sorryforboringyou-blog-blog

[sorryforboringyou-blog-blog]

IGNORE

You ignore the call; it’s not like it’s a new thing. The others seem agitated. More than you’re used to.

 James: You think this one is it?

 Sarah: It can’t be, but this whole thing hasn’t seemed real. I… I don’t know. She shivers.

 Bruce: None of this is real. He has tears in his eyes.

 Fred: Do you remember the directions? This is the kind of thing that the internet would help with! All those cute little reminders spread by well-wishers.

 James (walking towards one corner): Can you hear the frequency? The beat frequency? What was it, if one it is war, if two it is disease…

 Bruce (openly crying): It’s all bullshit.

 Cynthia: The instructions. That’s what they called them. They were very particular. Not directions, instructions. The instructions were to make note of your surroundings. Consider safe spaces. Move only in a zigzag pattern and cover up your tracks.

 Isabella: Leave no trace.

 Bill: We’re pretty high up here, you know. James has reached the corner and looks off the side of the roof. Have you heard about the localization of weaponry?

 Sarah: No.

 Bill: It’s like EMPs. If you want to take a place over, you don’t necessarily want to trash it first. You want to be able to move in and have it already ready-made. Like TV dinners, you know? Bruce is moving towards James. If you ruin a place too much it’s not that much use for you. People don’t always think about the depth of an ecosystem. You can make nice, good dirt. It’s harder to make good air. He puts a hand to his chin.

 Cynthia: We would be safe from some things here but not all; then again, we’re never safe from all. She rubs the back of her neck. She moves her eyes to follow that of the others’ gaze. The group has become aware of the fact that James is still looking down off the side of the roof. His back is heaving. Bruce is approaching him.

 James (with labored breaths, between dry heaves): I saw something. I don’t know what I saw. A dead bird maybe.

 Bill: This isn’t what you want. You poison the air and suddenly you have dead birds. Birds migrate. It’s not localized. You are stuck. Bruce has reached James. He puts his arms out to reach him but it is unclear if he means to grab his shoulder or push him. The group becomes less focused. Bill looks at Cynthia as he continues. We might even be safer here. If it was a localized attack they could be aiming for maximum damage closer to the ground. James falls to his knees and begins to actually vomit as Bruce quickly moves toward him. He puts his hand on James’s back. You wonder if Bruce moved first and James, through his fall, accidentally avoided a push. You okay, James?

 James (recovering): Yeah, sorry, flashback to seeing something dead in the road on a walk one time when I was a kid. My brother poked at it with a stick and then because he’s a dick, he flung it at me. This wasn’t as bad, but the memory came back and I just haven’t been feeling well lately anyway. Bruce helps him up and James looks down, careful to avoid whatever triggered his reaction. Looking at what came out, I’m probably better off.

 Sarah: Better off. I don’t know. Have you guys thought about all the shit in the world? Have you thought about how sometimes if the big things hits, the meteorite, the earthquake, the zombie invasion, maybe we’d be better off?

 James (touching his face to see if he has anything on it): My dad would talk like that. I don’t know if it was just morbid musings or genuine misanthropy. He would almost brag about his belief that the earth would lower our population if it really needed.

 Sarah: Why do climate change deniers sound like rape deniers? “The body has ways to shut that whole thing down.” She scoffs.

 Andrew (still in the north corner of the roof): The rush.

 Sarah: I don’t know, I just don’t feel like the world is moving in the right direction. The call lessens in intensity.

 Bill: I think we did it. Survived, hm? The call ends completely.

 Sarah: What if it happened? What if it ended because there was no one else to warn? What if…

 Andrew: The rook.

 Bruce: What if we were the only ones left. You look in his eyes but can’t read his expression.

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REACT

You react, but uncertainly. The voice in your head says: What to do when the world ends. It’s not like we’ve had enough preparation. It’s like a wedding, but you can do that one over with someone else. Just to get it right. You know, rituals are important. 

