The Mortalist

Hermit of the Big Stick

2012-02-14T12:17:00.001-08:00

Hermit of the Big Stick

Yan Yan

Across from the comic book shop was this weird goth biker bar. The place was as dark as night all day long. It had wooden beams in front like those old saloons from the westerns. The windows were painted over in this flame tattoo art style showing cavemen-like drawings of animal sacrifices. Then in the Diablo font it says Styx. That’s the name of the bar, Styx.

Once you step in, your eardrums are bombarded by the sonic force of Pantera. A trio of middle age buff dudes sporting their tattoos and leather vests sat at the bar with their backs toward you. The leather looks really nice. These were bikers who liked to dress sharp. That’s when you notice the Victorian glassware with macabre figures twisting and grabbing. The bartender, a young dark Mediterranean girl wore a black corset and stockings. All the way at the back of the bar was this bearded figure wearing a puffy homeless man’s poncho. In front of him was an iPad. His slim boyish hands slid over the screen causing a gashing wound to appear on the screen with blood oozing out. This was iCutter, the cutting edge cutting simulation app that was on every hot app list. He turned the side of his hand to the screen and used it as a rag to wipe away the blood. The blood smudged on the screen. He then click on the needle and thread icon and used a virtual needle to sow up the wound on the screen. Once that was done, the blood came out less and less. Using the wiping action with the side of his hand, he eventually cleaned up the bloody mess.

A mysterious woman entered the Styx. She wore a velvety red dress. Her eyes were emerald green and her long gypsy hair slithered like a mamba down to her waist. She was carrying an Adidas shoe box in her hand. The woman walked straight to the back of the room and sat down across from the bearded figure. He looked up and said, “you are her.” She nodded and quickly glanced around the room.

“So, can I ask you some questions about the product?” He asked.

“Sure, anything you want to know.”

“What does it know?”

“Everything it needs to for your purposes. You do understand that each unit is created for one or two specific purposes right?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Is there anything else?” She asked.

“Where did it come from exactly?”

“China.”

“I see. Oh, I see!”

A faint smiled crept into her face.

“Tell me, how were you able to find my services?” She asked.

“I have many connections in the world of gaming. Word gets around.”

“I never thought we would be catering to gamers.”

“Let’s just hope it works as well as it’s supposed to. I’m still a little skeptical, you know.”

“Well, you know how to reach me. We do have a 30 day return policy.”

“Excellent.”

“So are you ready to make this deal, Mr. Hermit of the Big Stick.?”

“Ya, I have the money here. Seventy five hundred correct?”

“Well, actually it’s eight thousand.”

“What, that’s not the price we agreed on!”

“Shh Mr. Hermit, we can discuss this.”

“What happened to the original price?”

“That was before I met you in person. Now that I have met you, my assessment of the risk of this situation has changed considerably. I think upping the total to eight thousand will help mitigate the risks.”

“Fine. Here.”

The bearded figure reached under the table and pulled out a suitcase. He opened it and grabbed eight roles of cash. He handed them over to the woman. She examined each carefully as if she could count the whole stack with her eyes. She then put the money into a small black bag. Mr. Hermit looked at his digital wristwatch and said, “Okay I have to get going. I will let you know how the product turns out.” She handed him the shoe box. After grabbing his suitcase and the shoe box, the bearded figure quickly walked into the men’s room. The mysterious woman left the bar.

Inside the bathroom, Mr. Hermit took care to bolt the door. He then pulled off his wig and fake beard. He put them into the suit case where the money used to be. He then took off his poncho and tied the sleeves into an uncomfortable knot around his waist. He went across the street and waited in front of the comic book shop. A Jeep Cherokee pulled up along the curb in front of Mr. Hermit. The window rolled down and a woman said, “Just on time, honey. Hop in.”

Mr. Hermit, whose real name is Sam, got into the car next to his mother. He put the suitcase and shoe box down in front of him and laid the poncho over them.

“How was your day honey?”

“Oh, just the same old same old.”

“Did you have math with Mrs. Weaver?”

“Oh ya, you know Mrs. Weaver, always coming up with new cooky ideas.”

“What’s she up to now?”

“Trying to get us to perform a play she wrote where all the characters are numbers and signs.”

“You’re working on a play in math class?”

“Ya, but we still have to turn in all the homework from the textbook.”

“Oh no. I’m going to have to speak to the principal about this.”

“Well if you do mom, don’t tell them you talked to me about it. I don’t want to be known as the school snitch, even if it’s only on a raving mad woman.”

“Sammy, don’t talk like that.”

“Sorry mother. Thanks for picking me up mother, I love you.”

Sam’s room was rectangular and long. He slept on a futon. There were posters of metal bands on the walls. The walls were painted a dark grey. He had an old organ, the kind kindergarten teachers used, against the wall. Next to the organ was his work desk. A printer, a laptop, external mouse, note pad, pen. At the end of the room opposite the bed was a small TV on a small cabinet. An Xbox 360 and a Playstation 3 were both hooked up to the TV. Controllers lay scattered like crabs on beach during sunrise.

Sam entered his room and locked the door. He went to his computer to put on Iron Maiden and turned up his computer speakers. He then went to his closet and typed in the key code for his safe, 543847. He took the remaining thousand dollar rolls out of the suitcase and put them in the safe. He then locked his safe. He threw the wig and beard into the closet as well before closing it. He then grabbed the shoebox and sat down on his bed. With a few waves of his hands he made a clearing in his messy bed. He laid the box down on his bed and carefully pulled off the top. There it was a lifeless Asian hand with a metal plate at the wrist attached to a chain. Sam dug around the packing foam and found a booklet and a small glass tube of white powder. He quickly read through the booklet. Apparently, the hand will be activated as soon as it comes into contact with the white powder. Sam powdered the hand and it stood up at once.

