I.

So, it was decided, then. That he would choose to believe in the life that enveloped him. That in
spite of closing the doors to his kingdom for eighteen-something years, he would choose to
believe. And it was as simple as that. As springing over a squirrel, still as a stone, on the
sidewalk, and sealing himself. Holding his breath, airtight. That he would instinctively avoid
such an intimate relationship with death urged him to embrace life. So, he opened up, tore down
the palisades, and welcomed weary travelers – peasants and merchants – into his kingdom. And
with them came life. For the better.

II.

Some short1 time following this event, it became apparent that something kept him grounded to
life. To those who believe in such fantastical things as the supernatural, it would be described as
a phantom force; intertwined fates and threads pulling and yawing erratically. Before the Grand
Opening, perhaps even he would have quoted some of the aforementioned lines. But this time,
unfortunately, it was something far more tangible. He was kept grounded to the act of living, and
downright avoided its trivialities. Was scared to death of them. Nasty buggers.

III.

It was at an intersection, under the unforgiving flame of fire that every so often chooses to pour
its heart out onto Little Meadows. In his dingy fifth floor apartment. In him. He swipes away the
shower curtains, discolored and stained, its rings rusted by the corrosive thoughts which they
facilitate, daily. The shower turns on. His fingernails gnaw at his scalp. Cleaving, kneading, as if
searching for an inescapable thought, or desperately trying to get rid of it. Steam breeds in a
shadowy corner of the bathroom, crawling, creeping out from its hiding place. It has come to
feed. It wraps itself around his toes, inching its way up through his leg. By the time he notices, it
is too late. The multitude of little beads are already up to his waist. He is being viciously
attacked. He chokes on the warmth they invite on his skin, on the clarity they bring to his
thoughts. The clouds in his head reluctantly part, and a sun, timid from its time in such
opaqueness, peeks through.

IV.

In his dingy fifth floor apartment, he uses the remnants of a mirror to cage and tame each strand
of hair on his head. He meets eye to eye with the distorted version of him, inches away. A mist
separates them. He feels him. Close, his lifeless breath. He is cracked, raggedy, and his hairs do
not want to obey. He prods them together and ropes them. Some disobedient ones defect. He will
deal with them later.

V.

1
After locking up for eighteen-something years, short can come to be a pretty relative term. It’s perhaps not the
duration of this period that defined it, so its length will not be discussed further.
Three paces back, rotate ninety degrees, four paces forward. He follows the directives and exits
his dingy fifth floor apartment into his dingy fifth floor hallway. It seems like a hospital’s, minus
the death, but full of sickness, nonetheless. The walls ail, they are pallid. Chunks of paint peel
forward attempting to be within earshot of the terse whispers exchanged between two midnight
bandits. Hush-Hush. Its wooden frames rot. They are losing a disinterested battle to remain
intact. Secretly, each yearns to burst so that the world can see all of its guts. Hush.

VI.

The sounds of night: the lascivious moon flaunts its gaze upon weary watchers, beckoning them
to join it, above; violent and calculated, the gruff hound warbles at the charred air’s mystique; a
moth incessantly zaps with light lazily cast upon the blotted asphalt; dimly, faintly, the lives of
the town’s inhabitants seep from bolted windows and mingle together.

VII.

Crunching his way through the trod road, curiously examining the buildings that loom over him
from a distance. Handsome and deceptively tall. He adjusts his gaze to the livelihoods that
ramble before him. Each one its own note, from high to low, low to high, making distinct
harmonies; a jazz ensemble. One picks up from where the other left off. Mr. Cleaners – 24 Hour.
Improvised and gritty, sprawling in no particular direction. Locksmith. Some notes defect. They
jump into a tarantella. Erratic, pressing, dangerous. He will deal with them later.

VIII.

He has reached the intersection. Here he looks up, unburdened by any earthly light, and listens to
the lecherous calls from above. To his left, the buildings. To his right, music. He faces a brackish
vastness2.

IX.

