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Audra isn’t really even someone I know; she’s more a friend of a friend (who isn’t really a friend so much as someone I can’t avoid running into on a daily basis). I only bought her a book because of guilt. Not my guilt, though: hers. Audra didn’t know my name, you see. So I decided to make her feel guilty by getting her a gift when she didn’t even know my name. Why? Because I could. She could find out from her friend who was my friend, but I knew she wouldn’t. That’s the kind of person she was.

The weather was violently calm when I walked up the path to her front door and knocked.

Twelve days later—it could have been two weeks, I wasn’t paying all that much attention—Audra called me. Which I basically wasn’t expecting at all.
“That book you gave me.”
“What book?” I asked. I was still trying to remember whether or not I knew someone named Audra. Oh, right, that Audra. I remembered.
“The Girls In Brussels Have It Easy? The book you gave me as—well, the only book you gave me.”
“Right,” I remembered. “By What’s-his-name. Tr-something. Trovost or whatever,” I spat out the consonants and vowels until it seemed like I’d probably covered all the letters included in the actual name, if not in the proper order.
“Treto. Or something like that.”
“Right. Whatever. So, um, how’d you like it?”
“Well, I didn’t finish it, but it’s very good. Like, excellent.”
“Tremendous.”
“Good.” I was moderately surprised. But then again, I knew nothing of Audra’s literary tastes, and for all I knew she could delight in absolute rubbish.
“But it’s also hard to read. I mean, it’s very jerky. Like, halted.”
“I see.”
“But I was talking. And Edward? Says there’s this movie out about it. Or based on it.”
“Yeah?”
“Which, he only knew this because he’d just talked to someone who knew about it. Someone, I don’t know who, it was their favorite movie, like of all time or something.”
“And? You called me to tell me that there’s a movie that’s based on this book I gave you and that it’s someone’s, you’re not even sure whose, favorite movie of all time?”
“Well, and that I like the book. I thought you might be interested in seeing the movie.”
“I see,” I said, even though I really didn?t see much of anything. Maybe Audra was on some kind of brain-numbingly powerful painkiller that would make her forget that we ever had this conversation. Against my better judgement, I added, “why?”
“Well, your name’s written inside the front cover, and I figured—I figured that if you read the book, you might want to see the movie, that’s all.”
So much for Audra not knowing my name.
“My name?”
“Yeah?”
“In the front cover?”
“Um, yeah?”
“That makes absolutely no sense.”
“Your last name starts with a ‘g,’ right?”
“Yes, that’s right.”

The Girls In Brussels Have It Easy? You’d think I’d remember a title like that, particularly if it was actually a book I’d read or, heaven forbid, actually owned.

Kirkpatrick Sale in the Ecologist:

FICTIONALISING APOCALYPSE
And the heart of the matter is that second question: `Is there a way we can prevent environmental injuries from happening again?’

I am not especially optimistic about answering that question in the affirmative. We don’t realise it, any more than fish realise they are swimming in water, but we are immersed in a culture, a way of seeing and living, that has erected a protective psychological shield that enables our society to go on doing what it does even though it knows apocalypse is pending. It is something that psychologists call `cognitive dissonance’: the ability to hold in your heart, in your mind, two contradictory beliefs or ideas - in this case, desire for the continuance of the capitalist system and the health of the planet.

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“Say.” he said.
“Talk,” I said.
“How’re you.”
“Fine, yourself.”
“Mind if I close the door?”
“Not at all. Go ahead.”
“It’s about Rainier,” he said, closing the door. “He kind of needs to talk.”
“You could say.”
“Talk to him, why don’t you.”
“I do my part.”
“Better if you talked.”
“I go home at night. Eat supper. Watch television.”
“He could use your thoughts.”
“Sometimes I read.”
“I think he should talk to you.”
“Again.”
“Last time was different.”
“And what happened to Ananas.”
“This is Rainier.”

So Underworld, the movie, is a kind of werewolf-vampire flick that’s loosely (says allmovie guide) based on Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 version of Romeo e Giulietta, but it’s not based on the eponymous novel by Don Delillo? What gives?

Everything’s fine, everything’s cool and I look at her and I ask: did you get it? We’re all suave, cool, but I’m more I guess you’d say debonair, like I’m a knight or something only now, set in today, and I’m asking her: did you get it, did you bring it with you?

