how never to be seen again

10:27pm: New Direction
This journal will now begin a transformation. In order to deepen my understanding of what I read, I will compose an essay on each novel I complete. Each essay will be a sort of book report, if formatted incorrectly and certainly not acceptable in any classroom setting. Juvenile as they may be, I will post them here.

I would like to encourage discussion, once again for my own benefit and greater understanding. This will mean reading along with me or, for those better read than I am, remembering along. For those who feel inclined to partake in this discussion, I will post the title of each book I intend to read next at the end of each essay. I am a slower reader than most of you, so you should have no trouble keeping up, even with other reading on your plate. Always looking for something new and wonderful, I will take suggestions for further reading.

I’ll begin, today, with “The Double,” a short piece by Dostoevsky. I encourage anyone to read it before they peek behind the cut. It shouldn’t take more than a day or two. As there are those who enjoy reading about books that they have not read, I must at the very least warn that there are spoilers ahead.
( This is not a scholarly essay )

7:41pm: come before me, dead man
twisting where you sleep
look upon my smouldering wings
each crumbling feather
soft as ash

9:44am: The Brick Dealer
This is fiction. It's like a real story of something that happened except I made it up.

...or is it?

No, I'm joking. It is.

So, they give me an hour lunch at work, and I don't know what to do with it. I'm hardly ever that hungry in the middle of the day and it doesn't take an hour to eat a banana and drink a Mountain Dew. I can't really read a book if I know I'm only reading it to kill time, either. I would prefer if I didn't have to take a lunch. That way I could go home an hour earlier.

What I do is wander. I work in the new mall they put out in what used to be the boonies, so there's houses being built all around. The property values went up when they built the mall, and I wish I had bought some of that property before. Maybe it's still a good time to buy it. I don't know much about real estate. I don't really have the money, either.

But I'm wandering down streets lined with skeleton houses, like a ghost town but in reverse. Phantoms of unborn neighborhoods. The houses are all two stories, and I can imagine them finished, with grass in the yards instead of dirt and weeds. Maybe even dogs running up and down the block. And I'm seeing all this, seeing maybe into the future when I'm approached by the homeless man.

At least I think he's homeless. He's dressed better than me in a navy blue suit and tie and black shirt, his salt and pepper hair slicked back. He's walking with a cane that's got what looks like a diamond at the top. Still, he looks homeless, touched by the elements, I guess. It is my assumption that despite his dress, he is squatting in one of these houses. And he comes up to me, tossing a brick with his free hand like he's juggling it or something. Then he catches it, puts it in his pocket, and waves with that hand for me to follow him.

I try and say I'm just walking but he keeps waving and finally says in a gruff voice, "Don't be stuck up." So I follow him, and he brings me behind one of these houses, where there's a row of windows ready to be installed. He takes a piece of chalk from his pocket, draws a circle on one of these windows, then rests it in a window frame of the house.

That's when he hands me the brick. When I begin to get his drift and refuse, he repeats, "Don't be stuck up." His voice is so gruff.

I can't explain how good it felt to watch that window shatter. And the homeless man must have known, because he asked for a dollar and I gave it to him. Then he took out his chalk and got another window ready.

I believe there were twenty windows there, because I gave that man twenty dollars. And I was late back to work.

4:56am: Skydiving
Darren lied and said he saw him just before he hit the ground, said his eyes were popping out his head like a cartoon. There's two reasons I know he's lying. First is I take the same bus as Darren and he didn't say anything then. Second is Darren makes up stuff like he made an invisibility potion but he won't say what's in it and won't do nothing to prove it. There's lots of ways you could prove it without giving out the secret. Like do something invisible, for starters, like go in the bathroom and tell everyone what Missy's underwear looks like, which he won't 'cause he's got a crush on her, which is why I told him to, or get the test answers from Mr. Jenkins' room, which he's got no reason not to when everybody wants the answers. Darren won't say why he won't, just 'cause.

