I'm dangling my legs over the edge of my grandparent's open grave. I can see the two caskets 6 feet down smeared with dark clay. Its a nice day out and the manicured grass is cool and damp. My grandparents lived in a time when material things didn't matter as much and people got through life on their word and with purpose. And now they have no words, all that's left is the skeletal remains of their physical presence, stored wastefully in expensive boxes on expensive real estate. Their death isn't a departure, but a final and perfect adaptation to a world filled with material without purpose.
Monday to Friday I stare at the light of a photocopier, blinking every time it produces another memo. Monday to Friday from 6am to 5pm I can predict to the minute exactly how my future turns out. And then Friday, at 5pm I hit the event horizon. Sunday afternoon I sit in the wake of destruction and shock of another weekend with new zeal for the predictability of my work week.
Friday night and I head downtown to meet up with some friends. On this particular evening we are all meeting at God''s Blind Spot. A grueling bar at the best of times. Regardless, the beer is cheap and considering the massive quantities of that particular poison which is required to get through an evening, it is the only option. Sober and still wearing my upstanding work clothing I arrive at the bar.
During the week I work in an office that has a series of televisions constantly tuned to 3 different news networks. I can watch our wars in stereo over a cup of coffee. Monitor #1 shows a nameless Middle Eastern city street after a car explosion. Monitor #2 shows a train bombing in India. Monitor #3 shows the World Cup. Iraqi insurgents and Kashmiri terrorists ahead by 1, and will therefore go on to the next round pending the results of the Croatian/Australia match.
While important people are doing important things, I occupy the majority of my mental ability around the defining aspects of life. File corruptions, paper cuts, smiling enough but not too much, avoiding work while looking as though I am exceeding the expectations of my employer. The edge of reality blurs further when I watch the news and once in a while I know the person on the screen personally.
And now, it's Friday, I am going to the bar. I walk through a mob of street kids and punks who are in the midst of a battle royale. Blood and booze take the place of thought and personality. But I have resolved to avoid that type of behaviour. I push through the crowd without stopping and walk in the door of the emptied bar. The owner sullenly handles a mop with a disgruntled look of confusion and anger, lost as a bastard son on father's day. My friends are nowhere to be seen, then the feeling comes rushing over me like water crawling up my spine when I realize my shoes are sticking to the floor. Looking down I notice that someone has decided to decorate the tile with a great quantity of slowly congealing blood. I imagine that from the empty nature of the place, this new scheme has not gotten the approval of the management. Without a doubt in my mind I know this has something to do with my missing friends.
Events like this usually follow a certain logic. The following formula can be applied. Bar - Friends + Blood = Hospital. The convenience of which is a matter of steps from the bar. Reaching the hospital, Jimi is in the waiting room.
It seems that after a few beers Jimi decided to use the washroom. Jimi had reacted to an unprovoked exchange of insults with some fuck-up from Soux St. Marie. This individual had decided that some unnecessary surgery inflicted on Jimi would better illustrate his point in their disagreement. So, the son-of-a-bitch bit Jimi's ear off. This was immediately followed by a massive 30 person bar fight, resulting in absolute drunken anarchy accentuated by Jimi slipping on his own blood looking for his ear. All of which, I was happily absent for and blissfully unaware of up until seeing Jimi at the hospital.
The blue glow of the photocopier rolls on and I'm sitting in a living room. The white paint has changed with age into the colour of a well-used urinal. The coffee table is dusted with cigarette ash and the room is furnished with used 30 year old furniture. Everyone is staring off silently and the moist hot air of July marks the rooms presence, leaving me with the feeling of a wax coating over my skin. I'm thinking of Jimi and his ear. Everyone tried to make light of the situation with friendly jokes, I got him a Van Gogh print and a bottle of absinthe for his birthday. The fun thing about absinthe is... well... nothing. Its expensive, tastes terrible and makes me act insane.
Drinking Absinthe. I was separated from my group of friends at an after-hours bar that night. I somehow managed to make the acquaintance of an Azerbaijani Importer/Exporter. I haggled with him over the unit price of a Russian built armoured car and the cost of body armour. Later, I found him in an altercation with a biker. Obviously the most logical thing to do when you see a 5ft 6 Azerbaijani being pinned against the wall by a 6ft 5 biker, is to put your self right in there. Go ahead! Don't just walk into the jaws of hell with a stupid drunken look on your face, run screaming all the way down. So I tapped the guy on the shoulder,
"So ah, whats your name pal?" I asked oh-so-cleverly.
"Buzzsaw."
"Really? Is that Czech?"
Anyone who can get away with calling themselves Buzzsaw is called that for a reason. Seeing that the etymology of names was not Buzzsaw's interest, I changed the topic to shotgunning a pint of beer. I found out sitting in my friends living room the next day that I beat Buzzsaw in a drinking contest, then took a bite out of my pint glass, chewed the glass and spit out the pieces. I then left the bar, found my friends waiting outside, was asked for a cigarette by a crackhead and told him to start running. I then proceeded to chase the crackhead for a city block. The troubling thing is that I still haven't gone to a hospital about the glass but I do have an appointment with the Azerbaijani on Thursday regarding a Russian armoured car.
I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing.
After the revolution in Russia and once Stalin had come to power, he instituted a series of five year plans which were designed to industrialize his country to the equivalent levels of its western counterparts. One of the ideas was to plant North American corn as an alternative to wheat because of its variety of uses and higher food yield. However, Russia did not have a national economy sufficiently adaptable for the introduction of a new industry, so the corn rotted in the fields.
I'm staring at the print pattern on the walls of my cubicle. I put away my days work and head home to my one room apartment. Once I get inside I find the timer on my coffee maker is still working. However, instead of coffee I have a packet of instant noodles cooking in the decanter to save the trouble of preparing a meal when I get home. I recently got a goldfish for my birthday so I walk over to its bowl and drop in a flake of fish food which he eats instantly.
My fish is named "The Glorious Five Year Plan".
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