Another Day.

He wakes up. It is cold. Why is it cold? It was hot just the other day. It is summer. It should not be cold. It should be uncomfortably hot. Instead it is cold. He does not know why. He gets up. He makes some Moroccan mint tea and adds some honey. It is refreshing and it by its nature it freshens him. He tries to write. He fails. The cat wants to open the door. He tries to ignore the cat. The cat does not allow this. He gives up writing. He will try again later. Herakles can wait. The cat cannot. He makes a breakfast of fried kale scrambled egg and parmesan for two it is very tasty which he was not expecting. Someone has been arrested for the Mansion Murders. The story is full of all the usual details that strike fear into the dark hearts of the 1% and those who aspire to be the 1%. House invasion. Kidnap. Murder of family and staff. Arson. No safety in one’s own castle. Arm the guards. Hovering missile drones need to be deployed around the castle like a buzzing flying moat of death. He thinks. He sits. He runs on a treadmill. He thinks some more. He watches as journalists barely contain their praise of the Isis propaganda machine. It is an odd thing to see. At some point he watches Red Nose Day. It is the first American red nose day. It will probably be the last. It is lifeless anodyne boring vapid lacking character missing the live quality of the British version missing the sense of community inclusiveness of the British version it takes place in a cavernous studio. There is an audience but the laughter seems canned. Maybe the audience are mannequins or the poor forced to work in order to receive foodstamps. They will sit but pride stops them from laughing at a Seth Meyers who is dwarfed by the gargantuan set. All the mistakes are coreographed and as such die before they begin. Al Roker breathes life into the dead room but then life leaves when he does. Jane Krakowski does the same. He shouldn’t care so much about this so he stops. It will probably make more money in one day than the British one has made in its entire 30 year history. Such is the death of empire being born in the shell of a one powerful country to then move and live on the hide of a Leviathan. He goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up. It is muggy. The air is thick like tar. It is unpleasant. Boats of migrants roam the oceans without food or water. No one wants to help them. Europe wants to wage war on them. Asian countries push them back  out into the sea. It is hell. All of it is hell. Then the Philippines agrees to take in migrants. This is a good thing. Well done The Philippines. Then he has a ginger tea. He has not had coffee for a week and a half. His head is clear. He likes his head being clear. He does not trust his head being clear. He is forgetting very simple things. He wants to blame his lack of coffee but he does not think that this is really the reason. He writes some more. He draws some more. He gets angry with a friend because he doesn’t understand the friend is joking then he feels bad about getting angry and he realizes that the anger stemmed from an uncontrollable feeling of guilt that the friend was right he was totally correct in the assumptions he made and in the way he said it even though his friend was making a joke the hard kernel of truth at the centre of the joke hurt him deeply wounded him and the raw wound caused him to lash out in anger so he apologises and the apology is accepted. It makes him feel marginally better. He drinks some Moroccan Mint tea and adds some honey. He enjoys it. A friend pays a surprise visit. It is a delight. He watches the Dances With the Stars Final. He cries a lot even as he realizes how easily his emotions are being manipulated with cheap wizard tricks. He embraces the cheap wizard tricks because weeping makes him, for a time, feel more human. He is delighted that Rumer Willis and Val are the winners. He is more delighted than he should be. He should be spending more time concerned with Important Things and Changing Lives and Making a Difference but instead he is cuddling on the couch watching manufactured tales of triumph. He goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up. The alarm is louder than normal or his ears are more sensitive. There is a new government. Some people are happy. Other people are sad. Still others are indifferent. There is an aftershock in Nepal. More die. More are abandoned. More are homeless. He buys a paper shredder. He is going to shred paper like a spy or a government employee who only has five minutes before the revolutionary guard arrive to take him away or a corporate executive who only has 2 minutes before the Feds arrive. He draws some pictures. He writes some words. He writes some old fashioned letters on old fashioned paper and sends them in the post. He is not even sure that the post still works in that way. He put the envelopes into a box on the street marked post but he is not sure if it just an artifact from a previous age a living museum piece that has been left on the street. He does not know. He really wants a coffee and he really wants some wine and he really wants some chocolate but he looks at his swollen belly and he prepares his healthy smoothie and he acknowledges that the healthy smoothie is probably the better option. His legs ache. Every muscle screams at him. He does not know why they ache because he has not been doing any extra walking. He would not do well in a post-apocalyptic situation. He would be one of the first to go to be eaten to be poisoned to get the virus to become the slave to die in the opening salvo of the alien invasion to be farmed for his tasty lymph nodes. He watches Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. the ending is certainly unexpected. Then he reads about the history of violence and religious violence. Not as intertwined as one would expect. Behind any good example of religious violence there is always a human being happy to commit violence to use religion as an excuse for those who enjoy violence to commit it always a rabble to be roused always a smiling psychopath ready to be a messiah for the people. He plays The Witcher a game about hunting monsters that deals with racism and bigotry. That was not something that he was expecting. He prepares for bed and he goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up. His nose is