“Your name is Lucifer.” Sam said, following the booklet’s instruction to name the hand.

“My name is Sam.”

“I will be your only master. You obey only me.”

“You are free to explore this room but you may not leave this room.”

“You are to hide if anyone other than me enters this room.”

“You are to ask for permission before playing with something that belongs to me.”

“That is all. Those are your basic guidelines. If you don’t have any questions we can start to talk about what your job is.”

The hand crawled around a little on the bed no doubt stretching its five limb fingers after a long period of suspended animation. When it heard its master Sam ask a question, it turned to him and with its index and middle finger slightly raise did a two finger nod. Sam understood the gesture perfectly clearly…

Sam brought Lucifer over to the computer and booted up his laptop.

“Just wait here for a second while the computer boots. I’m going to find you a stand.”

Sam went over to his closet and returned with a foot tall steel tripod. The legs could extend and swivel like a camera tripod but it had heavy weights at the bottom so that it could rest steadily on the table. The top of the tripod was tied to a bungie cord with a hook on the end. Sam unlinked the chain from Lucifer and hooked the bungie cord onto it. “Give it a shot, try to jump around a little.” The hand bounced around, jumping with all five fingers. The bungie made it nearly weightless. He could stand up erect on one pinky without any strain. “Great, this will work perfect,” Sam said.

Once the computer was booted Sam started to move his mouse to the World of Warcraft icon. Before he had a chance to click on it, Lucifer crawled over to Sam’s elbow and gently tapped it with its index finger. “What is it?” Sam asked. Lucifer crawled over to the screen and pointed to the Start menu with its finger. Sam at once understood with Lucifer wanted. He opened up Note Pad. Lucifer balanced its weight with the bungie cord hovering above the keyboard quickly typing with all five fingers.

“Hi, Sam, it is an honor to serve you,” Lucifer wrote.

“Oh, the pleasure is all mine,” Sam said.

“My English is not always good but I will try,” Lucifer wrote.

“Oh, it’s no problem, your English seems great.”

“Okay ^_^!”

“Well, now that we know we can communicate through writing, I think this whole thing is going to work out just fine.”

Lucifer respectfully got out of the way. Sam paused when he was logging into World of Warcraft.

“I may as well give you the password since you will be doing this a whole lot more than me.”

He grabbed a pen and brought his note pad next to his keyboard. Login: Lordsmee88@gmail.com. Password: l@zaru$666. “Got it?” The hand nodded.

“Okay, so you should know how this works. Right now the GP market is pretty good, better than leveling up services. You can use any of these characters, the Rogue, the Mage, or the Paly. The other ones I use to raid so they can’t move around.”

The hand nodded.

“I guess you know the rest.”

The hand nodded again.

“Well, great, you can get started then. Let me know if you need anything. Do you eat?”

Sam alt-tabbed out of World of Warcraft so that Lucifer could type on Note Pad.

“I do need to rest about four hours a day. I don’t need to eat but depending on the weather I may need some moisturizing lotion. A half hour of sun a day is also supposed to be good for my mood,” Lucifer typed.

“Okay, perfect,” Sam said, “it’s all yours.”

Sam set the tripod directly in front of the keyboard and brought the mouse closer to the keyboard where Lucifer could reach. Lucifer’s fingers moved with expert grace across the keyboard. It didn’t use the external mouse at all but opted for the scroll pad on the laptop instead. It seemed to know every minute detail about the game and went about hunting for gold with astonishing efficiency.

Seeing that there was no more work to do at his computer, Sam went over to his TV and started to play Halo III on his Xbox 360. After playing for about twenty minutes, Sam got his cell phone and called his friend Robbie.

“Hey Robbie, are you on WoW?” Sam asked.

“No.”

“Why not? Get on.”

“Nah, I don’t think I’m gonna play WoW anymore.” Robbie said.

“What? Why not?”

“I think its getting in the way of me having a normal social life.”

“Who needs a normal social life,” Sam said.

“I have needs that cannot be met in the virtual world, Sam. You should think about quitting too.”

“And do what? Go play baseball? Join track and field?”

“Maybe. Or perhaps write poetry.”

“Dude, there is nothing you can get from the “real” world that you can’t through the virtual world. In fact, I would even argue that I can get way more from the virtual world than you could ever in the real world.”

“Well, Sam, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

“Robbie, I got a re-animated hand.”

“A what?”

“A re-animated hand of a Chinese gold farmer. I got it from this person I met on WoW. I bought a re-animated hand from her for eight thousand dollars. But, I’m getting the hand to farm gold for me on WoW. I’ll have the investment back in like three months. After that, I’ll have two thousand bucks of change every month. Muahaha. Am I a genius or what?”

“How the hell is that possible?” Robbie asked.

“Well, I think there are only two possibilities,” Sam said, “it’s either bio-engineering or witchcraft. The alias of the girl I bought it from was Labruja, which means the witch, so the latter. But then again, it could be a tech company trying to make themselves seem mysterious by evoking the world of superstition and witchcraft.”

“Can I see this hand of yours?” Robbie asked.

“Ya, come over. You’ll be blown away. Dude I’m telling you, the real world sucks. I know you are trying to lose your virginity ASAP. Don’t you think I could help you with that? I know people who know people. You should just trust me more with your problems Robbie, I can give you the answer.”

“Oh c’mon Sam, you know I always respect your opinions.”