There’s this pitiful, like tragic expression on her face

Everything’s fine, everything’s cool, and I look at her and I ask: did you get it? Everything’s cool, we’re all suave and debonair, not a glint of perspiration on our foreheads, not a dab of sweat or doubt anywhere on us, and I ask her, grabbing her by the arm just below her shoulder, looking behind her sharply, “did you get it?” But everything’s fine, we don’t have anything to worry about, on the outside we’re totally together, it’s like we’re a juggernaut and no one can touch us. The nylon strap from my shoulder holster is kind of digging into my side, but it’s nothing much.
“Yes, I got it.”
Inwardly I’m shouting with pure and unadulterated joy, but outwardly, everything’s fine, everything’s cool, and I’m completely like calm and maybe blink one-third more often than when I’m not excited, but it’s not like she notices any of this.
I say, “then let’s go.”

But there’s still this expression on her face that I can’t really totally grasp. She’s cool but she’s pathetic, not like in a very sad heart-rending like way but more as if she’s projecting and everything else is pathetic but not her.

You got it, right?

“Yeah, I got it.”

A world of change can happen in fifteen minutes.

What happened?

“No problems. It’s all here.” The green-gray duffle bag’s slung over her left shoulder.

Looking over the edge, it’s not immediately obvious how precipitously the hill turns into a sheer drop; the grasses and low shrubs wave casually, thinking nothing of the many dangers of gravity. I’m just past the edge of the trail. Someone was supposed to meet me here. On the trail, that is. Not past it. But they’re late, and I’m easily distracted.

What’s that over there?

The wind slaps through the snaky and woody tendrils of the shrubbery, making a noise that seems oddly artificial. More significantly, it obscures any noise the ocean might be making below, and thereby conceals the immensity of the drop just past the edge of the hill. Or the edge of the hill, since anything past the edge would probably just be air.

I’m not wearing a watch, but I’m pretty sure that the person I’m here to meet is late. Call it a hunch.
Which, considering the fact that you know essentially none of the context what makes up the soon-to-happen (or not-yet-happening) rendezvous, probably means very little to you. If anything.

Context: Said meeting concerns the exchange of certain information, this information not exactly publicly available, but not private enough for my own peace of mind. Peace of mind being partially related to the knowledge that information of a certain individual’s past actions (that certain individual being yours truly) is forever gone. Or at least sufficiently obscured.

The idea behind this whole meeting is that I’ll have he opportunity to expunge any remaining evidence of that thing to which I’ve vaguely alluded in the previous paragraph. Use your imagination.

Of course, something doesn’t seem quite right. I crawl forward, inching slowly towards the edge of the hill. Doing this slowly, of course, to avoid an accidental slip that might send me reeling over the edge. Under my coat is the thing that’s going to ensure my peace of mind, as soon as I meet my informant. Yes, that’s right, don’t act like you didn’t expect it. A gun. Wow, that sure came as a surprise.

Anyway, back to crawling towards the edge of the cliff.

One false move, and I’m sent over the edge. I fall 2 or 3 feet to the sandy beach below.

“Hey there Dolph.” Tara’s standing there, stifling a smirk in spite of her obvious amusement, me being sprawled out quite awkwardly on the beach. “You thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?” In her one hand, there’s a white, greeting-card-sized envelope. In her other hand there’s a cupcake that has a candle in it. “Happy birthday, Dolph.”

“Crap,” I say. “You remembered. Crap.”

In summary: crap.

Imagine culture as a sinking boat. It’s sinking, but most people don’t realize it. they claim the turbulence is just normal, from the waves slamming into the sides of the boat. or maybe they’ll nod at mention of the fact that, yes, the waters are, as of right now, relatively choppy. they’ll say: of course they are, what do you expect, but, good heavens, the boat certainly isn’t sinking.

For just a second, though, assume it is. Imagine that it is sinking.

The Question at hand is: can you re-build the boat on the water, without it sinking completely? Can you rip up boards (pretend it’s a wooden boat) and reposition them to fix the boat? will other people let you do it, or will they stop you from ripping up boards, call you crazy, and say you’re going to make us sink? And if they do stop you, what do you say?