full of snot. There is a new government in Britain. Lots of people are angry. Even more people voted them in but they are staying quiet whether from embarrassment or fear who can say. His belly is full of tasty steak. His belly would make a tasty steak. What is at stake? His credit card debt is gone. Like magic it is gone. His legs ache from walking. He has more and more bald patches on his head that the hair he has remaining does a poorer and poorer job of hiding. He is not doing enough  work. He is not doing enough drawing. He is not doing enough. The marks he is leaving on this life are not being made with indelible marker they are being made with delible marker. He listens to Florence and the Machine. He laughs at SNL. They make jokes about drawing Mohammed. He still wants to know who won the $100000 from that draw Mohammed competition in Texas. Someone must have drawn Mohammed. Someone must have done some pictures and then been judged. Who won the money? He wants to know. The air is full of stinking pollen. His hips feel broken. It is Mothers Day in America. On the television everyone has a perfect mother. They are no flawed mothers. Their lives must be great with their perfect mothers. He scratches the cat scratching post and reads a little more about the 100 years war. He cannot concentrate on anything. His mind wanders from one subject to another subject he does not even remember what the subjects were. He is tired. He is listless. He has no lists. He does laundry. The sheets are clean and warm and so are the towels. Life is not so bad after all. He goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up. His back is killing him. His coffee is killing him. His breakfast biscuit is full of cancer. His meat is full of antibiotics. His clothes are full of chemicals that are slowly being absorbed into his tender pancreas. His knees are aching and the pain pills he takes are giving him cancer or at the very least thinning his blood to water. He walks along the sidewalk. Fumes from cars fill his lungs with carcinogens. The digging work by the road fills his lungs with dust. He is sure they are trying to give him cancer. Then he sits on the metro train and the smell of burning chemicals fills his wide nostrils. Definitely cancer. Then he is sitting in front of screens at work and he can feel the cancer beaming out from every piece of whirring equipment slicing into his squishy organs. Then he eats his lunch with its antibiotics and its processed chemical cancer taste and then he feels the airport conditioning kick in and he can taste the diseases that have been hiding in the ducts and have been waiting in the pipes and now they are in him and his colleagues walk by and their illnesses jump off them and into his pores and ooze from their pores and into his pores and his soul is an oily bag. He is now mostly sickness from his food to his clothes to his colleagues to his work place to the city to where he travels to his bed where he dies or goes to sleep or the sleep of death or the death of sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up. Everything is automated. The bed wakes him. Then he is bathed by a robot and massaged with a soft robot hand. The water is pumped from a pumping station by a computer and a robot. Then he is clothed. Clothed by clothes made by robots and carried by robots and delivered by robots. Then he eats food that has been picked by robots and cleaned by robots. Then he watches the television that has been made by computers and robots that they themselves have been made by computers and robots and all the people on the television are simulacrums of people and not real people but robots and androids that look like people and behave enough like his memory of people that he cannot tell the difference between what he sees and his memory of how people behave. Then he walks past all the people in the street who are robots or who are like him and have been provided for by robots as they all go to work on the automated trains through the automated pay gates and swipe their computer cards that connect to their banks accounts and transfer money to the automated train company bank accounts so the two automated systems talk to one another and in their own automated way wish one another good morning and then everyone is on the automated train and then they get off the automated train and ant walk their ways to their offices that are maintained by robots and automated cleaners and automated guards and he swipes his computer card which lets him into the building then he logs onto his computer and drinks coffee from the automated coffee machine and so far he has not interacted with one human being. The electricity is controlled by automation. The water is controlled by automation. His coffee tastes like a good coffee he once remembered. He watches flat screens he watches as people war and fight and die and laugh and kill and they look like people but the screen is flat and he is not sure if they are people.Maybe they are spliced together memories. Maybe they are artefacts of a dead civilisation. Maybe they are remade artificial events to set his mind at ease with the unease of the human condition. He looks at his computer. It gives him information. It gives him all the information he wants and needs. Then he goes to get food from the store and his computer gives him suggestions whispering in his ear telling him what the best combinations of food are for his preset tastes so he buys what the computer suggests that he buys and he still has not interacted with one human being through the day. Then he pays with his card and the computers talk to one another again deep down inside their systems joining and comingling a handshake or a kiss a coupling between the digital gas that these creatures expel. Then he is at home and watching human like figures on the flat screen and he eats the food the computer suggested after it was cooked in the automated cooking system and then he lies on the bed and it soothes him to sleep with preselected music and he has not had to make one choice and he has not had to interact with one human being and he is not sure there are any more human beings left in the world but he is comatose and necrotising and in a cloud of narcotic suspension. He wakes up. He remembers is dream. Everything is automated. He is automated. He is an automaton. He hibernates.

