thescannerdarkly

[thescannerdarkly]

there was a boom, a wave of pressure felt by all the soldiers underneath, and then a light bloomed in the sky above them. a million small chunks of metal, burning white-hot with a bright and terrible heat, expanding outwards in a half-sphere that reached out to cover everything. at the apex of its growth it slowed, and for a moment hung there, nearly motionless, drifting ever so slightly downwards. then they picked up speed, falling faster and faster, and as they fell they left behind steaks of light. the mass of men beneath surged, moving this way and that, trying to scramble up to the ridges above or find cover in the ravine below. the light fell down on them, and where the light touched, screams rose up and the mass of struggling bodies tried to contract, but the light was everywhere.

there was light on the ridges, light in the ravine, light covering the bodies of countless men, spewing sparks and heat where it touched metal and flesh; moving slowly, inexhaustibly, through whatever it encountered. men ran, trying desperately to tear the light off them, but it refused to come off. men turned stiff and fell, skeletons cracking from the heat and splintering apart. men emitted pillars of flame and smoke as they tried to roll across the unforgiving ground or claw their way to some kind of safety. piles of bodies fell on top of one another and liquid metal ran in rivers and pooled out from underneath the twisted interlocked masses of flesh and bone and ash that dripped and oozed from the parts that weren't crispened black patches of carbon. by the time the light finally, mercifully, burned out, only a few of us were left alive, the lucky few far enough from the center to escape; and as the light faded, a darkness settled upon all of us there, a darkness that would never leave us. even as our bodies staggered their way in a straggled line back towards camp, following the glow of flashlights ahead, in our minds we were still in that darkness and always would be; stuck in that ravine, creeping and feeling our way around on top of that mountain of what used to be men.

that night, in the valley, shots rang out. in the morning we buried those who had decided to take the easy way out. we stripped them of their useful equipment: their spare rations, so we could eat for another day; their good boots, so we could march a little farther; their rifles and ammunition, so we could continue to fight. then we buried them, piling them due to necessity into a single grave, one atop another. all of this was done routinely, without emotion. here, in this place, we were too far away from humanity for thoughts of tragedy or empathy. we filled in the grave and broke camp, embarking for that day's share of work.

[thescannerdarkly]

I see it, when he doubts me. I see it in the flash of eye contact. I see it in the moment of pause, the precipitously delayed answer. I see it when he enters the room and looks about just a bit longer than normal, pays attention to the crevices and cracks just a tad more than he should.

  He says he believes me. I don't believe him, though I think he tries to believe himself. He says it too often, like he's trying to prove a point. I act reassured when I'm anything but. We act like we both believe it. It's a tenuous peace, but so far it seems to work.

The doctors don't believe it, but that's what doctors are supposed to do, I guess. They run tests over and over again; I imagine them spending all day in their barefaced clinic rooms, thinking up new ways to prove that I haven't changed at all. Like the petty God of the Old Testament who only maintains humanity so he can question it. I bear their endless needle pricks and body scans like Job.

It's just three little pills a day: white, pink, and blue. He has them portioned out into neat boxes divided by days of the week. He checks it whenever he opens the medicine cabinet, but he'd never admit it. As long as I'm taking the three pills, we can keep the peace.

People were always puzzles to me, but now they're like books. I used to ply at their edges and slowly manuever my way through their corridors; now I follow their stories and admire their construction.

  But you can't solve a book. I don't even know him anymore.

I know his patterns. I know his face. I know his details and plot points, his themes and characterization. But I don't know that neat little categorization I knew before, that understanding of function and functionality. I can't see his possibilities, can't divert or mould or otherwise manipulate. I can't see him like I used to.

Now he's static, warm and fuzzy, radiating across the skin. I never knew people as sensations before. I only felt that for goals, for moments of duress that summoned up bile from my throat or instances of achievement that spread exhilarating little spikes all over my body. Now my goals seem immaterial and what I knew is dissolving into feelings.

They called it neurological damage inflicted by Wilson's disease. But to me it was an entire identity, a way of seeing people and life and myself. They gave me injections, and they took my life; now I take three little pills to make sure it stays gone.

I tell him that I'm happier now than I ever was before, but I don't believe it. I was happy before, and now I don't know. Before, I had it figured out; now it's all becoming grey, slowly, and I can feel my will fading away in kind. They call it anhedonia, and they tell me it's normal. As my biochemistry adjusts to the treatment, it slowly relearns how to be; but it's learning without me, and I can't seem to catch up.

[thescannerdarkly]

an unfortunate religion

It was a dark and rainy night in the cemetery where the next Messiah would be born.

Of course, this cemetery wouldn't be known as that for, approximately, 15 minutes or so. It was, however, known to be dark and rainy, as the cemetery was in a Climate Control Zone under the yoke of the New New Englanders, asocial misfits for whom New England was not already dark and rainy enough. In New New England, it rained as a matter of fact; sunlight was regulated to the temporary lapses of reality to which we are all predisposed- those moments in which fact is told to take a flying kick and impossible, unbelievable fiction is allowed, briefly, to sub in for reality.

