Literature - Exocytosis

Nothing Of It (2007)

1

It started when I was young at home and in religious school. Walk single file on the right side of the hall. Don’t push. Honor thy mother and father. Stop spitting your gum into your sisters’ hair. She didn’t even mind it after my mother started the peanut butter shampooing, rinsing and repeating for the better part of a few hours. Use your words was one rule I didn’t follow until I was four, and when I started speaking I had a speech impediment. During class I would have to go to speech therapy in a trailer parked on the fields next to the school. The trailer was frustration, a packed space with ugly grey carpeting. “Girl,” she would say. “Girgle,” I’d repeat. “Tree,” she would say. “Shree,” I’d repeat.

At that time my grandfather couldn’t say a word of English. We spent a lot of time outdoors together. There was a stream near our apartment we would visit and set up traps made out of glass jars, and the next time we’d come a water snake would be trapped in it. He’d point to a tree and ask me what it was, and I’d scream “Shree!” and he would laugh.

2

Natural selection has left both unity and diversity between organisms. All organisms use the same language; if the DNA of an evergreen tree was implanted into a human cell, we would begin to produce evergreen tree proteins. Obviously though, an evergreen and a human are not the same. There seems to be no one answer to what exactly is the most biologically fit. A tree, rooted deep into the earth, cannot move. If death is impending it does nothing but whittle away slowly. A sea urchin, in apparent wisdom, will release an enormous cloud of sperm into the surrounding seas seconds before its demise, keeping the possibility of procreation alive. Internal copulation, though, has left mammals with a somewhat more subtle death act.

After the invention of the defibrillator, a phenomena known as near-death experience began to be somewhat common. Those who suffered from cardiac arrest, the sudden and complete loss of function by the heart, were able to be revived back to life. Patients began to report a distinct experience afterwards: a sensation of floating, calmness, and overwhelming feelings of peace and love. This transcendental experience has been linked to the production of the neurotransmitter DMT, which was found to occur naturally in high amounts only before death in mammals.

The connection between DMT and near-death is contested by many scientists. What then could cause such a seemingly mystical experience in the inevitable face of death and for what reason? How is it that some, when faced with the inevitability of death react by slitting their wrists while others reach mystical heights, and still others release massive amounts of sperm or do absolutely nothing? This question is inherently linked to the broader more important question: What do we do, how do we live, in the face of the unavoidable end? The sea urchin has found its answer. Humanity though has been plagued by the question surely since the beginning of thought.

3

I thought that after three years it would be easier, but I still haven’t gotten used to the idea of killing mice. It’s their face. They lay lifeless, stomach up, limbs taped down, on the black lab tables. Their eyes bulge out a little, their small tongues stick out, and their two front teeth are broken because I put my finger behind their small furry heads and then pull on their tails until I feel the crack of their skulls separating from their necks. It is a humane process though. The mice are put into a large container filled with CO2 beforehand, depriving them of oxygen so that eventually they fall asleep and lose consciousness. I’ve done it a million times but I still get anxious when I have to do it. They also smell terribly.

And now, once again, the task has come. I turn the nozzle of the CO2 container. Nothing comes out. Worried, I look around.

“What is zee problem?”

It’s Professor Michaela. She is skinny, and wears slightly oversized glasses. Her German accent suits her. The students call her Professor Michaela Eichmann.

“There’s no more CO2.”

She comes over, grabs the mouse out of the container with no gloves, by the tail, and lets it crawl around on the lab table for a few seconds. From the tail, she slowly moves her fingers up the mouse’s back until she reaches the neck. She takes her index finger and pushes down, and in one fluid motion grabs the tail with her other hand and pulls. The mouse’s limbs convulse for a few seconds, it urinates and releases its bowels, and it dies. She tells me to finish up. I thank her and she leaves to her office.

Turning it over I see that familiar face. I tape down the limbs and start cutting from just above the stomach. Any blood that comes out is absorbed by the white fur, making for somewhat of a clean dissection. Cutting through the diaphragm, I see the heart, still beating. I cut it out and place it in a dish of clear solution under a microscope. Through the microscope I see a seemingly lifeless, dark red, and cluttered mess. It only takes a few seconds for the heart to recover from the shock of leaving its former enclosure and suddenly, it beats.

I touch the heart with my finger, and feel the force of the tissue expanding against my skin. A moment later it contracts, and blood squirts out, swirling into the solution, and around my finger. I remember the mouse, open, heartless. I walk over and put it into a plastic bag, date it, initial, and then squeeze it into the already packed freezer.

