allen tingley

There may be an opportunity for you here, Mr. Hodgkiss, but you have to be willing to talk honestly with me. How did his left ring finger end up in the store’s meat grinder? The police have forensics confirming Leonard Thomas’ skin, muscle and bone were ground through that machine. Why did you put it in there? Why wouldn’t you just throw it away? You’ve stated previously that you received the finger in the mail, in a padded envelope, from Mr. Thomas himself. Mr. Thomas has continued to deny your claims—so how did you get the finger? Where did it come from? Did you assault Mr. Thomas? Was it self defense? You have to be honest with me, sir. You’re staring down some serious allegations. Did you cut it off in his sleep? Did you drug him? Was there a brawl? It’s impossible to think that the man removed it himself and mailed it to you. Stop hiding. I’m here to help. We’re aware you were lovers. Did he try to leave you? Did he cheat? Did he hurt you? Help me build the story or I won’t have a chance in hell of saving your skin.

Jaime Boulden’s car salesman dad got me kicked out of school in 9th grade for almost but not really blinding Jaime’s right eye when he called me a fat retard and I threw a pencil at him. I guess that was the first time. Every day since. Every step of the way from mom to the home to CCAC to the hiring bitches to mom to county. Everyone I ever met has been disappointed at me. 

The boys have been on New Guinea for fourteen years and seventy days. de Torres sailed off. Teacher and nurses dead by 1622. Their copas y espadas long rotten away, they sit around the table under the tree outside the shanty church, shuffling dried leaves with charcoal drawn drunk and severed heads, a code to winning or losing, playing threes and fives, betting homemade weapons or what was once Ynigo’s red shirt on a fair run of the cards, and the ocean, there the whole time; just, eventually not worth waiting for. not when the next card is coming around.

divide it in two and move one half to the side.  now with the half you’ve got left, start prodding, left to right.  the hope could be small.  the size of a pencil eraser.  explore the material in such a way as to cover the necessary area.  it will be there, somewhere.  extract it in whatever shape is handy.  i personally find it best to reach into an infinite drawer (if you’ve got one) full of cutouts and feel around a bit.

throw the other half into the garbage.  compost it if you like.  feed it to your dog.  nevermind the time you’ve put into it.  it’s useless to you.  

feels as if i’ve been shot out of a cannon but not recently ——— that i’ve been hurtling for some time now, my arms imbalanced propellers wildly ripping at the wall of air rushing by, most of my mind squawking through my nerves but their waves find no purchase ——— falling stupidly over myself at at a speed that is impossible and never ending. the ground is buried somewhere so far off that only the littlest parts of me have enough sense to be afraid of the fall.

I take Kyle to see his grandfather once a month. Dad’s just down the road at Rose Gardens so it’s really not a bother. I think Kyle likes it. He asks Dad questions about the great depression and Harry Truman and submarines. The kid likes his history. Has a drive to know things that I never bothered about. That Dad didn’t really bother about either, I don’t think. But he plays along. That part of Dad is still sharp. Still together. He remembers headlines and attitudes. Kyle’s ten years old. Dad could tell him that Hitler was a stone-cold bastard (cussing helps) and he wouldn’t know the difference. He tells Kyle he remembers watching tanks roll down the street in Gary on their way to transport ships. That he remembers listening to Orson Welles’ historic broadcast on Halloween in ’20s. He likes talking to Kyle in this way, I think. Inventing a history for himself. Accounting for all the time he spent working, sleeping, standing in lines, bouncing me on his knee, mowing the lawn, eating meatloaf.

Dad knows well enough that Kyle doesn’t care about the twenty two years he lived with my mother and me. Anything else existed in a newspaper in a trash can in the office breakroom.

“The days were meaningless,” he’s said before, thinking of Mom, I guess.

I hope Kyle drives that out of him in some small way. He’s too old to be worried by the truth.

Okay after we eat these if we both get the fear our safe word will be “ice cream.”

Ice cream?

Ice cream. 

Ice cream.

You are beautiful.

One frame. Night. Chain-link on the right, pale orange concrete on the left. A path along an empty two-lane bridge. Empty streets at either end. Empty sidewalks. Empty air. City lost and so loses its fervor. They’ve all gone home. Empty everything.

