Everything in order

Monday, June 11, 2007

He shot me with a nine. Ric had pulled it out on us and fired off a warning shot to my belly. It really hurt. I imagined the doctors having to take out all the fat to operate properly. It would be a liposuction without the guilt. I looked at the hole in me and looked back at Ric. He laughed a little bit, because this was the weird part. We were the same person. This whole time. Me and Ric were the same person.

I thought about it like this, it was the end of the adventure now. Ric shot me.

I got back earlier today. An envelope had been slid under my door. It was from David. There were some photos in the envelope, along with a note telling me where he was going. He said that his family has moved him away. They've gone upcountry now.

He said that he was sorry about everything.

I thought that it was kinda funny. You know, it's ironic. He said he was sorry for everything, but the whole time on the adventure he was just acting like he wanted to go home. I watched four hours of sitcoms today. I've been thinking about the one that I've been writing all this time. I started it some time ago, but I haven't really gotten around to it recently. I just got sidetracked when my son came to visit. I guess now that he's gone I can get back to it.

It's about this guy who went to the moon.

Sunday, June 10, 2007

There was an incredible amount of sadness here and I was caught in the middle. I'd just got out of the tent with a mob of women trying to kill me. Stumbled through the doors and all I see is the dark of the rain and night combined with two figures facing off with superpowers.

It was terrifying. I ran at them, but my chest hurt when I breathed because of how tough it was in that world right there. You could tell that you needed super powers right here. I always thought that if the world came down to that, I would be one of the people who got powers. I jumped quickly to see if I could fly.

Now, they weren't exactly fighting. They weren't even shouting, but the were definitely versus each other. I could hear the odd cry flung out. That was them trying to touch each other's mind. You could hear the pain building up, but just when you thought it would break your brain would quickly cut out a defense mechanism and you would be thinking about your childhood again. It's for your own protection though. So you can't really get upset that you missed out.

You see, that's how they got into this mess in the first place. Both of them, they're always trying to get to see more. They're always just pushing themselves everywhere always forgoing their comforts for just a little bit more of a small glimpse at what's really going on. You think being as clever as them, you would maybe try a different approach at happiness.

And I'm thinking about being on Sharkania. I never actually saw Sharkania. I only got made on the Sharkship. The Shark of Wisdom says they made me so that they wouldn't have to feel bad. I'm still not sure if that's a metaphor or something. You can never really tell with that guy. He's always thinking about something else when he talks to you. He's always just telling you to relax.

I'm not exactly sure how I got made. But I'm probably going to be getting some powers soon.

Moe and Ric were fighting with pain. They weren't even telling each other why they hurt. They were stuck at the stage where they just hurt too much to do anything about it. Moe was trying to connect with his clever, witty summaries of the world. That was his favourite weapon. Ric would just smile and shrug off the complete lack of a point in all of it. You can't really top when someone does that. It's like Ric absorbed the blow into his own attack.

I kept thinking that maybe Moe would win if he just got enough time. You know, maybe if he just had a bit more practice he could sharpen his analysis of everything into an all-engulfing superweapon. Ric would be knocked over at it. He'd just sit there, dumb, realising that he's not completely hopeless. He's just not good enough. But Moe was getting destroyed. I think the emotional pressure of meeting his dad after all these years was kicking in.

"You just kicked me out." He would say. "I was just a baby. Mom was hardly even a teenager."

Ric is fully Ashkenazi. Moe is only half Ashkenazi. His mom (Carolyn) is not Ashkenazi. Carolyn uses emotions to override you. Ric is overridden by his emotions. Moe is sometimes hopeless.

We all stood still and Ric's smile slowly got broader, he looked like he was about to burst. I wanted to run up to him and hold his cheeks together just in case, but you know, I couldn't run. It was really tough in that world right there. I tried again at the superpowers and I tried something different. I crouched down real low and tried to run like a leopard. I thought maybe I could transform. I caught a breeze of the conversation run over my back and for a second thought that I was going really fast. But it was just their emotions shooting out all over the place.

Do you know how many things can go wrong?

Sometimes Moe gets so hung up about it all that he lies in his bed at night for hours, just apologizing to all the things that have to happen. You can tell it in him that he understands most things in a way that hurts. When you think enough about the world and yourself you'll start to notice more and more of these things.

That's what he's saying to Ric this whole time. They're facing off about their incredible emotions and all Moe can say to Ric is that he understands things. Ric still smiling. "I guess there's no point in guessing things", his smile is leaking. His eyes are desperately trying to get away as not to hurt anyone. His emotions can hurt people. So he looks away again and Moe gasps.