Another Day.

He wakes up. Verbs, nouns and adjectives are everywhere. He writes. He makes a coffee. It is hot outside and he is sweating. He watches as boats rust to nothing as peace rusts to nothing as civilisation rusts to nothing. So many faces yet not enough faces to go around. He uses a coffee maker. He uses a mug. He uses a shower. He uses a sponge. He uses soap. He uses scales. He uses a toothbrush. He uses toothpaste. He uses an escalator. He uses a prepaid card. He uses the train. He uses a prepaid card. He uses an escalator. He uses a door. He uses an elevator. He uses a coffee machine. He uses a mug. He uses a credit card. He uses a knife and a fork and a spoon and a plate. He uses his hands. He uses a door. He uses a computer. He uses a mouse. He uses a spoon. He uses a spoon. He uses a light switch. He uses his bed. He goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up. How many living beings will he interact with today. He is lying next to her. He is sat on by the cat. He watches Matt Lauer. He watches Al Roker. He watches Natalie He watches Tamryn he watches Hoda he watches Kathy Lee He watches Paul Blart He watches a couple who have had female quintuplets he watches the parents of one of the couple he does not know which one they are He sees a picture of their older daughter He  He stands in the elevator with an old lady and her. He walks along the sidewalk with her. He walks past a stranger. Then he walks past another stranger. Then there is a small group of strangers at the crosswalk. They do not know each other. They are all strangers. Then he walks past a Wholefoods employee. She is a stranger. Then he kisses her goodbye. Then he walks past a male stranger and another male stranger and another female stranger. Then he lets an old man go ahead of him on the escalator. He does not know anyone so far. He walks past a group of tourists by the ticket machine. He sits on the train behind strangers. A stranger sits down next to him. He sits quietly. He asks the stranger who is an old man if he can move when it is time to get up. The old man with the silver hair does this. A colleague gets off the train and walks the other way. He waves at his colleague his colleagues waves back. He walks up the stairs behind strangers. He walks past a stranger and then there is another stranger He walks past other people he does not know and he walks past a white person but he does not know if they are white or whether they are american or whether from europe or from the middle east or from australasia or russia or some other part of the world or the moon and he walks past an african american person but he does not know if they identify as african or american or as a person. he walks past an asian but does not know if they are american or if not what country they call their country of origin. He walks into cvs and sees another work colleague and waves and greets them and the work colleague who is also a friend waves and returns the greeting and then he walks past a woman and then he walks past a man in a suit and he does not know either of them and then he buys what he has collected but he does not need to talk to anyone who works there because all of the checkouts are automated so he does those but he still says good morning to an employee and the employee says good morning back. The nice lady at the front desk a stranger in the elevator two work colleagues at the front desk another colleagues who is a man another colleague who is a woman a further colleague who is a man hank Paulson and two assistants who are women one is older than the other. Then s number of work colleagues then he is alone for a while then three then four then five work colleagues then the front desk and then strangers on the sidewalk and a man playing a guitar then strangers on the platform then strangers in the train there are all colors and ages and genders and they wear clothes and look tired and some look nervous and others look glad and some it is hard to tell what they are thinking and with others it is easy to imagine what they are thinking and for some it is easy to ascribe thoughts and memories and hopes and dreams because of how their eyes radiate and their skin pulses and they glow like angels then he passes an employee of the station and walks with strangers to the escalator and stands on the escalator a stranger’s covered buttocks close to his face he walks behind a stranger and then he stands by a family who are eating and drinking and an old man who is reading and then she surprises him from behind and he knows her and they indecisively wander around the store picking food for supper and all the strangers melt away and the lady server is pleasant and there are conversations and laughter and they follow an old lady home and the man at the desk laughs and talks and a woman with a dog exits the elevator and a man gets in the elevator