It wasn't 'til after we all heard that Brian's dad got killed that Darren said something. Brian's going home early. Mrs Beaudry turns on the news, where Brian's dad is laying a couple feet deep in the grass by Monte Vista Ave. You can't see his face, just the back of his helmet stuck in the ground with the rest of him, 'cause this is from before the police came and kicked out the cameras so they could dig up the body and make the identification. And Mrs. Beaudry is telling us it happened sometime while we were coming to school, which our bus drives right down Monte Vista Ave most of the way and that's when Darren sticks up his hand and says he saw him falling, saw his eyes sticking out.

And even though he's totally lying, but Mrs. Beaudry says its shock how come he wasn't talking to anyone all morning, which he never does talk 'cause he's the nerd. So because the teacher says it, all the kids believe him and at lunch they ask him questions, but it's always he don't know or don't remember, 'cause he really only saw as much as the rest of us on the TV. I hope someone took a video and look there's no eyes popping out and they turn the camera and there's no school bus. And they turn the camera back and forth down Monte Vista Ave. and still there's no school bus.

And I wasn't even mad til Missy asked him what it was like to see a man about to die, and Darren said it was scary, that it made him think what it's like to know you were going to die, like what if it was his parachute wasn't opening. He said it made him scared for when he was going to die and he hoped he died in his sleep.

Darren's got a different fifth and sixth period from me, so I didn't see him after lunch, but I thought about him all that time and didn't pay attention to what the teachers were saying, and lucky they never called on me. I got madder when I thought about Brian going home and his mom all crying and him crying. And Darren was probably still bragging about how he saw it, which is shitty even if he did.

And after school we were waiting at the bus stop and Darren wasn't talking to anybody, just looking at his feet, and I said, Hey, why aren't you talking no more? And he didn't say nothing, just kept looking down and I said how bout you tell me again what it's like to see somebody's dad about to die. Or how bout you quit lying to everybody. 'Cause you don't think what you said when you see that. And he just kept looking down. You think how come I'm not crying? That's what you think. And I said I knew that, too, which was a lie, 'cause I only ever read it. But it made me start to cry, so I said it again. You don't feel scared or nothing. And you think how you don't feel nothing. And he just kept looking down. So that's when I took off my backpack and hit him.

1:31pm: More bad poetry at which you and your friends can laugh
You can see them hiding just behind their lives
Crippled by things done in a day grown long
When the now seemed eternal, vast and still

We are liars of the present to the last
By dead years curled in cobwebs thick and stiff
And ancient voices call us back to dream

Of being loved or being ripped to meat
Shadows cast across a half forgotten life

But it's not all that bad
After all, it's over now

9:04pm: Unpleasant Fiction
( Feedback appreciated )

11:43am: Goodbye shithole, hello shithhole
A trek across California


Since last we met our drifting monster, it has purchased a car for the first time in its life, a 1994 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera S, or, as deemed by the woman it loved for most of high school, "an old lady car." It has packed up every piece of shit that could fit into said car, leaving behind the furniture that made it safe from Iowa to Sacramento, and, after a quick oil change and under protest from its father (i.e. "I think you should stay here(, monster.)"), driven 400 miles south to its geographical home and a city more foreign to it than love.

On its first day in Los Angeles, it was hit by a car while walking through a crosswalk. As the SUV sped around the corner, the monster screamed at the top of its lungs and leapt into the air, found purchase with its palm on the vehicle's hood and flung itself clear, landing villainously on its feet. The SUV stopped and the would-be hero rolled down her window. Did our monster give her what for? Oh yes, our monster did.

"I'm alright!" it screamed.
"I'm so sorry," she retorted, fearlessly.
"Nothing's wrong!" it screamed again and waved its palms menacingly through the air, demonstrating that it could not be harmed.

Could this incident be read as cosmic retribution for the trail of broken souls our monster has left in its wake? Only if you flunked your Verbal SAT. Our monster emerged unscathed (see previous paragraph.) Take that, God.

2:39am: This is when you dream
Given that every moment, history and future, has at one point the glow of the present, statistically speaking, it is not the twenty-first century and we are not alive.