The people who lived here were mean, weathered types who were prone to both aggravated scoffing and grumbling insults in an impossible to comprehend dialect which sounded as if it had survived from Middle English and was, stubbornly, going to remain hanging about until progress finally bludgeoned it to death. These were born fishermen, conceived in hurricanes and delivered with stubby Pall Malls in their mouths- which was unfortunate, as their little commune was located on a mere 50 acres of land, located squarely in the middle of what was once known as Arizona. The climate control systems kept the atmosphere nicely grizzling, but as for major sources of fish, the closest practical location was some 150 miles away, in an artificial aquifer maintained by Nazis. The natural surroundings were quite nice, but the ideological backing of the whole endeavor soured the beautiful sunshine and fresh river spray that made such trips worth it.

As a result, they mostly spent their days drinking, smoking, taking turns herding the communal flock of sheep about with their dogs, and insulting foreigners (though their impenetrable dialect rendered most such events inoffensive). It was rated one of the Top 10 Worst Communities to Visit in Big America by Foreigners Magazine, a publication which rated being guillotined by Frenchmen as a 5 in their one-to-ten scale of bad things to happen to a foreigner in a foreign land. Immigration was nil, economy was nonexistent, and the food was simply awful- a fact which was a significant point of pride for New New Englanders. In short, it was a shithole.

And this was the exact reason that the Messiah had chosen it.

For who could reject one who came, with holy purity, from humble beginnings? A proper Messiah always had to have a particular kind of unfortunate upbringing- not one so severe or traumatizing as to paint them as an object of pity/suspected serial killer, but one which had enough struggle and grit in it to remind you that they came from a life much more bleak, gritty, and subsequently more legitimate background than your own.

For bleak and grit were in scarce supply in the year 483,194,900 and 24 ATD. What the equivalent year would be in the Gregorian calendar was a fact long since lost to the annals of time, and many harried conferences had been held about this fact over the year, each debating, proposing, and implementing a different way of categorizing time. For reasons of cultural sensitivity, artistic integrity, mathematical efficiency and plain bloody understandability, the date had changed from one new system of time until the next, until the year 483,194,900, when the exhausted Central Bureau of Time Management, bloodied and exhausted, declared their final verdict on the official method of timekeeping: "Fuck it, we've got a round number- let's just tack on more whenever we get around to remembering it."

In the year 483,194,900 and 24 ATD, there were no problems. Well, there were problems, but there were no problems that could not be solved- just people who didn't want to solve them. People chose their problems carefully, and most people chose to have trivial problems (or to have one or two head-scratchers thrown in at puberty and middle age, just to spice things up a little). Energy problems had been solved, population problems soothed, physics problems explained on formula sheets, and religious problems politely ignored. Every inch of the Earth and all the planet and planetoids and asteroids and collections of space junk had been divvied up into communities, where people came and went at will; and each community was a different place, a different time, a different color. Lives could be picked up and discarded at will, challenges overcome or fled from, loves  lost or found, sports interesting or not. Whatever life your little head desired, it could find at a moment's notice, settle in and live at will.

So people- and there were so many people, more than anybody was capable of counting- were mostly happy, finding places that met their definition of a happy life; and those who weren't happy were unhappy on purpose, to just the degree they felt they needed to produce works of art, woo insightful and emotional members of their chosen gender, or properly enjoy an authentic crackhead existence as a junkie on the edge of society. Oftentimes, great poets and directors and dancers and interpretative sharpshooters would live a respectable portion of their life in a community designed to provoke the optimal conditions for tragedy-driven art, then move to a community with better recording studios and comfortable hotels where they could properly translate their tragedy into commercially viable art.

The Messiah had meant to come before so many people were properly happy, but she had overslept.

And so she skipped the whole miraculous conception bit- with a little bit of well placed bribery, the proper authorities could be convinced to overlook such matters as biological reality and plausible deniability- and went straight to the birth; and out she came, out of a very surprised New New Englander, during the funeral service for a local dog who had died of lung cancer.

The Messiah was raised grizzled and stoic, but it never really took. She enjoyed the never-ending rain, the piped-in audio of distant waves crashing against craggy cliffs. She enjoyed the pallor of smoke that hung over every public and private space, and how it roughed up even the most pleasing of facial features. As a child, she would splash through puddles of rain and laugh at how the water coated her skin, and her parents would shake their heads in shame and mutter things that sounded like a fish performing autofellatio. To enjoy New New England was not the New New England way, and it made everyone around feel a particularly unwanted kind of miserable, as they grow envious of the child's love of this hellish environment.