You move like a new driver, stutter steps then a short gallop. You’ve never thought about the size of the roof before. It’s like crossing states, it’s like going out west. The difference between walking and driving. Realizing Miranda July and Regina Spektor really are the same woman. You’re crossing time zones from running, how at the Four Corners Monument the corners meet in the center. An affront to logic, to math, to geometry. Listlessness. Lustlistness. Listlustness. Lesslustlist. Lestlustlistlostlast. An avowal to the fact that we made it all up. You’re finally moving, you’re getting there. The stairs. The call is still going off. The voice in your head quiets down, less urgent, like when you have to go to the bathroom but you’re miles away and at times you can calm it down. You get to the stairs and for some reason you look down. On the ground is Bruce’s mangled body. Your mind spins.

 James (from behind, talking to the group): No, you don’t get it. They can’t change the past. That’s the problem. So they have to get there and watch it happen. It’s very affecting. Emotionally, dare I say, satisfying. You keep looking at Bruce’s body.

 Cynthia: Do they ever show up early or late?

 James: Yeah, they travel in a phone booth so it’s not a perfect science.

 Cynthia: How do they mark the time? Is it some weird trope of finding a newspaper? Asking random passersby, “What year is it?” Like a David Lynch movie.

 James: It’s different each time but usually they are somewhat close and things develop.

 Cynthia: And they let them lie. Developments of horrible incidents.

 James: They rarely go back to happy times, sure.

 Bruce: Since they’re already traveling through time, do they ever see shimmers?

 James: Shimmers? You’re becoming aware of something.

 Bruce: Shimmers, like afterimages, when you close your eyes after looking at light. I always thought if you time traveled, it would be an affront to logic. It would be an avowal of some horrible other path. You would see things. Your mind isn’t meant to move in that many dimensions and you would see snippets of other times.

 Cynthia: Snippets?

 Bill (to no one): “Specks—specks all over the third panel, see?”

 Bruce: Like you’re in New York and look at where the World Trade Center used to be and there’s a shimmer. You can kind of see it, because you’re not supposed to be in this time, so you’ve become of all time. You’re almost figuring it out. It’s something not right. It’s something moving, in the corpse.

 James: How morbid. But I think I see your point. What if it was just you see someone in two different places at once? It’s the mouth. You can see it’s the mouth. The show doesn’t concern these things. They are simply there when they travel to the past.

 Bruce (you time the motions in the corpse’s mouth with the sound behind you): That’s fair. It’s very difficult to speculate. And then you talk to someone who’s in two places at once. It’s the same person, not a twin, so doesn’t the person in both places have to talk back? The call fades and Bruce’s body slowly fades before your eyes. You keep walking towards the stairs. That’s enough for tonight.

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SOUTH

You move towards the southern corner. It’s interesting how “southern” is such a common adjective. Things are southern. “Western” may be a commonly used word but as a noun. Westerns. Isabella and Trish are talking to each other in the southern corner; you notice they look a lot alike.

Isabella: The Matrix is a small-minded view of simulation theory. In creating the matrix, the machines have proven that they can create simulations. I can’t remember, are there programs that don’t know they are programs?

Trish: I don’t think so, but then again it’s not inconceivable that there could be.

Isabella: If there is one program that doesn’t know it’s a program, that believes it it is human, then The Matrix lurches past Blade Runner and hints at simulation theory. What if they people plugged into the matrix where they are interacting with programs are actually programs inside a bigger... matrix, for lack of a better word.

Trish: Don’t be poetic. You can just say reality. Or dimension.

Isabella: If human life can eventually be simulated in such a way that the simulations believe themselves human then there is no reason to believe we ourselves are more than simply simulations.

Trish: Or existence.

Isabella: I wonder at times if there are people or programs, simulations or someones who are more aware of the whole system than we are. Defeats the purpose, perhaps. Suggests a narrative when we are simply data.

Trish: Or theatre.

Isabella: I get it, there were other words to be used. I’m not so precious about words. It’s not as if we are simply simulated language. We are people and not actors reading lines.