But this has no practical consideration and, at this moment, as we are experiencing life, tonight, I am going to beat the shit out of you. I’m not bluffing. I’ve been restraining myself for years, allowing your idiot forks like I was blind, leaving amateur pins in place and letting your petty checks go unpunished.

Fuck you.

You malcontent. You stink of loneliness. In better times, I would never have called you my friend. You leave early when you're losing. You gloat when you're ahead. You cock.

I won't be your prize. Not here in front of your brother. You will not gloat. You will not stand proud. Put money on the table. I'll take it and give it back. No money. I'll play you for your soul and give it back if you beg. Tonight, I take you for everything you’re worth.

1.e4

8:32pm: regarding existence
( Wanting and having are two different things )

9:41pm: I will keep doing this until you make me stop.
( more? )

10:51pm: Why I am in love with chad Simonds
A distantly remembered exchange

Someone
I think poets make the best playwrights.

chad
I think playwrights make the best playwrights.


no beats were missed in the making of this exchange

3:09pm: How to be Nice to a Cat
1. When it meows at you, meow back.

Make sure to produce an almost identical meow. This may seem rude to you. You would not like for somebody to repeat things back to you exactly the same way you said them, matching your inflection, but you are not a cat. Also, it's probably not exactly the same, anyway, unless you're that guy from Police Academy. (I think your name was Dana Carvey.) Also, it probably doesn't mean anything. Also, if it does, it is much safer to agree with somebody than it is to say something random that might be offensive.

2. Let it watch you pee.

When it comes running into the bathroom after you, it is because it wants to watch you pee. Do not close the door as much as you can before it comes running then stick your foot in the door and gently push it back. That is rude. If it meows while you are peeing, it is still correct to meow back. (Note: If it is number two, do close the door as much as you can before it comes running then stick your foot in the door and gently push it back. It does not know that you want to go number two, and you will not be able to open the door when it wants to leave. It will probably meow at you when you push it out the door. This is the one time when it is probably not OK to produce an almost identical meow as, I can assure you, whatever it said, it was mean.)

3. If it is that one eyed cat at your work and it sits on your chair while you have walked to the printer, do not kick it off your chair when you can simply switch chairs with the empty desk next to you.

It's true. There is totally a one eyed cat at my work. It is very cute and I don't know what its name is. Do not let this cat watch you pee. You're too new at the job and you don't know if the owner lets it watch her pee.

4. Feed it.

Feed it anything it wants. If it gets sick, it will not remember that you gave it the food, but will somehow remember not to want to eat it the next time you eat it.

5. Leave your room a total mess.

It likes to explore, and it is too dainty to go outside.

6. Rub its face in circles.

Alyssa told you she read this in a book. It doesn't seem to work at first, because the cat is scared to let you touch its face, but once it realizes what you're doing, it will love you forever. The Cat That Looks Like JamAlyssa's Cat The Cosby Show also likes it when you rub its jaw. It did not know about the circles at first, but it especially likes the circles on its jaw.

Feel free to update this list as you see fit.

10:22am: Tom's acold
There is a huge pussing and dripping woundhole in the footnotes to King Lear in the Complete Pelican Shakespeare with implications the size of your mother.

( This is not a scholarly essay. )

2:06pm: Arlen "Under-read" Lawson

Below is some amateur philosophy on the nature of time. I don't pretend that I'm pioneering any ideas, but I got to thinking and, well, here you go. If anybody knows what to read in further pursuit of these ideas, I would be grateful for any leads. I think it has something to do with why people think (thought?) of time as another physical dimension.

( "Like, did you ever think how if, you know, you got to the end of the universe what would you find, like if it was a wall, what's on the other side?" and other questions you asked your mildly retarded foster brother as he stared with deer-in-headlights eyes over the edge of his bunk bed )

3:13am: The Rivers of Pangaea
Interstate 80 takes you all the way. There are nearly 2000 miles between Iowa City and Sacramento. If you fill your head with stimulants, you can make the trip in just under two days. The states through which you journey act as did the chapters in that pulp trash novel that kept you up all night. If the chapters were very long, then the miles are the pages. If very short, then words. The mile markers count down driving west. You understand how this makes stopping difficult.