"That simply will not do," the authorities said; "People move to New New England to feel put-upon, not to feel inferior." So the parents of the Messiah were issued a polite notice, which in New New England was a domestic assault consisting of various neighbors wielding Cods of Shame and beating you about the head for half an hour, and they were convinced to move.

They moved to Brigham Young Land, a legally-distinct alternative to Brigham Young World for those desiring the cleansing stiffness of Mormon life, but the Messiah found the uncomfortable garments fashionable, the sermons fascinating, and the community outreach delightful.

 Disgusted, her parents moved to the Opticorp Supress-o-matic Cubicle Farm, but the Messiah was invigorated by the Byzantine bureaucracy, found the corporate décor to be "zesty," and quickly became the manager of a small battalion of copywriters, who chain-smoked their envy for this six-year-old away in their modest one-bedroom apartments, all of which were located just far enough away from the office as to be inconvenient.

At this point, her parents gave up on trying to instill any sense of self-respecting masochism in their miracle child, and settled down in Rabbi Jiao's Americatown Suburb, an inoffensive dive joint located somewhere on Venus.

The Messiah grew up inoffensively, somewhere in between "stressful holidays" and "surprise vacations," and obtained an inoffensive education. She learned of the Bigger Bang, the explosion of knowledge that built the framework of the society she lived in; she learned of the various wars of incorporation, genocidal smartphone models, failed zombie apocalypses, and bad decades for music that were deemed necessary for basic functioning in society, and was given a degree in Somewhat Put Together-ness.

 It was at this point that her parents, wizened by 18 years of nonstop shame and at the limits of their healthcare plan, told her in no uncertain terms that she had to get the fuck out of their house.

And so she set out into the worlds, beginning her mission of bringing the news of ultimate salvation to the people. The only problem was, she had absolutely no idea what that news was.

[thescannerdarkly]

it's creeping up again, that old feeling of general terror. it takes to the background when i drink, like Palestine or the state of journalism today, but it's still there, every time i pop a fresh tab. a feeling of terror that we're doing this again, that we're only happy because of this; and now it's a "we" instead of "i", because i'm looking in on the events that are supposed to make me happy, forfeiting any self-control in favor of self-satisfaction. it's easier when we pretend that i'm not responsible; it's just a response, and we can stop any time. look at these two nights a week where i teetotal, sanctimonious in my refusal; look at how strong i am, that i don't need it during the waking hours, only before i fall asleep. addiction is an insidious thing, the way it creeps up the throat from the gut: it starts as hunger, morphs into pleasure, and ends up as necessity. we see ourselves falling, but there's simply nothing there to stop us, so we pass on through. hayden died and i took that personally, because i was there, so i cut out the reckless abandon that i had treasured for so long. I became a little bit more of an adult that day, when i realized that Hayden never would, and it's that seed that cries out in me now. it's easy when it's legal, it's just groceries in a store; the employees beaten down so they don't question my daily arrivals, and the price suitably modified so i don't feel terrified when i look at it day by day. capitalism found a way, as it always does, and adapted to push its tentacles as deep as it could. it's not to blame, of course- i walk in every evening, desirous, as it sits there waiting to be desired. there could be a moment where i stop and examine myself, where i think better, but it never comes. the only thing i think is that without it, the night will be empty, a hollow nightmare thing of lying awake waiting to sleep, too aware of the surroundings for my own good. i could replace it with prescription pills to blot out existence- and God, i actually have that option now, heavens forbid- or i could replace it with acceptance of my difficult position. but the alcohol makes the slide so easy, and degree by degree we accept the burden of obligation. this isn't a cry for help- i need none, i have more than i can handle.

[thescannerdarkly]

A sky the color of pale blue iron, the color of skipping school- the gradual brightening without a source over the horizon, behind rows of stucco apartments or the black-green outlines of trees; a sky the color of circus folk alternative from the early 90s, Oh Comely in my ears, seeking refuge in the cranny formed by the fences of some tiny suburb butting up against a copse of trees hiding a babbling brook; headlights coming over the horizon, an endless, intensifying stream of comfortable vehicles, puttering along to mystery destinations, caffeine-addled slumbering eyes behind the wheels, heading for their daily routine, bright white headlights, varying in temperature, some of them clicked off. The color of days stolen from the maw of life, summer days in the early haze of addiction, walking Hobie in a euphoric joy; the color of days spent improving the self, heated exchanges between self and chemical, finding secret places in the woods to imbibe, finding ways to make money for earbuds and intoxicants. A sky the color of Ghost, walking out the long path towards Gunn Highway with a gram burning a hole in my pocket, Sean alongside spewing lies. Eventually the sun will rise and burn away the early morning mist; the school buses will disappear from the roads, the traffic will lighten, and we’ll enter midday, a time of Phoenix and Godspeed You! and Nana and trudging through flooded woods so I could get away from school a bit longer. A sky the color of coffee, those little espresso machines at Circle K spewing out Peanut Butter Cup concoctions so that I can stay awake as we drive an hour, two hours out in Dad’s shakey old van, towards Winter Haven or Okeechobee or Dunedin or wherever the day took us. A sky the color of that morning after I got out of the mental ward, in the mother-in-law suite behind those nice Colombian’s house, where I ran for a few miles to feel like I was doing something for my self-hatred; the morning I found out my trusted iPod classic had a wounded headphone joke; the morning I spoke to my future wife, my future ex-wife, for the third time, finally set up a date and flushed my next two years down the toilet. Can’t help but see the memories in the morning’s light. They shine more brightly than any others; I can’t help but love them, their impassable distance be damned.