Trish (jokingly look at you): Line?

Isabella: Simulation theory, though, is perhaps like free will.

Trish: How so?

Isabella: If you accept it as a concept it destroys narrative. It becomes bland. This is why free will stories are always about characters with shifting beliefs or uncertainty for the reader. Is the top still spinning? Are we still in the game? Is it real or is it “Planet Telex”?

Trish: Quit with the references. That said, I think I agree. The plot of The Matrix has always been terribly flawed to me. Humans ruin the world. Machines plug humans into a simulated reality where the world isn’t ruined. There’s no reason in the story not to long for the matrix after being unplugged. It seems a better world.

Isabella: The reason is truth.

Trish: Truth?

Isabella: Conflict is created by the lie. We are unaware we are dreaming. Unaware we are in the matrix.

Trish: I think you’re mixing metaphors.

Isabella: That’s just another line. The whole spirit of the film is that we need to know the truth and the truth is that...

Trish (laughing): “We need to go deeper!”

Isabella: Well, yes. The irony is that truth is an illusion. It’s as real as the matrix. The unplugged people in Zion may themselves be essentially machines in a simulation, actors in a play.

Trish (looking at you, somewhat quizzically): Even we could be...

Isabella: But to admit that destroys the purity of their mission. It complicates the war between man and machine by eliminating the difference between them but also by loosening any logic behind the conflict in the first place.

Trish (slightly dumbfounded): True.

Isabella: I’m not sure if there are simulation theory stories. Such narratives are so often Frankenstein myths: creation goes after creator. But our data doesn’t fight us. If it thought for itself would we suddenly have battles with numbers? I’m not sure. Maybe we can run a simulation to find out. She winks.

Trish: Maybe there are stories that address the different levels of simulation.

Isabella: Stories... I didn’t think of that. Simulations could be stories. In that case they would be interesting.

Trish: Our stories are the most interesting things we can tell, be it real or fiction.

Isabella: So if simulations are stories, each additional simulation would become more... She mimes Monty Burns’s hand motion for “Excellent,” while saying Interesting.

Trish: They tried to break away from that in The Matrix by making the human settlements in the real world stylish and lively.

Isabella: Yes, but can they compete with the matrix?

Trish: I don’t know if I ever thought about this, but the code in The Matrix that they view in the real world. That’s not like language where aspects stand in for other things. Or, well, I don’t know coding. It seems more closely linked, rather than words that refer to objects.

Isabella: The code is the matrix.

Trish: So on the higher plane, the different dimension, the older reality, in a deeper theatre, are we just lines of code on a computer screen? Isabella smiles and the two stare into each other’s eyes for an unnervingly long period of time. It’s probably not that long but it’s such a private, personal act that you become disturbed by it and begin to walk away. You move towards the

NORTH or EAST or WEST

If you’ve visited each corner, click here.

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EAST

You move towards the east corner. You think about how you associate the cardinal directions with your right and left hands. How you learned that moving north, east is on your right, and west on your left. You never were good at finding north though. It felt to you like north was up, which didn’t help. Bill is in this corner with Sarah.

Bill: Words have complicated meanings.

Sarah: Some words.

Bill: No, all words. When you say a word there’s so much going on. I thought about this when I was reading translations for that Spanish literature class. Each word means a lot. We don’t really think about it. There’s something godly about language. Can we think without it?

Sarah: You’re going off the deep end.

Bill: Yeah, I have soul cancer; you’re ego tripping.

Sarah: I haven’t read that one.

Bill: It’s Roadwork by Stephen King. For some reason it sticks with me. I don’t think the quote is just right but who cares.

Sarah: You just said each little word has a lot of meaning.

Bill: And we take it for granted. I’m not being a moralist. It’s nothing bad. I just mean that when we say something, we are actually saying many things embedded within the language.

Sarah: I think that’s what they said about angel talk.

Bill: What?

Sarah: Enochian, is it? The supposed language of angels. I think it was seen as crystallized thought where each word has condensed meaning.

