Clouds Don’t Evaporate

Against You

No matter how fast you run, or how far, the sky’s still above you, watching. A gentle breeze cools the sweat on your forehead: that’s surveillance. The dew collecting on your shoes is reporting your whereabouts at this very moment. The rays of golden sunlight burn you and you alone. Blades of grass lash you and the leaves in the trees are snapping jaws. The world turns against you.

The Whole Point of the Cult

The whole point of the cult was to scratch together a little money, enough to stay afloat and give me the time to write, and then, hopefully, make a name for myself as a writer and, if I were lucky, get to a place where I could do it for a living. After that I’d tell my disciples that they’ve made it, that they didn’t need me anymore, that the faith was in their hands now. But almost from the start it took over my life, pushing everything else out. Now, even if I could find the time, I could never be a writer. The only people that would read anything I wrote would be my disciples, and to them it would be the infallible word of god. If anyone else even chanced upon my writing, the first thing they’d know about it is that it was written by that crazy cult leader they sort of recall hearing about once before. In either case, who wrote it overshadows what’s written.

You know, I never wanted a job. I never wanted to be employed, to be someone’s instrument, to be someone’s object. All I wanted was to carve out just a little space, a little time, where I could do what I pleased. Where I could write. That’s why I started the cult.

A Perfectly Lovely Ride

It’s a perfectly lovely night to go for a drive. The air is cool outside, which is a relief after such a hot day. Back home is still full of the air from the late afternoon heat; the cool night air won’t seep in until three, four in the morning. In my car, speeding down the freeway, the air gushes in and I’m soaking it up. Right now it’s wonderful, but I have work in the morning, so I’ll need to be home before three or four in the morning, and the cool I’m enjoying now will make the stifling heat of my bedroom that much worse when I return. More importantly though—at least for right now—right now, it’s wonderful.

But hold on a tick— I don’t remember starting the car. I was in my underwear, sitting on the couch beneath the ceiling fan, just sweating and hating life. I stepped outside and it was nice, so I sat on the porch, still in my underwear—it was late so no one would see anything—and life was great. Then the mosquitos started eating me. That’s when I decided to go for a ride. But I don’t remember going back inside and getting my keys, or getting dressed, (I’m in shorts and a t-shirt now), and I don’t remember starting the car….

It’s quiet outside— it’s quite inside too. It doesn’t sound like the engine’s running. I can’t even hear the tires turning over the pavement. The only sound is the wind whistling by, like I’m falling. The ride is smooth, too— too smooth. The speedometer, tachometer, engine temperature gauge, and fuel gauge all read zero, and the dash isn’t lit up. I feel for the key in the ignition, but there’s nothing there.

Now I see everything with fresh eyes. The road is dark out ahead of me. It’s because my headlights aren’t on, but it’s not only that. The streetlights aren’t lit, and there are no headlights from the oncoming traffic, no headlights in my mirrors, no taillights from the traffic ahead of me. I ease up on the gas, but nothing happens. I take my foot off the gas completely, but I don’t slow down a bit. I touch the brakes and nothing— I press a little harder, but still nothing— I stomp on the pedal, putting it all the way to the floor, but nothing happens. I turn the steering wheel this way and that, but it makes no difference. I pull the parking break. None of it makes a difference. Nothing I do makes a difference. I’m not in control.

The Nehalem Pyramid

At first the pyramid over Nehalem was a little black chip in the sky. It had probably been there for weeks before anyone noticed, but once it was spotted it was only a matter of hours before everyone in the town knew about it. Which isn’t saying so much— only two hundred some people live in Nehalem. And, just being a speck floating up in the sky, it was forgotten before long, around the time the local paper ran their story on it.

“Is it getting bigger?”, people started asking a few days later, necks craned, squinting into the sky. Someone in town with a telescope made a time-lapse of it, and indeed it was gradually getting bigger. The local paper wrote a follow-up to their earlier story, which included the time-lapse video. The story quickly went viral. Journalists and tourists and ufologists started flooding into the town.