Everything except the field of view. The brown cracked winter grass. The wind. My keys keeping time. The man, standing at the end of the corridor, facing me, barely there. 

I stop. He stops. Turns. Waits. Empty everything. At the end of nowhere to go and he’s there and we’ve lost and I told myself I would never again be caught out here alone. 

With each footstep down the line, a resolution. If he’s there when I get there, I will murder him. 

Cindy sits on the rough carpet draped over the porch stoop, legs crossed, arms tucked in, leaning forward into herself. The sun breaks over the valley shortly before lunchtime, and she squints with one eye as she watches Christopher throw the ball at the backboard standing in the driveway over and over. A giant ball and cup. The hope of a meaningful afternoon with time to herself while he stirs on the living room couch and before her husband returns to suck the air out of their home. She likes the warmth of the sunlight against her. Her pores open, she deepens her breath.

When she was young, when she married Christopher Sr., she thought her mind would change. That she’d, at some point, make the turn into adulthood and be as comfortable home with a child as her mother was before her. She’d never asked her mother if that change had ever occurred for her. In the years since she passed, Cindy wondered if her mother wasn’t as insane as she’d turned out to be, day in, day out. She wondered if her mother had learned to hide herself somewhere safe, in a movie theater or a hope chest, in romance novels, in trips to the mall. She wondered if her mother had remained 18 forever, or if she’d made that invisible light blink off under the strain of giving herself away to her daughters, to the expectations of family.

She wipes the sweat from her palms on her knees, stretches out and thinks the thin layer of moisture forming on her legs is… sexy. Would have been sexy if it mattered anymore. She would love to feel eyes on her, still.  She feels no guilt. She’d love to walk upstairs and begin the ritual of beginning again. Shaving in the shower. Drying her hair. Standing in front of a mirror. Feeling awful, gorgeous, then awful again. She wants a man to buy her dinner. She wants to watch him try. She wants to smell someone new. Wants to be pressed against a bathroom wall. No part of her wants to spend the next thirty years kissing that man. Cooking these men dinner. Being where she needs to be for them, and only for them. She sits like this a long time, feeling the sun, the late May air evaporating her daydreams off of her skin, her son pounding the basketball in the background. She’s patiently desperate, and no right answer in mind but the passage of time. 

        the back splash behind the kitchen sink is a brownish blue.  i’ve tried to scrub it clean.  all the different techniques on the internet.  nothing.  it’s just worked too hard, is all.  the tile has been put through too many tenants.  too many smoky writers and teenage 20-somethings.  it still does the job admirably, and the grout scrubs white with some effort.  it looks nice in the afternoon light.  the grey counter-top probably looked ‘sharp’ against the tile to the landlord thirty years ago.  i don’t know why i care.

        the last of the dishes are done.  i’ve been standing at the sink for ten minutes, turning to the fridge, to the pantry, to the living room.  friday night.  nine.  i know that this is how it goes after a while.  a few move away and a few more go with the ex-girlfriend or the pregnancy.  at some point you stop feeling lost.  alone, too.  at some point there was a me that split—i don’t know, a few years ago.

        i split into the me in my apartment boiling water for a french press and the me who has a new girlfriend every other six months that never makes it to I Love You.  the me who spent a week of evenings tuning his equalizer to play Paid In Full to no one, and the me who tries desperately to feel comfortable after two hours standing at a show in a bar with no one to talk to.

        somehow these two became bifurcated in my head.  the me that is home, alone, above it all, and the vestigial me which keeps trying to create a life.  a feeling of community or at the very least of being human. a ghost of something gleaned from the odd touching moment in a film or the song that makes me long for a distant lover i alienated years before.  there are these things, these things which flow from one self to the other, a blood supply which won’t allow it to die.

        as i stand here, though, free from inputs pulling my strings, i don’t care.  i could stand in this silence, the corner of the formica drawing lines in my palms, all night long.  i work tomorrow.  i will come home.  i’ll lay on the couch.  smoke.  put on a record.  tire.  the other self hiding in the background, waiting for me to put on side B, the track about waking up in the back of a car.  i’ll remember her name, and that she txted me yesterday.  the other me will stir a little.  hoping that this time it will win.  i’ve grown much too tired to care about the outcome.

