Monadic Echoes in a Vagrant Civilization

Waiting for the train during rush hour, happened to notice that every train aside from my own has arrived and no one else in the station has boarded, save the few people who are lucky enough to have the advantage of taking any train home (e.g. people who have perfect enough timing and/or salaries to afford to live in the Castro). I assume that no matter what bus or train you take home, you've suffered this if you've lived in San Francisco, land of the even more free.

I was sitting in the station and a voice projected from the loudspeaker, the same voice on the other end of a telephone line when you've made an incorrect dial, the same voice that informs you what number is finally being served after you've taken a ticket from the dispenser at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Two-car-N-in-seh-ven mih-nuts. An extremely attractive Asian girl exposing her smooth long legs and a pink-sweatered chihuahua on a glittered leash stops to wait for her route's train right before my worn sneakers, my torn pseudo-flannel. I watched her dog for about five minutes when the automated woman projected again, two-car-N-in-seh-ven-mih-nuts. That's what it said five minutes ago! Oh well, I guessed, I should be used to this by now, right? I guess.

This time it was actually a well-estimated seven minutes until my train approached. It arrived at the station, filled with people beyond it's maximum capable capacity, but I simply could not wait any longer. I had to board this specific arrival. Just like I always do. It's not like this ride will last forever, I thought, EVENTUALLY, this car will be less crowded after a few stops. But those few stops lasted an eternity. An eternity in which I realized too many things to remain with the content I thought I found in San Francisco. Upon being macerated by such an immense mass of people I examined my surroundings. There happened to be more than one few armpits, thick and tangled gnarly black hairs less than one inch from my eyes. Why did every pork-stuffed old man downtown have to wear a tank top today? An old married couple felt it was necessary to speak saw-toothed Chinese as flagrantly as possible in my face, and an ambiguously pretty girl--I couldn't quite get a glimpse of her face-- apparently valued sending text messages enough to relinquish her own center of balance to the point where she left herself swaying back and forth onto whoever on the wobbling train might catch her.

With unfathomable effort, I patiently waited as an old vagabond with at least five huge bags and a guitar forced me farther into the can of traveling anchovies. His hair was white and he had a long white beard like Father Time, and dirt was caked on his skin everywhere it was exposed. Somewhere between the rancid smell of his clothes and the greasy armpit consuming my tiny face a thought occurred, circled endlessly through every node in my brain like stock cars in a NASCAR lap race,

This city has lost its magic.
This city has really lost its magic.

Recalling the first time I visited San Francisco with my parents, all the sites we saw, the recounting of escapades we narrated to our family and friends when we returned from vacation, I truly believed that it was a wonderland. Here, a homeless man hides behind half of a tree and scares the living shit out of passersby, and they give him money! Here, people walk through the park completely naked, and they don't get cited for it! In San Francisco, you can smoke all the drugs you want, and people think that's great! Nonetheless, after working downtown for over a year, the sight of the endless line of tourists waiting to board the rotating cable car stop induces a sickness within me similar to what a Christian soccer mom would feel if she was forced to watch explicit German scat fetish pornography for five consecutive hours. Mostly, I've acquired a distaste for the city's local culture. People come here to reinvent themselves, and they do just that. Becoming the person they always dreamed of being but couldn't [because everyone who knew them before would question the sudden change] is suddenly attainable, because all the other people who've ended up here are already too preoccupied with their own self-transformation to notice yours. I haven't met many people in San Francisco, mostly I've been introduced to surfaces. Masks aided by funny hats, Camel lights, and scores of cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

This obsession with providing two-dimensional images of oneself has left people doing nothing with their lives. All of us who originally intended to attend school here realized that college is a waste of time, we can sustain ourselves with minimum wage jobs for the rest of our lives, leaving us with plenty of free time and just enough extra money to buy alcohol and cigarettes. But we don't want to see past that, into the ugly relentless future, where regret hones the human psyche past the point of simple contentment. Instead, we shall refuse to simply leave our hearts in San Francisco, we will exercise them to their last struggling beats.