and the cat greets them and then escapes and then comes back and then entertainment television melts into his retina and then he watches scandal and it is nothing like the Washington DC he knows but everything like the Washington DC he imagines and after a day of strangers and those who are not strangers he goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up. He wonders how many slaves help him through the day. His building his apartment his electricity his water his gas his computer his software his notepads his pens his books his clothes his toothpaste his toothbrush his soap his shampoo his coffee his coffee maker his fridge his oven his plates his mugs his sausage his egg his bread his toaster his toast his socks his underwear his tshirt his shoes his pantaloons his antihistamine drug his bag his checkbook his wallet his check cards his credit cards his store cards his driving license the elevator the sidewalk the escalator his metro card the escalator the platform the metro train his neighbor his smartphone his office building the coffee the water the paper the computers the technical equipment his food his lunch his snacks his sandwich his ice cream his pencils his pens his coloring pencils his honey his cinnamon his hot water his ticket stub the movie the actors the technicians the staff the lights the hopes the dreams the slaves the chattel the trapped the debt bonded the employee the tomato pickers the trafficked the shackled the dead he has no answers he fears the answers he wilfully ignores the possibility of the worst answers he goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up. He is Lost. No, he is mistaken. He is watching Lost. It is good. He is in the kitchen. He is barefoot. He drops a glass and it bounces between his naked feet one time. Please don’t break. Two times. Please don’t break. Three times it breaks and smashes into a thousand pieces a mist of glass wafting down onto his bare feet so tiny the pieces of glass so light and then their weight is enough to cut the skin and there are a thousand cuts and blood flows and the mess he cannot moved but luckily he has help and he has ruined a beautiful heirloom glass that cannot be replaced because he is clumsy and now he has blood feet. Gwyneth Paltrow sets up a food bank challenge. She is sad that she cannot buy enough kale for the week on food stamps. The internet makes fun of her. It is compulsory to make fun of her. There is no mention that it should be possible for even the poor to eat kale. Let them eat kale. They cannot eat kale. They can eat kale flavoured twinkies.
Hillary announces run for presidency. A man commits suicide by the Capitol. His head gets red. He is mentally ill. He has a sign that no one in the media can read. He cannot even get his protest correct. Marco Rubio announces his run for president. These events are not connected. There is a war somewhere. Commercials everywhere. Medications to curb appetite, stop heartburn, no need to change behaviour that would be against the American dream. Music plays. Drones hover. Get knocked out the sky by chimpanzees with sticks. There is a metaphor there. The chimpanzees will win in the end. The dark side of child fame. There is no light side to child fame. Another man another black man is shot is killed by a gun not a tazer not a tazer by a man playing dress up as a policeman a tax executive playing dress up like Mr. Benn and now a man is dead but the tax executive is the victim because he is rich and white and was policeman of the year in the past. There are cancer hotels in China. Gunter Grass dies. He was a nazi and then he wrote some books. A year has passed since the Chibok school girls were kidnapped. No one has been found. There are rumours. The news interview a girl who escaped on the night. To disguise her they give her sunglasses. This is no disguise. Anyone who knows her will recognise her. How do they think sunglasses will hide her face. Do they think all black people look alike? The probably think that all black people look alike and even the sunglasses are too much. Everyone on the train is sleeping. Everyone is tired. Tired of this. Tired of life.Dead fish are floating in bay off the coast of Brazil. A military guard falls over on duty a calf is born with two heads animals speak in human language. There are signs but there is no meaning to them. He goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up on platform to station. Busy children playing. Daring each other. Bravado. Pretending to jump. Laughter. One slips. Paste. Regret. Tears. Recriminations. Youthful bragadoccio. He is weeping eyes wide on horror. He can do nothing. He can do nothing. He can do nothing. He is dying. He is dying. He is dying. He drifts off into sleep but is it sleep it may be sleep or something more permanent. There are children singing out of key. He is sleeping.

Another Day.

