i'm bored as all-f*ck and seriously don't care stop talking. easy-tiger she says. softly. calms me. i mumble curses to myself and when she asks what? i say What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? to which she says what? again. and i smile pretentiously to myself as i stare out at the lowered window at rising masts of smoke and think it's the long fingers of a giant smoke-monster come to raze the world back into cataclysm. about time.


*___*___*

EMAIL HIGHLIGHTS:

more of everything - does that make sense?
yes. of course it does. me too. more of everything. always. i agree. (and i sit by the campfire and smoke awkwardly and she shakes her head Q! that's a depressant! and smile that invisible smile, with reddened eyes and hungry fangs and i lick my lips and Mr. Hyde gets a hard-on and ) (drive too fast with windows down in any weather it rains i don't care let it rain and if heat then we'll sweat whatever) (and i hug friends too hard ow it hurts she says and in her ear i whisper sshh baby, it's the only way to feeel my body and she gives me a weird look and i'm sad she doesn't get it) ( and i haven't called her since the time in her room worried about her roommate coming home any minute any minute she makes me keep my tshirt on and we jump every time voices are heard walking down the corridor and she laughs still holding my penis in her hand slippery licks her lips at least we're not freezing our asses off on the beach i laugh and grab her by the hair and pull her up to kiss her, and she contorts her neck to get out of it and slaps my cheek hard enough to mean business and i lift myself onto my knees and grab her neck and push her head back down onto a pillow ow! she says annoyed and i put two fingers in her mouth and grab her jaw with the rest of my hand and hold her till she kisses me ) more. more of everything. more of everything good and terrible. more f*cking tshirts and green apples and naked bodies and more miles of freeways and more hugs with friends and upsize my damn lemonade yes, of course! i've waited a whole year to be here you think i'm going to walk away without a refill you're outchyo mind. if it has to hurt let it hurt.


and don't worry about exams.
for whatever reason, only some people have that ability. to say something, the same thing everyone's saying, but you believe them. it actually works, it's does make everything alright.


that sorta causes heightening of the senses to some metastable state
met • a • sta • ble adjective Physics (of a state of equilibrium) stable provided it is subjected to no more than small disturbances
__and i interpret myself, using these words. find them in dictionaries and emails and hold them up to light and look through them and sit around thinking about them and if there's enough leg-room in a word to incorporate myself, having no identity of my own, maybe i can borrow this word's or that word's. and that's me. that right there. metastable.


I suppose it's too out of the way, but inconvenience is the deterrence tool of happiness. This is the bridge less taken, but we chose it.
it's funny how your words make me want to write stories. stories stories stories. true-stories about nonpeople. people who don't really exist, maybe just as versions of myself, or people i've bumped into. when i arrive(d) in Vienna this girl on the bus and i'm looking in my notebook trying to work out where the hostel is and where to get off the bus and her with a crumpled piece of paper in her hand and i ask her where her hostel is and she tells me and it sounds about the same place as mine and we talk and in my head (even though at this stage i don't think any woman exists except for _ _ _ _ _) i think please, pleaseplease fall in love with me and save me from this but she doesn't really, we eventually work out her hostel is at the start of the street and mine at the end and i nod sadly and walk away into a dark January oblivion of myself : two weeks after for my birthday i'm sitting at a restaurant somewhere in LA with Monz and Jamal and i can barely manage a smile but i joke around with them and someone finally says, q, it's your birthday dude, this is your birthday dinner. and i look up confused, what? (btw Monz, what will we do for yours?)

other stories. other stories that end differently. end in people kissing under bridges (is that the start or the end, or is one end the same very exact thing as the other's start?, yes yes, that must be it, all linked, like chains, every novel just starting off where another left off, every email, every first kiss makes another relationship officially over).

stories about my grandfather who posthumously i think is my very best friend and whose tie i appropriated out his closet after he passed away and wear too much and take it with me when i travel it's here with me now even though it has two small holes - stories about my mom and my sister and about crazy people and walking back home from McDonalds with my sister i chastise her the whole way (ok ok jeez, calm down she says) for not smiling at a homeless man (dammit Sahar, that's a person, do you understand? do you see that that's a human being do you have any idea what it's like to not be smiled at? not be acknowledged when someone walks past you it makes you feel like a ghost it's the worst thing in the universe (cause i do) besides - what makes you any different to them? what? tell me now? you, i, everybodydamnoneofus is 3 bad decisions, one unfortunate week away from being that person you give them the respect and dignity that a human being deserves or i swear i will be pissed _ off. (damn q, ok ok, i get it).

stories about random conversations/moments. that's all i've got tin. as far as i can tell, being human is just that. and i haven't managed to gather anything more to my name than that. (and that makes me sad)


*___*___*

how will i last without magic?