[thescannerdarkly]

you’re an interesting spark; if i’m to be the kindling, so be it. 

[thescannerdarkly]

“Do you ever tease yourself on the edge of sleep?”

 He stops to consider it honestly- half necessity, half curiosity. It’s hard to think through the gabapentin, harder still through the alcohol, and near-impossible while she’s running her fingers up and down the notches in his spine. “Not really. Normally I just finish and try to fall asleep.”

 She shakes her head. “No, not like that. I mean- do you ever stop yourself from falling asleep when you want to? Lie down in bed and shake yourself awake, that kind of thing.”

 He nearly falls asleep just thinking about the answer. “No, not really. I can’t sleep very well, so-”

“Oh, is that my fault?”

“Recently, sure, but-”

“Because I can stop, if you’d like.”

“I didn’t say that.”

She smiles, and her hands drift to his shoulder blades. Warm tingles run down his back, and a soft sigh comes out his mouth. “I can’t sleep well, so I try to wait to go to bed until I’m fucked up enough that I fall asleep instantly.”

 It’s not an uncommon story; she’s been there, and two-thirds of the people she knew had been there or were there right now. “Seems like nobody can sleep that well.”

He shrugs, muscle shifting under skin under her fingertips. “My parents blamed it on the TV. My job blames it on the drugs. I don’t know where it’s from, I just deal with it.” He hesitates, that little breathe held right behind the lips. “Could you, maybe-?”

 Her fingers move lower, and she begins to scratch his back. He twists in place, eyes closed, mouth slightly opened in reverence. It makes her smile.

“I do it, a lot- wait, on the edge of sleep. You stop hearing, you stop thinking- things just begin to happen, and they take on this kind of-”

 “Lower, please.”

 “- this kind of self-possession.”

[thescannerdarkly]

the older i get, the more of a material ego i build- a self-image drawn from not just my physical surroundings and depictions, but the material ownership i claim on different objects, the way these objects are seen by others. for a decade i've built upon my belief in the mental self as the only relevant dimension of who i am- the only thing that has any value in determining the illusion of self, the third-person reflection- and now that precocious little methhead in torn jeans and oversized shirts who would rather sleep outside for a few days than be forced into a clothing store is trying to convince the lethargic motivation system that i should buy new clothes, pick styles, shape who i appear to be to others. as if it matters, as if it ever mattered, as if resistance to it never sparked the development of my definition of myself.

  how much of myself do i lose on a path towards social compliance, the "healthy" that enables me better access to the resources that social structures can provide? can we lose selves, or can we only evolve them, redefine them, rearrange them in different patterns without loss of mass or energy? i tell myself that my teenage protests against these material definitions, these social expectations, are the immature shackles of childhood that i must cast off to continue on without dying broke and high without accomplishing anything of worth; and i tell myself that compromising to these social expectations is a betrayal of the philosophy closest to my heart, the sole idea that i choose to define as a priori, that i've based my definition of reality on since i first realized i had the power to do so. can we betray ideas, or only stray from them? should i paint this as betrayal, or as growth- as weakness, or as the full exhibition of that amazing human quality of self-control?

  these old ideas gave me comfort in the times of cold. i collected the seeds from books and movies, conversations and thoughts, chemicals and experiences, and i grew them into a structure that could bear the weight of definition upon itself. from them i derive my love of art, of places, of whatever stimuli this consciousness can experience and create meaning from. i've been leaving behind ideas and finding new ones ever since, and to view those as betrayal seems idiotic, knowing that they're merely the result of development upon the existing; but to give in to the most despicable concepts of vanity, of anti-functionalism, of granting my contemporary society any degree at all of control over my composure, my actions, my cares- how could i not hesitate, and how could i not hesitate to hesitate?

these answers will never be clear, but perhaps they can come into clearer focus. i don't write much anymore. i hope that part of me didn't shift as well, and resolve to apply myself to it again.

