the confident

i.
an old man sits on a porch feeding pigeons a stale loaf of bread. the pigeons pace around, making a community out of his front yard. Bathing in the gutters lining the streets and warming themselves on the slanted rooftop of the man's collapsing polish flat, the birds get fatter and watch the neighbourhood change, perhaps unaware that someday the old man will pass away, leaving them to migrate to a park or parking lot, forced to move along, eating garbage.

their kind is a strange one: living in community, taking whatever comes their way - they fly from one watering hole to the next, letting their large numbers protect one another. when one drops off, they will mourn briefly, but keep eating and moving. the birds that cannot keep up go alone: a one-legged pigeon hops around the bus station begging for crumbs. its friends and family have deserted him. he hobbles around looking for new circles to join. scared his days are coming to an end, he buries his face in feathers and tries to sleep on the curb of a street downtown, the noise of the city deafening.

ii.
the streets are full of people building new things.
city workers - in bright yellow vests - cheerfully crush chunks of the old asphalt and prepare a new tar. private contractors perch on scaffoldings, stack cinder blocks, saw lumber and hammer things into place. basements and storefronts are filled with ideas about the future: the old homes and foot paths will decay and be replaced by new ones: this is how we continue, no ending.

iii.
the confidence that comes from knowing his seed is strong enough to harvest a child gives him the purpose of finding suitable pasture for the future and an inability to recognize this purpose as being far from extraordinary, but still: average and empowering.

iv.
the largest blackberry never recorded was unremarkably eaten.

it grew - as most all fruits will, and managed to be overlooked by the workers handpicking its brothers until it became larger and fatter than all the others. finally, it was picked from its vine, and every person that touched its juicy flesh remarked to themselves, silently, how big and extraordinary a fruit it was. the blackberry never realizes its fate, stabbed with a fork and swallowed whole - a tasty dessert!

Let

“Let’s write a Hollywood movie”
“OK”
“Any ideas?”
“Yeah…I mean, I’ve been wrestling with this car chase scene.”
“Anybody dies?”
“Yeah. The main character dies within the first two minutes of the chase.”
“Oh. Buzzkill.”
“I suppose.”
“Did you think maybe you should keep him alive or something?”
“Why?”
“To keep the story moving.”
“Oh. Umm.”
“It’d probably be a good idea.”
“You think?”
“Sure. Hey, let me see that script of yours.”
“Sure, hang on, it’s here, in my bag.”
“OK.”
“Yeah, here it is. It’s not very good—“
“oh, nonsense. You probably just need some rewrites.”
“Maybe…”
“This scene here, where the doctor protagonist tells his wife he wants to work extra night shifts…I’m going to write in here to have the wife suspect an affair.”
“I suppose that sounds reasonable.”
“And the next scene I’m crossing out, rewriting it as a scene between the doctor protagonist and his secretary.”
“But…”
“It’s OK, they’re going to have sex.”
“Are you sure? Have you even read the rest of it?”
“Let me tell you, andy. You’ve got some good stuff here, alright?”
“I do?”
“yes. This is Hollywood material.”
“It is?”
“I have an agent that could make you famous, Andy.”
“really?”
“yes, 'Famous'”
“Andy, screenwriter….”
“Yes, Andy screenwriter, but first, we need to get through these rewrites.”
“OK…”
“So, while the doctor and the secretary are getting it on in the worst way – anal – Detective Mick enters the operating room. Seems the wife has been doing a little investigating.”
“Wow. This is going in a whole new, totally dynamic direction!”
“They don’t pay me to film shit, son.”

....

“So how about when the detective reports back his findings- the affair- the doctor has a mid-life crisis, then the story goes into the dissent of his marriage…”
“I was thinking maybe the doctor should be abusive.”
“Abusive?”
“Yes. An abusive, cheating deadbeat doctor. Drinks rail scotches and beats his wife.”
“…rail scotch?”
“So the wife becomes bitter, but empowered!”
“But the movie wasn’t even about the wife!”
“Ok, that’s fine, but you need to shut up.”
“You need to shut up.”
“No, you need to shut up. Listen to what I’m saying: You could make seven figures on this screen play Randy.”
“Andy.”
“Right. We just need to wrap this up in the right package to sell it en masse.”
“How?”
“I’m going to take this home, OK? Maybe work out a couple stale scenes. I’ll call you Monday.”
“OK. Don’t you want my help though?”
“No thanks, this is all crap right now anyways. I’ll make it golden. Thanks a lot Randy.”
“Andy.”
“Yep. Later buddy.”


-june 25, 2004

screenplay

he walks to the garage to return the shovel and somehow falls asleep in a wheel barrow. He wakes up when she comes home from work. the garage door opens and she pulls the car in. he rubs his eyes and tries to stand up. he fails to stand and falls on concrete. she sees this from inside her car. she rushes out of the car to help him, but he stands up on his own. an open wound on his forehead covers half of his face in a warm, lush blood.

you're back, he says. i missed you.
why do you do this to yourself?
what? this? (gets blood on his hand. wipes on shirt)
let's get you cleaned up.
he starts crying and embraces her, getting blood on her shoulder. she holds him while he sobs. His sobs lighten and he begins to kiss her neck. he suddenly fondles her breast. she pushes him away, repulsed.
what's wrong with you?
honey...i...
no, don't...
she gets in her car and starts the vehicle, he is staring at her the whole time.
don't do this!