Moe falls to his knees and I finally reach them. I'm telling Ric to hold on, maybe if he just gave us a little bit of time we could explain. I'm quickly looking at Moe, trying to get him up. We could probably take on Ric if we teamed up, I'm thinking. I start thinking about all the patterns in what they were saying. I start working out all the ideas that are going to set in place the end to this madness, but I get hit by lightning. It's not just me. It's me and Moe. We get fused.

I'm trying not to cry at the sudden burst of pain that I'm absorbing from Moe, but I realise that there's nothing new here really. We're like the same person in two parts.

The rain crushes down and it's getting harder to hear anyone. Ric doesn't need you to hear him before you get turned inside out by his smile. Something so nice maybe, revealing all types of doubts reinforced by a lifetime of loneliness. He didn't even notice his son getting fused with a shark. We're both shark now and I think how this couldn't have happened with anyone else. I've tried before, is what I'm saying. I've tried with David. I've tried with people. It's only Moe the whole time.

"It's okay." We say. Although it's really just me now. It's been me the whole time. "We can just pretend. We can just be cool for cool's sake."

Ric looks at me and I close my eyes because all I could see coming was his smile and there was no way that that would help me now. I tried to imagine stuff. I tried to imagine Ric getting hurt maybe. Maybe he has to stop fighting us because he's getting hurt, but it's no use. I start to think about Sharkania again.

I look up and start cutting things up with my mind. I've got super thinking from Moe. And I've got my own emotions right here. I can quite quickly see all the things that have happened recently in perfect perspective. It's not even lonely. I can see Sarah. I can see Carolyn. I can see how they went wrong.

I tell Ric that it's cool. It's okay.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Her shirt was all undone. We stood around and couldn't understand why she didn't just close it up. We could all see.

I stepped forward and asked her if there was something special happening. I asked her where Ric went. She said that I would never see him again. She told me again that she was all that I had left of him.

Sarah sat with us around her, the crowd watched her sitting naked in the dirt. She wouldn't get up and I was embarrassed.

"What's wrong?" She shouted. "What's wrong? Don't you love me anymore?" She was looking straight at me. I stood out even more than just being a shark, I was the guy that she was angry with. "Tell them what you did! I dare you."

I spoke a little in my mind. I kissed her while she slept. That's it. Nothing more than that. The landlord would vouch for me, if I could just find him. I looked around a bit and tried to get a better view. One of the people in the crowd stopped me. They said that I was trying to get away and that it wouldn't be that easy.

I looked deep into his soul and thought about all the pain that would probably happen to him in his life. He didn't know, he was so innocent.

"He laid hands his hands on me!" She shouted again. "Did you see what happened to that kid?"

Oh man, she made me so mad. I looked around for the landlord again. I thought about all the things his words could mean to these people. They didn't want to hear me, I'm a shark. People don't understand pain like I do. The thing about being a shark is that you see all the sadness in people. You can just look at people and the next thing you know you're just analyzing and breaking them down in your mind and they don't even realize it. They just don't get it most of the time.

"He got his friend to trick me!" She shouted. This bit just wasn't true. "He took me up in an aeroplane and told me all these secrets and I trusted him so much." She had the audience right there with her in the plane. She said how it was raining and how she had to take off her clothes because they were wet. "When I got down, he made me trust him." She was pointing at me now. Pointing at the shark.

She was saying that basically me and Ric tricked her into trust me. I told them that my friend would clear it all up. I said that he was right there the whole time. All I did was kiss her and I touched her hair. They wanted to know where Ric was. I told them that he disappeared. I told them that when his wife found him he just vanished. I told them how Carolyn used emotions.

No one took my side and all of a sudden I regretted ever leaving the house. I couldn't believe that this whole time I had just forgotten how people treat you when you're a shark. I saw again all of the things that people do. I saw how they took her side because she had better emotions than me. I saw how they twist your words around while you speak so that you sound worse than you really are. I hated them all. There were too many people to take on at once. I thought about Monopoly.

A silence gathered quickly, I didn't even realize until Leonard Cohen was right upon us.

"Son, what is wrong here?" He asked so calmly you could have cried and people would have been okay with it.

Everyone jumped up to say why they hated me. The girl even tried. She tried to twist my words and what I did into something so bad that people could hate me for it.

He didn't even hear them.

He just looked at me and I could hear his guitar strumming in the back of my mind. I could hear him playing songs about why people make other people hurt. I felt like Moe with him staring at me.

"Your friends are outside. I should think that you somehow know this. Let me tell you, your friend, Michael. Your friend collapsed in front of me. The strings on my guitar were too much for him, I can imagine he understood all too well. I assume that he always understands too well, but that's not the point.

"What really happened when he collapsed was more than just my music. It was because of someone else. I played to him and I asked him who it was and he almost died. I looked right into him but I was scared that he would have broken for real.