The End

The Flower of Evil

2012-01-29T22:21:00.001-08:00

When I was a little kid I had a big bushy mustache and wore a red cap. I wore blue overalls and a pair of snow white gloves. I lived in a two dimensional world and walked on blocky bricks. I spent my days fighting my arch enemy the ravenous boy eating flower. I ran back and forth and jumped and ducked. I battled the flower by jumping on its big bulbous head. Eventually, after drinking all my milk in the mornings and eating a lot of macaroni and cheese I grew big and heavy enough that I was finally able to crush the flower when I jumped on its head. When the flower died it gave me an evil stare with its verdant eyes. With its dying breath it covered me in a plume of toxic spores. It made me cough when I breathed in the spores. I didn’t know it at the time but the one of the seeds took hold inside of me. Over the years it germinated and I had an evil flower growing inside of me.

When I got older my world became three dimensional. My mustache went away and I stopped wearing a cap all the time. The ground beneath me became asphalt. Small trees littered the drive way tied to wooden sticks that helped them grow straight. The cul-de-sac marked the border of the safe zone beyond which my half-foot feet served no useful purpose. If I wanted to go to school or my friend’s house I would have to get my parents to drive me in their SUV.

In the Garden of Revelation

2012-01-23T10:31:00.001-08:00

d.hill prays with a lot of skepticism, mostly of his own worth, for god to fix all the things about the world that he worries about. Next day he carpools to church with his friend e.lee who is then unable to give him a ride home. He decides to walk but in the hallway on his way out a girl spooks him from behind. He had never seen her before and she is very cute. He asks for her name but she evades his questions. She asks him to take a walk with her to Eldridge Park and he consents. As they walk they begin to talk about some of the issues that are bothering d.hill. We learn that he is actually much older than we think he is. He is a college graduate with an advanced degree in mathematics. He couldn’t find a job after school so he returned home to live with his parents. He started going back to the church he went to as a child but later gave up along with his parents during his teenage years. He went there now partly for a lack of better things to do and to network. He is happy to see some of his childhood churchgoing friends. He is a little bit weary of their increased dogmatism and strange political inclinations but he’s not a pushy guy. He is most worried about the environment and the plight of the bottom billion. If only he could put his mind in service of sustainable development, he would become the man he ought to be. However, he’s not sure how to even begin to do that, having little interest in economics.

She then springs it on him. She heard his prayer last night. She’s god. They are sitting on a park bench. She offers to show him the truth if he is interested and offers him a pink pill that says ‘god’s pink pill’ on it. She takes him on a galactic journey to her home planet billions of light years away. She shows him a planet, larger than earth, covered in ash and erupting in smoke. Amidst the ocean of fire is an oasis. A big bubble protects a floating island with vertical farms and a giant city in a building. She shows him the lab where she and scores of other human figures work in a laboratory with sophisticated machines. Some are typing, some pouring liquids, and some manually engineering nanoscopic material under a microscope. He asks her about what happened to her planet but she says she doesn’t want to tell him and that it would just worry him too much. Besides, it isn’t important at this point in time. She then tells him that she is indeed one of the makers of the human DNA along with a team of top scientists. They spent their last days before their planet became completely uninhabitable to create a molecular code that would create intelligent life again in the universe wherever if found the proper conditions. They wrote the code in such a way that it began as the simplest organism that could reproduce without organic food. There were many situations that they accounted for and so created different sorts of life forms that first terraformed the environment of the planet the genetic code would land on, creating soil and atmosphere. The code was written in such a way that life would eventually develop into intelligent beings on its own accord. They ran computations for every condition they could imagine but they knew that the code would not bloom on many planets. In fact their calculations led them to believe that one in seventy trillion was the best they could do but they were already very proud of that accomplishment. They created as many copies of the code as they could and launched them into space, especially aiming for impending supernovas that would scatter the seed further than they could ever reach through propulsion. Some parts of the code ended up on earth via an asteroid and blossomed here. D.hill asks god if she is still alive and she says no. The scientists who created the code also put an immense amount of effort, mostly led by her team, to code themselves into the consciousness of the intelligent beings that would eventually evolve from the execution of that code. In other words, d.hill was programmed to recognize god and she was just a flesh and blood human who had the rare genetic manifestation that made her understand that she could deliver the message of god. She was born with a genius and proclivity toward chemistry and was able to recreate ‘god’s pink pill’ which unlocked the memory sequence written in the code of the final days of the home planet. D.hill wants to know what it all means. She gets a call on her cell phone and tells d.hill that she has to go pretty soon, someone was coming to pick her up. She tells him that the answers to many, though not all, of the questions he had asked through his prayer could be answered if he continued his pursuit of mathematics. She tells him that he should try to learn as much as he could about DNA codes and use his mathematical genius to piece together the other stories written into the code. He may, if he works hard enough at it, unlock the story of how god’s people got themselves into so much trouble and destroyed themselves. She tells him that it isn’t a pretty story and would do nothing for anyone other than to satisfy their understandably gnawing curiosity. But she tells him that there are many things he will discover on his way to unlocking the story that will be greatly beneficial to humans and help solve many of the problems that he worries about and prayed to her about. A Camero pulls up to the parking lot of Eldridge Park and god tells d.hill that her boyfriend has come to pick her up and that it was nice talking to him. He thanks her for everything and hopes that they’ll keep in touch. She says, that’s easy, he knows how to reach her, anytime anywhere. On his way home d.hill has a nagging sense that what happened was all bogus and that the girl was just some crazy deluded fanatic who gave him a psychotropic drug and got lucky guessing that he had prayed last night about the things he was worried about. After all, he was talking to her about those things and they met at a church so it would be reasonable for her to guess that he prayed about the things he worried about. He thought what really didn’t add up about her story was the fact that if she is just a human who somehow was preprogrammed to be able to access the historical material inside human DNA, that doesn’t explain how she would be able to hear his prayer. She didn’t say anything about telepathy. As he thought this though, he heard her voice in his head. I can hear you d, she says, and giggles. But he thought again, his mind probably just reflexively imagined her voice saying that. He hears her voice once more, you are a smart and rational boy. Keep up the good work. He was less sure that he imagined that message because he wouldn’t really call himself a smart and rational boy, but it is still possible that he was projecting her personality into his own inner monologue. In any case, he thinks, the story she had told him was more than enough to make him curious as hell about genetics and he set his mind on wanting to learn as much as he could about the human DNA. He heads to the university library to begin to look into the study of DNA, looking to prepare himself for formal study. At the library he runs into someone he went to college with who was a philosophy major. They had taken Logic together. They decide to get some coffee together. As d.hill starts to talk about his strange experience, his friend says he’s writing a paper on William James’ The Variety of Religious Experience and tells d.hill that religious experiences happen in all sorts of ways and that he should not rule his recent experience out. He asks d.hill if he believes in god and d.hill says sort of but more in a Newtonian/Unitarian sort of way. The friend tells him not to dwell too much on doubt because experiences are at times beyond logical analysis. D.hill goes to the university chapel and feels his body pulsate with purpose and cries.