after she leaves, he stumbles into the house and turns on television. he watches a short segment of old nature footage. a monkey pees on himself, all over his face. he laughs aloud. there is no one in the house but him. after finally noticing the blood on his head, he decides to bathe. he lays in the bathtub, turns the water on, and plugs the drain. as the tub slowly fills, he eases himself in the warm water. relaxed, he tries to masturbate in the bathtub for a while before he passes out in place. the faucet keeps going. he never wished to die like that, but this is how he died, failing to masturbate before passing out, dying in his sleep with a hand on his softening penis. they would find him, weeks later, his mailbox stuffed with overdue notices.

squint.

i.
hanging pictures up in specific spots, where you think they look their very best on the wall-type prominence. for when strangers enter your space for the first time a strange deviance crosses your face when they don't take notice to the prominence of your symbols you etch onto every wall and echo with your voice full of passion the squeal of electric energy, your back pushed against the corner of an empty room, teeming. the walls bending inwards as they rise. a lone light fixture stuck to the ceiling. the creaks of a house, the usual air flowing through the vents - a breathing specimen in this house. the specimen an indefinite longing. unequal air pressure forcing a wind into the house through a crack in the window, scattered papers rustling back and forth violently. the sound paper makes, shredding under subtle pressure.

ii.
embarrassed, hiding the wine glass behind the television set when you were too drunk to wash it and put it back in the cupboard. stumbling to bed drunk, reciepts and other notes of personal debt carelessly stacked in a pile with sketches and unfinished pieces of writing, held in place by a bag of potato chips turned into a paper weight. for weeks, forgetting what's been placed where, and pulling out more papers that will get lost in a mess. no sense of organization or moral responsibility. no more debt, no more goddamn debt, get your bank affairs in order, get a day job, do this, do that. get a job, keep working on all your miserable affairs in a logical order. don't say anything critical to disrupt peoples' world as they rotate on their axis slowly. you, yourself, spin around the room and watch the lies fall off yourself like wet rags or dead skin.

iii.
your coworker says look at that snake in the cockpit, pointing out some blank-faced man you didn't know was originally there. his hand on her leg - the only bit of anatomy you'd see of him until years later, when you would finally meet him, drunk off your ass and him too. his handshake firm and overbearing, his hands much bigger than yours. "bigger everything," she once confessed. cocking your head, checking to make sure everything is level.

rediscovering an acquaintance who is still an asshole.

Two plants let their leaves unfurl in the sunlight a small window provides and split the differences of life unevenly. The one closer to the window shows an overbearing sense of vitality: by the end of the season, the plant may bear fruit! The other - overwatered and consumed by moldy bugs - has no future.

The plants lay still and silent when a stranger enters the room, and grow even quieter when they leave.

most art

you said i'm going to paint a picture and you sold some furniture to buy some canvas, which you stretched yourself, in the quiet of your empty living room. and for weeks falling into months, you worked on your art, little by little, thinking of the painting every second you were away from it, reasoning all the painstakingly small details you would work and re-work until you have constructed your masterpiece - not so much a summation of life, but a statement to your close friends of how you had spent the past few months mesmerized by the canvas. you will feel good, great, relieved, or disappointed as you look at your painting, unable to realize it as just another picture, but, instead, your creation: something that has acquired meaning only in your dreams. a ghost painting you will be praised for, but misunderstood all the same.

DT - hopeless mechanics - YOU LEFT FOR SOMEONE

i.
nobody has a god like my god.
i'd love him to tears if he'd show his face. (wind picks up)
it can't be completely random. (wind calms)
show me a sign.
show me a sign, goddammit! (a brief fluttering - wind)
i'm not settling for that, you pussy
yes, i will insult your women. (wind picks up)
if i were god, i would be this playful.
i will wait for you.
(even though i'm sure you're already here [you know that, though, don't you?])

ii.
-figure out how to build a wind turbine / generator
- research agriculture
- hoard resources
- abandon old friends

iii.
if i knew i'd be alive in 200 years, i'd cover my body in tattoos as a time capsule of the old earth.

it's indeed haunting that the west believes death and that i should stand on the end of the homosapien species spectrum, feeling completely fine.

we will all be poets / philosophers,
like plates of the earth grinding upon each other on a different scale of time we cannot comprehend

iv.
animations
enter/exit
a cubicle instance.
barry walks to bathroom.
barry goes to bathroom.
all rooms and cubicles are just different clips on the timeline. the opening door
resizes the room as it fills with people. barry. you are friends with barry.
barry. his nostrils appear to be flaring.

each paperdoll has their own vitals: every hour, happiness minus ten.
the closer you are to deadlines, the more stress you get.
on release, interact equals barry.

your job earns the company money.
use money to buy improvements: coffee maker, stapler, filing cabinet, colostomy bag, faster computation.
if this was the symbol of my youth, perhaps the symbol of my adolesence is a balled up kleenex.

v.
each cubicle has a computre, phone, calendar, and chair.
unplugging the computer equals intelligence.

meetings will be called. depending on the success of the business, the boss will be mean
or nice. you can lie, accuse, praise, or just sit dumb and fat, filling up on refreshments.
resentment is inevitable, slouching in the back of a crowded room, face fidgeting out pantamimes.

the world around him only faint glimmers of activity from far away, he laughs at the idea of a shirt, boldly questioning "what's human suffering?" as if displaying idiocy so blatantly would be a sarcastic jab at the lops mulling about the ignorance pool, jabbering to themselves god and jesus god and jesus how did we get here? god and jesus, let's turn the city of chicago into the city of god- a great beacon of hope. let's all be fake christian for a moment and jerk off each other's upper middle class segregation egos in a fluttering moment of song and dance, praising old idols in the context of McChurch, persuading the persuaded in a marketing ploy devoid of spirit.

vi.
monks live in the mountains and wait for hope, content.
christians drive to church and praise the lord for being here, among the living, in the form of hope.