"I noticed that something was wrong in this part of the tent. I could feel it through the crowd's response. I saw what happened and I heard what he said to you. I knew what he was to you. I could tell that you killed that boy, I understand why, of course.

"I saw you looking for Ric. I could feel something deeply unsettling in your search. I realized then that the person you were looking for was causing all the pain in Micheal. I sent them outside. You will find them there, but I cannot go with you. I will stay here and keep the crowd at bay. When you realize who you are I will let them go and you will have to leave this place."

I ran outside, everyone was frozen.

I saw Moe standing next to Ric.

I have never met someone as clever as Moe. He is so clever that he just understands himself all the way into an soul-pervasive sadness. I shook my head at the thought of all the pain right there. He's so different. He is so sad.

Other people would have cried.

People don't understand Moe, it's because of it all. It's because they try to talk to him but he can't keep them up to it. He's just jumping through it all and people don't want to keep up. It's so sad.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Carolyn did nothing. Moe was being wrestled to the ground by the only things that his mind couldn't hold on to. I was on top of Ric, just making sure that he wouldn't get up to love Carolyn again. She was trying to trick us with her tears. Leonard Cohen was playing his guitar and singing, making it all up as he went along, looking Moe straight in the eyes. Moe couldn't move anyway. We were all trapped.

About Carolyn's crying, you just sort of learn after a while that she's not really sad for you. She's crying for herself and that's it. Ric didn't get that and that's why he had to disappear when Moe was born. He got stuck on the moon and couldn't possibly hold onto something like a child. A child will do that. I'm always saying how sad a parent can get.

I tried to break into Ric's mind, but something was missing. Moe let go of the microphone stand, sprawled on the floor he wrapped around himself trying to break free. It got so intense that no one existed in this tent, not even us. We were all trapped in all the things that go wrong in life and this tent was just some place that it happened to all come out. I told Ric that nothing here mattered. I told him how it wasn't very good. I told him that nothing is really that good, it's just time to let go of all this stuff and move on.

The whole world went quiet when Leonard Cohen stood up. He looked at us with pitying eyes and slowly asked us what the difference was. But really? None of us could disagree with that and we started changing.

As easy as that we started changing. He carried on playing and changing us.

I saw the world really quickly in the back of my mind. With the rest of me I decided to get up and join him. I looked around and echoed those words. I looked at all the people in the crowd and they held up their hands as if to ask why they ever tried.

We all gave up right there.

Carolyn got angry. We sparked all sorts of hurt inside of her mind and she changed. She looked at me one last time. Her head bowed to the side, she opened up her eyes wide and tried to look into my soul. She pouted her lips and even had a tear forming. It was the most emotional thing I had ever seen, but it couldn't touch the music going on around us. All the sadness in her world looked at me and as soon as it saw me I looked back at it and she collapsed. Her eyes dropped and this time she got sad for real. She got so sad at me, I don't think that she ever saw that coming.

"It doesn't mean anything." Leonard Cohen sprayed over us as we all gasped at all the feelings we were having. People were falling down, breaking their minds with sadness all around me. I stood still and just let it go. All the sadness crushed her. Leonard Cohen said again, "It doesn't mean anything, all of our thoughts are nothing. We have to realise this."

Ric disappeared.

I looked at Carolyn and told her so.

"He's gone. I'm all that's left now." I whispered just loud enough for her to hear.

She screamed. She tried to run out to the exit, but she was eaten up by the crowd even as quickly as she ran. I couldn't see her anymore and that was the end of her and I haven't seen her since. It must seem like forever. She was gone now.

Moe broke his back, he tried so hard to get up. All his joints locked and he shattered every bone trying to move. We all wanted to jump in and help, but who were we to understand. That guy had more pain than anyone in that tent right then. There is nothing that he wouldn't want to understand, and that's what you get for that. Your body destroying you in a weak attempt at turning off your mind.

He wasn't really breaking all his bones, but he was really grabbing for air with his mouth. He couldn't breathe in case he managed to speak, what he could have said would have hurt. His pain was so much.

Carolyn was gone and it didn't mean much like you would have thought it would. There was no celebration saying, "we made something evil disappear". We couldn't stop now.

I couldn't find Ric and Moe was broken. I was just there on my own, standing in a crowd.

"Hey, what's going on?" A fat voice came stood out from the crowd. I stared at the direction it came from and before I knew it, there was Monopoly standing in the middle of it. He stepped out and all the ugliness in the world came back.

"What are you doing?" He said. "This is ugly. It's stupid."

He didn't understand anyone's pain. He just stood there being selfish.

