The other night I ordered sweet and sour pork, fried rice and a two liter of Sprite.
The man who runs the Chinese delivery store is quite familiar with this Village. He was kind enough to include a bag of ice with my order, knowing that the water potability here at the Abbey is in perpetual flux. In the past two months, both my friend and I have become ill. I've taken to brushing my teeth and washing my hair with Ozarka.
Prior to eating, I cue-up Mulholland Dr.. Earlier that day I went to the pawn shop to look for a cheap 8-track recorder, but spent too much time looking at used DVD's and never had the chance. I've recently acquired a Roland Juno G-series synthesizer, and I cannot bear the process of recording music on my laptop. I've seen Mulholland Dr. once before, but watching a Lynch movie only once seems pointless. I can only ever begin to understand his work upon the second viewing, and after a substantial lapse of time.
My friend that attended USC said that the film was mostly just a cadre of L.A. inside-jokes with enough banal kookiness to be appreciated by a " normal viewer." I begin to imagine mold-spore inundated film canister vaults and the coagulation of hill-fire smoke which form layers of universally disparate pretensions that accompany the pacific surf while those words echo in my head...
As the credits rolled, I was in a haze of sober lucidity. Now, I get it. I felt sick and fell asleep on my couch.
Sometimes at night, when my head won't settle, the blur between reality and fiction slowly eviscerates. Voices of what was, what is and what should never be squelch to a din not unlike the channels in between the frequencies of a police scanner. I turn the valium up until the wheel breaks motion and I fall into deep sleep.
The morning sun allows a temporary respite from, well, the rest of my life. Jig-sawed coincidences fall in-line with literature and theory while the sounds of the voices on my stereo walk across the road in order, and rearrange me 'till I'm sane. Everything in this world is all wrong, but I cannot argue that it does not make perfect sense. Unfortunately, I'm hanging in this mental ether where the divine truth is as readable as a Highlight's Magazine; yet something akin to discovering a perfect blue diamond is less allusive than fresh perspective.
This morning I sat on the couch, turned on the television and waited for the tea to kick-in. There were two fortune cookies with my delivery the other night. I ate one the night I fell asleep on my couch; it read "the basic rule of free enterprise: you must give in order to get," while the reverse was the word "children: (hai) (zi)." Admittedly, this was more like being kicked in the balls by the Maharishi than a fortune.
This morning I sat on the couch, turned on the television and waited for the tea. I cracked-open the last cookie to read "romance will come your way soon." And on the back was this. So, like, hey! What a perfectly appropriate day log, right? A perfect snapshot of this saccharine-memetic life of mine. Could this be a glimmer of hope, maybe, please... ?
Oh, but meanwhile, deep within the omniscient catechism of the "perspective" lies the hook. Because here and there in this (n)ether-world of muck and binary, violence and malaise are the only things that dance - and how - in such a gloriously tragic harmony. While I, myself, considerably worse from the wear, am sitting here watching the wheels go round and round... and I just have to let it go.
... nothing is real.