Freewrite 2 - fiction

2012-01-18T08:25:00.000-08:00

Thu 09/10/09

Sad Bad it Feels Good

They are so good it almost looks like they are dancing. They used to really dance one out but now they are getting older. Rob allies over a big cement block while Josh flies down a five set of stairs.

“Dude, I’m making it” Rob says.

“Oh ya? Good for you buddy” Josh smiles.

“I’ve doubled my earnings from last year on my online brokerage account” Rob says, “next year I’m gonna hit sex figures at the office churning out fucking paperwork.”

“I knew you could do it” Josh says.

They light a cigarette each from Josh’s pack of Marlboros. Rob stares out of the Brooklyn waterfront to see the sunset over the lower Manhattan skyline. The sky is just turning from pink to a dark indigo. The water is calm as always. Josh stretches his arms a little. His oily hair, the color of dark rich coffee beans, looks really good like it was made for the dusk. Rob’s dirty blond hair looks like the color of autumn leafs. The boys pull up their skateboards and shake each other’s hands before parting ways.

Rob returns to his flat to brood. His room is rather messy. Posters of movies by Tarantino and Gasper Noe line his walls. He is on the computer counting his earnings. A pile of work from his law firm sits next to him. He still has a few more hours to work before he can go to sleep. It is silent as the dead of night in his one bedroom apartment. The familiar sound of his cat meowing has disappeared. Where did Tony the cat go? Mandy must’ve poisoned him. That’s what Rob thinks anyway. He brushes his teeth and washes his face. He stares into the bathroom mirror and stares into his crystal blue eyes. There isn’t a blemish on his face. He could shave, or he could just leave the stubbles. It doesn’t matter. He returns to his desk to finish up the rest of the documents.

The next day at work he receives a text from Josh’s iPhone. It says, hey buddy, Mandy and Aja want to go to this roof party tonight. It’s at some condo. Please come, I need you. Rob grimaces a little and goes out for a cigarette break. Mr. Drew catches Rob on his way back to his cubicle. “Hey Rob” says Mr. Drew. “Oh, hi Pete” answers Rob, “I was just going to finish up the Lyndon case today.” “Ah yes, about that” Mr. Drew was a short but amiable looking man, “we’ve been talking about your performance, you are the silent type I can tell, you are working extremely hard, the company is proud of you, let’s talk in detail over lunch next Monday.” “Sure thing Pete” Rob says, hesitating for a moment. Then he shakes Mr. Drew’s hand and goes back to work.

That night at the party, Rob arrives with Mandy, Aja and Josh already there waiting for him. Aja is an attractive skinny brunette. She had the habit of wearing bright red lipsticks and had a different pair of earrings every time Rob had seen her. Mandy nearly leapt on Rob with her welcoming hug.

“So, Rob, how’s work” asks Josh.

“Good, Mr. Drew is going to have lunch with me on Monday, I’m moving up” Rob answers.

“Oh, that’s great” exclaims Mandy, “I’m so proud of you baby.”

“Thanks” say Rob without looking at her. Josh pulls out some cigarettes and offers one to Rob. Rob refuses. Mandy moves herself closer to Rob where he could smell her new perfume. She found the most exotic and erotic smell she could find. Rob found her scent putrid, like durian.

Aja say “fashion week guys, I can provide full access to whatever you like. You boys should take this opportunity to impress some ladys.”

“Impress some fresh college girls is more like it” cackles Josh.

“Well if you like em young, that’s how it shall be served” Aja smiles at Josh.

Mandy wanted to change the subject but couldn’t. She says” I remember when I first started college, I was like this little sex machine. I don’t even remember half of the guys I slept with in my freshman year. Mostly just that one filmmaker guy, that was interesting.” Mandy said the word filmmaker with scare quotes. She puts her arm through Rob’s.

“I don’t think I could stand to hear another little girl moan in my life. They think they are like phone sex operators or something. It’s from watching dumb Hollywood movies I bet.”

“Well Rob” says Aja, “got any girls on your mind? Or is the one next to you good enough to settle on?”

Rob pulls his arm out of Mandy’s embrace. “I don’t know Aja, I’m more of a prude than you may think.”

“Don’t kid yourself, we know what you do” Aja says. Josh nods in agreement.

Beers and cocktails were the flavor of the night. The four friends get up and dance a little to the Dj’s selection of disco obscura. There was nothing in it for Rob. He looked at Mandy with disgust. Why is this bitch always all over me? He didn’t quite understand why he always ended up hanging out with her. More likely than not she was going to sneak herself into his apartment again and he would wake up the next morning with that ridiculous stench all over his bed. Oh well, all he could do now was get drunker.