Dyou try to convince them that the boat is, in fact, sinking? Do you try to at least get them to concede the possibility of sinking? like it could, maybe, under certain circumstances, be possible?

or do you tell them, hey, nothing going on here, I just need to rip up a few boards, fix a little leak (divert their attention) nothing much, no, nothing happening here

or do you tell them nothing and just rip up the boards yourself

jump overboard, maybe?

Convenience is something, a concept that becomes warped in our minds through our strange way of living on top of the planet. And, opposite convenience (we imagine) is this creature called inconvenience. Like day and night, or night and day. There’s also this thing called necessity, but it’s more often than not conflated with convenience, such that any situation bordering on inconvenience is perceived as an affront to our very existence. After all, it’s an obstacle to the necessities of life, like access to constant routes of (mental) escape, like cold and hot food, like cold and hot water, like constant routes of escape from cold and hot weather.

The only reason to act is to change the paradigm within which you think, therefore enabling you to change the minds of other people. Don?t recycle to save trees–recycle because it makes sense. Don?t buy organic because you want to be healthy or because you want to support organic farmers–buy organic because it makes sense. Don?t carpool because it saves gasoline–carpool because it makes sense. Do not act to bring about a certain concrete action–act because in acting you can change minds. Don?t oppose war because you?re against violence, because you?re a pacifist–oppose war because peace makes sense. Or better yet, don?t oppose war, demand peace. Act to change minds.

but most importantly, act to change minds and not things;
[do this] because you don?t matter.

How far would you go? To save people four, five generations from now? If you could live your life with the knowledge that your luxuries would damn (doom) your distant kin of the future, would you? Oh, sorry, you already do.

You?re living off a loan based on guarantee of future payments.

Sometimes thinking outside the box still means that your thoughts are framed by the boundaries of the box.

You have to wonder, sometimes, what kind of madness it takes to put culture into a context resembling sanity. She walked up and down the street, as if she were looking for something: a lost cat, perhaps, or maybe spectacles, an old book, returnable bottles, a particular land-mark. Jimmy says her name’s Samantha, or something like it. I said I don’t care, that was, must’ve been sixteen years ago. Before all this started to make sense. But I have to back up or you’ll have no idea what I’m talking about.

Back then she was very pretty, you wouldn’t say attractive because who would be attracted to her, but she was pleasant to look at and had a wonderful face, but for it being tilted down towards the ground and with that lost look in her brown eyes, not that you’d ever know they were brown what with her not making eye contact with you, ever, but you seemed sure they probably must’ve been brown, that was the type of person she was. All times of day you could see her, though not consistently; maybe she’d be inching down the street at 9:30 in the morning, not really lumbering, no word really suitable to her pace, slow but not at all torn, not indicating any imperfection, any mental lapse, and maybe you’d see her walking down the street at noon, lunchtime, or at 3:30 in the afternoon, or after six o’clock in the evening, or at midnight, any time, really.

And it was bothersome because you couldn’t really tell that anything was wrong with her, and you wanted there to be something obviously, something patently wrong with her so you could write her off as crazy, as that crazy woman who’d go walking down the street; you wanted there to be something transparently wrong and malignant on her person so that you could maybe laugh it off, tell others about her in a roundabout sort of way, through anecdote, and laugh amongst yourselves as you heaved collective sighs of relief that you, at least, were perfectly sane in your thoughts, that at least you were put together, rational.

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Even the most basic of realizations must be based on an understanding that?

?what we understand as ordinary mundane daily life is only made ordinary through repetition.

so today I went to the store, and they had a sale on
[product name here]
, so I got six of them

“?what’s a seven letter word for delusion?”

repetition (repeat)

what we understand as ordinary is only made ordinary through repetition

“?and I was driving down the road and didn’t need to think where the fuel for my car came from”

made ordinary

even the most basic

through repetition

(repetition=addiction?)

what we understand as ordinary and experience as understandable and reasonable expectation is only made ordinary and reasonable through addiction

even the most basic of realizations must be based on an understanding of that.