Lisa Frank and I left "the Athens of the Midwest" in the afternoon. The sun had set before we saw Nebraska. Lights of suburbs spread across the landscape as large and christmas-tree-colored as those I remembered from childhood in Southern California, an arch over the interstate which I remember thinking lovely, and a terrifying moment in Dix, where we drove thirty miles down an unpaved road in the wrong direction, almost out of gas as we pulled into a closed station in a town that seemed as abandoned as any in that pulp trash novel that kept you up all night; these are the only impressions I retain of that state.

In Colorado, we swore that we would rest before the Rockies, the first of the two mountain ranges I was terrified to cross. At a gas station, in a wind that threatened to tear that loose tooth from the earth, a man who pretended to understand everything I said replied in broken English and probably tried to tell me when the mountains began. Back on the interstate, afraid of stopping for the night in such a wind, we waited for the mountains to grow from the hilly horizon, and held our breath (figuratively) as we passed the long haul trucks whose trailers were blown into neighboring lanes by the winds I fought to keep the U-haul on the road. We were almost in Wyoming before I was sure that we had crossed the Rockies unaware.

The sun rose in Wyoming. We talked in monologue about Iowa City, Sacramento, family, and each other. Lisa almost talked about her father, then decided not to. The interstate wound in shallow curves through wondrous jutting landscape carved, I thought, by the rivers and winds and ancient turmoils of Pangaea. Every turn revealed new variations on a beautiful theme, and I thought it might be wonderful to live there. (When we stopped to pump gas, the man's man clerk seemed to think little of me and my home-knit cap, and I have decided to judge the people of his state by him.) We entered a tunnel dug through a cliff and held our breath (literally) until we emerged.

At least along I-80, the landscape seems to change as you cross state lines and the only state prettier'n Wyoming is Utah. Twisting through the hills, we were nearly out of gas and worried, with little money and no sign of civilization, when we came to a rest stop at exit (don't remember) and parked our tiny truck by sleeping long-haul Big ones between hills that photographs and words would not do justice. I called my brother (who used to drive one of the Big ones) to ask him where we were and where gas was. He said we'd stopped just shy of Salt Lake City and were actually coming down from the Rockies. We climbed a paved walkway up a hill that was bigger than it looked, and stared down at a valley full of brown and purple trees feeding from a tiny river edged in ice, between on one side red rock formations dotted with dark green bushes and etched with hieroglyphs of topographical change containing faces and overlapping profiles that seemed intentional and, on the other, hills of brown grass dotted with the same dark green and patches of snow. Breathless, I called Cool Jesse to thank him for his assistance and tell him how far we'd come and try to describe the country around me. I think I may have said that this was where God would live. A train came through the valley by the river. There was a white cross on the hill, which upon inspection, proved to be a memorial to a fallen police officer. When and if I die, my ashes will be scattered from here or outer space.

We tried to sleep in the cab for a few hours but found it impossible. Lisa's mother had transferred money to her account, and we got back on the road.

It was dark again before we came to Nevada. We pulled to the side of the road at one point, and sat on the hood, holding each other under a blanket. Lisa found the country the most beautiful of any we'd seen, even in the dark. I wouldn't want to live there. When we stopped for gas, there were a dozen slot machines in the mini-mart, and a small casino on the way to the bathroom. This is not the only reason I wouldn't want to live there, but it is reason enough.

We stopped at a liquor store to wait for morning before attempting Donner Pass. The Sierras were trickier than the Rockies, but there had been no reason for my worry. We came into Northern California and Lisa began to recognize the place she was from. It had been almost two days. I had driven more than ever in my life. Though I had been afraid that the claustrophobic cab would lead to arguments, we'd had wonderful conversation the entire drive. I would like to do it again.

8:07pm: Clive Staples Lewis and the Shadow of a Tesseract

C.S. Lewis looked into his heart and found the shadow of god. Lewis, the atheist, who all his life wished for a god that loved the world and him, but found that his intellect foiled belief in his greatest desire and yours, in the end chose not to dwell on his sadly rational doubt. In the heat and the hunger and the madness of dying that comes with being alive, mirages are likely. The shadow he saw might very well have been this sort of thing, but, here in the wastelands, we die either way, whether chasing oases that are likely not there or coming to terms with the horror of our fate.