        Jay only spends time outside of himself when his will breaks down, and even then, it lasts only moments. Just long enough to realize what it is he’s doing, and the context within which he’s doing it. She’d told him. He’d come expecting some news, surely. They’d talked naturally for almost an hour and he’d mostly forgotten the fear. The need for self-control. It took a non sequitur (Jay should know about those by now, for she’s famous for the blind side) followed by a subtly more difficult swallow, and Jay was floating above the room, watching the cone of light from the fixture hanging over their table wash his wavering profile in dull, lifeless light. Jay saw himself smile, take a drink, say “Oh, awesome…”, and in a ravenous motion, rip a third of his thumbnail off with his teeth. It began to bleed. Jay could see himself sitting across from her, hiding his thumb under his palm, trying to save face. Trying to have something to say to move forward, to bring his body back together. She smiled. Jay wanted only to be able to reach down with his phantom hands and drive his own head through the plaster wall to finish what she’d started.

Let me level with you. Ben punched Jeremy in the nose at recess this afternoon. Jeremy called Ben a queer, faggot, something. Ben has temper problems. I’m sure you’ve noticed. He hasn’t learned to use his brain yet. It just drags him around like a rag doll. He’s not a bad kid, but this can’t go unchecked for very long.

Jeremy had a pretty serious nose bleed. His parents aren’t overbearing, so there’s not much left to do. I suggest having Ben apologize to Jeremy. You may want to offer to replace his sweater. About his anger—Ben needs to slow down a little bit. Does he get enough activity at home? Does he have enough around him to keep him stimulated? I’ve seen other young students take this turn. There’s something about young promise that sours if it isn’t kept in the proper conditions. Ben is right there, right now. He’s becoming increasingly volatile, but I believe it’s because he’s bored. We just need to keep Ben moving, is all. Keep his mind busy so that it doesn’t have time to boil over. Do you think you two can help me with that? Do you understand what I’m asking, here? 

        I wrote about writing this three days ago.  Almost three days ago.^[1] 

        I didn’t know what I’d write, exactly. I know that it’s going to be just long enough to fill three quarters of the page. I know that I will submit this off into the ether and then walk away from my computer for two weeks. I know that I’ll be up most of the night, not because I’d like to be, but because I know I’m endlessly tired tomorrow.

        I know these things because I wrote about them. Am writing about them right now.

        I can write anything. I can write that on Wednesday I will fall in love. I can write that I’ll get a phone call from a long lost relative. That I’ll overdraw my bank account. That I’ll sky dive.^[2]

        The classic line is something along the lines of “I thought I could control it!” You know, buyer’s remorse. Dude invents flesh eating virus and then gets his flesh eaten. But if what you wrote, if what you typed into a text editor somehow foretold the future, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you try?

        I never believed in fate. In a “predestined path.” I thought I was enlightened. That I could see the connections, the causation of things, because I wasn’t blinded by the ignorance of “things happen for a reason.” I’ve always been kind of an asshole.

        Far as I’ve been able to figure out, I wasn’t entirely wrong. Best I know is that there is somehow a give and take between now and tomorrow. Somehow this moment is connected to one in the future. I suppose it’s like a caveman trying to figure out why fire is hot. Regardless, what I say here, in this text editor, somehow connects to the events in the coming days.^[3] I don’t know whether I’m changing things in the future by writing in the present or writing in the present what happens in the future. I don’t believe that it’s either. Somehow I’ve managed to tap into the intrinsic paths of things. Of myself. I don’t believe what I am doing is fortune telling. It’s something else. Something way more out there. Somehow I’m course correcting for what comes tomorrow.

        So I’m done. I’m tired of knowing what her name will be or when I’ll drink too much. I want to be surprised by the rain and live without the dread of an incoming sprained ankle. I’m not interested in knowing, not anymore. It’s not a question of knowing anyway. We weren’t built to see this way for a reason. For once I think I’ve beaten it.  I think I’ve got it figured out.  I’m finally writing for my future.

        And I will write nothing else. I will never write again.

^[1] It’s actually 71 hours, 46 minutes, 52.4 seconds. I figured that out with clever use of a stopwatch.  