The pyramid got bigger over the summer and took on a definite shape to the naked eye. By September it was big enough that for two hours at midday the town was wholly in its shadow. The population of Nehalem grew along with the pyramid. People came from all over the world to see the it, this impossible thing. All these people came with their money in hand, and a lot of folks in Nehalem—not a wealthy town by any means—found themselves suddenly flush with cash. The military also came to town, with their scientists, to understand the pyramid and mitigate the risk it might pose, but the scientists managed only to learn that the pyramid was made of iron and the military, with no understanding of the pyramid, had no plausible means of mitigating anything.

For lack of any better idea, the town was evacuated. No one was allowed within a mile of it. There was a lot of grumbling about it, but only few people ignored the order to stay out, a group of tourists from California, and they all got caught and spent the night in jail. For a month the pyramid didn’t grow, didn’t do anything. A rich Silicon Valley venture capitalist, who had taken a keen interest in the pyramid and was used to bulldozing with money anything in his way, bankrolled a lawsuit against the government to get the ban lifted, and in mid-October it was.

People came flooding back into Nehalem, eager to have what they had been denied. There was some worry that the pyramid would start growing again with all the people returning, like one had something to do with the other, but the pyramid went on floating there as it had since the start of Autumn.

For the remainder of October the skies stayed clear, but the rain had to come eventually, and when it did the cloud cover meant no one could see the pyramid anymore. Sometimes a dark square could be seen through the clouds and remind the townsfolk the pyramid was still there. The tourists had left—taking their cash with them—and the military had become such a fixture that they went unseen. Everyday life in Nehalem resumed.

And not a Sole for Miles

Halfway across the river, fifty feet of water beneath me, and I don’t think I can swim another stroke.

Punk Spirit

Punk is an aesthetic, a form of music, a style of dress, but it’s also a spirit, a spirit in two parts. It isn’t concerned with how things are supposed to be done. It doesn’t ask for anything. It doesn’t owe anyone. It does things its own way. That’s the first thing. Consequences aren’t important. There’s nothing worth compromising yourself for. That’s the beginning of punk spirit.

Well the park bench, door, and sleeping in the rain / Little kids sitting in the shooting gallery / Set yourself up from innocence to misery / Well this is what you want, not the way of what they fucking say. —Tim Armstrong of Rancid in the song “1998”, from the album “Life Won’t Wait”

There are consequences. You’ll never be on anyone’s short list, or long list. You’ll never get a record contract. You’ll never have a big budget, or any budget. After you’re dead, no one will do a retrospective of your work, no one will make a documentary about your life, your name won’t be used as an adjective. You’ll always need a day job. You’ll die in obscurity, and you’ll stay there.

These things might not turn out to be true—nothing's certain about the future—but you have to believe they will. You can be happy about it, or unhappy about it, but you have to believe it, and you have to persist.

I had nothing, I had nothing to lose, and all that I was doing I was doing straight, always driven by the motto, “Either this way or no way.” —Blixa Bargeld in the 2008 TV show “Mein Leben”, viewable on youtube, translated by Google and corrected by me

Pig-headedness is only half of it. The other half is solidarity with the other punks, the other people taking their own way and taking it to the end.

Further, ever since ancient times, the skeptical Indra, Lord of Heaven, has come to test the intentions of practitioners, as has Mara the Tempter come to disturb and obstruct the practitioner’s training in the Way. All instances of this have occurred when someone has not let go of hopes for fame and gain. When great compassion is deep within you, and your wish to spiritually aid sentient beings everywhere is well seasoned, there are no such obstructions. —Eihei Dōgen in “Keisei Sanshoku” of his “Shōbōgenzō” as translated by Hubert Nearman

A Flea Amongst Giants

It’s before dawn and all the buildings are laying down, asleep, and among them a little flea of a child is seeing what she can scratch up to eat amongst the rubble when she finds a miracle: A sack of grapefruit, heavy with sweet juice and not even moldy, one of her very best finds. She might’ve found more, but the sun peeked over the horizon and the buildings started to wake, to pull themselves back up and go about their business, so the girl had to flee and hope she’d find that spot again.

The It

If you see it, you’ll always see it. You’ll try to ignore it, knowing as you do how much easier it is to get along if you don’t see it, but ignoring is seeing, and it will be so much harder to get along.