4

It was summer, so I was visiting my aunt in Long Island, on the beach. Stepping onto the sand, I felt that sharp hot sensation on the bottom of my feet quickly dampen into comforting warmth. Above me a seagull beat his wings and I couldn’t tell if what I heard was the sound of the air whipping through his light feathers or the ocean waves crashing onto the sunned sand. My grandfather stood tall next to me, my head reaching up to the denim belt loops on his jeans. It came without warning. My hand shot up to my scalp before I knew what I was doing. Warmth and wetness. I looked up to see only sky. On my fingers I noticed a smear of crimson blood, paint-stroked across the top of my nail. On the sand next to me was a shell, cracked open and shining black like asphalt on a hot day. On the edges where it broke I could just make out small amounts of the blood from my head. I picked up the shell and showed my grandfather. Seeing my head he knelt down to inspect. His hands moved through my hair, I could feel wetness surround the tip of his finger. He asked me if I was ok. I asked him what happened. My grandfather explained to me the process in which birds would find shelled animals in the ocean, swoop down and catch them in their mouths, and fly around in the sky with the shelled animal looking for a rock to drop it onto so that the shell would break and it could eat. My dark head was that rock, but the bird never came down to eat his food. Excited I kept the shell and took it home. It smelt of salt and sea death. A few days later my mom made me throw it out.

5

It’s 5:30 PM and already it is dark. I walk home through the cold. The whole scene is grayed as if in an old movie, except for the annoying high contrast the streetlamps give off. “Poetic,” I think to myself sarcastically. And then: “I need a girlfriend.”

I had been in love once, or I thought I was. It was towards the end of high school. Each time I would close my eyes my mind would fill with thoughts of her. Her smell. Her eyes. Her hair. She completely consumed me. I couldn’t sleep. My grades started dropping, my friends thought I was sick, my parents even accused me of doing drugs. But looking back on it I realize I wasn’t in love at all. I’ve watched pornos where I’ve taken special notice of the girl’s eyes or hair, and that love was hardly real. Or that love is more real; it usually ends up in the garbage can though. But that feeling that kept me up all those nights, it sure as hell felt more real. Life was better when I thought I was in love. A certain divinity crept into the most concrete inanimate things. I could look at an ant, a tree, the chimney of my house, the string tied onto a balloon, that broken blade of my ceiling fan and I’d be in complete awe of their existence. But I’m better now. Once I remembered to jerk off, love and god died and I could sleep again.

6

The sky has always been a source of inspiration. Ptolemy looked up at the stars and felt a departure from the mortality of Earth. The Mayan civilization found splendor in the stars, making up gods not for purposes of explanation, but as a way to give homage to the beautiful night skies. The German author Hermann Hesse wrote about the “cheerful serenity of the stars.” To him, the stars were a reminder of the deepest happiness: a subtle happiness which was not frivolity, and which was at the heart of every true piece of art and thought. But if the stars can lead us to happiness, they can also lead us to misery. Looking up at the night sky, Albert Camus could not escape a feeling of enormity. Like Ptolemy, he felt the immortality of the stars, and the mortality of the Earth, but instead of inspiration and happiness, Camus was left with a feeling of relative smallness and meaninglessness. Ptolemy was able to escape this Earth and be in the stars, while Camus was stuck in the soil. For the ancient Chinese Poet Li Po, the night sky was at once his ultimate happiness and his demise. Li Po was fond of taking night time boat rides along the Yangtze River alone. One night, he noticed the reflection of the moon in the water. Overcome by the moons beauty, Li Po tried to embrace the reflection, and drowned in the river.

7

I remember walking on the beach as the sun was setting with my grandfather, how there was no one there, how it was so windy it was hard for me to walk. The whole of my being was concentrated into the task of walking forward. My hair, like my shirt, waved uncontrollably, trying to leave the constraints of my scalp, and Newton screamed his third law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction; so I felt my hair trying to fly away and my head pulling tightly back. And I felt each thread of my shirt pulling on the next one, wanting to float away into oblivion and the skin of my back tugging in step, conforming to that screamed rule. I looked over to my grandfather. He looked frail and the skin of his face seemed to have been dropped onto his skull like a wrinkled sheet onto a bed. I thought he wouldn’t make it back. I told him that it was just a little farther, that we just had to go a little more. The wind carried the pale sand around in the air, the color of the sand melting with the pigment of my grandfather’s skin; at times he seemed to be disappearing.

8

I live in an apartment across from a rabbi, a real rabbi, a beard, a hat, everything. He invites me over every once in a while and he gives me a beer or a shot and some of his wife’s homemade snacks and talks to me about religion or life or whatever. I ask him what god is. I ask him what does spirituality have to do with not eating pork, or lighting candles on Friday. I tell him that I can feel spiritual without saying a prayer from a siddur, that I can even feel the unity between all things and eat pork, and that everything I see and experience leads me to the conclusion that the universe is indifferent. He tells me those are only feelings, that truth and beauty are a manifestation of God.

He’s also an alcoholic. The alcohol, he tells me, is spiritual lubricant. I think of Sartre, who looked at a glass of beer and became uneasy by its existence.

9

My grandfather lies in his hospital bed. He knows he is going to die. He’s been laying there for a month now, and he’s bored. I talk to my father outside the room. I ask him if we should say the Shema, the traditional Jewish prayer one recites before death. My grandfather calls in the nurse and asks her to end it. She says that it is not up to her, that the matter is up to God, and that we must wait for His action. He rolls his eyes as if to say I’m dying, not dumb.

