Forlorn Death Sells Circus Balloons
"I’m pretty upset because I ate a penny. A real copper coated, zinc penny! Of course, I’m lucky I didn’t eat a nickel or a dime. That would have really changed me.
“Well, how do you feel?” said Siggy. “I wish I was a helium balloon floating aimlessly in the wind, only it would be nice if somebody would catch me and return me to the crying little girl.”
Today I start the new journey. It begins by putting myself on another level of thought, another vehicle of reality: a plane of existence of melting dolly clocks and people talking backwards; where the walls have more personality than the art that hangs from them. A land of little creatures madly scurrying about the carpet in search of food and little shiny things to fling at you. Where you always feel like you’re floating, yet you’re really sinking at the same time. Here, melting wax drips up the candle and the dinner table spits foul insects from underneath his legs. A lingering colorful spot, which bore from staring at a flame, follows my sight everywhere. It glows hot pink when I try to hide from it and green when I try to look around it. Yes this is it, a world where I feel like a god, yet I know that there is something even greater because where else could those twinkling lights be coming from?
But out here I am alone, and I’m melancholy when there is no one to listen. The Ill-communication makes me sick which makes me loose concentration, and every time I lose concentration, things go awry and I fall forward into this world again. While alone mosaic is how I see. Everything is mosaic! If I put the pieces together, I might earn a gummy worm or a golden sticky star. Ah, but still I yawn, and it feels so good to take deep breaths in shallow years.
My god, this keyboard has suddenly started breathing! Every time I push in a key it tickles her. What did this keyboard ever do to deserve this? I want to say for the record that I’m sorry, Keyboard, for tickling you so much. I hate it when I get pinned down and tickled to the point of warm wetness down the carpet; especially when playing chess above the clouds crouched with one knee in my mouth and playing a fluked flute with the other. “Check me quick mate, I’m hit!” I scream, scathed by the scalding hot water that splashes upon my face when I see my fair lady in grave jeopardy. And then when I ask, “What is death, Alex? I shall risk everything!” I win only silence, so I make up my own answer:
The brain, this mass of water and lipid soap makes one do livid stuff! Why? Were these elements randomly assembled together? Were they supposed to do something meaningful, or something random? Were they supposed to create something from nothing only to see it go back to nothing again? Why do we swim so hard against the infinitesimally large current of universal entropy? Were we destined to see beyond the end without seeing anything before the beginning? How can we lead linear lives and perceive rectilinear timelines when so many of us are capricious? Is the answer in the straight and narrow? Bullwinkle ordure! It’s not worth the paltry change.
But I already risked everything, Alex! “Too bad, your partying gift as a game show contestant is an oral toothbrush. Now go home!” Attention all beggars and question collectors: don’t look back for fear that you will only see the future. Never say that at your parent’s funeral. Who cares, you ask? Whoever does lives a painful life, but it’s worth the torture of comparison for why else would we compare ourselves with others? We are all just water and fat. And here’s the conjured resolution: It’s because we can’t socially think alone. We can’t sanely live alone. We can’t stand or even sit on a toilet alone without fear lingering like the candle-spawned spot we all have seen at least once. We live to not be alone. Mother Nature elegantly personifies this concept.
Was that funny? Something was funny because I’m laughing. You don’t think I’m laughing for no reason do you? Now I care, and now I know what’s so funny. It’s the buzzing ambush in my head. No, it’s just the wind letting out the violent thoughts: Will eat mankind for clues.
If I woke up tomorrow warm and snug in my nirvana blanket in my utopia bedroom, it would immediately go awry and I’d begin to wonder what “real” utopia would be like. Wasn’t I just there? Well, that’s the secret. You will never get there, like the end of the beginning. Dr. Seuss knew that. Hunter Thompson knew that. Nirvana is like a rubber band in the shape of a Mobius strip: an oscillating, addictive madness that envelopes even the strong willed and broken hearted. That exalted perseverance for happiness which binds us together will also let the wind nonchalantly carry away our future tears and future dreams. That sneaky wind. If only I could be the wind. Just for a day, even. That would be grand.
My dirty sock in the corner is crawling away! Wait sock! I want to go with you. You seem so content to just crawl along the carpet. “Well, you see that’s just it: I get stepped on all the time which causes me to stink and that is now why I crawl away from you who abuse.” Sock, listen, I’m sorry. I’ll try to wear flippers. I’ll tell you what, let’s be pals! I’ll take care of you if you let me crawl away with you. So now I’m on the floor with the sock, not looking back; no worries no stress. Why am I even here? Money? I hope I find change in my future, but soon I will go to sleep. Yes indeed, I think I am wearing them down. The walls tend not to bleed so much and the creatures on the earthen floor are scarcer. Soon I’ll find my peace.
So here comes the end of my story, my journey, and my life with the lizard. I ate a penny tonight, and that right there says it all. That, contestants, shows how demented money is. I ate it, I will shit it and that will be all. But when I give it to someone else, they react more than just oral ingestion. They go crazy, and that is why I am not crazy. It’s not because I don’t have a psychological disorder or a bad disease. No, it’s because I threw the money out and let the voices in. True, they own skeleton keys, but that doesn’t matter, because now they’re always welcome, and I’m never sad and never happy; never pained and never pleasured; never honored and never blamed. Yes, Alex, my lucky hobbit heritage makes me the stoic winner, and if you’re lucky, you can sometimes hear them whispering and giggling in the wind and saying how they too, wish they were a helium balloon."
This was borrowed from issue 10, "Don't sell the bike shop, Orville," and was written by kemotherapy. Permission was neither asked nor granted.