Perhaps some words are needed to demystify the nature of our subject. Perhaps you feel as if we
jumped in too rapidly. Alas, it is that very nature, the one thing you seek to understand, that has
drawn me away from eliciting its complexities onto this page. You see, I have come to the
realization that the act of writing, of giving a thought a domain, a particular tangibility and
concreteness, is a very fearful process. This proves especially true when that thought, which one
so desperately attempts to restrain, has no desire to be bounded. There are a few situations when
this may be the case. Firstly, suppose a thought to be Inconceivable3 (as an example, A young
2
In the absence of daylight, the mood of the ocean deteriorates. It wails and lashes. A sooty darkness sweeps over it.
Perhaps the only discernible flashes of light are the pearly tips of its waves, the wan reflection of the moon, and the
faint yellow glow of a wandering bark.
3
A thought may be given the honorary title of Inconceivable if it satisfies one of two prerequisites: it may be so
complex to grasp by the human mind that it is deemed Inconceivable; or, it stems from the mind of someone who is
not capable, for the life of them, of comprehending the world in which they were born into. If the thought should
meet the former description, it should be safely stored in the annals of one’s mind, with hopes that it will be of use in
some short time (see first footnote). If it falls under the latter category, then it becomes a very tricky creature, and
must be handled with extreme care. For a powerful thought in such a confused mind leads only to suffering. This
thought should not be safely stored. On the contrary, it must be grappled with. Yes. Made docile.
man considers the table set before him. There are carefully placed porcelain plates upon an
embroidered linen mantle, glittering silver utensils, and sleek glasses of wine. This elegant setup
invites him to question the rigidity of Time. A mangled thread manifests itself before him. He
plucks it and recognizes the transience of his presence in all moments. This is a dangerous mind).
Secondly, the thought may be too menacing. In the process of writing, ideas come and go, like
the ebb of a violent tide. In that bustling factory that is the mind, thoughts and ideas coexist in
different stages of development. Some show promise, and are worked on, explicated, and
extricated. Some still remain in the primitive stages of refinement. The process of solidifying
these thoughts and coherently elucidating them on script may be both spontaneous or drawn-out.
This is the natural state of things. Yet in certain dark corners amidst the constant churning of
ideas, void of any direct light whatsoever, there may spawn frightful thoughts. Terrible beasts
that ravage and plunder the order of things that one follows so…sycophantically. These are the
thoughts that are to be discarded immediately, without entertaining the possibility of refinement
or anything of the sort. They feed on any attention that is bestowed upon them, reproducing and
multiplying like a virulent virus. If one, in the process of writing, senses the impending arrival of
one of these beasts, stop as immediately as I did when considering the intrinsic nature of our
subject. Calmly put your writing utensil down, and cease writing for some short time. Take heed,
unless you want the beast to consume you, take over your precious factory, and begin its own
solidification processes.

X.

Though, I do believe it is necessary to include the description of our subject I partially

transcribed. It goes as follows:

…this was a particular type of being, not quite a man, since the word begs to
imply a discernible coincidence of mind and body. Not quite. This was a creature
subjected entirely to the whims of his tormented psyche. Tormented in the same
sense conspirators were by the infamous Duke of Exeter’s daughter during more
primordial times. Except, while such a device was used by warders to inflict
purely physical pain, his psyche, stubbornly leading opposing trails, brutishly
tortured those forms we consider to be the quintessence of our very being. And,
while such a divergence is not readily visible through our corporal forms, it was
present, nonetheless, in the dampened dungeon of his soul, and the clamped
antechamber of his mind. A being forced into such arduous suffering has no
choice but to follow his psyche on its conflicting paths, not fully knowing if there
ever will be a point of convergence, yet closely retaining a mangled thread of
hope that takes the form of his existence. And thus, splintered at his core, he is no
longer considered one full being, but rather a collection of smaller ones; each
receiving some care and attention, but admittedly less than each deserves or
requires to become whole. So, before even thinking about exerting himself across
a dead squirrel, his efforts were directed towards deliberately piecing together the
convoluted puzzle that was his psyche. Infinitesimal piece by infinitesimal piece,
the sum of his parts, following each scent with hope, each trail with hope, each
path with hope…
XI.

Gliding on rolling hills;

Up
Down-
up,

Down.
Particles dancing on my face,
sweetly.
Extended, crucified by the
sun.

XII.

Here are some things I am against: myself,

the lady who messed up my order today.

XIII.

What is existence if not a prolonged battle against another force? What is jumping if not an act of
defiance against gravity? What is humming if not a losing fight against the many particles of air
that prevent somber notes from being heard by the most distant of listeners? What is one who is
not against something? Who fights no battle4? Who does not engage even in the simplest of
skirmishes: those against Time? Who succumbs to the provoking motions of the sun and moon?
Up. Down.
This is no losing battle. No. This is a white flag. A being who has no fight has no existence.