Bill: I think all words are like that.

Sarah: Sure, but imagine it magnified.

Bill: Like I said, godly. Sarah nods. I try to listen for it now. All the separate meanings in how we speak. Sometimes it’s almost like we are saying completely different things at the same time.

Sarah: Like two people speaking. You think about the number she said and sense the vibe that you should leave. You move towards the

NORTH or WEST or SOUTH

If you’ve visited each corner, click here.

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WEST

You skip towards the west of the building thinking about the arbitrariness of the globe. How the West and the East are terms people use when you could argue the opposite names are just as true. There are three people in the corner huddled together. One is kicking a hacky sack.

Bruce (focusing on his foot as the hacky sack falls toward it): Have you heard the song “The Murder Mystery” by the Velvet Underground? He successfully hits it a few times.

Paul: No one has heard that song.

Bruce: Important band, man. He misses the hacky sack.

Paul: You listened to them for the first time three weeks ago. Cynthia gives him a glare.

Bruce (looking up at Cynthia): So I’m assuming no.

Cynthia: Yeah, no. Sorry! She makes a face.

Bruce: It’s fine. Frowning at Paul. No one has. He spits off the roof.

Paul: Bro.

Bruce: It’s not going to hit anyone. Nothing matters anyway.

Paul (trying to raise his spirits): So, the song?

Bruce: It’s weird, there are these two vocal tracks going at once and it’s intentionally disconcerting. It’s not easy listening.

Paul: Nothing you like is easy listening!

Bruce: Fair. There’s this part that is just two people speaking quickly into both ears when you listen.

Paul: Yeah, I mean I would say play it for us but we can’t do that anymore. He looks forlorn.

Bruce: I have it on analog. I could play it for you one day. I can’t say you’ll like it. It’s a weird choice. It’s like, you know the beginning of “The Bends.”

Paul: Yeah, the parade noise.

Bruce: People just skip that sometimes because it’s really just noise.

Cynthia: Noise can be music.

Paul: Sure, but it’s weird, it’s separate from the song. It’s like, do you know this song “Man Out of Time” by Elvis Costello?

Bruce (smiling): No one’s heard that song.

Paul: Sure. I read somewhere that the beginning of that song is all that remains on the whole album it’s on from the original recording session. Like there’s just this part at the beginning and then it starts.

Bruce: It’s like the first attempt of the song was “out of time.” He laughs. “Man Out of Time.” I’ve never really listened to Costello.

Cynthia: Yeah, we could come over. It would be good to see Bonnie. Paul can bring Costello music. He won’t shut up about it.

Bruce: I... yeah. I don’t know, Bonnie’s been weird. You could come over though. Anyway, listening to the Velvet Underground song, I would try to mimic the talking at times and I got some notion in my head like there must be some way to speak more than one word at once. A thought begins to occur to you.

Paul: Like when a lyric can be heard two ways?

Bruce: No, remember, this is two different voices. It would be more like some kind of advanced ventriloquism.

Paul: Can ventriloquists actually drink a glass of water while doing their act or is that just in cartoons?

Bruce: You know, I used to think mirages were real.

Cynthia: They are real...?

Bruce: No, like the whole thing. The oasis in the distance in a desert where you run up and then eventually realize you are sucking down sand.

Paul: Well, our media has a way of inundating us with what would seem like extreme cases of mental illness and presenting them as yes, crazy, but well...

Bruce: Almost ordinary. You know, I’ve always wondered, what do the blind see? Everyone thinks it’s for them just like us when we close our eyes, but I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s real.

Paul: To be honest, I don’t know. You turn around.

Cynthia: I had a friend once and he said... The thought recurs. Once you’re speaking again, if you could speak more than one word at once you could certainly make up for lost time. You walk towards the

NORTH or EAST or SOUTH

If you’ve visited each corner, click here.