^[2] I made all that up, just now. But it will happen. Is bound to happen.

^[3] Last week I tried this the first time. I wrote about explaining the problem to my roommate Brian, who then intimated that I was merely holding myself to these things which I write. I was so dedicated to replicating those truths that I was doing the work of “fate” for it. When I reached the end of the story, I edited in a line about slapping him across the face. I thought that that surely wouldn’t happen. A few days later Brian called me an ignorant self-centered prick for thinking I controlled the universe. I slapped him hard across his cheek with the back of my hand.

        Ted sits at his counter-top and stares at the spot on his beige carpet.  The spot that will never come out.  He’ll have to tear up the floor in the entire room.  It isn’t even in a place where he could cover it with the sofa.  He passed out on his way to the bedroom.  Idiot.

        The doctor told him he couldn’t drink tea anymore.  No more coffee, either, but coffee wasn’t really a problem for Ted.  Losing tea, though.  Devastating.  A full half of his social interactions revolved around tea.  Tea service.  He’d gotten into it in college, halfway between an Anime movie club and a pig-tailed MPDG sophomore named Alice.  He’d had tea three times a day, minimum, since.

        They’d prescribed him painkillers.  Serious shit, as far as Ted could tell.  He wasn’t well versed in being under the influence.  One pill didn’t do the trick.  Two felt warm and fun, but when he bent over, his abdomen howled in pain.  He found himself lying on the floor, his legs splayed open, head buried face down on a pillow, praying.  Pill number three got him on his feet and to the refrigerator.  A cold glass of water.  He collapsed onto the carpet four steps off the linoleum floor and, during the course of the night, passed three stones that looked like slivers of glass.  Along with them came a mixture of blood and urine.  His corduroys were no match for the burst dam.  He woke up on fire, his body having finally given up the ghost.  But the god damn carpet.  And the tea.  If he could just have one more cup of tea.

QMA: What’s it like, living with him?

M: Mostly okay.  He does mean well.  And we don’t want for things.  The bills get paid.  T is a man like any other, but I’m used to him by now.  My life has grown in and around his.

QMA: Can you compare it to something?  Something our readers may be able to relate to?

M: I don’t know—it’s not like I’m living with Bukowski or even Hemingway.  T doesn’t drive his sadness into me.  He pretends that it isn’t there.  He lies.  He’s a liar.  The most delicate and useless of lies.  He doesn’t call me a cunt or leave for months on end or drink himself into sadism.  He lies.  Imagine living with someone who is constantly trying to win a secret game against the known world.  [long pause.]  Maybe that’s even worse.

QMA: You’ve been living with him for twenty years and he still lies?  You still allow him to lie?

M: It isn’t a question of allowing him.  He doesn’t have any idea what the truth is.  It isn’t in his deck of cards.  When I ask T what he wants for lunch, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a truthful answer.  Somehow, to him, allowing me to know what he’d like to eat would let me in on his plan.

QMA: His plan?

M: T lives in some sort of extra-dimensional world.  I say that I guess kind of tongue and cheek but he really doesn’t live here.  He lives in, how did cummings put it— thousands of these enormous dreams.  Yes.

QMA: Enormous dreams?  His lies?

M: I think his lies facilitate the dreams, not vice versa.  He isn’t concerned enough with me, with life, not to lie.  The ramifications are nonexistent to him.  I guess by sticking around I haven’t helped the situation.

QMA: Why do you, as you say, stick around?

M: The first ten years were tenuous but exciting.  He’d won most of his awards and things by that point.  I was a trophy.  A role I was mostly comfortable with, because T was a kind man.  The second ten years have been calm and, to be honest, good.  Very good.  T and I don’t see each other, not for what we really are, but somehow the layers of playhouse makeup have piled up into something we both find comfort in.  His lies are my escape.  My truth keeps him awake and alive to stare out of the windows and dream for the world.

QMA: Is he ever honest with you?

M: I think there are times where he’s honest without knowing it.  Things which are true not because he decided they were, but because there is no other.  There is no lie that exists.  He tries to hold these things like bargaining chips, pieces of the plan.  His one blind spot.  His one ignorance is in truths which he cannot control.

QMA: Like?

M: Like when he whispers to me that he loves me, and his eyes tell me that he thinks it’s a lie.