Closer to home, about four stops from my destination, I looked out the window and saw two women, a mother and a daughter walking together, matching pace, synchronized in their steps and arm movements. Parallelism in plain sight, this is what it looks like, two normal ladies wearing giant t-shirts, stretchy camel-toe pants and New Balance sneakers moving in synchronicity, and to be honest, it appears quite stupid. Not that it was divinely profound or anything, it just brought forward the realization that going with whatever flow is boring, I'm going to get off this train and do something, anything, everything. And the first step I have to take begins with this city to my backside, getting progressively smaller and out of view as I continue forward.

A shame, really, that a place so perfect should be so poisonous.

I finally know who actually watches Jerry Springer

Instead of feeding me, my older brother, and official guardian for the weekend, goes to the golf course until nine o'clock, post meridian.

And he calls me when he's done, to suggest we go out and pick up food at Wendy's. Sure. I'm fucking starving, I'd eat the little kid next door if you served him to me on a plate.

Why aren't we going into the drive-thru? Because Mickey wants to sit down and eat as soon as possible.
He says, can we just eat inside?
I tell him, this place is always a freak show.
No. I want to eat inside.

So we walk through the glass doors, synchronized, like in bad-ass movies about bank robbers and other smooth criminals.

And I swear to fucking God, if Wendy's is not the Southern U.S of American haven of Burbank, I'll be damned. Every mullet in the city was having dinner there. The only thing that stopped them from pulling out rifles and shooting at my Mexican self was probably my belt buckle with a huge picture of Tom Petty's face.

They all stood in line talking about what they last saw on COPS and Maury. It seriously felt like everyone in the restaurant had just returned from Wrestlemania. I bet more than half of them owned that compilation CD that sold on TV with hits by Lynard Skynard and a free poster of a hot blonde bro-ho posing in front of a Confederate flag backdrop, exclusively offered if you called within ten minutes of seeing the commercial. Steve Miller was even playing on the speakers, and the tetra-generation family next to us is talking about the situation in Iraq.

My point is, after 6 p.m., Wendy's is white-trash capital of the world.

After we leave the twenty first century Faulkner set, Mickey says he's sorry.
It's all right, I say, I just have to post a blog about it now.


and it's how I realize I am exactly like my father.

at first, i almost wrote about why kevin and bean piss me off.

I.

There's something in the grass. As though it has a flaky scalp.
And a scent in the air. As though I'm in my mother's house 15 years before now.

There's a child behind me, before me, beside me. I'm sure there's one above me.
One below me, but I don't want to think about that.

It's holding my hand. Clutching my arm. Tugging my belt loop.
I detatch it from my physical contact.

Stop following me.
I don't know where I'm going.

15 stories above you (condensed into one)

prologue

Remember when I fell 15 stories? I'll tell 15 more.


I. trust me, though. tomorrow you will NOT wake up next to emerson OR thoreau.

I'm walking down the sidewalk with my friend Peter, and approach this perfectly shaped maple leaf. Peter's talking. This leaf is the color of every aesthetic aspect of autumn. It's gold in the center and fades to a vibrant red at the edges. Peter's still talking. I have to pick it up, keep it somewhere forever, but as soon as I stop to do so, a boy about my age, with brown hair just long enough to be tied back and a Beck circa 1995 mien, kneels before me and picks up the leaf, and admires it as he keeps walking, then puts it in his flannel pocket. I laugh inside. Peter keeps talking.


II. how the quadratic formula began the progression of my day getting better

I came across a totally wicked equation that I couldn't factor for the life of me. I almost cried my eyes out of their sockets, but then I thought wait one fucking second. I can use the quadratic equation. and I did. and it freaking worked! and at that very moment a hand was placed on my left shoulder and I heard "RAAAWR!" Joe and Tara were standing behind me! in my very own bedroom! And the carne asada on the grill smells phenomenal. what's a podcast?