[thescannerdarkly]

unread message to an old friend

I had a dream the other night, that I went to go see you; you were reluctant, but finally offered. The meeting was awkward, and it started and stopped; at some point we had some negative interaction with another, and for a brief moment as i was making fun of them, we seemed to bond again, whereas before you seemed distant. i asked if you wanted to have a smoke and talk, like old times, and you withdrew and left instead. i wondered why you would, and i was walking back to the car, i read text messages from you. you said you had some fun, but you went back through our messaging history and found a history of me denying my own culpability in manipulating you, and constantly offering apologies instead. you were hesitant in saying we could be friends again, but you promised to consider it; and i woke up shortly after, cursed to remember it was only a dream. i consider it a point of pride that, even in my dream, i could think of that: of being happy with the mere possibility of reconciliation, because i recognized my own fault in the way i treated you and our friendship, and the way i've acted in the years since. sending this message is a crime, since i should leave you well enough alone; but i could little more wait for a chance to preen in my own sense of accomplishment in recognizing that i manipulated you and intentionally did so. i like to think i'm better now, after many hardships and losses that i caused in the slow process of recognizing and learning to properly regret my toxic behaviors. i'm going to USF soon, after many years of not going to school, and more of earning my long begotten associate's degree. i'll never be able to step on that campus without thinking of you, but i figure that's well-deserved with what i did to you. i know that suffering such penance won't make me any less guilty of the crime, but i'm glad that at least now i can know well enough to recognize that, and to do better with those i love today. i miss you. i hope you're doing well. best regards.

[thescannerdarkly]

on the coldest day of winter, it rained.

we were out on the porch, maggie and i, faded as if by sunlight from the cumulative comedown of six days of her ex-boyfriend's weight loss script. it was dark, still, pre-dawn- pre-daywalkers, pre-exhaust and exhausting stares. we were safe in the dark hours, coccooned in comforting anonymity, and we ventured out from the porch like refugees from some war-torn country, limping and cautious. 

 it was cold on our lips, cold on our fingtertips and noses. normally we were dying from cold, but that night we were fleeing from the fire we medicated with. we walked through the dream-world reflections of pooled rainwater on the gapped asphalt streets, waking the narrow razor's edge of streaked streetlights beneath our feet.

 that's the image i remember, over all of it, all my years of substance-influenced experience: us fragmented souls walking that razor's edge, trying to find just the right balance between fire and cold. 

yajna can't be explained through a linear perspective. if you looked at us in real-time, all you would see is a paper burning from the edges. the story is in the edge between the flames and the paper, in the moment of consumption- that perfect, peaceful point between existence and combustion. 

[thescannerdarkly]

Ghost in the shell's Motoko Kusanagi has lesbian relationships in both the film and manga versions. In the film, it's a metaphorical, ideological relationship with a female prosthetic body containing an entity with no biological basis and thus no gender, ultimately representing the birth of a consciousness free of the limitations of both man and machine; and in the manga, she gets fingered on a speedboat.

[thescannerdarkly]

you can tell who’s homeless by looking at their feet: my past 48 hours after a bottle of whiskey