?Hi,? I smiled not-too-hopefully.
?Before I kill you, I should probably ask your name,? Mari sighed emphatically. You could just tell it wasn?t turning out to be her day, either.
?Harris.?
?Shit!? she exclaimed, slamming her non-weaponized hand down on the counter. ?Trini. Milk. Eggs. Rope. In a plastic bag. Now.?
Trini, who apparently knew this woman, dutifully went behind the counter to procure the items, grabbing the milk and eggs from a tiny fridge presumably hidden behind the counter and putting them in a paper bag along with a thick bundle of rope before neatly closing the top of the paper bag.
?Anything else?? she asked politely. There was somehow a sense that all of this was very formal.
?No. Come on Harris. We?re going on a trip.?

As Mari shoved open the door, she said matter-of-factly, ?my brother?s name was Harris. Get in the car.? She said this, but her gesture was directed at a gigantic and stocky black-and-white spotted horse standing on the cobblestone street. Then she saw the incongruity of what she?d just said, and shouted ?Shit, Terence!? The horse neighed disapprovingly. ?Well,? she turned to me, ?I guess we?ll have to go by horse, then. Here,? she grabbed a clump of black from inside her coveralls and handed it to me. A balaclava. ?You?ll probably want to wear it.?

As they say the things you expect them to say, all the modern conveniences, you think whether or not they’re actually conveniences or even modern. They’re convenient for you, now, and they’re apparently modern, but how much good will they do you elsewhere? Taking apart an automobile and rebuilding it so that you need to hold down thirty-seven buttons simultaneously in order to make a right turn may in fact give you more control in a particular situation, but overall isn’t it less control? And more inconvenient? Yet that’s what we’re up against, really.

Common tasks have steps added to them, they have additional requirements thrust upon them: they are made more complicated in order to bring added simplicity. Dig?

The most basic of tasks are turned into twelve-ring circuses. The tedium and uncertainty of catching/harvesting and preparing food is replaced with dissociation from the source and dislocation from the food itself. Because what can you know about a pack of crackers? What is partially hydrogenated soybean oil, anyway?

Convenience foods, stores, flags, etc. etc.

Convenient when and for whom and for how long? Where does the convenience come from and, most importantly, is it transferable? Yes in a general sense, but only to a limited extent. And because most convenience is created by transferring the burden of knowledge from the user to the creator of the convenience itself, the user finds herself most limited in her ability to replicate the convenience, should she find herself without and in a strange place. Unless said strange place is also equipped with said conveniences.

Is an invention that renders you partially (if not totally) helpless in its absence really so modern?

So you find yourself inconvenienced, and of course you can’t be expected to have infinite knowledge or to be capable of recreating your position of convenience, not absolutely, but will you be able to eat and sleep, might you somehow find shelter and water?

That convenience means that you don’t have to worry now. But worries don’t just disappear. They just get postponed and transmuted.

More later.

The blurred-out, digitally-camouflaged faces on the now-infamous picture only lead credibility to the notion that this photographic-instant-as-media-sensation is representative of something larger. Who really cares about the picture itself? You think maybe it’s gone; you don’t see it splashed anywhere on the front page of the newspaper, and you think, maybe they got tired of it. But then there it is, staring at you from A-4. Or B-3. The Back Page.

Each time they use it, it’s slightly different. But basically they’re all the same. All re-workings of the original photo, attempts of photographic ‘experts’ to make out faces one, two, and three. Attempts to pick out vital clues from their lank bodies, ascetic surroundings.

Here’s an idea. When they do find the faces, they’ll show them in a column to the right of the original picture. Post-offices across the country will be furbished with the humble trappings of this WANTED poster. Reward $1,200,000.

If you sit at the right kind of table with the right kind of things in front of you and the right kind of people behind you and next to you and talking to you, you expect to be waited on. You have a reasonable expectation of service.

You can’t really be held accountable for the situation in which you find yourself, not accountable in the sense that you can be expected to conceive of any other way for things to be. This is how things are; don’t think how to create a different scenario, but how to make the current scenario better.

Besides, you’re entitled.

Listen to you. You’re rambling. You don’t make any sense.

Calm down. Breathe. Swallow. That jabbing pain probably means you need to urinate.

That tingly sensation? In your fingertips? Your fingers are burning; take them out of the fire.

“We live in the kind of world where…” is one of your more favored catch-phrases. Really, one of your catch-phrase-prefixes.

“We live in the kind of world where… Isn’t that horrible?”

Isn’t it.