[sorryforboringyou-blog-blog]

NORTH

You approach the north corner of the roof. There are four people there. One older man on the corner of the roof, occasionally hanging his arm off the edge. He is unkempt but does not disturb the other three. Fred and Jessica are facing each other; James has a bit of a thousand yard stare off into the distance.

Jessica: If you could go back in time, not too far, but still back in time and the catch is you can’t control it, it just happens and you aren’t necessarily aware of the change, when would you realize you’ve gone back?

Fred: What?

Jessica (putting her hand up dismissively): Shut up; when?

Fred (putting a hand to his face as if in thought): Hm... I assume you don’t want an answer like “When I see a calendar.”

Jessica: Right, outside of just seeing the date, when would you know?

Andrew: The raft.

Fred: I guess it would have to be some kind of change. If you went back long enough to notice the season was wrong...

Jessica: What if you went back just a few days?

Fred: That makes it harder.

Jessica: Right? I think it’s funny that Groundhog Day only works with a radio playing. We all wake up to our phones now, right?

Fred: Yeah, my alarm is “4 Minute Warning.”

James (cringing): Jeez what a bright way to begin the morning.

Fred: I mean, as students we have a weekly schedule.

Jessica: But physical classes are canceled.

James: Yeah, I’ve been watching lectures on any day I choose really.

Andrew: The ruse.

Jessica: And most people do the same shit everyday. Wouldn’t necessarily know.

James: I wish I could go back in time a few days.

Fred: She’s still going to break up with you.

Jessica: Dude, she’s still fucking the musician. You don’t lose your memories, that’s the whole point.

James: I love her, man.

Fred: You were a shitty boyfriend so this is what happens.

James: Harsh...

Andrew: The rust.

Jessica: It’ll fade. This is how you always are, James.

James: Yeah.

Fred: I guess you could see something or someone that shouldn’t be where they are.

Andrew: The runt.

Fred: Someone only comes to the office on Mondays and they are back again.

Jessica: Or you see someone who’s dead.

James: She said I was dead to her.

Fred: Shut up. I think, I think you wouldn’t imagine time travel then.

Jessica: Maybe not.

Fred: I mean I would lose my shit but I wouldn’t think time travel unless I remembered the specific moment or I checked the date.

James: I would think zombies.

Fred: You are a zombie.

James: Fuck you, mate.

Jessica: It’s just, I had this dream and I thought it was now but then I saw my old roommate and, yes, dream logic, but in my head I was like, oh it’s three months ago. Then I woke up thinking that could only happen in a dream, but I don’t know. I wonder when we would know.

James: Especially now when all the days seem the same.

Fred: I miss the internet. Everything seemed to change so quickly. It felt like days were decades apart.

James: Haha, that’s like dream logic. Inception, “we have to go deeper.” The days in those dreams were like years. I don’t know. It seems obvious but I think you’re right. It would take some time. Life isn’t important things happening--they do, I got dumped, but most of the time they don’t.

Fred: Welcome back to the world of not self-pitying, Jimmy!

James (smiling): Fuck you.

Jessica: Inception, Sarah really likes that movie.

Fred: Bill really likes that movie.

Jessica: Sarah really likes Bill. James feigns whimpering. Since we’re talking about Inception, what do you think happens at the end?

You grow bored and begin to float away and you move to the

EAST or WEST or SOUTH

If you’ve visited each corner, click here.

[sorryforboringyou-blog-blog]

KEEP LYING DOWN

You look at the sky and have a thought. Maybe life actually makes sense, but from a distance. The way a boiling ball of fire becomes a yellow smiling face in a child’s eye. Maybe from a distance you can see the pattern and know why it all happens. You stretch your arms and SIT UP.

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THE ROOF

I’m writing a play/choose your own adventure virtual reading game (how pretentious does that sound?) on my blog. I’m going to use tumblr as a way to link posts when the reader makes choices so the next several posts may seem incomplete because they are all a part of the play on my blog.

