Sweet Misery
Fuzzy newborn chick with a trout strapped to his back is hanging on a dorm room wall. An eighteenth-century lithograph of the hanging of a witch with the caption “hang in there baby”. These were the only two memorial pieces of this movie I watched some time in the recent past. Not a name, a director and who-he-was-back-then actor. Oh, there’s a mnemonic clue; no female lead or supporting role. Speaking of movies and Mnemonic (I swear to darling baby Jesus and his mom, coincidence) I tried watching Johnny Mnemonic the other day or two. I want to say that’s the fifth time in my life and I still haven’t made it through. It’s in 2021 and people can surf the web in their eyeballs, though, the web looks like 90’s data packs and graphs, and, inexplicably, the internet turns you into a cartoon for a few minutes; think Heavy Metal not Bugs Bunny. With a foundation like that they might could have made a watchable movie. I’d like to blame Keanu Reeves, in general, for everything, but he wasn’t all that’s wrong with that movie. Type casting wise he was a good pick seeing as Charlie Chaplin is dead and all. Real Dead.
My head is throbbing with an ocular migraine, yes, they’ve added a headache. They who and/or whom, you ask? The they what am, the they that are responsible for all the things they’s are accused of. Aliens, authority figures, a symbol for all creation conspiring against you to fuck up your day. I don’t know, headaches weren’t coming with the laser light show in my left eye and now they are. Different they, very specific to phantom laser light show that only plays in my head. I take some CBD, a bit of medicinal reefer, put on my gray-shade ray ban aviators and type. Not really the typing part that helps, it’s the methodical part of ritual and that typing has me sitting upright and ray bans and monitor are the only balance of light that mitigates the searing stabbing that light plus brings or the mandalas of purple and greens that the inside of my eyelids play out.
It’s only been two years since these started. The mandala thing has always gone on, though I didn’t learn what a mandala was until … after the formative years zero to five. Honestly, how would I remember when I first heard Mandala? It’s one of those things that when someone explains it you think “So that’s what they’re called” not “Great more useless information” or “I should take notes”. I had meant to ask people throughout the five odd decades, but forget to. I’ll ask the one person (I hope, geez, I really do hope there’s one) reading this; what do you see when your eyes are closed. Precisely, physically, objectively. I have never seen just darkness. My suspicion is that no one does, but it’s just a guess, maybe based on what the camera does when someone sleeps in the movies; either fade to black or pans the room for ninjas. I think it’d be cool if under my eyelids I was panning the room for ninjas, but that would sort of be a lie. It’s 2018, Trump is n the white house, the concept of an absolute truth or lie is no longer relevant. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but I’m hard pressed to think of a good way of meaning it. I reckon its just sort of the truth.
I’ve managed to stretch – I’m doing nothing and a whole lot of it – into three paragraphs. If I took one of the paragraphs and gave it to you, what would I have? Nothing, but two paragraphs of it. To say this is productive falls on the lie end of the sort of bell curve, it does, however, chew up time I could be holding my head in my hands chanting “fuck, fuck, sweet non-dairy fuck, hurts, fuck, hurts like fuck, oh my non-GMO fuck”. It’s not like killing time, it’s like self-defense, keeping time from killing me, like in the near future, it’s going to get me eventually. If I were inventing my own theology, or, as is the long-standing tradition, adding bits to an existing theology, there would be some entity, the personification of death or god or a nemesis, who would look through your dead eyes. The question isn’t what are they trying to see, a new world, a new you, the experience of mortality? No, the question is, do they see a laser light show and if they wanted it to stop WWHDMD (What would haredawgs mythology do).
Hundreds of words have been sacrificed to bring you this lack of a message. In the right context any of these words could be a productive member of society, respectable, um, not the proper name (heh, Freudian typo, meant noun, obscuring the Trump-ness of it all). Oh, as long as I’m snarking up Trump without any specific breech of protocol, manners or ethics that I’m aware of being said or done by the man, shit, this sentence is just going to trail off and the next paragraph will begin with a …
So, I get this call, the one that starts long about now and ends December 31st, healthcare and the intrusion of the federal fucking government. This lady calls and pitches all these options that exist for people not where I am. I keep from hanging up for a while because I think I’ll be switching insurance, if possible, and doctors, so, I wanted to hear about it. Some twenty minutes later I made a crack about Trump and healthcare. She was holding in a laugh, I didn’t know, and the dam just burst, at rumbling explosion into belly laugh and then settling into a delightful giggle that would not go back in the box. I pictured a call center full of cubicles covering the headset receiver and peering around to see if someone was getting carted off by Mental health professionals; again. She got very specific about her Trump issues, the sting was abated by the delightful giggle that would not go back in the box. Our call was over before it did and for all I know it’s become chronic.
She was so pleased that I opened the Trump door (a thing of her own invention, I honestly wasn’t trying to free her from her script) that at the end of the call she kept saying I could call her if there was anything I wanted, um, an odd turn of a phrase, repeating her name and when I asked if they were commissioned she said no. I don’t think she was flirting, I think she needed a customer number to show on the record and someone she could vent to. She needed it way more than I did, I do kind of need a health care option. I’m strongly considering the fuck you option. Not getting insurance and paying as I go, maybe at urgent care.
Ok, this plan is getting me a whole lot of nowhere. Below is a poem I was writing and stopped because the next stanza was not coming. Ok, it was, I just didn’t like it or any of them what was competing to be it.
She was waiting at a
House fire
For a hose to come
I said ‘How you doing?”
She said
“fine.”
I said ‘Wanna go for a ride
In my American car?’
She said
‘ain’t you a shining beacon
In a dark
Port.’