Rob woke up next morning with that ridiculous stench. He is late for work as usual. Mandy is already gone. For some reason Rob’s bosses let him show up late since he usually stayed an hour or two after everyone else. This is the new corporate management style embodied by his firm. It is worker friendly and it raises productivity. Rob brushes his teeth and decides to not shave again. He plays a game of Tetris on his original Nintendo, eats a granola bar and then goes off to work at around 9:45AM.

Another day at work. Not much special. Something puzzles Rob about the Lyndon case. What if this man was really innocent and that there was no reason for him to go through the cautionary steps involved in defending him? What if all the judge and jury had to do was look at Lyndon in the eyes and see that he was innocent? Wouldn’t he just be wasting his time? Everyone at the firm thought that Lyndon was guilty. All except Rob. That’s probably why they put him on the case.

A text message arrives from Josh’s iPhone. Hey buddy let’s go to the shooting range tonight. I’m feeling trigger happy. Sure, sounds good Rob replies to his best friend.

…continued

At the shooting range, the guys once again reveal to each other their manly prowess. These two friends are often the envy of men and women alike. They are fond of this fact. It is their main bond. It has been ever since high school.

“I’ve figured it out” Rob says as he picks a piece of debris out of Josh’s hair, ‘with the salary that Mr. Drew is now offering me, I can afford to hire three escorts a week at $500 a pop.”

“Really?” asks Josh, “and that’s how you plan to spend the rest of your life?”

“Yup” says Rob.

“Look man, you’ve been dating Mandy for years now, she’s really in love with you, you’re not kids anymore, you should think about financial security, maybe buy a house or something” Josh advises.

“Fuck that,” Rob says, “fuck that!”

The two friends part ways returning to their respective abodes.

Rob calls his favorite escort service to set up a weekly schedule. The next day Mimi comes over. After that it is Lola. After that it is Tamara. Tamara is a cute Jewish girl. Mimi is Chinese. Lola is half Latino half Middle Eastern.

Rob likes all three of them very much. He likes to play scrabble with Lola. Everytime he plays a word, he would ream her that many times and then they would continue. Everytime she plays a word, she would suck his dick until it hit the back of her throat that many times. Often, neither would reach orgasm by the end of the game. Someday though, Rob believes that they will get a really high scoring word. Rob likes to play with Mimi’s rubbery thongs. Some nights, she would also wear an elegant leather outfit. Rob once bought her a whip but he was totally not into it. This other time he is pounding Tamara heavily in the rear. As he slams into her anal cavity, he imagines that he is flying through a time warp. He would squeal like the nerdiest kid he knew in middle school, Luke Johnson, “this is tubular, this is so tubular!” He would make his voice all nasally and scrunch up his nose. Tamara thought that it was hilarious and screamed and moaned and laughed all at the same time. She nearly choked on her own saliva.

But alas, Mandy turns up again. This time, Rob has a plan. He offers to take her out on a trip into the Aiderondacks to go camping. She is thrilled. She thinks that he might propose to her. She makes a mix CD with sexually charged Rock n’ Roll to listen to on their drive. Rob tells lots of funny jokes and Mandy thinks that he is really ready to propose to her.

When they get to their camping ground, Rob runs off into the woods. “Where are you going Rob?” Mandy asks at the top of her voice. “It’s a secret!” Rob yells back. She chases after him into the woods. Rob is waiting by a creek. The sound of the rushing water roared like a tireless lioness. Mandy is astonished at how beautiful and romantic of a spot Rob had picked in order to propose to her.

Rob say “Mandy, I have something important to say to you.”

“What is it sweety?” she answers, smiling deliciously.

“You can love me in hell but you can’t love me here on earth” Rob say.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Mandy ask. She suddenly feels her spine cackle with nervous energy. Her limbs go limp.

Rob pulls out a gun from the back of his jeans.

“This one’s for Tony” Rob say “you poisoned my cat and now you are going to pay!”

“No, please don’t rob, I’m sorry, I didn’t. No!” She screams. He shoots her in the head. She dies. Rob quickly wonders whether or not the police will find out and sentence him to death. “Fuck it” he mumbles.

Freewrite 1

2012-01-17T13:38:00.001-08:00

Tue 09/08/09

Writing with Music On

Oh, I’m sure Ms. Lynda Barry would not approve of me writing with the radio on but hey, at least I am using a pen and writing in a notebook like she said to. Although, I didn’t get loose sheets in a three-ringed binder. This is because I got the paper and pen from a Hasidic 99¢ store. I got like 20 pens for a dollar ninety and these lined, 100 sheet wide-ruled paper for ninety-nine cents.

She also told me to not go back and read what I have written until a month has gone by. Phew! I almost started rereading it. I think I understand why she says this. In fact as I write, I am beginning to understand her instructions as given in the book, What It Is. See, reading over what you just wrote in hopes of spotting spelling errors is a habit that pretty much everyone develops from going through k-12 American education. The sort of writing compulsory education prepares us for is day to day business and civic writing. In this kind of writing, the most important thing is to look perfect. Writing as a civic tool is generally used as an indicator of whether or not someone is proper and neat and “detail-oriented”. It is a way of showing that our pre-frontal cortex is in slick condition. Writing and editing simultaneously is what we are taught to do – for example as a part of standardized testing. It means we are critical of our own flaws and aware of our own actions and thoughts. Writing and editing at the same time is not so much writing as a sort of tracing. I could go on and get all ranty about how the system oppresses us, takes away our creativity, and how much bourgeois values suck but that won’t be necessary. Besides, I’m not making any typos. Do you see any typos? Cuz I don’t. I am a bourgeois perfect and tidy goody two shoe; if I were not, I probably wouldn’t be writing this for the reason that I am. Oh boy, this point is getting belabored to HELL, I’ve been wanting to get to my next point like 20 lines ago.

My other point was just that writing without immediate rereading and editing constitutes an entirely different sort of writing. Writing without immediate revising is a kind of thinking. No, I should say a mode of thinking. Writing as thinking is essentially the point of writing. Let me explain.