In the waiting room the television is on. Israel has attacked Lebanon. The news reporter goes into the details of the situation. I’ve had enough of it; I leave to see my grandfather. I ask him what’s up, if I can do anything for him. The awkwardness of the situation makes me anxious. He holds my hand in his, and looks at me. I ask him if I should close the blinds to the window; he says later tonight. We sit there silent, his hand in mine, and I fall into it. The tranquility is intense. I feel his complete understanding and agreement with the conditions of the world, with his death, and he lets me share the sentiment. He takes his hand and makes a fist and punches my arm playfully. A few minutes later he asks me if I am ready and I begin to cry. I nod even though I couldn’t possibly be. He closes his eyes and seems to concentrate, and then silence. A moment passes. The light shines in through the window, lightly coating the blanket over my grandfather’s body, shimmering on the thin fragments of cotton not completely attached to the base. He opens his eyes and looks around surprised, and then sees me. Realizing he is still alive he gives a silly grin.

Later that night we go to CVS to pick up antidepressants for my grandmother and mother. Coming back to the hospital we go to the room and find my grandfather dead, my mother and grandmother standing around his body. His mouth is open and his head is lying on his shoulder. Each of my family members kiss his lifeless head. I stand by watching, staring. My father tells me that I can touch him, I don’t want to, but I do it anyway. My sister takes a slinky which she bought to give to my grandfather as an 82nd birthday present and puts it over his finger as a ring. She sets the hand back down and steps back and watches it for a second. “I guess that’s weird,” she says, and takes it back off.

10

It is true. To argue logically one has to accept that there is an absolute truth. Any axiom which denies an absolute truth is itself an absolute truth, and so the whole tower crumbles. What then, do I make of this ever-present feeling of meaninglessness, of the skies laughing at me? Is it, like the rabbi said, only a feeling? I find two answers.

Pythagoras, who, like most mathematicians around 500 BC was also heavily concerned with metaphysics, believed that the universe was composed of two entities: the limited and the unlimited, a whole and voids, roughly analogous to the supernatural heavens and the tangible earth. The natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3…) were the highest form of reality for Pythagoras because they too were comprised of wholes separated by voids (musical notes and scales are also of this form). Truth and reality could not only be described with natural numbers, reality was natural numbers. When a student of his discovered the existence of irrational numbers, numbers that can’t be expressed as the quotient of two natural numbers, he thought that this was a flaw in nature and could not accept their existence. Pythagoras had the student drowned. Plato found both rational and irrational numbers to be true and perfect, more real than our own physical world, which was only a reflection of the abstract world of truth and beauty which was run by math. Imaginary numbers were later discovered. Descartes, at first, had trouble accepting them, using “imaginary number” as a derogatory term. Later, Euler created what has come to be known as the most elegant equation in mathematics. My math professor was in tears as he wrote it on the board: $e^{i\pi}+1=0$. For mathematicians, contemplating this equation is the equivalent of tripping on acid. The equation features a connecting of the five most important values in all of mathematics, two irrational numbers, an imaginary number, and two natural numbers. Richard Feynman, perhaps the greatest theoretical physicist since Einstein, would say that even this is not real, that nature knows nothing of it. Emerson told us that even nature is not real, only we are. Sartre would say that it makes no difference if there is a universal reality or not, that man could not tell the difference in any case. This is the first answer: God’s existence would change nothing; man cannot possibly know Him.

The second answer is Feynman’s. It is said that he was a magician, as opposed to a genius. He would come out and declare outlandish things like photons did whatever they pleased, moved any way they wanted, at any speed they wanted, faster or slower than the speed of light. Everyone thought he was completely nuts, but five years later the physics community figured out he was right. And it is because it was found that photons, the particles of light, move anyway they want, anyhow they want, that so many peoples notion of reality and truth was turned upside down. Truth, it seems, does not have to follow logic, it is not necessary. No amount of elegance, intuition or logic will ever amount to truth if it is simply not so. Feynman was a scientist of the highest order, and yet he condemned the whole subject for being something that was ultimately not true and real: “If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts — physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on — remember that Nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!”

11

My grandfather rolled up the cuffs of his pants, took off his shoes and socks, and stepped in. I followed. Looking down I saw the wavy form of my toes clear through the water. Above me, leaves swayed, letting lines of sun shine through, spotting my toes and lighting the waters surface like foil. The stream ran cold that day, and slow. We tried to stop it. We took rocks from the shore and piled them. We covered holes with twigs, and then grass, and then dirt. I looked over and saw my grandfather, knees in the water and putting his hands over where the water was still running through. I felt around our wall, and tried with any part of my body to stop the relentless flow. Soon we were both lying in the river, bodies tight against our wall of rock and tree, grass and dirt. And though the water was so clear, as if nothing, and so cold, as if frozen, and so slow, it seemed as if no amount of rock or twig or grass or dirt or bodies could stop the slow subtle power of the stream.