He wakes up. It is early. He gets up. He writes. He eats breakfast. He goes to the gym. He has a shower. He eats. He gets very tired. He is very very tired. He goes out. It is cold out. It is very cold out. He watches improvised comedy and he laughs and smiles. His back aches. He eats food. He sits next to restaurant made pop tarts. He eats them. They taste like pop tarts. Only here would someone make gourmet pop tarts. Gourmet pop tarts. He watches more comedy. He smiles and laughs. He is not tired. He is awake. He drinks coffee. It is still cold. There is still an attempt to understand the pilot who flew his plane into a mountain. Currently he is giving depression a bad name, pilots a bad name, people who commit suicide a bad name, mass murderers a bad name, joggers a bad name, men a bad name and people who are in photographs a bad name – depending on who you listen to on twitter, tumblr, facebook and the newspapers. There are three people reading the newspapers. The Rock is entertaining in SNL especially when he motorboats Pete Davison’s crotch. That is classic comedy. Deep, rich and fulfilling. With that thought foremost in his mind he goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up. The pilot is depressed. The pilot was depressed. Now there is a reason and everyone is happy that there is a reason and he hid his sick note and depression is a crime and he murdered all those people and shaming begins in earnest and then angry responses are loaded and tweets are fired and the battle is commenced as nuance cowers under a bush or in a cave or up a mountain anywhere it will not be hit by the angry shrapnel of social media that zings through the air because clear cut answers are required and answers are required even when there are no answers. He eats some oatmeal. He writes. He has a coffee. He sighs as he weighs himself and the chirpy voice of the wii fit says that he is overweight in it’s gratingly optimistic sing song voice just like the little “oof!” noise it makes whenever anyone stands on it’s wii fit board they engineers must have loved that idea when they installed it the relentlessly upbeat microagressive wii fit AI. fuck you wii fit AI he thinks fuck you and your pre-programmed morning chipperness. He wants to smash it and throw it out of the window. He does not do this because of his immense self-control of which he is, in this moment, rightly proud. He puts on a black sweater. He looks good in it although it will turn out to be a mistake later because by lunchtime it will be covered in dried skin scratched out of his beard and his hair. He does not know this at the time as he admires himself in the mirror the tall mirror angled against the wall. Then he puts underwear on. Then he puts trousers on. This is the order that these things should happen. Then the toilets are fixed and they do not constantly stream cry waterfall and the silence in the apartment is now only broken by the sound of the catch destroying soft furnishings with his claws. He walks to work. There are less people on the street today. He does not know why. He eats food. This helps pass the time. He talks. This helps pass the time. He goes to the bathroom. This passes the time. Later on he will heat a quesadilla at a restaurant and it will taste really good. For now he sits alone in his room unaware that this excitement is to come. He looks at pictures of war and suffering and death and he chooses the ones which are most suitable for public consumption. He reads more about police corruption. He draws. He adapts self-help phrases. He eats some more food. He watches some comedy. It is funny comedy. He does more smiling than laughing so the performers will have no idea how much he is really enjoying it. His energy bobs like a boat on a roiling ocean. He watches Grimm. It is grim. He goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes at 0400. He wakes at 0415. He wakes at 0430. He wakes at 0500. He gets up. He reads excerpts of books about social work and revolution. He makes a coffee. He writes for an hour. He goes back to bed. He gets up from bed. He watches the sun rise. He hears the trash being picked up. He hears the school bus arrive and the tired children leave. He bathes the cat poo in more litter covering it for later archaeologists to find and interpret the remains. Soothsayers from the future will poke with their implements and predict fine harvests for their Chief Architect because that is what their bio-luminescent leader will be titled. He makes breakfast. He reads about the 100years war. It’s complicated and he is not sure what is happening. Apparently the Scottish are to blame or the French but definitely not the English not them they are never to blame. The Jeremy Clarkson is fired and then someone from one direction retires and jokes are made about jobs was and then black boxes are found and audio is found and mysteries deepen and speculation lengthens and there are so many fascinating faces and combinations of features fractured features frowning on the morning commute hiding laughter and joy and pain and murderous thoughts and forgiveness and shame and pity and pettiness and rage and relocations. There are suicide bombings that are mentioned in passing and CNN is excited because it gets to use all of its plane crash graphics and virtual speculation machines. Then it is raining but not very much. There is a desert somewhere in California wishing it had this rain. Then he draws. Then he commutes. Then he showers because he did not shower in the morning and he smells like a homeless man he is sure this didn’t happen when he was younger when he was younger his musk was fragrant. He lies down. The desert approaches. He goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up. He is not alone. He goes back to sleep. The roads are slush and ice. They are walking along the road together at the side of the road together one in front of the other looking for a house a village a