I’ve gotten good at spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and so on. People think of me as a good writer. However, whenever I sit down to write seriously, I just get really confused.

Oh wow this song is really distracting it goes, “I am a virgin and I don’t want to wait, I told my doctor I wanna get laid.” There is swirly space noise happening behind the pseudo-rapping.

Anyhow, writing is a more serious and slower form of contemplation. It is contemplation without the use of images, emotions, memories, smells and so on. It is a much more abstract form of contemplation because language is abstract. Western language is an abstraction of phonemes. Those phonemes have come to us after travelling through all of human history. That is why writing as thinking is a special kind of thinking which is different than say problem-solving or daydreaming. The same problem could be tackled with different tools. The results that come from contemplative writing may (or may not) be different than the results achieved otherwise. I think this sort of writing will help me understand more what the purpose of writing is. It may even cure me of neurotic complexes whose symptoms include scatter-brainedness.

Writing as contemplation will focus our being, as our being glides through time, into a funnel. This funnel is the funnel of language. Thinking through language means that we cannot think about sexy girls. I can write about sexy girls but writing about sexy girls does not make me horny at all. Only reading about sexy girls will make me horny because then I get an image of a sexy naked girl in my head and my body reacts. However, when writing, s e x y g i r l is just eight more letters. This means that, as long as I don’t get distracted, if I write for an hour that is an hour in which I am not thinking about or picturing any sexy girls. Reader, do you realize what Lynda Barry is doing to me? She is trying to help me, she is trying to make me a stronger person. A person who is capable of not thinking about sexy girls for a whole hour!

Oh look, here comes kitty. Kitty is here to distract me. I shall not budge. Kitty is nice in many ways but I always realize, especially at night when we are sleeping together that his affection is not really real. I mean it is and it isn’t. It isn’t because animals have no soul. Discuss.

Ouch, my right hand is really sore. I am not used to holding a pen for this length of time. I have been practicing scales on the guitar recently and that has made my left hand very sore but also very powerful. Now if I could write with my left hand or play guitar with my right hand, then I would only have to grow the muscles in one of those hands. But that is not the case.

This is fine though, I want my brain to develop equally on both sides anyhow. With my left hand I grow my right brain. Through music. With my right hand I work on my left brain, through language.

There is a strange uncomfortable feeling associated with both exercises though. Either with guitar playing or writing, when my hand gets to a certain level of soreness, I start to feel nauseous. I feel a shortness of breath. This is definitely a feeling I remember from middle and high school, this kind of fatigue, it has to do with pushing your hand and brain muscle. I think this is why kids hate school so much, even those of us who love to learn. Or, perhaps especially those of us who love to learn. Learning is nauseating.

Look, I’ve already come so far on my first journey. I’m not even going to count how many pages I have written. I’m going to guess about 5. And already I have told you, along with myself that I write, play guitar, and sleep with a cat. This are things that are definitely true about me. They may even be the things that are most true about me at this moment. I guess that means that I’m really not much of anything right now. Rather empty. I not anybody’s lover actively. I’m not in a profession per se. But as I write out those words, I am beginning to understand what they really mean and why people love using them to designate those relationships. Lover. Profession. It is a strange feeling to learn, especially when the teacher is this pen dancing before my now rather crossed eyes. I used a metaphor. Why did I use a metaphor? Because I am in a trance. The motion of the pen is divorced from my actual actions. I have forgotten about the pen. I think a part of this is because language is so abstract. Pen is the least of my concerns. Another reason why I have forgotten the pen and used a metaphor to describe its movement is because I am in love with it. But it is not a woman. I think this is what Lacan refers to as object of desire and things being support objects for desire. I think the pen is dancing because in it, through it, I feel closer to the erotic. I think that the movement of this pen is like a woman dancing because when I write with it, I feel closer to that feeling. I wonder what girls describe their pens as when they get all cross-eyed and in a trance after writing for a long time.

The more I write, the more I realize how ridiculous critics of writing are. Writing really isn’t an art. It is an activity at bottom. Writing as art, I now believe, is actually a category of visual arts and not exactly related to writing as contemplation. Writing as contemplation is not an art because contemplation is not an art. When I come back to read this again a month from now, I will be hit with a ton of images. If I rearrange those images in the right way, then I can perhaps create a language based visual art object from them. Okay. I think that is a good note to end on. My first journey was a deeply self-conscious one. I hope that next time, I will raise my eye level a bit and get a bit more Adventurouse!

Book Review - 1Q84

2012-01-16T12:39:00.000-08:00

I just finished Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 last night. I wanted to write a few words about it while the experience is still fresh in my mind. This "book review" takes the form of an imaginary dialogue. It is full of spoilers, and contains mostly my interpretation of the mysteries behind the story. I know critics are supposed to be "against interpretation" but since this book review is itself fictional, I don't think that rule applies.

HM: So what did you think about my epic 960 page novel in 3 volumes?

YY: I really enjoyed it. The realism and fantasy blended very well together and I like the strange metaphysical implications of reality veering off into a fictional world where causality is confused.

HM: What do you mean by causality being confused?

YY: Well, it seems as Aomame points out, the world with two moons is partly being created by Tengo and herself. This analogy is a bit of a stretch but I see the logic of the warped reality as being similar to how Steven Hawkings describes wormholes. He imagines a fleet of alien spaceships surrounding a star with reflective mirrors and then focusing all of the energy that the star emanates into one point. That point would have such an intense concentration of energy, and as we know energy and matter are two sides of the same coin, it would drastically bend space-time and create a wormhole (space-time is not uniform but folded along concentrations of matter and energy). In 1Q84, the intense concentration of energy comes from Tengo and Aomame’s longing for one another and that energy warps the fabric of the literary space-time around them, sending them through a wormhole into another reality, one in which the rules of the world are so warped that they are actually allowed to meet each other.