My life has become modal. Two choices. I can be as I am and grind myself into dust in a mechanized dismantling, or I can take the pill and mostly make it to appointments on time and clean my apartment when I know guests are coming over. I can fire myself toward a singularity that may or may not be maintainable, or I can mostly make it off the bed to change sides when the needle hits the end of the track.

I’ve found that no comfortable middle exists. There is no cruising altitude. When I’m sober I’m furious in my action. It’s productive. Generally leads to a horrible place, though. Whatever it is I charge into turns into an all-encompassing ideology. Then I take the pill, the blinders fold away, and I’ve found myself in the middle of something I’m ill-equipped to deal with. The realities of life are things most people, I think, are ill-equipped to deal with. They weren’t meant to be studied. We’re meant to be those raging bulls flying at a waving flag. The pill lays me out on the ground. Causes me to stare into the eyes of those in the stands smoking cigarettes in the afternoon, waiting for a sword to flash. Makes me wonder why they’re watching. Makes me wonder why the ground is cold when the air is so warm. Makes me forget about the contest running toward me with a sharp edge aimed at my chest.

He’s not tired of little parts of her. The creases of her mouth. Her hair trigger. Her back tight against him. When they’re driving together, he wonders if she has those things, too. Anything to hold on to. He straightens his posture a little and tries to smile nicely. Tries to turn and touch some part of her. He hopes he hasn’t worn out his last bit of charm. That he hasn’t run out of little tricks to keep her dancing. Two days from now he’ll know it’s too late, but if they never meet eyes as she considers the damage, if he can make it to the shore before she breaks, he has a chance to relearn to love her.

He has an apparatus he wears when he goes at home. Holding his breath doesn’t work because aside from the olfactory nonsense he’s normal, and every normal person strains a bit from time to time. Can’t strain for very long while you’re holding your breath. Forget about public bathrooms. Can’t walk around with a gas mask on in Minneapolis. Even in Minneapolis. Off limits. Enclosed spaces in general. Too many people and odds are it’s bound to happen. Someone in the room has had cottage cheese for lunch and they don’t know about his crossed wire and they let loose a nice quiet prayer-to-god of a fart on the mall escalator. He doesn’t get a chance to decide before heaving vomit all over the back of the Farter. Not even a moment to turn out of the way. He can apologize but it never does any good. So he stays home. And when he has to go himself, he uses the apparatus. 

I don’t know when I’m allowed to put in my headphones.  I’ve done it twice now. Put them in, hit play, laid back, and then the stewardess starts making hand motions. The lights haven’t turned off. The plane isn’t moving. No electronic devices please. No headphones.

At least I’m alone. No one next to me to watch me struggle under the constant barrage of unfamiliar rules. I can squeak and squirm all I want. No apologies. The stewardess has walked off again. The plane is humming. Moving now. Surely. Headphones. Yes. Headphones. As long as I don’t focus too much on whys and hows. 

Can’t let my mind settle there. Not the airplane itself, I mean. I’ve done those. I’m cool with man’s dominance of the physical world. It’s humbling and triumphant. A fat stupid metal bird lurching into the sky. No. The part I can’t think too hard on is Chicago, or her name, or the fountain, or the shoelaces dragging on the ground. It doesn’t matter, anyhow. In seventy two hours I’ll be home and life will move on.

The plane settles itself in the air and my gut sags. It’s less than an hour to O’Hare and then I guess a train ride into the city. I haven’t really thought very far into it. I didn’t have time. I bought the ticket on Wednesday, worked all day yesterday and grabbed the 28X out to airport this morning. I didn’t tell anyone I was leaving. I didn’t even get in touch with the few friends I have living out in Chicago. I’m on my way. That’s it. For a man who’s never spent an ounce of time considering an act of faith… Turn up the volume and stare out the window. The Ohio interstate spirals off in all directions. From this high, it looks like a future people trying to repopulate a landfill. Green around the edges.  

It seemed like a thing to do. I had the days off work and it’s still too cold to kill time smoking joints in the alley. The ticket was only $97 and it’s March—if I can’t find somewhere to stay in the city of Chicago when nothing is going on outside of the permafrost thawing, I’m screwed anyway. I could always call Hilary if things fall through, I guess. She lives up north somewhere. How do I answer the obvious question? That I flew out here to meet a girl I met in a dream? She’ll punch me in the fucking dick.