IV. Friday, the Fucking Phenomenal.

We're in Ikea, Joe and I, and we hear this perpetual beeping. Oh, God. What is it? The alarm clocks. It's the alarm clocks. It's the sea of SNAJDA alarm clocks inside of that bin. It's coming from the bottom. Joe says, Now we have to find it, and thus begins our journey, our search for the origin of the muffled beep. At first, we maniacally burrow through the plastic cubes the sound gets both louder and stifled as we push each of the million aside, ten at a time. And all the while, we're pushing aside time. For a brief moment, quitting seems the only markable option But the lack of silence, the beeping shatters any notion of resign. I can't tell if its constant tone is playing the role of an ambitiously sought objective, or simply mocking us. I stand back. Things are getting intense. Joe's desire to find it becomes more ardent with each passing second. I listen to the background music as a familiar piano melody plays from the store speakers. Lights go out and I can't be seen Tides that I tried to swim against Have put me down upon my knees Oh I beg, I beg and plead "Joe," I tap his shoulder, "the song that's playing." "....Clocks." It's destiny. Before the last chorus, he reaches down and pulls up the glorious thing. The Clock.




V. despite the fact that my pig fetus is rotting into nothingness

Okay, so I pretty much orgasmed today in Algebra upon learning about "Pascal's Triangle" That's about it.


VI. the repetitive routine of each recurring day

i had this dream. i dreamt words words in phrases I'd never seen that changed the world at least, it could have been but when i awoke i couldn't remember a single thing.


VII. I hate eggs, no matter what they feed my brain, so I won't fucking eat them

I spent the last ten minutes glancing at review packets and crap but I remember NOTHING from this past year and all I can hear is John's voice from the end of summer telling me that this is the year that counts but it's always been physically impossible for me to focus on anything so now I have to learn a semester's worth of eleventh grade in less than two days which I have a feeling will be the death of me because I spent too much of this semester having sex with random people to have learned anything that actually matters. God, I hate everyone.


VIII. david bowie as a new reason to be alive on a day of a thousand small victories.

personally, I prefer these things. it's like contemplating that the word "weird" is, in fact, spelled weirdly, ignoring vital rules of punctuation, finding an old picture in the pocket of pants that haven't been worn since the previous century, thinking about bears kissing. that's a nice one, being obnoxiously vague in a blog entry, there's another. I'll tell you what it isn't like. It isn't like hearing someone say "anyways" or pronounce "pillow" like it's spelled "pellow"
My point is that it's a very good thing.


IX. a stray dog at what felt like midnight on a rocky beach somewhere

I wrote all my confessions in the sand because I knew they would be erased by morning and I drew an ampersand because it looked like a guy masturbating.


X. another of the juvenile thoughts that blossoms upon momentary vanity

Some people set clocks ahead
Most set them on time
But me, I'd hate to lose my head
So I'll stay an hour behind


XI. attention all planets of the solar federation. we have assumed control.

the concept of public schooling is so strange to me. summer vacations are weird. the thought of a single infinitely expanding universe is a fucking trip. the internet is basically an entire universe at the tips of my fingers. foreign languages are incredible. music is organized sound travelling through time or something like it, and that's insane. the human body is 206 bones, 4 types of tissue, and billions of cells more than just complex. and for some reason, all my honors class discusses is whether or not we agree with banal proverbs like "you can't judge a book by its cover."


XII. the secondmost important level of the food pyramid takes a stand.

Every year, the junior class presents a Spring dance called "Backwards", an equivalence to what most know as a "Sadie Hawkins" dance. Yesterday a class meeting was held for active students to vote on the theme of the dance. William Duncan (previously named my saviour) suggested that the theme be "Vegetable" Most of the people at the meeting voted for it. Victory. HOWEVER ASB Leader, Rosa Flores , IGNORING the fact that this is a DEMOCRACY and a MAJORITY RULES, decided to make it so that the theme is NOT "Vegetable" It is, in fact, "A Night in Paradise" (tropical or something) The last homecoming dance was Tropical. The senior prom is going to be tropical. So what am I to do? Fucking take action, that's what. I'm petitioning this shit, I'm going to take care of it. I'm Carmen. I might even prepare a presentation. I don't know. I just need some signatures. Support Please?


XIII. the law of gravity, and stuff

There was a little boy outside the school asking had I seen Isaac?
Sir Isaac?
. . .No.
And so ended our ephemeral association.


XIV. [untitled]

In a room of steel
I look at my reflection
And I have no eyes.


XV. The elevator broke.