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AHS Cult - slight spoiler

There’s almost this transcendent moment in last night’s American Horror Story where Sarah Paulson asks the couple that moves into the murder victims’ house after the wife tells her she watches all the Real Housewives shows, “Doesn’t it upset you?” where she could have been talking about all that reality TV.

Of course, instead, she follows up, “To be here so soon after what happened.” [Meaning the murders in the premiere.] The weird part about Ryan Murphy’s work is that it’s at its best when he has something very clear to say morally. (I can imagine Murphy as the greatest ever Lifetime filmmaker in some alternate universe.) And for him, in the middle of this zany, over the top, biting-off-much-more-than-it-can-chew season of this horror show, to make a comment about the impact reality TV has on the country...

Well, it just would have clicked into place so well.

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We tend to idolize people at the top of any industry in this country and the truth is they're usually overly aggressive, super-competitive, and sometimes--often, though not always--have to trample people to get there.

Colin Cowherd

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By a paradox of pictorial thought, the average low-land North-American countryside had at first seemed to me something I accepted with a shock of amused recognition because of those painted oilcloths which were imported from America in the old days to be hung above washstands in Central-European nurseries, and which fascinated a drowsy child at bed time with the rustic green views they depicted—opaque curly trees, a barn, cattle, a brook, the dull white of vague orchards in bloom, and perhaps a stone fence or hills of greenish gouache.

Humbert Humbert; Nabokov, Lolita, part two, chapter one

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I’m also really tired of hearing some feminists say that any CHOICE made by a woman is invalid or wrong because it doesn’t line up with THEIR idea of liberated womanhood. Do you want equality and freedom of choice or do you want everyone in the sex industries and other traditionally female occupations to roll over and do what you say? If you want the latter, you are just as bad as the patriarchy that you rail so hard against.

Stoya

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(People used to ask me why I wouldn't become a self-publisher in comics. The answer's simple: for me, I could either become a publisher, or be a writer, but not both. My IQ does not break the bank and I am lazy. This is why I became a writer in the first place.)

Warren Ellis, Machine Vision (018) teehee 

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It is personal. That's what an education does. It makes the world personal.

"White," speaking, written by Cormac McCarthy, in The Sunset Limited

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There must always be room for coincidence, Win had maintained. When there's not you're probably well into apophenia, each thing then perceived as part of an overarching pattern of conspiracy. And while comforting yourself with the symmetry of it all, he'd believed, you stood all too real a chance of missing the genuine threat, which was invariably less symmetrical, less perfect. But which he always, she knew, took for granted was there.

William Gibson, Pattern Recognition, page 304 in the MMP

Echoing the equally interesting, "Win, the Cold War security expert, ever watchful, had treated paranoia as though it were something to be domesticated and trained. Like someone who'd learned how best to cope with chronic illness, he never allowed himself to think of his paranoia as an aspect of self. It was there, constantly and intimately, and he relied on it professionally, but he wouldn't allow it to spread, become jungle. He cultivated it on its own special plot, and checked it daily for news it might bring: hunches, lateralisms, frank anomalies." page 126

Train your paranoia. Gibson is the king of making the old new, revitalizing the outdated phrase, "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you," which a quick Google is pointing towards attribution to Joseph Heller, in...?, yeah Catch 22 which I had guessed. Anyway, very relevant stuff, for writing and I guess for religion.

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Man cannot do without feelings, but the moment they are considered values in themselves, criteria of truth, justifications for kinds of behavior, they become frightening. The noblest of national sentiments stand ready to justify the greatest horrors, and man, his breast swelling with lyric fervor, commits atrocities in the scared name of love.

Milan Kundera, "Introduction to a Variation," Jacques and his Master preface

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And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way that we reread a book or resee a film.

Milan Kundera, Ignorance

echoing (expanding on?) Anne Carson, Eros, the Bittersweet; some Inception in there as well, especially if we consider dreams as often being past narratives (such is the case in an early scene in Ignorance or wait, I'm wrong, it's an early scene and throughout Identity, the novel before Ignorance; this is further exemplified in multiple parts of Jacques and his Master)