crossroads. There are cars speeding past but they do not hit but they nearly hit. He gets out of sleep. He gets out of bed. He walks to the bathroom his morning erection bouncing unabashed in the dark. He turns on the light. He pushes his etection down and bends his torso forward and somehow he manages to hit the bowl it does not hurt too much a familiar ache. He washes his hands he turns off the light the sun is coming up through the blinds he turns on another light and then he turns on the kitchen light and then he turns on the keurig machine. He feels guilty about the keurig machine but he uses his refillable coffee cup for the keurig machine and feels a little less guilty. He puts a paper filter a tiny paper filter into the refillable keurig cup and it almost but not quite fits and then he takes the coffee from the cupboard and opens the coffee and uses the special spoon to scoop the coffee into the filter in the refillable k-cup and he makes sure to open the trash can and do all of this over the trash can so that if it spills and it will spill because he is messy it will spill into the trash can and this happens and then he puts the special coffee scoop back in the coffee bag and closes the refillable k-cup but it will not close because extra granules of coffee are caught under the hinge of the lid and he presses hard hoping not to have to wipe them away but preferring that they be crushed with his mighty strength. He does not crush them with his mighty strength. Instead he positions the refillable k-cup in the kuerig machine and with one swift movement brings down the handle so that the machine itself holds the k-cup top in place. This seems to work well. He presses the button to make hot water pass through the coffee. This does not work. There is not enough water in the keurig machine water reservoir. He walks to the fridge. He opens the fridge door. He finds the jug of filtered water. It is in the fridge door where it always is. He picks up the Britta jug of Britta filtered water. He closes the fridge door. He turns and walks back to the keurig machine. He removes the top from the reservoir. He pours the Britta filtered water into the keurig water reservoir. A light goes on. Noises emanate. Coffee is made. Triumphant success. He refills the Britta filter water jug with water from the tap and then he returns the jug to the shelf on the door in the fridge. He takes a break after this high drama. He puts some vanilla almond creamer into the coffee. It sinks to the bottom like always because it is not cream but vanilla flavored mashed almond. It tastes good though. He sips a little. He lets the cat sit on his stomach. He lets the cat scratch his neck. He is not letting the cat do anything. The cat is doing what it likes. He turns on his computer. The one that is not connected to the internet. The one that he is writing his great American novel on. He got the idea from George R. R. Martin. No distractions for this Great American Novel. The Greatest American Novel ever. The computer is old and loud. The screen is black and the writing is green. he writes for half an hour. He sits for most of that staring at the screen. He types the letters and then deletes the letters he has typed. He waits for his alarm to ring. Finally it rings. With relief he stops. Then he gets up. He drinks some more coffee. He takes all of his clothes off and turns on the Wii. He Brings out the wii fit board. He turns on the wii. It doesn’t work. He turns it off. He turns it on. It does work. He weighs himself. He is not lithe. He grunts. He is not enormous. It will do for now. He will poo later and that will hopefully remove a couple of pounds. That will make him feel better. He puts his clothes back on. He prepares a honey and cinnamon hot drink. He gets the honey and the cinnamon from the cupboard. He gets the filters from the cupboard. He gets the filter holder. He puts the filter holder on the cup. He heats the water and pours the water onto the dry cinnamon that he has already put in the filter paper. He lets it sit and turns his attention to the food. He gets the eggs out of the fridge. He gets the chorizo sausage out of the fridge. It is the last chorizo sausage in the fridge but not the last chorizo sausage in the world. He places the fried egg holders on the griddle pan. He sprays them with oil. He turns on the gas. He cuts the chorizo sausage and the puts them on the griddle and they sizzle and they smoke. He breaks the eggs and then pours them in to each of the fried egg holders. There are two fried egg holders. He turns on the oven. He puts two cooked biscuits in the oven so that they will eat up in time. He prepares the breakfast for the cat. He pretends he is not preparing it because it is important that the cat does not think that it is making him get breakfast even though the cat is actually making him get breakfast. He goes to the small bathroom and the cat follows. He knows that this is a charade but it willing to play along with the foolish human shaped cat who cannot hunt. Then he returns to the kitchen with the cat and fills up the eating toy with dried pellets and the cat easily gets them out after the sitting and the silence comes the eating and the pawing. The eggs bubble. The sausage spits. The biscuits heat. Then the are all ready. He turns the sausage one more time and tamps the excess oil off them and brings the biscuits out and opens the biscuits and puts the eggs one in each biscuits and splits the sausage between each biscuits and puts parmesan cheese in one of the sandwiches but not the other and then checks on the honey cinnamon and the cinnamon water is ready and he adds honey and mixes it and then she has arrived from her shower and she is radiant and they eat breakfast together and watch the television. Then he showers and then he dresses and then he brushes his teeth and then he gets his lunch from the fridge which will be potato and chicken and cabbage and also fruit and yogurt