Bricklayer’s Fate

“It’s like that brick wall,” he said. “That brick was laid probably over a hundred years ago. The men who laid the bricks are all dead. No one knows who they are. But here’s this thing they left behind. And you and I can admire it and talk about it and take shelter behind it. My buildings will outlast me. And that’s why I’m not afraid to die.”

A Possibility Is Percolating

And there it was, quietly percolating beneath the television hum and the fish tank filter trickle. Barely audible in the pauses between dog yawns.

Almost unnoticeable.

But noticeable after all.

The Red Heading Of A Two-Headed Beheaded Fish (A Dream I Had)

In an office with V. He is hanging a blind in the doorway so we can keep the door open but still work in privacy. He gives me a strange glass jar because I’ve been doing good work.

I go to the bathroom, but the toilet has no water and is stuffed with trash.

At a bar, nursing a small glass of scotch. A is there, drinking alone at a table. We make awkward eye contact. She leaves, and others begin to whisper about her.

It’s night and I’m riding a bicycle up 128. I have no energy. I’m weaving between lanes and I don’t think I’ll make it home.

At a pet store. Two giant creatures are displayed in an oversized aquarium. They look like polar bears wearing sports jackets. I travel the length of the store, and discover a lounge in the back. It’s empty and there’s a dry ice machine.

With E on a building rooftop. It’s night and the heights make me uncomfortable. We’re discussing a movie we’re going to make. My ideas are sad—his are funny. We decide this makes us a good team.

He has a sheet of paper. The ideas written on it read like a list of foods. Some are written in the form of Mad Libs, like ___________ kabob.

E is laughing as he explains each one. One item, he says, is the red heading of a two-headed beheaded fish.

The Other Day At Band Practice

The other day at band practice, Ben, attempting to correct Christian on the structure of a song section we were working on, said without pause or warning, “No, no… it’s meow, meow, meow… then a Texas,” illustrating that no proper, conventional terminology is ever really safe from the corrosive qualities of a tantalizingly silly and private nomenclature.