I don’t dream. At least, hadn’t, up until this point. I read somewhere that I had to be dreaming, that everyone dreams, but it’s the memory part that gets in the way. It seemed logical. If I can’t remember anything while I’m awake, why on earth would I be able to remember my dreams? But I remembered her. 

The stewardess stops by with the drink cart. For an hour-long flight. Because of the time-zone change, I arrive at the same time I left Pittsburgh. The coffee tastes  like it’s already been digested once, but it’s a nice gesture. They could have withheld beverages and I would have been none the wiser.

It’s a strange world, up here in the sky. A world that exists without you knowing about it. All this free air up here not being put to good use. A nice place to live a different life, I’d imagine. An unknown life, sitting around the clouds.

It’s in the afternoon. In the dream. And I’m surrounded by skyscrapers. There’s a fountain. A giant fountain set off down the street. The sun has burst and it reflects around the wet steel and glass of the thawing city. Fuck, I think there were even birds flying through the air. Like a movie. And she walked towards me from the fountain through the crowds of Midwesterners milling around the square. She was—is? young. Her dark hair was unkempt. She slouched, just slightly, and her shoelaces dragged across the ground. Her eyes—distortion or otherwise; she was coming for me. An answer pursed on her lips.

I don’t know. It’s burned in there. I saw the same thirty seconds over and over again. Her walking towards me. Every early morning for two weeks straight. I don’t remember to buy toilet paper until I’m peeling apart 2-ply paper towels, but I remember every second of it. I found the buildings and the fountain—Buckingham Fountain—on Google Maps. I don’t really know what the plan is. I have a book. Tentatively… sit there. Until the light is right. Or until dark. Jesus christ. That’s really my plan.

The overhead light dings on. Headphones off. Coming in for a landing. The world gets larger outside the window. Rises up at the plane at a speed that seems impossible. It’s Friday, 11:00am central time. Her name is Diana and she’s waiting for me by the fountain, and by Sunday, this will be done. 

molls:

it’s been way to long since i’ve gone home and chilled in a pile of dogs and ate my auntie’s monkey bread and backtalked the adults in a j/k way.

only motherfucking person i’ve ever seen reference monkey bread!  family breakfast every christmas morning.  man.  i really hope it’s not racially charged.

fuckyeahvalhalla:

this is BEAUTIFUL.

apoetreflects:

“The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and translate the passions which are its material.

—T. S. Eliot, from “Tradition and the Individual Talent” in The Sacred Wood (Routledge, 1920)

tj:

Every time I see people arguing on the Internet…

The Wire creator David Simon, in an e-mail to the Times of London responding to Attorney General Eric Holder demand for an additional season of the acclaimed HBO series.

[digitalspy / thanks adam!]

(via uberlad)

onefootinthegrave:

alisonagosti:

The Family

never not rebloggin’ this.

vitanovello:

It is a fine thing when a young fellow of eighteen or twenty stops to think about his confused state of mind, clenches his fists and tries to grasp reality. But it is not so good to be doing it at thirty. And doesn’t it turn you cold to think you will still be doing it at forty or later?

- Cesare Pavese

oddfuture:

Domo Genesis And Hodgy Beats Releases Their Own Version Of “Liquid Swords” Entitled TANGGOLF. Click Photo To Download. 

last one, i promise.

off tune-yards’ new album, w h o k i l l. 

as a follow-up, the live version of this song that made me become obsessed with the voice.

i would normally hate almost everything about this video.  good thing her voice and her attitude overwhelm the rest of it.  hell, she could be singing about hate crimes and i’d probably be enraptured.

pitchfork:

Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Matt Sweeney— the pair that gave us 2005’s awesome Superwolf LP— have a new two-track single coming out April 18 in the UK on Domino and a day later in the U.S. via Drag City.

nickdouglas:

“that might be hard for you to understand”

THIS.  THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICA.

nickdouglas:

Our Lips Are Sealed Official Trailer (by John Gallino)

Whole ball of d’aww.

It’s about a world record. Can you guess which?