"Look, we're trying to make sense of some serious stuff here." I said to him. "I think we would all appreciate it if you just tried a little bit to understand that. Come on. Either that or just leave."

I said it loud enough for everyone around to hear. No one said anything, but I'm sure that they all agreed with me. I think they were just a bit too scared to say anything, like they didn't want any confrontation. There's enough pain already.

"No." He said. He made a stupid face with his fat head and then he spat on me. I killed him.

I jumped on him and ripped him up. He made me so mad. I just thought about all the pain he was causing. All you have to do is try a little bit harder to understand, but no. I hated him so much.

I shouted at him. I shouted so that other people could hear.

"You don't care!"

"I hate you!"

They all didn't say anything, but I'm sure that they took my side. No one could even cry. Everything was crazy around here. All this pain was just hanging loose and no one could break away from it even though we pretended real good.

Leonard Cohen told us stories about all the girls he ever loved. There were so many and they all loved him back equally. None of them would tell you lies. None of them would say things just so that they would win an argument. All of them loved him perfectly.

Saturday, June 02, 2007

And Leonard Cohen played to us. We all sat still and all stood around not feeling awkward, just moving with his voice and nodding slowly when we finally got it. I told them what the lyrics meant. I told Sarah how she had fallen in love with me. I told the landlord how it didn't matter what anyone thought about it. It was cool.

When Sarah woke up she was mine. Her hair was even dirtier than before and her skin was caked in the sweat of a bad dream. She didn't speak. She pushed herself back against one of the support beams of the stand that we were still resting under. She saw the landlord watching over us from a small distance. He was like a priest seeing over our union. She pushed herself against the wall and wouldn't look at either of us.

And then I saw Moe. He stood right up close to where Leonard Cohen was playing. He stood nearer than anyone else dare stand. He didn't move with the music like the rest of us did. He stared intensely at the guitar, reaching out his hand he held the microphone's stand. Leonard Cohen seemed like he didn't even notice. It wasn't because he was ignoring Moe, it was just that he understood so perfectly and didn't need fear anymore.

Moe's weight fell against the stand, knocking it all over. Leonard Cohen sat still, still playing his guitar. The microphone had spilled all over the floor and all sorts of people were grabbing around, trying to fix everything. We could all still hear him playing. He sang about us, he told us what was wrong. He told us that it wasn't worth very much anyway.

He looked at Moe and everyone stopped at that. His eyes locked on Moe's and suddenly Moe couldn't even get up. Moe tripped over himself and couldn't work out his body and legs. He waited for some help, but Leonard Cohen just kept playing.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed something happening. I noticed the whole place change, something dark was coming over us. I looked over to the opening and noticed Ric standing there so quiet, it was haunting. He froze at the sight of all the people. We all didn't know what to do or say, someone held out their hand and asked him to join them, but he couldn't move and then they would take back their hands away and feel ashamed at having been turned.

I walked up to him. My body swung as I moved through the crowd, not touching anyone. I couldn't waste any energy on these people now.

I saw Carolyn enter from the other end and thanked how big this tent was. I could get to him before she did. I had to warn him in case of her needing. I suddenly realised then how it always was, I realised then that Carolyn wasn't good. I told myself that it was okay and that it didn't matter, but I was lying to myself.

I ran at him and couldn't hear Moe being taken over by something so powerful, an acoustic guitar being played by someone as pure emotion. I couldn't hear him collapse and that he couldn't get up. Ric was drenched in rain. A pool of water flooded the ground below him, I heard thunder.

I saw Carolyn move near him, I saw him trying to move and he was just smiling so hard that I thought his face would fall apart. It was the type of smiling that tries to hold in all the pain of a world that you can't talk to. I understood then why he couldn't talk anymore, why every person he ever met got put off by his mind just his talking in opposites. I smiled to myself too, at the thought of all the pain, it was overwhelming.

I saw Carolyn crying. She just looked at Ric and cried. I told myself not to fall for it again. I didn't want to get sucked back into her world of emotions.

“We don't want to go through this again.” I told her.

Ric was breaking down in front of us, his smile just widened and could have broken any second now. He rubbed his eyes for a second and you would have thought that he was about to cry. I tackled him to the ground. He still smiled and couldn't stop rubbing his eyes. I tried to hold his hands down to stop him from crying.

Carolyn stood there.

I looked at Ric in all seriousness and tilted my head to the side a bit. This was between me and him. I widened my eyes.

“What's wrong, man?” I asked him. “Why are you trying to cry?”

He broke and all of a sudden it was so much more than anyone could handle. One whole life of intense alienation came crashing down and I thought about how it must be like to spend your whole life living by yourself. Being completely unable to mix with people, you're just an alien. I wanted him to stop. I spat on his face. He still held that smile only now it had broken.