October 23rd, 2001
Your Mind Aches.
It's morning, this morning and I wake up; my room is a mess and I have to go to work. I jump up at the alarm, slap at the snooze button, fall back down, look out the window, and sleep. This morning, in the morning, I jump up at the alarm, slap the snooze button, look at the window, fall down through a messy room, sleep. It's Wednesday, or Saturday.Break.
After a tough weekend of cooking and two beers, Matt and I took a Sunday night drive downtown to get some coffee and we took along his large Belle and Sebastien looking white German Shepard named Shenney and we found a perfect place to park right in front of Sean O'Toole's, and as I stepped out of the vehicle I noted to myself that his Pathfinder still sounded like it was running, then Lo and Behold Matt yells, "Please tell me you didn't lock your door", because he has, somehow or another, locked his keys and his Large Dog inside of his Big Running Truck, so we decide to grab out coffee and tackle the problem once we've had a chance to whet the old whistle, but all we can figure to do is to coerce Shenney into the front seat and hopefully get her to paw at the unlock button, but when that doesn't work I walk into Plymouth House of Pizza and find some cops and ask them if anybody has a slim-jim to break into the truck with, and they don't, but one of the occifers offers to call AAA for us, priority-style, and soon enough the tow truck comes and dude helps us break into the truck and rescue Shenney, but not before we run into Erik and Stephanie, whom we join for a walk to Friendly's for ice cream break.Yesterday morning, less than 12 hours later, the same tow truck guy towed Matt away from an eleven car pile-up on Route 3. He is fine, though his car is pretty beat up and it's not his fault. A tough break.
I'm sitting on a couch with Dave, staring at the television. We are full of toxins. We are laughing at the screen and at each other, thinking about what we will talk about when next we go out for a cigarette. We are driving. We are standing next to a Pepsi machine, smoking a bowl. I am blinking. I am thinking about work, and about my girlfriend. We are laughing about his ridiculous weekend.
Break: It's Thursday, or Monday. I'm alone in the kitchen, dunking cookies in milk, looking out into the forest through our bay window. And every twenty seconds a light gust of wind blows across the woods, unleashing a new down pouring of leaves. With so many colors, tiny moving objects, frail fibrous flaps still clinging to wood, shaking in place: it's complete optical information overload, like staring at a field of shivering grass. Leaves flutter and fly. My brain is absent-mindedly scrambling to calculate a hundred fractaline trajectories simultaneously... as colors neutralize, falling to the forest floor.
Break a small, specific part of the human brain, and the owner of that brain will no longer be able to process visual movement. She'll continue to retain unwavering perception of color, shape, size, light and dark, as well as object recognition. She will understand that since a nearby automobile, only recently seen on her left now sits at her right, the car must have moved. But these images become snapshots, three-dimensional still-frames, never joining one another to form a fluid line. There can be no slow pan across a room, from left to right. Foliage moves from forest to floor, but leaves no path. Dis joined vignettes, collected only through audio.
Break. Voice change.
With my trusty hawk Sir Wallace perched proudly upon mine slender wrist, I set off down the bushy slope in search of the source of the pitiful cries I had heard from within the chambers of mine woodland retreat. I held, in my writing hand, a staff hewn of wood, for to aide me in my descent. How did the sound of this poor creature's yelps hit mine ears like a bullet to the beating heart! Doubtlessly a damsel in distress had lost her balance while scrubbing linens upon the rocks, and was now dastardly ensnared by a hollow log only inches from the surface of the unforgiving river. I made my hustling way down the forest path, and turned toward the sound of these harrowing screams.... Imagine my surprise when I realize that the owner of these cries was none other than my trusty hawk, Sir Wallace! Break!In the dream of two nights ago I am riding in a golf cart o'er the green rolling hills, and I am thoroughly shocked to learn that Will and Willy have decided to pave over the entire 11th hole of our golf course. I look up from my hands of the steering wheel to see that the tees, green, and hillside of 11 are coated with a think layer of solid asphalt. I shake my head in disappointment and frustration. Thanks to the natural shape of the land, once the home to a giant sand pit, the paving has essentially created one giant curved half-pipe. The neighborhood skaters will not be far off. I know this, but Will and Willy do not. Despite my disgust for the destruction of grass, I laugh.
Break of Day.
The present season is road kill season, you drive down dark streets with a standard transmission, stradling a dead possum, a crushed skunk. The smell, and the color, red pulp that makes you shudder. The country is cut up into smallish sections of land, outlined by strips of dangerous asphalt. Break.
The smell and the sights remind me of last autumn, of hours walking through the golf course, pushing a lawn mower, listening to Kid A, or some other silly headspacey album.
break
(Scene: small outdoor area adjacent to a commercial restaurant kitchen is enclosed on two sides by the edges of the building, and on the other two sides by tall wooden fencing. A door leading into the kitchen is visible in one of these walls.One of the fence walls includes a gate, which is propped open so that the audience can see the characters chatting among trash barrels, brooms, and garden hoses. The two characters are sitting against the building, wearing appropriate cook garb.)
Ryan: Huh. That's funny... I should write that down (fumbles through shirt and pants pockets).
Lauren: There's a pencil behind your ear.
Ryan: What?
Lauren: You have a pencil right behind your ear.
Ryan: Is a pencil going to help me light my fucking cigarette?
Lauren: Oh. Ha! That's funny. You should write that down (Break).
I'm with Dave, at Gilda's Stone Rooster, a beautiful dive bar just over the Marion line. Packed with visual information, built like a basement from the 70s, with a pool table, booths, couches. There were benches. The drinks were cheap, and strong. Smoking too much. A spot of Golden Tee. Cast iron trim, giant TV screen, ashtrays everywhere. Gilda herself ran the place with her wild-haired husband. Cheap apps. Faux-stained-glass lamps hanging above the booths. The best bar I've ever been to, with all its people and colors to see. We have quickly grown comfortable.
The sunlight through the maple trees is too much, as you drive downtown. Break. Sitting watching reality TV, movie, New War footage, episodes of The Muppets, professional sports games that mean almost nothing to me, video game screens, web browsers break. In the dream I'm talking to a man who can't seem to understand what the fuck I'm talking about break I'm talking into a phone, to a friend on the other side of the country break I have no plans for the future to commit to break. I'm driving home in the dark, at 1 in the morning, swerving to avoid cars, trees, trash and dead animals break every day I smell pine needles.
Break.
At work, I stand in the kitchen for hours at a time assembling club sandwiches, washing my hands, running glasses through the dishwasher, staring at off-white walls, wiping the slicer, running up and down the stairs. I step out onto the deck for cool air and sips of hot spiced cider, on break.
I'm driving home in the dark, swerving, brake.
The wind blows, in the morning, and with the dawn of light I can see leaves outside my window, fading. My room is a mess and I have to go to work.