HM: I like your analogy with wormholes, I think to me it was a little less “scientific” than that but I can definitely see the parallels. What then do you think of the Little People?

YY: Well, the Little People is a mystery that we can triangulate using the various clues that you give. Little People exist in contradistinction to Big Brother. Little People also have a opposite and balancing force, one that is more invisible and more God-like. Little People can physically manifest into the world of 1Q84 but they don’t just stroll around everywhere. They are constantly looking for passages, usually through the dead, to perform certain necessary tasks. Yet apparently, they are interested in gathering power, exerting influence, and recruiting followers, so in a way, they are very human as well. I want to say that Little People represent a force of Chaos by which the rigid Laws of the world can be manipulated, though they themselves are still partly bound by the Laws. They are the mechanism through which Tengo and Aomame are able to warp reality.

HM: Who then is Fuka-Eri?

YY: That I’m a little less clear on. I think Fuka-Eri’s relationship with the Little People originally only happened by chance. She is basically just a normal human girl. However, after losing her dohta I think her soul becomes partly crippled. I don’t think what happened to Tsubasa was purely a “metaphysical” injury, one rule in 1Q84 is there is only one reality, so what happens in 1Q84 also happens in 1984 and Tsubasa’s wounds are real, as are Fuka-Eri’s most likely. Maybe in the world of 1Q84, a part of her escaped from Sukigaki but a part of her didn’t. I think that means that in 1984, she lost a part of herself before escaping as well. Her powers don’t have anything to do with the Little People but rather with the opposite force, the force that is like God. She is basically like a shaman or oracle, who derive their power through trauma.

HM: That is quite a dark interpretation but I think it is fairly accurate. But are you saying that the events in 1Q84 are just coded versions of what really happens in 1984? That seems to take things a bit too far don’t you think.

YY: You are right about that, I don’t think 1984 is the real reality and 1Q84 is an imaginary one. I think for the characters whose lives intersect both worlds, they experience one continuous reality in both worlds, so it is not as if there is another version of themselves in the world that they aren’t occupying.

HM: Well, I myself don’t have a single way of decoding the story either. I just know it works the way it is presented. But tell me what you think of 1Q84 as a piece of literature.

YY: Above all, it is wonderfully comforting. My favorite aspect of 1Q84 is that it is kind of a science fiction story that is set in the past but without the use of time machines or alternate realities. It almost incorporates alternate realities but not quite. The other reality in 1Q84 is not a whole other independent reality but simply our reality slightly warped for a short period of time due to the circumstances of the protagonists. Their need was so great that the laws of the universe made an exception, although not an unprecedented one, for them, without having to recalculate everything else. It is really a lot more efficient than going into an entire secondary world.

HM: Is there a moment in the story that you are particularly fond of?

YY: I’m not so sure about moments so much as types of narrative strategy that you use. For one, I think it is great that the summary of what happens in Air Chrysalis isn’t revealed until Aomame reads it. I think at that point in the novel, the reader has basically given on getting a straight forward retelling of the story but then we actually get the whole thing and it basically makes sense. The fact that Aomame, who in many ways has a lot more information about the rules of 1Q84 than anyone else because of her conversation with Leader, reads it and explains it to us is really great. For that matter, the line about how you’d have to be in jail or in the hospital to read Proust is pretty funny.

HM: What about the characters? Do you have a favorite character?

YY: Well, actually I’m kind of sad Professor Ebisuno just disappears from the story, but I can see why it would be pretty pointless to reintroduce him in the second half. I guess Aomame is the most interesting character with the most likable personality. She is the one who basically figures everything out. Her and Tamaru are the smartest characters and I really enjoy all of their conversations. Tengo is really underdeveloped, the situation with his mother is never fully revealed but he’s also just not that curious. But I guess for his relationship to Aomame to work, he would kind of have to be a little dopey. She wears the pants in their relationship for sure.

HM: Ya, I think it could be awkward at home if Tengo were too interesting, he’s basically going to become a house-husband.

YY: Which is just right for a contemporary male protagonist.

HM: A novelist especially.

HM: What about Ushikawa? What happens after the Little People get done with his corpse?

YY: I’m scared to even imagine that. First of all, let me say that Ushikawa and the pacing of the book 3 in general is really kind of impish.

HM: How do you mean?

YY: Well, you know that by the time we are on book 3 we are hooked and you can basically do whatever you want. This is the part of a novel, especially a long one, when the author has the most amount of freedom. You chose to write hundreds of pages of a stake out, telling every piece of every day from multiple view points. You also create his wonderfully bazaar, contradictory, self loathing yet nefarious character who serves very little purpose.

HM: Well I don’t know about little purpose.

YY: Right, I guess at that point in the narrative, you need Tengo and Aomame to meet and do so in a way that has to be unexpected but also sort of quotidian. There can’t be a sleight of hand deux ex machine situation but they can’t also just bump into each other on the street. I think the pursuer pursuing the pursued is very clever. I didn’t see it coming, even though Fuka-Eri said that was going to happen. It was really a wonderful surprise. Their meeting is just coincidental enough but not too much. As for Ushikawa’s personality, he sort of embodies the world of 1Q84 as a whole. It is misshapen and perverted world but one that demands your sympathy. Ushikawa’s loneliness is deep and though the readers don’t like him because he’s the villain, they also would like him to have an okay ending. In a way, if the reality of 1Q84 were not warped around the spark between Tengo and Aomame, Aomame and Tamaru would be the real villains in the story. But of course, that is not the case.

HM: What do you think happens to Ushikawa in that room though? I’m curious to hear.