We came out dripping, shivering, but the sun warmed my skin. My wet feet clung to the soil of the shore, and my toes dug into the earth. My grandfather rested his hand on my head; we stood there watching the water flow past us.

Dieting (May 7, 2009)

Sarah and I had our last meeting today. She wondered how I would do without her and the thought crossed my mind too. Most people had heard of the Subway diet – a minivans drive away, a suburban turkey sandwich, and the ghost of past wastelines sourrounding you in concentric circles; Jared made it feasible and fun. Atkins, Jenny Craig, Weightwatchers, even the Grapefruit. These were diets for the masses, feel good roads to failure, but Sarah knew me better. We had been through them all: Breatharianism, Edinic, Ketogenic, we even tried our hand at Inedia. And now our time was coming to an end.

I began to think backwards. Today we were filled with nine and a half ounces of salt water, half a guava, and three sticks of celery. Yesterday, Sarah had managed to find dragon fruit, imported across the ocean from Singapore. And there were the dirty wrinkled fingers of a Malai migrant worker, there was the wooden arc, filled with two of each species – two green bananas, two spiked pineapples, two mangos, two cucumbers, two cantaloupe, two – there were the rough seas, salted blues and greens, tumbled fluids; there was the shipping yard in San Fransico, the fuel inefficient train making the cross continental journey on roadways Asian men built in dusty air; there was the grocery store, the black man working for minimum wage stocking shelves; there was me, and Sarah, and the knife, and our mouths; there was the deep orange fruit, my white teeth, my golfball shaped tonsils, my constricting throat; there was intestines, and villi, and enzymatic breakdowns; lactic acid was there too, and tumbling fluids; there was my stomache, where food had been entering, exiting for years now, a gastronomic history of my life so far. I remembered back to four years ago, when I would think about what it was that I had eaten. I had always looked straight towards the stomache, imagining the skin as transparent; the way people might imagine a fetus inside of a pregnant woman. That all changed with Sarah, and the Shangri-La. I could now only think from the source – the big bang, or, if I was in the mood, Creation itself

Letter (February, 2010)

Dear --,

Ours was the story of Creation. All twisted dust. All infrared dreams. All nauseating potentiality. Remember those trees, dear? Three feet tall as if children; limbs like arms, like limbs. Remember those dances? Everything kinetic and everything bruised. Every reason sacrificed for rhyme. Every cloth and leaf pulled by an airy wind. Temperaments right and but just so that we couldn't tell if it was us and the trees and the Earth that toppled through the ether or the other way around. I want to be in those circles again.

Ours was the story of Creation. Did you know that in Genesis, in the original Hebrew, it goes: וְהָאָרֶץ, הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, וְחֹשֶׁךְ, עַל-פְּנֵי תְהוֹם; וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים, מְרַחֶפֶת עַל-פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם , . Did you know that I was walking home from work one day, I was still near Bellview Sanatarium Ward; I had just passed a man in boxer briefs and that Jamaican man who sold me those bannanas twice a day and wouldn't charge me once in a while, and I was playing that game I sometimes play with myself where I try not to step on the cracks in the sidewalk, and I try to keep away, as much as possible, from the gum stained onto the concrete, and I find myself tiptoeing around those grey/wintergreen/black blotches of polyisobutylene until I convince myself that my superstition was my own personal invention and in any case was an arbitrary one - and so I decided to stop and just walk, and then, just moments after that, so that it still took me by suprise, but not completely-out-of-the-blue-holy-shit-someone-call-911-by suprise, one of those Jewish religious guys with the beard and the hat and those braided lengths of cloth coming from the secrets of his shirt came up to me and asked me if I wanted to pray. I asked him who wrote the prayers and what they meant. He said 'The truth is I don't know. The truth is it doesn't matter which author past made this. The truth is often words precede ideas.' And I think he meant that real: not that the words are more important than ideas but that the words came first; that the words aranged themselves. Not that words can partake in the act of aranging, but that there was something intrinsic in the physics of words that spontaneously causes their comming together.

And he told me the intracacies of תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, that 2.2$\times10^{3}$ years ago was a guy whose word was 'Septuagint' and Septuagint translated תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ from hebrew to greek, from תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ to 'aoratoV kai akataskeuastoV' , and that aoratov $\in\{$unseen, unseeable, undefined, without horrizon, of or relating to darkness$\}$, and that kai = a primary particle having a copulative force, but that by that time it was really just that kai = &, and that akataskeuastos $\in\{$not provisioned, not prepared, unfurnished, rustic, empty, $\emptyset\$} and that by 1613 there was a Pilgrim fresh new to the eastern United States Coast whose word was 'Purchas' and Purchas wrote these words, in his book which book's word was 'Pilgrimage', in Pilgrimage: That Prophecie that the world should be two thousand yeares Tohu and Bohu emptie and without law (sic), and that there was always also God said let there be light , and there was: that it was words that created the light, and that furthermore God said it was good, and it was , and so then the words that God said had to precede the fact that it was . And do you think it's possible that Creation happened because of תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ, because of רוּחַ , because of every preposition and of noun and of verb and of parenthetical in that inkfilled lambskin - and not the other way around? Do you remember our story, dear? It's the same one. And I think if I can write it all down, if those damn words would just come together the way they do and I could be so lucky as to be part of that somehow, because what am I but bones and vasculatures, I'm all just splotches of hair and atoms, insecurities and mucus and lymph fluids and - I'm all just word, I mean what could we be but words? And but if the words would just come together I'm sure it would all happen again.

