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.

To Poop Among The Beasts

250 miles from mainland Yemen, where women are occasionally beheaded for sorcery and American drone strikes target a flourishing al-Qaeda contingent… 50 miles from Somalia, whose waters are dotted with pirate ships… on as island the size of Rhode Island, home to tarantulas, scorpions and centipedes found nowhere else on Earth… I will poop under the stars like a wild animal.

Along The Trail, Among The Dead

We left the road, picked up a trail that led us into the woods and made our way up the hill, stopping occasionally to catch our breath and admire the plants. The patchy fog, the light, the wet earth—it was all so weirdly colored, just slightly surreal.

Here and there the vertigo would catch up to me, especially on the steeper inclines, or where the sides of the path suddenly dropped off. But it would always pass, leaving me a little less sure on my feet.

Eventually, we reached a graveyard built into the steep, steep hillside. It was virtually vertical, with stairs along the side that led up and up and up. We climbed, me following slowly and unsteadily behind.

At the top there was a fence. We leaned against it, the graves in rows below us, the city of Hiroshima stretching out in all directions.

Between Islands, Just Floating There

Farther and farther from the boat, feeling ourselves ease down the food chain, we drifted and drifted. And a great big school of fish—little silver ones—appeared suddenly and without warning. And they were everywhere. And you could hear them. Millions of tiny popping sounds all around, in every direction. We held hands.

Ypsilanti

 

When we arrived, a surly woman cleaning up behind the bar was there to greet us.

“Where you boys from?”

“Boston.”

“Boston where?”

“Massachusetts.”

Pleasantries were exchanged. The conversation continued.

There had been a riot at a club just around the corner the night before, she explained. Dozens of people had locked themselves in here for safety, she said. If we cared to look across the street, we could still see a policeman's blood on the curb.

As we had around three hours to kill before we went on, we courteously excused ourselves, got back into the van and made our way to the hotel.

For the next two hours, we sat—two to a bed—and watched a martial arts movie on tv. No one said a word.

When it was time to head back, we shuffled silently into the van. Someone put Metallica on the radio. For Whom The Bell Tolls.

It was very loud.

And very funny.