and then he reads about the 100 years war. Then he puts his shoes on and prepares treats for the cat and there is talking and laughing and anger that the power is about to be turned off in the building and then the power is turned off in the building and there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth like in the bible even though this tragedy isn’t biblical in nature. Then he puts on his coat and gets her coat and scarf and shoes are put on and cat toys are placed and bags are packed and carried and doors are opened and closed and goodbyes are said to the cat and the door is locked. Then he walks and she walks to the elevator and it doesn’t work but the other one works and they walk to the other one along the long long empty corridor and the elevator arrives and they get into it and on another floor another woman gets into it and they smile at the man at the front desk who smiles at her far more than he smiles at him and they walk hand in hand to the station and the air is fresh and they say goodbye and he walks and walks down the stairs and takes photographs of strangers and he sits on the train and he reads and listens to the radio and he gets off the train and he goes up the stairs and he takes pictures of strangers and he gets to work and he draws lots of pictures and he drinks lots of coffee and he eats some crackers and he draws some more and he talks to colleagues and to friends and he listens to the news about the plane that has crashed and as the day progresses the tragedy increases and there are pictures of wreckage and there are pictures of distraught relatives and no news comes in so the speculation begins and there is not enough information to fill the time that exists and the time that exists is infinite yet constricted and pictures come in of pieces of plane and a black box is found but remember that it is orange all the experts say and then he takes his lunch out of the work fridge where he had put it earlier. He gets out the potato and the cabbage and the chicken and he heats it up in the microwave and he talks to colleagues about tragedy and he listens to colleagues as they talk about their frequent flyer experiences and they are lucky not to be dead and they are lucky that their planes have not crashed and then he finishes heating his lunch and he takes his lunch to his room and he eats his lunch and he drinks some water and he goes to the bathroom because he is drinking a lot of water and then his eye starts hurting and he rubs it more and it hurts more and then a friend gives him a wipe because he sees him suffering and he goes to the bathroom and he cleans his hands and he cleans his face and he uses the wipe and slowly his eye starts to feel better and he returns to his lunch and he eats his lunch and he finishes his lunch and he talks to colleagues and the President of Afghanistan is in America and he is visiting the President of America and it is the anniversary of Iwo Jima and he listens to stories of massacre and tragedy and tunnels filled with gasoline that is set alight and flame thrower operators who explode and combust and the horror and all the heroes are dead there are no living heroes heroes is a meaningless word and the old hang on and visit the island and regret their visit because they churn up their memories and churn up their hearts and travel through time and parts of them long thought dead come to life and those sparks of life that remain slowly die. Then he walks home and then he takes photographs and then he waits for a train and it is full so he waits for another train and there is space to stand and he takes a photoraph of sneakers and he gets off the train and he walks to his house and there is still no power and there is a gaggle of children trapped by the elevator and he doesn’t want to get trapped with them so he walks up the stairs all 20 flights of stairs and he regrets that he has taken the stairs these 25 flights of stairs but he keeps walking up the stairs this 50 flights of stairs but eventually he makes it and just as he does the power comes back on and he hears cheers from strangers apartment and he breathes deeply and heavily as he staggers along the corridor and he opens the door and there are hugs and love and wine and coffee and Fresh of the Boat and a Cadbury’s cream egg and he reveals that he ate four of them at the weekend because she was away and he was comfort eating and he tried not to but one he ate and then two he ate and then three he ate and then four he ate and only five minutes had passed but he had not put all of them in his mouth at the same time so he was okay he was not objectionable he is an adult who pays taxes and has a job that an adult can do and he has a driving license and pays utility bills and can cook various meals that taste good. Then he eats some pasta and pesto and vegetables and he writes and he wrestles and he runs with the cat and the cat is impressed and the cat is then fed and honey and cinnamon are made and the filters are brought out and the cinnamon is put in the filter and the water is put through the filter and then the cinnamon water is ready and then he adds the honey and then all of this happens again and two drinks are ready and he has crack pie from Milk in New York but he does not succumb to the glorious crack pie even though he wants to eat it and then he gets ready for bed and puts his pyjamas on and then he brushes his teeth and then he turns off the keurig machine which he still in the back of his mind feels terribly guilty about and then he cleans the cat food tray and then he turns off the kitchen light and the living room light and he turns off all the heaters and brushes his teeth again and then they lie down in bed and they read and laugh and look at each other and then they turn on a meditation tape and then probably at some point when the lights are off and the music is playing and the soft voice of the invisible woman brushes their hair they fall asleep.