it's three am and i'm tired but i can't sleep because of the shaking, so i'm going to stand in the bathroom and smoke a cigarette out the window. listening to the superbestfriendcast, texting a friend, experiencing that rare moment of feeling like your life is under control, like you can make a change. feeling pretty okay. then she knocks and she comes in. and she's yelling about you smoking. and she's yelling about you being up all night long, yelling about you not sleeping like a normal person. she's yelling at me and i've dropped the smoke and i've dropped the phone and i'm yelling back. and suddenly fuck it, i don't need any of this shit. i mean, here i am, trying to get my shit together, trying to get myself back into a happy person, back into a person i can be good in, and she's fucking yelling at me for having a goddamn cigarette. i don't fucking need her, i don't fucking need any of this. grab my immediate shit and get the fuck out, streetwalker mode, only thing i'm taking is my cigarettes and my music player, a little personal time with me, john darnielle, and the asphalt. get out twenty feet from the door, stop, and turn back around. walk back in, because i know that i'm better than that. because i know that i can face up to my own mistakes, because i know that i can make these things work. i don't need to run from this shit, because i've handled this shit before, and i can handle it again, and i can make this work, because i really do want my life to get back to normal, to get back to being less shit. we sit outside and talk. we sit outside and i tell her, these days it feels like i can't change anything. these days it feels like i can't get anything done. shit job, shit friends, shit personal life. tell her it feels like i can't even change things with her. but also tell her, i live for the little things. tell her i look forward to my friends, to my hobbies, to my job, tell her i look forward to changing this stuff in the future. tell her that i can make a change, that i just need to find something to fill my time with, that i just need something i can put all my life into. and she's nodding, she's talking back, she's smiling, she brings the dog outside so i can pet it, everything's going to be alright. and then the cruisers show up, the officers with their flashlights. i look at her and i say, what the fuck is this? are you fucking serious? and she just looks down at her feet. ask the officer, can i at least have a cigarette while i wait? yeah, he says, just move your hands slowly. tells me about how he went up north when he turned eighteen, about how he got a job whitewater rafting, got out and found a bit of himself in the wild. i tell him how i'm trying to find a bit of myself in my music, how i'm trying to find a bit of myself in art, how i'm trying to find a bit of myself outside a bottle so i can exist without the monkey on my back. he nods and he talks and he lets me smoke, so right now he's my best friend. the pat-down, and they take away my smokes. they put me in the back of the car, tell me i'm being baker acted, due to some alarming things i said. i say, i'm sick of this shit, just take me away so i can get this over with. cruising down the street, five'o'clock in the morning, early risers commuting to work, me looking at all this shit through the bars in the back. shaking, shivering, tired, half-dead, wishing for a smoke but they told me they don't allow smokes in the ward. out past the airport, they have the strip churches, all those evangelicals selling a shot into heaven; and past that, they have the beauty salons and the strip clubs, promising a little bit of heaven on earth; and past that, they've got the MHC, they've got central processing, they've got bond sellers, they've got a little bit of hell. in through the back in the new sunlight and they're telling me that it's all going to be all right; fuck, i know it's going to be alright, i just want to go home, but of course i can't say that to the nurses, they're just doing their job. three hours. the freshly raped bipolarette sobbing in the chair next to me, screaming, you're ruining my life, i have to see my children. the nurses laughing about it in the room over, mocking her. the guy in the long jeans with the blanket over his head, junkie brewster DT'ing, shaking on the cot in the corner. three hours before they get my fucking information down, tell me i'm going to talk to somebody to get me out of here, and don't you want something to eat. no, i say, it's too much effort just to throw it up, but i just tell them i'm not hungry, i'm not in the mood, i just ate. shaking in the lobby, last seat in a row of crazies, wrapped up in blankets watching the thirtieth re-run of Full House on the TV. talk to the insurance lady, talk to the nurse, talk to the counselor, sit outside and wait. get up and check the board, walk back, sit down, get up and check the board, walk back, sit down. a change. underneath dispo, next to daniel p, it says, AES. fuck, that's new, what the hell does it mean? flag down a passing nurse, ask him, hey man, what does AES mean? he has no idea, of course not. flag down the motherfucker who made the decision, hey man, what does AES mean? he turns to me and says, you're admitted, and walks away. shaking. sobbing. crying. snot dripping from my nose, head between my knees, arms wrapped around myself, screaming to myself, no, no no. saying, i need to go, i want to go, i can't go. i can't leave. somebody lied about me, so i need to stay here, and i can't shit without permission, i can't sleep without permission, i need somebody to come in and wipe my fucking ass, i can't leave. i can't go. and i'm sobbing and i'm fucking wondering, why? why? why? i haven't seen a doctor, i want to see a doctor. tell one of the nurses, i want to see the doctor. she says, if you want to see a doctor, you have to sign this. i say, what does this do? she says, it allows us to release your medical information to her. well, alright then, if it lets me see a doctor, if it lets me explain that i don't want to fucking kill myself, if it lets me get out of this place. i sign it, i go outside, i sit, i wait. three hours go by. no doctor. and the shakes are getting worse and i'm barely hanging on and my head hurts and there's nothing to eat. smoke break. no smokes. we go outside, nobody has any smokes, not junkie brewster, not David who keeps calling me Ty and asking if I got his daughter anything nice, not the bipolarette, not the chubby hispanic teen who tried to kill her boyfriend, nobody has any smokes. we sit in the fenced-off corner of a tiny yard and we wait. and then we go back inside. go to the board. now it says West, instead of F2F. i ask a nurse, what does West mean? she says it means the west ward. i ask, why didn't i see a doctor? i was told i'd see a doctor? she says, the doctor looked at your baker act, and decided to admit you. i say, she didn't even see me? she couldn't take five minutes out of her fucking day of getting paid too much fucking money to sit on her fat ass and drink coffee and sentence motherfuckers