It was ours, the story of Creation. It was our fermament, it was our miasmata rising…

I miss you,

Felix

Study (February 2010)

And there is a point in pursuit of a PhD when you begin to wonder if you will make any discovery other than this following one. You will find this strange and undeniable Truth: as the train of words which forms a question becomes shorter and each word more likely to hold a syllabic count of unity, the question becomes not only more abstract and difficult to solve, but has the strangely powerful ability to freeze, and anent that freezing the absurd thing is that though the question becomes increasingly abstract and takes more of an unreal form, the freezing is wholly on this Earth, and leaves us constrained, unable to move within our bodies, leaves us under the covers of our beds, another day wasted. And this is how it goes:

Can the local field potential and phase precession be created by entanglement of ion channels?$\xrightarrow{k_{f}}$

$\xleftarrow[k_{r}]{}$Does phase precession let organisms know where they are; how do neurons do this?$\xrightarrow{k_{f}}$

$\xleftarrow[k_{r}]{}$What is the connection between neurons and an organisms knowledge?$\xrightarrow{k_{f}}$

$\xleftarrow[k_{r}]{}$How do my own neurons let me feel emotion, and generate qualia?$\xrightarrow{k_{f}}$

$\xleftarrow[k_{r}]{}$Am I more than a collection of matter in a certain place?$\xrightarrow{k_{f}}$

$\xleftarrow[k_{r}]{}$How did I get to this point in time and space?$\xrightarrow{k_{f}}$

$\xleftarrow[k_{r}]{}$What will I get accomplished here?$\xrightarrow{k_{f}}$

$\xleftarrow[k_{r}]{}$What am I doing here?$\xrightarrow{k_{f}}$

$\xleftarrow[k_{r}]{}$What am I doing?$\xrightarrow{k_{f}}$

$\xleftarrow[k_{r}]{}$What is this?$\xrightarrow{k_{f}}$

$\xleftarrow[k_{r}]{}$What is?$\xrightarrow{k_{f}}$

$\xleftarrow[k_{r}]{}$What?

And you'll soon find that $\frac{k_{f}}{k_{r}}$»1 and that no matter how many probability density functions you calculate, you just know you ain't ever goin' back to the start, not in any meaningful way, not any time soon. But you'll still get a thesis, you'll be wearing that awkward colorful gown just like everyone else. And so no son, don't worry. Despite the fact that the majority of marriages end up in regret and lawyers, despite the endless and heartbreaking statistics concerning the fraction of small family style restaurants and delis which amount to piles of debt within the first five years, and son, I'm sure that moth flying towards that bright sexy electronic buzz on that warm summers night will end up just fine, and try not to think of that time uncle Joe followed that girl to France only to find that she had been cheating on him all along, just like we'd told him, and have you forgetten, like I'd suggested, about your attempt to soar down our sloped concrete driveway in that plastic tricycle I bought you (and did you forget about that bloodied kneecap and that brown antiseptic so strong that it stung not only the bruise but every atom on the inside of your nose, and some circuit of neurons so that even just seeing squared tiles lit by ugly incandescent lighting brings back the smell of everything, the blood, the stickiness of the bandaid, the brown liquid,all found that day in the bathroom.). You're going to end up just fine son, because I know you know you love her, and I know that she loves you, even if at the moment, my handsome son in his handsome suit on his wedding day, is getting a little bit of the nervousness about the whole thing. The point being this: Just shutup and know it, for the time being, until it becomes True.

Trust (April 2010)

