Plathological

Can I read the story sometime?

I can't wait. I'm looking forward. And that, fatefully enough, is part of the one-minute-mind-tracking turned canadian proletariate non-political whinefest that I wrote for Erin's assignment. I want to show it to you, but I don't know your e-mail, so I'll post it here. I love this, I'm using your blog to have my shit reviewed. By you. (And maybe others. I'm not a writer, I just do it sometimes.) Please comment so I can make ammendments and pack it off to Erin. I trust you.

Between e-mails I stare at the "c" at the end of "ViewSonic".

This is how to completely blank your mind. First, get a job. Not a good one, not a bad one. Just a job. It mustn't pay more than $30,000 a year and mustn't pay under $22,000 a year (this is in Canadian funds, please to re-work to suit).

Work well for 4 month, then, poorly for 6. Develop strategic ways to waste your time. Decide which stall in the bathroom is best to masturbate in, which superior to slink by when you're an hour late, where to sit in order to go unnoticed as you spend all day looking up your own name, the history of Sri Lanka, or Prince's complete discography. This last part is important, as you may end up faced with a large photograph of Prince's leather-thonged crotch, and people who can fire you mustn't be privy to what your paid hours are actually spent doing.

Bring in a plant in a clever little jamaican beer bottle. Just a small plant, and nothing else. You mustn't give the impression that you are settling here. Wear shabby clothing, keep the good stuff for home and away. No use in sullying your favorite shirts and expensive pants. You can't tell a story about ruining your tie with Foldgers dark during Bill's farewell get-together, on the third floor, at 11am on a thursday. Your best shirt with gin-cranberry on a friday night, on the hand...

Live in the future. Put away half of what you earn by living in a tiny batchelor with someone else and eating cheaply. Save. Yes. Unbelievable as it is, you're 21 and you can. So do. All this money will get you out of your newly safe, secular bubble and into the big world. Two months from now, six months from now, three years from now, it doesn't matter. Live in the future. This is where you will place the anchors for your heart, you soul and your expectations. Doing this will allow you to divorce yourself, temporarily, from passion, intelligence and disappointment. Free of these low, human stimuli, your mind is a light myst. Just hanging there, damp. The ghost of christmas future, standing in for the promise of some great reward, topped with a velvet bow.

Disconnect yourself further from the experience of your life by bringing headphones and music to work. If you are a fan of any depressing, introspective lyricists, save them for wednesdays, when the realization that you could at any point walk out the door won't crush you with it's impossibility, like on a monday, or cause to actually do so and have to find new employment, like on a friday.

These are the steps. Are you ready? Focus on the "c" at the end of ViewSonic, that'll be the brand name of your computer screen. Give it a good stare. As your mind clears, take in the banality of your thoughts. Don't fight it. Just sit back and appreciate it. The gait. The texture. The feel and slow turning of absolutely nothing. White noise, telephones, central air, street sounds through double paned glass. This is when you've stopped thinking and can only notice. The illegible post-it notes. The waterbottles. The myriad brand new, soon-to-be-obsolete, bubble-shaped electronics.

The fluorescent light. Buzzing on and off at a terrible speed.

By now it will have made your once pink, healthy young skin like paper. By now they owe you a living. Or something. You're a husk of who you were. You spend your waking hours pushing, then pulling at the strings to your faraway heart. Lost in the future. You find yourself understanding your mother. Drying out under that sterile, hateful light.

Arabs invented the idea of zero, sometime before 1000 AD. Really, people didn't have a concept of nothing before then.

When you need to buy lightbulbs, darling:

A guy made entirely of lightbulbs knocks on your door and demands an outlet/ post-haste, POST-HASTE, because how else is he going to "see the light?"

Joy,

yes, of course, you may. it gets workshopped this coming tuesday. in fact, I think we need to get together sooooooonnnnn.

what are you doing this weekend?

nothing definite for me yet----

you & Ben should drop by & bring fiction. I live above the art's collective.

still have my number?

one of you call me. i think that's an official memo.

I haven’t seen you guys in so long I’m starting to think you don’t exist anymore.

Xavier--

the "editing" shall be finished soon--the Chinese lesbian film and nutmeg were all too distracting tonight . .but of course you were too tall to see it happening from way up there.

ahahah.

typing that out really made me want to kill myself.

anyway, you'll have more to meditate on soon. maybe more rug jokes, sad lesbians on trains, appropriate and justified heehees.

xoxoxo
oxoxox
xoxoxo

Ben,

I think reading that (again) made me fall in love with you (again). I think. It's difficult to tell, my heart is beating too quickly. ;)

xxo

Michael--

yes. I read an article by Kurt Vonnegut about a year ago wherein he outlined how Arabs invented number (the digits), until then, we had been using roman numerals. but . .the concept of zero . .that was them too?? all i can say is: amazing.

do you have any articles for me to read regarding?

hahah:

all my reply comments are somehow magically spaced three minutes apart. I love myself. So much.

haha, HA: nevermind, i'm an idiot. but ALMOST.

B minus.

The short answer, re: zero is Ptolemy the Great.

The long answer is on my blog.

THANK YOU!!

This weekend? Housewarming on Saturday. Potluck @ 7pm, part-ay at 9. But what does that even mean. Be here at 7.

it means I'm bringing nutmeg.

where do you live now????

directions may be sent to the following forwarding address: cszpak@uvic.ca