A Spell

All you have to do is lay out his clothes on a bed, a button up shirt, a pair of trousers with underwear inside them and socks slipped into their cuffs. Lay them out, then take them off, carefully, like you’re undressing a person. Unbutton the shirt, then pull first one sleeve over the hand and slip the arm out, then do the other. Unbutton the pants, and unzip them. Pull the cuffs of the socks over the heels, then pull by the toe, slipping them off the feet. Grip the waistband of the trousers and pull them down over the hips to the knees, then tug alternately at the left and right leg until they’re off. Last, pull off the underwear.

He wasn’t there until you undressed him, but at this final stroke, by magic, he’s there, back on your bed again like he’d never left. Don’t get excited though. Nothing important can be done by magic, and this spell has only brought back his body, cold like mud and as dead as a memory. But he will be there, which—maybe—is better than nothing.

The Dangers of Sugar

The 911 Transcript

Dispatch: 911 emergency

Caller: Uh, hi, this is Mrs. Robert Cole calling on behalf of my husband. We’re at 1612 South Antoine Street.

Dispatch: What’s the emergency, Mrs. Cole?

Mrs. Cole: So… I don’t know— my husband thinks he got his head stuck in the dryer. He’s always doing this sort of thing though. We go to a lot of trouble and it turns out to be nothing. But we’ve tried about everything we can think of and— I don’t know.

Dispatch: You said his head is caught in a dryer?

Mrs. Cole: A clothes dryer, yes. It looks like the door slammed shut on his neck, uh, while he was pulling something out. Maybe? I didn’t see what happened; I just got back from the market. He’s standing in front of the dryer, kind of bent over, his head’s inside of it, and the door’s shut. i just— Robert, how did you even manage it?

Dispatch: He’s conscious then?

Mrs. Cole: Let me check. (passage of approx. eight words, indistinct)

Mrs. Cole: I can’t tell. I don’t think so.

Dispatch: Can you open the door?

Mrs. Cole: Let me check….

(Mrs. Cole can be heard putting down the phone. Approx. three seconds later she can be heard struggling to open the dryer door.)

Mrs. Cole: Oh God! (several words, indistinct)

Mrs. Cole (panting): There’s a lot of blood— He’s bleeding, from his neck.

Dispatch: Okay, an ambulance is on the way. You need to apply preassure to the wound, Mrs. Cole, and don’t disconnect. I’ll stay on the line.

The Coroner’s Report

IN THE MATTER RE THE DEATH OF:

I, HERMAN SYLVESTER, Sheriff-Coroner of the County of Washoe, State of Nevada, certify an inquiry and investigation was held in the death of ROBERT NICHOLAS COLE, a 42 years old male, born in New Mexico. The inquiry and investigation revealed that the decedent died on the 19th day of June, 1955 at 1612 South Antoine Street in Reno as follows:

MANNER OF DEATH: NATURAL CAUSES CAUSE OF DEATH: BLOOD LOSS due to PUNCTURE WOUNDS to the neck.

Sustained following INJURIES FROM EXCESS DIETARY SUGAR. The incident occurred at 1612 South Antoine Street in Reno at an unknown hour on June 19, 1955. I certify that death occurred from the cause and in the manner stated above in accordance with the written findings contained herein.

Signed this 15th day of March, 1955 HERMAN SYLVESTER, SHERIFF-CORONER

Recollection of Maurice Sinclair

When Bob died it wasn’t so much a shock, really. He was always getting into tight spots, something of a daredevil. He got himself out of ’em too, but, well, we all sort of knew, you know, that one day he wouldn’t. It was that daring that we loved about him. So when we finally learned what got him, that he died from eating too much sugar, I thought, you must be joking! Look at him, his head’s nearly ripped clean off. But now, looking back, you know he did have a sweet tooth? He must’ve drunk a half-dozen colas a day for as long as I knew him. My doctor— later on I asked my doctor about it, because I drank my share of cola too, and he explained how the sugar eats away at the lining of the throat, and if this goes on long enough your head’ll just come right off and all your juices’ll spill all over the floor, just like Bob’s did. Well, I hardly have to tell you I haven’t touched a soft drink since 1963. Not even once.