to life imprisonment to check with me and see that i wasn't actually crazy? i'm not fucking good enough for her five minutes? i'm not a human being, worthy of respect? i'm not somebody with my own complex emotions and desires and ups and downs? i'm just a fucking piece of trash, apparently, i'm just a fucking number, i'm just a fucking slave in the goddamn system, so that i don't deserve to be talked to, i don't deserve to be seen, i'm just some motherfucker who deserves to be locked up and told what to do, because i'm not a human being after all. i'm a fucking number. sobbing. shaking. arguing. sobbing. they take me down a hall. they lock me in a room. they tell me, strip down. they tell me, wait here. i ask when my doctor will be in. nobody knows. i ask when i can leave. nobody knows. i ask why i'm here. nobody knows. i ask if i can leave. no. it's smoke break on the west ward. sit outside. people have smokes, but they're hiding it. if people know you have a pack, they're gonna swarm you asking for a spare cigarette. so they hide it. people go around making deals. hey buddy, can i get your short? can i butt with you? hey man, can i share that? we're all desperate for the little highs we can get. i try, but i can't. talk to Keith. Keith's feet are dirty and cracked; Keith's homeless. Keith says, that pastor down at New Beginnings, he's crooked. He says, my mom works for Urban Development, she knows he's under federal investigation for taking food stamps from parolees. He says, a homeboy of his, Pastor Ted made advances on. He says, known him a long time, and he's all in it for the money. Richard says, his family has known Pastor for years and years. says he knows the pastor's first wife, his current wife. Says he's heard the rumors about Ted being homosexual. Says that all the programs ask for your EBT stamps, he says that it's not against the law, says that it's voluntary. Keith asks, can you be in the program and keep your Metro card? Answer me that, can you keep your stamps and still be in the program? Keith talks to me, he says, what kind of pastor carries a 9 in the church? when you're a man of God and you've got a 9 in the church, when you're smoking cigarettes in the church, you're not on the better side of things. i've gotta agree. we both share our fond curses for Judge Keats, the parole judge. we both share our grumblings. Dinner time. I've been here twelve hours. can't move my hands too well. can't feel my face. can't believe i'm here. don't know why i'm here. i don't want to hurt myself, i don't want to hurt anyone else. where the hell is my doctor? nobody knows. microwaved dinners in the box, two cartons of milk. hey man, you can have my butter. guy's got Hard Life tattooed on his knuckles. bitches about the food, me and Keith agree. Richard chimes in, says it's usually better. watch shitty movie on the TV. go back to the ward. smoke break. dad manages to send me a pack of smokes in here. nurses sneak it to me over the counter, make sure nobody else knows. stand outside, and Keith knows. he asks me, man, can i get a smoke? i say, you gotta find happiness where you can. I hand out smokes like the Candyman. I give one to Keith, one to Hard Life, one to Richard. Frederick walks up to me and asks for one, I give him one. Give one to Junkie Brewster. We stand in communion. I give one to the carnie, the man with the tattooes on his face. we talk. we talk about smuggling in microdots in the lining of your briefcase. we talk about Fantasy Ranch and the DJs who used to play there. we talk about the pure crystal they used to have on the streets, back in the mid-90's. we talk about the shit-grade molly they've got now, all the kids thinking they've got gold when they've got meth. we talk about Amsterdam, we talk about buying bags of heroin. Frederick talks to me about the gospel, talks to me about King Crimson, talks to me about the music scene in Detroit. he says to me, i slept with a Glock next to my head a couple of nights, i'm a little fucked in the head. he's fifty-seven, been to forty-seven states, been out in the desert, been down the streets. he talks to me about the ministry that calls to him, talks to me about the good we find in all people, about how we're only human. talks to me about the little hand-crank radio he has, about how he listens to old sci-fi on the AM channels, about his old days as a trucker, about the way he talks to the wind, the music he makes. smoke break over. go inside. ask if i can shit. snacks. Cereal bars and decaf instant coffee in lukewarm water. talk to keith, talk to carnie, talk to richard, talk to hard life. bitch about the food. Immortals on the TV, bad movie, doesn't matter. go back to the ward. line up. blood pressure time. sleep time. lie down on the mattress. sweat. cry. sweat. shake. wake up. blood pressure time. breakfast time. smoke break time. share away the last of my pack. talk about heroin addiction. talk about the carnie, twenty-four years of working there. talk about richard's dad dying of cancer, him coming in one day and the doctors telling him he's fine, coming in the next and having to take him off ventilators, having to watch him die. how his wife killed his dogs when he came down to florida to put down his dad, how the only reason she's still breathing is because of his daughter, because of his little girl. he talks about how he's not a perfect man, about how he's only human, about how he got himself a record because of all this shit in his life, and now he's getting straight. i believe in richard. shoot the shit. wait. read the Bible, book of Job. my clothing is rendered, my hair is sprinkled with ash. and none of these wise men can convince me to believe in god. wait. talk to the doctor. five minutes, she says five words. i spend five minutes explaining the situation, and she discharges me. you couldn't have spared the time last night? you couldn't have spared the time yesterday morning, sitting in your office five feet from me? you fucking shit. you fucking piece of shit. you don't decide where i go. you don't decide when i live. YOU CAN NOT MAKE ME A FUCKING SLAVE. I AM A GODDAMN HUMAN BEING, YOU STUPID, INCOHERENT, IDIOTIC FUCKING IDIOT. I DESERVE RESPECT, YOU MOTHERFUCKER. I AM NOT YOUR FUCKING SLAVE waiting. leaving. sobbing on my dad's shoulder. mcdonald's. never tasted so good. riding home in the work truck, windows down, my face out the window, my tongue in the wind. i can taste the exhaust pipe smog, and it tastes good. go by her place. get all my shit in the boxes. leave. come back in. tell her, i want nothing to do with you. don't text me, don't call me. don't think you can ever make up for this. don't think you can ever excuse this. don't think you'll ever hear from me. head back. Pacific Rim. Fireball whiskey. Memories with my dad. Telling me, he loves me no matter what. telling me, i don't need her to make my life. telling me he'll advise me, he'll tell me what he thinks is right, but he'll never tell me what to do. he'll never tell me when i can fucking smoke. nobody will ever take away my shoes again. happiness.

