first book

Chapter

He wrote in his journal on one of his dismal aimless afternoons in Portland. The coffee shop was his second choice, his first plumb full. The cafe was sterile, full of glowing apples and start-up fanfares. There were Portland Mercuries scattered about, one open at the next table to the horoscopes. The wind blew in the open door and no one save the barista spoke. He didn't fit in. He had no technology, no fixed gear, the patches on his coat were like a sky-blue suit at a formal dinner. He's from somewhere else, no one cares where. He might as well not have been there, and in a way he wasn’t, he was beside her, writing himself by her side in front of her wood stove, feeling her wool and tasting her tea and fruit. He read Celine to her, out loud, the father and the World Fair and the laughter shared between them.

11. Isabelle. I froth at the mouth. Her text stuns me. Kindnesses that go unchallenged. My sorrow shared by millions. Such an expert you are with your SIM cards and former heartbreaks. So ordinary, conservative cool, full of poise.

I figured you could love someone like tossing a coin, no preference for the outcome. A quiet pep talk, some time and you're okay again, deserving. I know that, all in all, things went according to plan. I couldn't afford yoru paranoia, your beautiful cruelty.

We would have figured each other out, same conversation, the boredom would set in, we couldn't withstand the Terror of our Revolutionary Love. I was your Robespierre; God was your Napoleon.

Chapter

He walks across leafy Portland State and remembers the day he walked out of class, seemingly forever. The day before he’d read about Buddhist monks and their annual reading of the Scriptures. How they would flip through a book, pfffffft, set it down, done. Just so many dead, immaterial words, nothing compared to the living thought, the immanent groundlessness of being. His professor had made a Hegelian claim to absolute knowledge, she had imposed her image of a dead writer to stimulate dead minds and he heard a voice inside say, “This is not for me,” and he stood up and left.

As he watched the wind-blown leaves dance around his feet he chanced to look up and notice the library, massive and teeming with books. Unconsciously he had arrived; saw he had an hour until close. He walked in, trying hard to shake the feeling of fatality from his mind.

CHAPTER

He wrote:

“To be discarded. To have the vital days of your life used and discarded by that which cares little for you. A stupid fate, but no less common because of it. Only we can love ourselves as much as we require, but it must be a selfish love, a harsh love.”

He heard, "There is an extra charge," and "I like pumpernickel."

There was a young man with a group of older women at the cafe. He was being flirtatious, courting them. "Look at this young man," they communicated silently to one another, "They don't make them like they used to."

It's obvious he would like to take one of the three women at his table home with him. "The walk-in in the kitchen here says 'Christopher Walk-in,'" He says, "I have to bring that home with me, that's hilarious." He speaks to them as if they were adult-sized children, paternally, this is what we're going to do now.

It is the lady in yellow and pink flowerprint, gray and hungry, that takes to him. He's turned slightly away from her, saying, "It's so bad, soooo bad," I couldn't hear what. He turns further and speaks to three other older women at the next table, joking about a free dozen donuts. His experience pales in comparison to theirs. 'Who gives a damn about donuts, you have your whole life ahead of you!' they scream silently. Yet healthy indignation sinks into apathy, the conversation rolls on, and for these girls the day slowly drifts by in the company of themselves.

13.

Ah, the Oregon Coast in October, tucked in a sleeping bag in a small tent beside the ocean. I heard its waves and felt endorphins flow through my body from the long bicycle ride. A rainy day of taking hills and watching the RVs go by. I thought to myself as I was at the bottom of every hill, 'I wonder what's over?' and I always replied, this in my head, 'More trees.' The height of cynicism is at the bottom of a hill with the cold rainy wind in your face (though under poncho I was a furnace) with knee ache, the tired feeling that doesn't go away with eating. Fatigue. It was around four in the afternoon when I would look to camp. You can throw a rock and hit a campsite all along the coast. I hadn’t planned at all, simply read a few books on touring, picked up my supplies and left. It seemed instantaneous that I had a goosedown warm light sleepingbag and personal tent, two panniers and a solid 10 speed. Suddenly I was free to do as I wished, for I was traveling.

The chaotic nature of the world, colored only by the flash of external sculpture representing the boundless authority. Its blackness humbles the quieter now murderous crowd though all is silent except for the blare of the cars. The sphere hums and vibrates metallic gray spectral patterns of fractals emerge from the depths of uncertainty as the future peers itself. Taoists reach a kind of satori, philosophs strand years, its just art for the raggle on this a thous. Fear blue flash of in and the overtake red recollects a moment. Arrest to run and the screaming continues, more pacified. With each handcuff, the blue and red, static, become solidified, Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada. South Dakota. As sides are taken, as pragmatism holds solidified sway grids forming union recollects a moment when five state assailants are beaten, as he name piece placed plastic piece into its proper place on North America. He remembers her smile, she's dead nowompared to the screaming, needy children at the grocery store she used to work at and her other grandchildren, to her he was outerworldly, so like her son his father yet infused with new blood, reborn. It is on this sphere of gelatin and fractal imprecision that she inscribed the union patch of sand that the crowd now projects onto the sphere. He is easily bored, easily changed, and when he turns away to stare a barely perceptible blood red begin to tinge of dark green and seem cracks of a union.

20.

She reads,

X

“We are more than ever surrounded by ants,” says her letter. They push the dust uneasily at top speed. They take no interest in us.

Not one raises its head.

This is the most tightly closed society that could exist, although outdoors they spread out constantly in all directions. No matter, their projected schemes, their preoccupations . . . they are among themselves . . . everywhere.

And up to the present time not one has raised its head towards us. It would rather be crushed.