Begining creative writing classes talk a lot about trust and honesty. Trust between the author and the reader. Does the reader trust that the author is being honest? I want to tell you, reader, not to trust me. I don't even trust myself. I wake up, sometimes, months after I've fallen asleep. Can you imagine that? A first concious breath after three months of sleep; oxygen, cold and heavy; the chilling awarness of a living body; all nerves and feelings - and then - and then the knowledge of having been active but not awake, of being real in a world where the lights were off, so to speak. Try to put yourself there for a second. Maybe your'e cooking and the radio is on. Maybe you've got some onions simmering in oil; you notice every hiss and every oniony fragrance, and the heat from the pan rising to the skin right under your eyes, and the way things just seem to sweat sweetness in cases like this, and everything pops up from the pan to fill the room. And the radio is playing some tune that you just love. And for a moment you stop with the onions and the popping and the heat and there's only the music. And it's the focusing on the music that makes you stop fixing your gaze on the cast iron and the caramelizing and now your gaze is fixed to nothing. Staring into empty space; if you drew a line from the back of your cornea through your retina and followed it straight you'd hit some patch of painted wall next to the fridge, maybe. But that's not where you're looking at. There's no saliency at all, in anything your'e looking at, no discernable features of what your'e visually focused on compared to it's neighbors: you're in charge of casting the main actor and you're only considering inconsequantial extras: a whole town of neighbors with no one to be a neighbor to. And that's all in a moment. You've gone from onions and heat and popping and taste to emptiness - the white painted wall next to your refergirator, and not even that - everything you see is next to and the point it's next to is also next to, and you've lost all reference to anything. And that's all in a moment. You've gone from discernible features to so many different things that theyre all the same, there's no information any more. Everything's just the white wall next to the fridge. And maybe in the next moment it is the music, maybe the music changes from 5/4 to 4/4, or the saxaphone start in, or a key change happens, and the music - the thing that brought you from conciousness to nothingness in the first place - brings you back. And that's just a moment or two. Now do it for longer. Do it for a minute or a few days or three months. That's where I'm at for three months at a time. It's all just a white painted wall next to the fridge. So if there's a world out there I wouldn't trust a word on these pages; I've been asleep through most of the cooking.

Honesty though, I'll be honest. You can take that to the fucking bank. I couldn't lie to you if I tried. There's no such thing as fiction. There's no such thing as fiction.

There's no such thing as fiction: not in the stories of feeble old veterans, not on cheesy television sitcoms, not in Alice's wonderland, not in my unconcious dreams, not even in a politicians speech.

Fiction preceded existence, and then existence killed it.

In the begining there was myth, and through a process of spontaneous self-assemebly we came, glowing in our realness, all existence and dinosaurs and plants and light and water. We came in the form of wars and clouds and houses and gates and pyramids and smog and rats and hair. The prebiotic soup was born from myth, and then myth was gone. Not so much killed but vanished. Myth, having resigned to its destiny and having formed the galaxies, became an impossiblity. There is now only reality. Fiction preceded existence, and then existence killed it.

I am so steeped in reality that I couldn't fucking lie to you if I tried. All story is florid history. All fabrication just twisted tangibles. No novel creation; all Characters truly created in the Author's Likeness. We are so steeped in This World, that we have no ability to make up any story. And so this is the history of a bitter tea, left soaking too long; now in lukewarm waters. We are forever relegated to the nonfiction section. Do yourself a favor and forget half the Dewey Decimal System.

Gum (October 2, 2005)

He was one of those people that are defined by the gum he chewed. That’s what he said when he introduced himself to me.

“By your gum?”

“Yea,“ he then stuck his fingers in his mouth. “Mwhy gmum.” And he picked out from between his molars that white piece of chewing gum, extended his arm, hoisted the gum up by his finger an inch from my eye, and though blurry, I could see that there was a smile on his face.

Had this happened anywhere else I would have been confused. But the soundtrack of New York City softened the edges of the weird, allowed for the unusual to become conventional. If I never saw him again all that would have stayed in my mind was that this was the only bum I had ever seen that wore his rags with such conviction.

I told him I had to go. I was studying advertising at NYU and I had a class on pop culture to get too. One day, I thought to myself, the billboards I would make would be worth more than this homeless man had owned his entire life. But he didn’t respond. His arm didn’t budge. He didn’t stop holding that piece of gum one inch from my eye. He didn’t move at all, except that his smile had disappeared. I felt bad so I offered him another piece of gum. But he started marching away down the street, arm held high and stiff with that chewed piece of gum on his finger.

Continuing onto class I was excited that I had a story to tell my friends. Inevitably it would end up, like most of my stories, quoting Denis Leary. “Yeah, I love living in New York, man, and people who live in New York, we wear that fact like a badge right on our sleeve because we know that fact impresses everybody! ‘I was in Vietnam.’ ‘So what? I live in New York!’” That’s why I loved New York. The hustle and bustle of the city, the constant movement, the never ending noises. It was just like Leary said, you really could die at any moment; there was no place this alive.

The teacher ended class five minutes early. I grabbed a bite at McDonalds, like I did most days after class. The Golden Arches had special prices for students at NYU. Finishing up my Big Mac I realized I would have to rush to get on the 5:47 train home. If I missed it, it was another hour of waiting around Penn Station and probably a Krispy Kreme donut to pass the time. When I left McDonalds I ran.

Running through the city was pretty regular for me, but strangely I wasn’t in any sort of good shape. Exhausted, I finally saw that big Fox News advertisement and I knew I was close. I ran towards the escalators and just as I was stepping onto them a hand rose beside me. Without thinking I gave it a high five, as if I had just finished running a marathon. There was a piece of paper in my hand. Halfway down the escalator I looked back up and saw that same bum I had talked to earlier that morning.