[thescannerdarkly]

When they booked me into the mental ward, I didn't break in the waiting room; I watched Fresh Prince as a guy tried to call President Obama to warn him of something he never got to explain. The same guy came back to his seat and gave me some advice on my beard; he told me he could see what I was going for, but I needed to trim it deeper in the edges. I think of him when I shave.

When they transferred me to the east wing, they made me strip, and that's when I broke down. I sobbed with a grief that shook me to the foundation as I removed my clothes, a dispassionate attendee calmly nodding along to my grievances. I sobbed and I moaned that I didn't want to be here, that I didn't want to do this, that I'm not crazy, I was just Baker acted. He didn't care; he checked beneath my balls, asked me to bend over.

I was 18, and I hated my body; it was a source of great shame, the worst thing I could imagine. They made me bare it because I was smoking cigarettes and they didn't like it. We spent an hour talking, and they took me away.

I broke, then; the next few days were recovery, where I didn't shed a tear. Frederick was homeless, but he told me of better times- when he biked across the country listening to music on his little hand crank radio. I shared my cigarettes with him, with Gary and Kevin. Kevin told me he was gonna spend his birthday here, so I went back on the Friday after I got out and asked that they give him a pack of cigarettes I bought for him. I hope they gave them to him. I couldn't live with myself otherwise.

[thescannerdarkly]

Ghost in the Shell's Motoko Kusanagi has a lesbian relationship in both the manga and the film adaptation. In the film, it's a metaphorical, ideological relationship between her and a prosthetic female head/torso containing an entity that doesn't have a gender, ultimately representing a fusion of consciousness independent of any sort of biology; and in the manga, she gets fingered on a speedboat

[thescannerdarkly]

[thescannerdarkly]

It's the first cold day in a southern climate, the chill coming on persistent gusts as the sun's slow rise illuminates the ragged ridges of vigilant clouds to the east. It's a call to something with more control of the body than a mere nervous system, an exhilarating touch that lifts the spirit up on silver threads of joy that pass through muscle and tissue like pure thought, radiating with the heat of a higher power.

This is a manic state, I know it; but I feed it scraps and kindling in exchange for a warmth that doesn't scald, and it plays to a pleasant experience, at least for the first few hours. We take out into the silver blade morning, the slow dawning on the first cold night, and I succumb to it, selectively: on comes Death Cab, Aeroplane, Brand New, whatever else harmonized with my teen angst when I first learned to love these moments back in freshman year. They sing to something deeper than myself, something primordial to the bubbling concoction that suffices as a self.

I'm on my way to buy my medicine. It's never a long trip- it's sold at any Wal-Mart or CVS or Publix, and there's always one within at least a couple miles. They're monuments I pay homage to when I pass through old neighborhoods; great concrete idols of self-prescribed self-destruction, unwittingly serving hundreds of perfectly normal people a day. I claimed them, and they gave me fevered nights of spirituality, and I couldn't ask for anything more.

[thescannerdarkly]

Fractured.

 Maybe I broke my brain. Zap, just like that, a short between the wrong two wires, and now I’ve lost something in me that I’ll never understand beyond its absence. One time too many, the old machine just couldn’t take it anymore. Blew the radiator, and now it can’t do long division anymore; but nobody ever talks to it about math, so they’ll never know. To them, it still chugs.

 Maybe the truth is like an axe through the skull, and you have to put it all back together to have thoughts again. Maybe when I remember what being human is, I’ll have come back with some great truth- I’ll have the answer, but I’ll have forgotten how to read it. We can’t read it when we’re stuck in the ‘human’ mode. Nature’s thumb is on the switch, but it can be fooled, outwitted, like a doddering parent. 

 Can’t stop thinking like a machine. Feels better to be the machine, really. Machines can be tinkered, fucked with, altered, torn down and put back up again, with just a few sprockets missing. We can know what we’re messing with when we move beyond alchemy into science: the science of defining a soul, the mechanics of being human. Does a machine want to be a machine? Is that what the result of all that energy moving through these systems is, desire? Potential along pathways is more the same thing, just accidental, in this frame of reference. What happens when a machine wants to change itself? If they can be made simple enough to delineate the components they need, maybe we can, too.

 A great Rube Goldberg machine, that’s what life is: an impulse of energy traveling through objects in its path in a domino effect. I wonder what the effect is to the outside observer, enjoying the show.