After Dark

The pubs fill up.
The guards fall asleep.
The streetlamps' yellow haze reflects in the sidewalk end puddles.
Thoughts faulter between everything and nothing.


And the high tide washes it clean for tomorrow.

Mm Mmmmmmm Mmmmm

Mmmm Mmmmm,
M mmm'm mmmm mmmm mm mmm mmmm mmmm'm mmmmmmm mmmm mmmm.

M mmmm mmm, mmm m mmmm mmmmmm mmmm mmm. M mmmmm mmmm m mmmm mmmmm mmm mmmmm mmm mmm, mmm M mmmmmmm mmm mmmm mm mmm. M mmmmm M mmm mmmmm.  Mmm mmm mmm M mmm mm mm mmmmmm mmmmm mmmmm mm mmmmmmm M mmmm mmmm mmm mmm mmmm mmm mm mmmmmmmm mm mmmm mm mmmm.

M mmmm mmm mmm mm mm mmmm.

M mm mmmmmm. Mm mmmmm mmm mmmm mmmmmm... mmmmm?

Mmmmm.

Mmmmm,
Mmmm

My Suit in a Bag

The mall. It seems quant that it would end here. Originality points: zero. I suppose it's the by-product of watching too many 70s horror movies and a naivity in thinking a new shirt would be a duct-tape solution to the sickness anyone I can meet will soon feel.

"What are they doing? Why do they come here?"
"Some kind of instinct. Memory, of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives."

I first noticed the change this weekend after buying a pack of smokes from the BP in Dinkytown. I walked out of the building when my eyes connected to a girl sitting in a car waiting for her friend to fill up. Blue. Disconsolate. Despairing. Despondent. Ravenous.

She watched me get in my car, unblinking. I pulled onto University and up to the red 11th Ave. stoplight. The car she was in stopped next to me and I could feel her stare from the passenger seat. "She's just looking for the same thing as everyone else," I reassured myself.

"They're after us. They know we're still in here."
"They're after the place. They don't know why, they just remember. Remember that they want to be in here."

I turned off onto East River Road and drove along the banks haunted by her eyes.

But she wasn’t the only one. Walking to class on Monday, I saw it again in the face of a girl waiting to get on the bus.

She was infected too. It strangled her thoughts, twisted her face. Her hair, quickly tied up. Her focus, blankly into the concrete sidewalk.

What could cause such pain?

I had forgotten these questions and the incident by the time I left for a concert that evening. When I returned I noticed a deep scratch across my chest, just above my heart (visible in a recent facebook photo).

Fuck, I’ve been bitten. No, I can’t be. My shirt isn’t ripped. It’s probably nothing. I’m over-reacting.

The next morning everything was different. A new color filled my reality. I couldn't shake the random moments of my mind screaming, drowning.

A call from a friend broke my penance, “Let’s go to the mall, there is a sale this weekend at Banana Republic.” Anything to fill the void.

In the car, it picks up again. I’m walking inside.

It’s getting worse now. I sit down on a bench, writhing. Everyone oblivious.

I can feel it pulsing in my body, vibrating within every fiber of my being: shaking my soul to silence.

"The normal question, the first question is, are these cannibals? No, they are not. Cannibalism in the true sense of the word implies an interspecies activity. These creatures cannot be considered human. They prey on humans. They do not prey on each other, that's the difference. They attack and they feed only on warm flesh. Intelligence? Seemingly no reasoning ability, but basic skills remain from a remembered everyday life. There have been reports of these creatures using tools. But even these are the most basic, the use of tools as bludgeons and so forth. I might point out that even animals have been known to adopt the use of tools in this manner. These creatures are nothing but pure, motorized instinct."

I am poisoned, sadism--setting in. I must resist. I am stronger, I can't be broken. I am
















Hello.

I'm Brad, nice to meet you.

Are you free this weekend?

Dinner and a movie?

I'll see you at eight.

Everything You've Come to

As fall semester was ending, I had taken to wearing a bandana over my face when longboarding around campus to keep warm. It has the wonderful side-effect of scaring people out of your way as well. For some reason, clipping along at 15mph doesn't have the same 'don't walk in front of me' without looking as though I've just stepped out of a spaghetti western. Longboarding is an odd activity; normally I see it as a means to an end, but late at night it has a soul of all its own. I had been working late on a Sunday night with a few friends in the ChemE undergrad lounge. When I came outside I found Washington completely empty. I walked into the street, took off my headphones, stopped my music, and started home—carving from curb to curb. Not a single car or person the entire five blocks. It was a morning post-snowstorm run down through the forest–the light posts my trees; the neon lights my powder—laying the first tracks of the day.

Over winter break I had two episodes of sleep paralysis within a week, excluding the one mid-December. Sleep paralysis is characterized by “partial or complete skeletal muscle paralysis during the hypnopompic or hypnagogic states. In other words, it is the sense of being aware that one is unable to move or speak while falling asleep or waking up. Sleep paralysis may also be accompanied by hypnagogic hallucinations. These hallucinations can be auditory, tactile, and/or visual.” (Wiki Link). What this brief summery leaves out is these dreams are often the real hardcore nightmares you experience. Because you’re initially awake, it tends to start ‘real’ before you begin hallucinating due to the chemicals numbing your body. At first I began to think that I was having an increase in frequency but have since realized I’m just better at identifying them. Talking with others I think everyone has one or two a year, and I think I’m at five for 2006—not much to worry.

Due to my mild away-message-checking-ocd and clichéd lyric posting, I happened upon a man that had Bob Dylan’s songwriting, Frank Sinatra singing, and a touch of Marlon Brando ala Streetcar Named Desire combined into one French (rather Flemish) artist. Jacques Brel (Wiki). Amsterdam (youtube video). Ne Me Quitte Pas (youtube video) – the saddest love song I believe I’ll ever hear.

I was out last week to visit a buddy who is enjoying a small break before starting his new job and found Uptown’s normally bustling midday streets eerily vacant, due in part to the unbearable wind tearing through the corridors of concrete and brick. One man stood indifferent. Wedged between Hennepin, Emerson, and 24th, the statue of Thomas Lowry stared vacantly westward down Hennepin away from the city, top-hat in hand. The statue was originally erected at the intersection of Hennepin and Lyndale in 1915, a tribute to the man who created the first streetcar system in the city. When the memorial was moved in the 1960s to Smith Triangle Park to facilitate the tunnel system, Lowry’s son had already run the company and died, and the entire Twin Cities Rapid Transit system had been dismantled due to money and politics by 1949. Looking at him I couldn’t help but feel as though he held a bit of sorrow in his posture, or maybe his eyes were set a bit too deep and the setting sun gave him a look of concern. “Here, hold my hat. I’ll be right back.” just longing to escape to anyplace but here. Or maybe that was just me.





Believe. Fear. Love. Remember.