In The Silver Chair, a book meant for Christian children, he called himself Puddleglum and said through the megaphone of his painted cork mask,

"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things-trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's the funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

In Descartes’ First Meditation, he convincingly removes his ability to be sure of anything except that he exists. In the following meditations, he tries to rebuild the world around him by first proving that God exists and that, being a loving God, it would not deceive us. His premises are often flawed, his conclusions do not always follow as necessary from his premises, and there is, of course, the Cartesian Circle. In Mere Christianity, Lewis builds a case for God, but it is built on premises as flawed as Descartes’ and rings just as hollow. It is impossible to believe that Lewis has firmly convinced himself.

I now see The Chronicles of Narnia as oftentimes racist and filled with that kind of chauvinism that presents itself as chivalry, yet filled with an inspiring warmth and intelligence. The last time I read them, I was a child and believed in Heaven and God. The last time I read the seventh and final book, The Last Battle, in which Lewis imagines Heaven as the Platonic ideal that casts this and all worlds as shadow-lands, I believed that he had come close to describing the place I would go when I died, or at least a way that we might understand it (like the shadow of a tesseract cast) in our world. Since then, I have grown a little, as has my concept of the universe and its infinite, horrifying and intricate beauty. With it has grown its Platonic ideal. This time, after I’d closed the book and set it on my lap, with neither warning nor precedent, I cried loud and ridiculous sobs. It lasted less than a minute, but felt like it would never end. Every time I had cried in the past seemed the shadow of this, which must in turn only have been a shadow to Lewis’ tears, mourning the loss of Heaven.

5:09pm: Strunk and White v. Merriam Webster
Elements of Style v. Accepted Usage of English Language
Stuck-up Bible v. Populist Rag
Who is more retarded?
The people who fail to accept that language is in a constant state of flux or the people who stupid up a perfectly good system of communication by misunderstanding and misusing the existing language until the misunderstanding becomes proper usage?
Your grandparents or your grandchildren?
The entries below from Elements come from an edition originally published in 1979 and reprinted in 2000. The dictionary entries come from www.m-w.com, but similar entries can be found in an ancient dictionary possessed by Jamal and Alyssa, which we believe was printed in the fifties. If you refuse to accept definitions that were probably standard before the birth of your parents, I am sure that your old high school English teacher can suggest many fine Olde English dictionaries and courses.



Elements of Style:
Nauseous. Nauseated. The first means “sickening to contemplate”; the second means “sick at the stomach.” Do not, therefore, say “I feel nauseous,” unless you are sure you have that effect on others.

Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: nau·seous
Pronunciation: 'no-sh&s, 'no-zE-&s
Function: adjective
1 : causing nausea or disgust : NAUSEATING
2 : affected with nausea or disgust
- nau·seous·ly adverb
- nau·seous·ness noun
usage Those who insist that nauseous can properly be used only in sense 1 and that in sense 2 it is an error for nauseated are mistaken. Current evidence shows these facts: nauseous is most frequently used to mean physically affected with nausea, usually after a linking verb such as feel or become; figurative use is quite a bit less frequent. Use of nauseous in sense 1 is much more often figurative than literal, and this use appears to be losing ground to nauseating. Nauseated is used more widely than nauseous in sense 2.

Elements of Style:
Flammable. An oddity, chiefly useful in saving lives. The common word meaning "combustible" is inflammable. But some people are thrown off by the in- and think inflammable means "not combustible." For this reason, trucks carrying gasoline or explosives are now marked FLAMMABLE. Unless you are operating such a truck and hence are concerned with the safety of children and illiterates, use inflammable.

Merriam-Webster:
Main Entry: flam·ma·ble
Pronunciation: 'fla-m&-b&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin flammare to flame, set on fire, from flamma
: capable of being easily ignited and of burning quickly
- flammable noun