I went down the stairs to track three where I found my train leaving slowly out of the station without me. Sweating and tired I climbed back up the stairs to the waiting area where I collapsed on a bench. I opened my hand and looked down at the torn sheet of paper I was handed. In scratchy blue marker a smiley face was drawn, the smile protruding out from the confines of the face. Tired and somewhat astonished by the revelation that this homeless man could actually draw a valid smiley face, I sat there and stared. It was another 55 minutes until the train would come.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had a good nights sleep. After catching my breath, I got up and walked around. I felt dizzy. I needed fresh air but I decided to settle for whatever was outside of Penn Station. The curb there was plated with metal, and it made for somewhat of a comfortable seat.

“Come on, let’s go.” I looked behind and up, from where the voice was coming. It was the bum. The sun was directly behind him, so his whole being was darkened. I could only take notice of his rhythmic chewing of a piece of gum, which I’m sure was that same piece from the morning. Ugly and old, the gum changed form with each bite. I saw the wetness of his mouth each time he lowered his jaw to dislodge the gum from its stuck position between his sodden leathery tongue and hard yellow teeth.

He started to walk away. He turned the corner and I lost sight of him. I just wanted to sleep, and it suddenly occurred to me that if anyone knew how to sleep, it was this guy.

I got up and ran to where he turned the corner. He was still walking. Once I caught up to him I stayed a step behind him. He didn’t turn around or stop until we got to the East River. I had never actually been up to the East River before. All I knew about it was that the mob dropped bodies there. The bum took off his shirt and pants. He rolled over a sizeable rock to reveal a suit, dirty but folded. The suit fit him perfectly. While he put on his tie, I asked, half jokingly, “You gonna go for a swim?”

“No, I can’t swim.” He climbed over the railing, looking into the river. “But I can sure as hell float.” With that he let his body fall into the water at gravity’s whim. I ran towards the railing and looked down into the water. And there I saw him, flapping his arms wildly and kicking his legs to no avail, a biological anomaly: a form that didn’t fit his function. He was by no means drowning, but he really wasn’t floating either. I watched five minutes of what I finally decided was either some passionate water dance or a strange attempt at staying above the water. He started to laugh, and I couldn’t help but laugh either. I jumped in fully clothed. Under the water the sounds of the city were muffled. Light shone through the water in strands. When I went up to take a breath of air, he was still moving madly.

“I thought you said you could float.”

“I am floating.”

“No, you’re waving your arms and legs like a frieken maniac.”

He took a breath and stopped moving, and started to tread water. “Everything’s relative.”

I asked him why he was wearing a suit and he gave me a strange look. “So that I don’t get my clothes wet.”

We must have stayed there another hour. I had been to the top of the Empire State Building before, and I thought that I would never be able to see more of the city than I could from that point. But it was there, floating on my back in the East River with some bum I didn’t know, where I got to see more of the city than I had though possible. It didn’t sound any quieter because I could still hear the taxis, and the people, and the wind. It didn’t look any smaller because the skyscrapers looked bigger from down there. It didn’t feel any less alive because I felt, every so often, the vibration of the subway, or a car driving close by, or some highly adaptable fish graze my leg. Every sense was more intense and much more unorganized than it was all those days I had ran through the city, but I felt that the city was composed.

I took the 11:52 Dover Express home. The man next to me slouched, one leg extended into the narrow walkway, leaning back in such a way that I had hardly any room to sit. He held a newspaper in front of his face but his sunglasses hung low on his nose and I could see that he was sleeping. My cheek was flattened against the cold window of the train as the conductor spoke on the PA system. Without intention my fingers began to search under the seat. I felt something. My arm lifted. And there I was, still damp and disgustingly warm, stuck between the cold hard side of an old train and the bare hairy skin of some fat sleeping man, holding a piece of chewed gum an inch from my eye.

The gum had hardly any form. There was no pattern to it at all. Randomly flickering, the sickly fluorescent lights fought against passing streetlamps and a radiant moon for its chance to cast shadows on the matter I held. Something about it hurt and I began to sweat. The complete disorder of the whole situation made me want to scream. Then the lights turned off. The engine grew quiet. Below, I saw the river giving off vague notions of moonlight. The absolute serenity hit me like that first cold conscious breath after passing out. Still an inch from my eye, I stared at the gum. It exploded with light as full energy came back to the train. But the noise did not irritate me. In the collective chaos I noticed a harmony: between the moon and the streetlamps, the forward movement of the train and the loud noises, the gum and my eye. I was only troubled in that I knew when I woke up that next morning I would get dressed and go to class. But now I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

Coffee (January 1, 2006)

Coffee

He stepped into the coffee shop, the same one he had started his day off with for the past eight years. The Mexican lady behind the counter never learned English in that time, but she did know that he liked his coffee with sugar, and milk on the side. He paid and took his morning drink with no smile, without even looking up.

The street outside was empty. In the distance he could make out the pastelled silhouettes of the rolling hills he had moved there for. He had loved to get lost, both physically and mentally, in those hills. Those were the hills on which he had mastered his own brand of meditation: where he was able to, by completely clearing his mind and concentrating intensely, separate his physical world, that shallow world of animal instincts, wants, and needs, completely from the world of his mind and spirit.