XIX.

The truth is, honest, that when I write I just jot down whatever comes into my head. And I pray
to god that it forms a story. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t. And it’s not something
you can identify until the writing is “complete”. A life rambles and roves, twists and turns and
snakes. Just when you think it’s gone off in one direction, it rears its head and decides to follow a
different, untrod and densely vegetated path. Wild. And it just so happens, that the thoughts
which give birth to this life are no different. Wild. I truly pity the soul who must journey through
such thick and stifling underbrush, blinded. Likewise, I pity the reader whose eyes must dart
across the convoluted and sprawled thoughts of this tormented soul.

XX.

I.

Sitting at the edge of his seat, at the edge of his porch, of his world. As the sun rises from its
celestial bed, the grass coolly blows, and the wind languishes. A rooster does not crow. Any
4
I am not referring to a pacifist.
rooster, golden or bronze, to signal the day’s awakening, or rust in the direction of the breeze. He
did not make it so when he imagined this scene. Perhaps it was intentional. Their desolate
groaning, he says, would have made him shoot them straight to hell. I sought to ask him where
he thought he was now? Or, perhaps he merely forgot.

II.

The scene is primordial. Its objects yearn for advancement. A rock path, snaking towards a
rotting wooden shed. A wooden shed, hoarding a mélange of tools, once obsolete. A hose pours
itself onto the ground. Onto an amorphous manifestation, a young child, perhaps. It must be a
child, since, along with the longing that permeates this desolate scene, there is an innocence, a
shamelessness that resonates in the air.

III.

From on high, through the gaslight of an open window, hear the gospel from the radio-
phonograph. A series of undulating waves race from the window, mingling with the millions and
millions of particles that surround it. In company, they vibrate and jive. When the box is shut off,
only the grass and wind are vulnerable to the thousands of tiny hairs in his cochlea. It is time for
other particles to commence their dance. It is a waltz. Precise and cordial, step by step. Partners
follow the calculated rhythm that guides them. Or maybe, a tarantella. Each particle in its
monomaniacal quest to move. A frenzied dance, passionate and lively. Erratic.

IV.

Sitting at the bottom of his seat, his world. As the thick drapes of air unfurl over him, the weight
drags his eyelids down, and casts a dark shadow over him- it is a starless night. There was not
enough time to produce their appearance. Or energy. A different sound echoes and springs off
the massive walls of this scene. It is the sound of money.

XXI.

Crunch. crunch. crunch. I am walking down a gravel road, deemed worthy enough to be void of
slimy, corrosive tar. I am the feather who humiliates and latches on to goop. A road isolated
enough to lack any uniform surface. Worthy. There is constant music in my head. A product of
my surroundings? It brashly seeps in, and I am a welcoming host. Welcome to the warm
distortion of notes. I am not as crazy as he makes me out to be, you know. It is easy for you to
alienate our thoughts, but if you really take some time to think about it, we are one and the same.
Brothers in arms. The grotesqueness of our thoughts is never fully appreciated. We are keen to
sweep away the ones we dislike. The so-called beasts. We rid ourselves of them, alter our lives to
get rid of every inch of them. Hide any evidence so as to restrict the coming of any conclusions
or realizations. Another murder that will never be solved.

XXII.
Leaves on the ground crawl. Then they make a run for it. A cool wind urges me to follow them.
There is a storm coming.

XXIII.

There is a level of detachment inherent to a work of writing. Through my experiences, I am able

to write about the experiences of someone who I don’t fully seem to know or understand. And, in
turn, someone may write about me writing about someone who I don’t fully seem to know or
understand. And we can go down this lengthy path, and with each level we add a fresh layer of
detachment. With each layer added, the writer loses more responsibility. In this case, loss is a
good thing. The writer is not responsible for writing about the experiences who they don’t fully
seem to know or understand. They are not held responsible for this. I am being held responsible.

XXIV.

“On: The Day I Lost My Brother”

The air around me stiffens, just a little bit. Just enough to pester. I hoist my arm. The caulked air
does not budge. I take a step. The air gives, I break through it.
BOOM!
It seals up behind me.
Uh oh.
I am trapped, now. Can I go back?

XXV.

Our ashy dusk covers the night’s evil blackness. He sees an Old Man on a skiff and an ancient
Mariner.

Why are they so Old?