YY: Well, he can’t become the new leader I don’t think. There is a hint that he is well matched to Fuka-Eri. I wonder if a dohta will be created from him, maybe a 17 year old version of him, who will become friends with Fuka-Eri. Together, they could basically do Leader’s job without really being Leader. Fuka-Eri has enough power over the Little People that they can’t control her, but they could maybe make it fun for her to return to Sakigake by offering her the friendship of a young Ushikawa. On the other hand, would the world of 1Q84 go on existing after Tengo and Aomame leave? Maybe once they leave, the Little People just go back to their world and Ushikawa’s air chrysalis is never finished. Fuka-Eri just lives out the rest of her life alone and emotionless with Ebisuno and Azami.

HM: If there is one thing you could change about the story what would it be?

YY: Well, to be honest, I found the ending a little flat, not that there was a need for some exciting action or tear jerking romance but, you know, there could have been a couple more twists. Maybe a confrontation with the cult. Another run in with Fuka-Eri, Someone getting shot. Maybe Tengo and Aomame don’t find each other right away. Or the Little People show up somehow. But I don’t mind the way you left it. I think your decision was to let the Ushikawa scenes play out fully, make the reader wait. Rather than using the story to escalate the tension of the final reunion, you simply use the reader’s own sense of impatience. The quietness in which the reunion happens also has a specific kind of beauty to it. It’s a very tranquil ending. The significance is unsaid, the power of the bond, as powerful as a wormhole, is left up to the reader to imagine. So I guess I wouldn’t change a thing.

HM: Well, I’m glad you enjoyed it and I hope you’ll read my next novel as well. That is if I write one.

YY: Probably.

Who are the Mortalists?

2012-01-14T00:48:00.000-08:00

In the year 2468, medical technology will have advanced to a point where indefinite life extension is possible. The oldest person will be turning 500 years old. Can you imagine? A boomer born in the summer of love still kickin' it in the 25th century! It just might happen. However, indefinite life extension requires the manufacturing and maitenance of body parts made from your orginal DNA. The process is both labor and capital intensive. Therefore, not everyone can afford it. Only the rich get to become immortals. Ya, bummer.

At this point you may be thinking, this sounds like that Hollywood Sci-Fi movie that just came out with Justin Timberlake. Well, yes, In Time does have sort of a similar premise except for that fact that it's totally retarded. In that movie, instead of indefinite life extension, there is some bizaar gene manipuation process that makes it so that after the age of 25 you have to buy time - the more money you pay the longer you can live. And if you can't pay up then you die. Oh and minutes of life are transferable like through your PayPal account or something. It doesn't make any sense.

A better example of the use of this premise is in the book Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel. This wonderful little novel by the lovable Russian-American satirist cum Columbia University creative writing teacher, Gary Shteyngart, does in fact describe a world in which the reality of life extension technology has already been woven into corporate culture. Love won't be the same (especially with rich old men). The reason why Gary's and my premise seem so similar is because we both got it from the same TED talk. I think. In this TED talk by Aubrey de Grey, he basically lays out the logic behind immortality via medical advancement. It's pretty cool.

My friend James likes to throw wrenches into my premises. He thinks that it would be more likely for us to become androids, replacing our aging limbs and organs with bionic ones. I don't know about that. I personally would prefer my own arm. I'm sure the doctor could give me a genetic muscle boost if I really wanted it. But really, who needs muscles in the 25th century? He also thinks that by 2468, we'll already be so deep in Ray Kurzweil's "Singularity" that we'll have subsumed ourselves into a great cyber-being (the way mitochondria exist only as a component inside of us). I don't think that would happen for this reason: the end game of human evolution is not intelligence. Intelligence is only a tool at our disposal. We live to serve our egos, to be is to be. I don't think we would sacrifice our egos for greater intelligence, that's just not where our priorities lie.

Which brings me to the original question: who are the Mortalists? Well, let's first take a minute to look at this other link so you don't confuse this idea of Mortalism with Christian mortalism. Christian mortalism is referring to the time gap between when you die and when Judgement Day comes. So basically this group of Christians believe that your soul falls asleep after you die and wakes up after Judgement Day. Whatever, not relevant.

The Mortalists that I'm talking about are people who hold these 3 tenets:
1. I shall die someday
2. I shall live in pleasure and in pain
3. I shall remain conscious and thinking so long as my body is able
Looking at these 3 tenets, it seems like everyone is a Mortalist. Indeed, as a Mortalist myself, I would like to welcome you all to the club by saying, "if you're not against us, you're already with us!" Sounds like a line from an early 20th century propaganda poster doesn't it? But I really think the world would be a better place if we took these tenets to heart. Frankly, I think it might not be so easy for everyone to affirm their own mortality. People who take pleasure in having immortal souls might have trouble with it. Sure, they won't deny their mortality, not in the year 2012, but maybe they don't really want to think about it in this way either. Let sleeping dogs lie, they would say. But let's not mind them. Let's fast forward back to the year 2468.

In the year 2468, there are people who call themselves the Mortalists who abide by these tenets against the prevailing norms of society. These gypsies live in rural communes away from the rat race in the cities where men and women work long cut-throat days, getting by on happy pills. At the end of the month, the "immortals" get their astronomical salary and then spends it all on their insurance premium so that they can get their next round of fresh tissues and organs. For as long as the medical industry spends enormous resources on keeping all the immortals alive, the immortals have to maintain an amazingly productive economy so that at least some can afford life extension. And so it goes, the Immortalists live their lives and the Mortalists live ours. If you want to know more about this world in 2468, stay tuned and you'll be rewarded eventually (I'm trying to write a novel, sshhh).

I hope to update this blog twice a week. In the next few entries we'll go back to the year 2009 when I did a series of free association writing excerices as prescribed by Lynda Barry in the book What It Is. So please do check back.

Adios Mortals.