He stood there, outside of the coffee shop, staring at those hills. He had never tasted coffee so bitter. There was something too, about the Styrofoam cup in his hand that irritated him. What the hell was it made from anyway? He couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was exactly, or what disgusting mechanical process it took to change whatever the ingredients were to the final product. If there was a devil, he was sure that it was Satan himself who made Styrofoam.

It took a tremendous amount of effort to start his walk to work. His only comfort was the knowledge that in nine hours he would be able to go home and sleep.

Jonathan Dayton High School looked prestigious from the outside. Inside, three quarters of the lockers were vacant and the bathroom had been de facto converted into smoking lounges. This is where he worked. He always thought his position as gym teacher gave him the most real view of the kids. Not even the parents, especially not the parents, knew how these kids really thought. Some days it would make him happy. Nothing was more enjoyable to see than a bunch of kids playing basketball, or a group of girls giggling at some boy they liked. It was cheesy, he knew that, but he loved those days. Lately though, the days were not like those good days. Lately, the days were filled with disgust and headaches. Giddy girls were at once shallow creatures shaped by The O.C. or whatever show the kids liked these days. A group of them, he was sure, would go out and spend fifteen dollars on some small salad that they’d all share for fear of becoming fat. And he knew the kids playing basketball would rather be doing drugs or fighting or even touching themselves at home, and on these bad days he wanted the same thing.

There was one person he liked more than the others at the school. But even then there were days when he just could not handle any meaningless bullshit conversation, even with her. She was a biology teacher and her name was Glenda. In class she had a subtle sense of humor that was only understood by a quarter of her students and even less of the faculty. To most of the students and the teachers though, Glenda was just a small awkward woman that knew every bird call in the state of New Jersey and could list the top three most prevalent enzymes in a newts liver (and the variations in that list depending on where the newt was from).

But where others saw nerdy over enthusiasm for science, he saw passion. His conversations with Glenda had never reached topics of God or spirit, but he was sure she thought about these things. Every chance he had he snuck away from the smelly locker rooms he was in charge of to talk to the woman. Glenda didn’t mind his company, but she didn’t find it overly enjoyable either. And sometimes, though she knew it was sophomoric, she was embarrassed to be seen with him. She knew, and the kids knew, that he was just a high school gym teacher.

Arriving home he wondered if he was the only twenty seven year old to have a mid life crisis. Every passion he used to have had collected dust, especially the guitar he kept leaning against the wall to his attic. He hated this new lifestyle. He always had a certain contempt for people he suspected of having no real passions. It was arrogant to think like this, but he had trouble respecting those who could not be moved by beauty. There were many people who annoyed him simply by stating they did not listen to music all that much or that they didn’t really see anything special in a painting by Dali. But the people who enraged him the most were those skinny, lackluster people who did not enjoy food. To him there was no one as disenchanted and he wondered if these people could truly love.

The big news all over the school the next day was the birth of a group of ducklings. A mother bird had flown into the enclosed court yard and was forced to give birth there. The children thought it was cool, and the news made some of the teachers smile, and after a day no one really cared. But he was interested in the ducks. He was amazed at how they all waddled in line after their mother. During breaks he would go into the courtyard and follow them around. At first the mother duck would attack him. The children watched from their classroom windows and laughed. But after a while the ducks reached an understanding and allowed him to come close. The girl students thought it was cute and the guys still pointed and laughed.

Glenda noticed the gym teacher in the courtyard. And after a while she began to realize that his affinity for the ducks was not the result of immaturity. She had never thought of him like this, and she had to admit to herself that there was something about him that she liked. She went to the courtyard to talk to the gym teacher. The conversation mainly concerned the ducks. He was amazed, but not surprised, at the wealth of information she knew about them. She thought about the last time she had even kissed a man. The bell rang and she had a class to teach.

He was either horny or in love. But he had been horny before, and this was something more. He didn’t know what it was exactly and he didn’t really care. The feeling consumed his whole being as only something fresh and discovered can, whether it was love or not. But for all the newfound excitement the feeling gave him, it was also something old and familiar, something, he felt, that should be taken as some sort of revered inherent tradition. The days had reverted back to those good days and he hadn’t even realized it until now.

The next morning he woke early and decided to go back to the hills he used to enjoy. He sat down besides a huge maple, the same one he had always sat by. At once he felt something new. All those times in the hills before, he had separated from himself, concentrating on the surrounding environment. But now he felt more himself than he had ever been. The hills were defined by his being there, every leaf was an extension of his fingers, and every branch was his arm. He thought of Glenda.

He wasn’t dumb; he knew that everyone thought of him as some crazy gym teacher. And he knew that Glenda hardly respected him, much less liked him, until she saw him with those ducks. Yes, she was the same as everybody else, but he decided that he would fuck her anyway. He went to get his coffee like he did on every other day. The cream swirled through his hot drink. He thought of the galaxies and looked at his hills. Today was a good day. He could only hope that the day he died would be one of these good days too.

Adam Shai

2005