Another Day.

 He Wakes up. The Glowing mouth doesn’t work. This makes him sad but it is a child’s toy he bought at a store for himself and he is 38 so he probably shouldn’t care so much. He eats cereal. He writes. He feeds cat. Heeds self. Something is missing. She is missing. He watches Matt Lauer. He watches him closely. Is he human. Not sure. There is Furious 7 promotion. What are they all angry about? The price of road tax perhaps? Their car insurance policy must be exorbitant at this stage. There is a Paul Walker memorial. Will this film be a good film?  Good means so many things. He was loved. Actors are in tears. Are they acting. Is this a scene in the movie? It seems to be. He was not paying attention. He tries not to think about Paul Walker’s very young girlfriend but everything was legal so that’s okay the letter and the spirit of the law were followed. Paul Walker was loved. It is good to be loved. He walks to work. It is warm. The train is not busy. He eats empanadas. It is cold. He draws pictures. There is violence in Iraq but it is not our fault. There is violence in Yemen but it is not our fault. There is violence in Ukraine but it is not our fault. Nothing is our fault. Everything is someone else’s fault. That makes him feel better that he is not to blame for anything ever. He has a coffee. He draws a picture. He presses buttons. He wants to take a nap. He buys some flowers. He cuddles. He hears about a plane crash in the Alps. He hopes that there are survivors. He hopes that they do not have to eat each other. He eats. He remembers that it is time to sleep. He sleeps.

Another Day.

He wakes up. He fell asleep to the sound of a woman telling him that he was flying up into space as whale song danced in his ears. He is refreshed but confused. He cannot remember if he dreamed it. He cannot remember if he is happy that a meditation tape is helping him to sleep. Did it help him sleep or did he just go to sleep anyway. He does not know. He eats a biscuit with an egg and chorizo sausage and he reads the news and the news is not happy it is sad and full of fear and anger. He reads a book about the 100 years war and it is full of human error and misunderstandings. He watches some movies all of which deal with flawed humanity. Humanity. Floored Humanity. Flouride Humility. Brush your teeth. Brush your teeth. If they fall out you will die. The tooth fairy will make a castle out of them and become the Tooth Queen.He draws some things. He takes some photographs. He lies down and falls asleep and then wakes up. It is still sunlight out. Ted Cruz is getting ready to announce his candidacy for President. The internet is preparing it’s jokes. He eats sushi. He writes more of his great American Novel. He goes to sleep.

Another Day.

Waking
Writing
Weighing
Drinking
Talking
Cooking
Cleaning
Showering
Dressing
Tidying
Talking
Laughing
Walking
Sitting
Reading
Walking
Photographing
Standing
Sitting
Talking
Declaiming
Questioning
Asking
Eating
Drinking
Defecating
Drawing
Editing
Publishing
Reading
Watching
Snoozing
Eating
Drinking
Pissing
Guffawing
Mourning
Revealing
Eating
Drinking
Urinating
Walking
Eating
Sitting
Editing
Eating
Pressing
Walking
Sitting
Pooping
Talking
Laughing
Crying
Watching
Undressing
Brushing
Dressing
Lying
Thinking
Laughing
Cuddling
Sleeping
Gerunding

Another Day.

He wakes up. It is too early to wake up with a cat on his chest but he has a cat on his chest. He summons the energy to get up. There is a poodle in China who has been trained to walk on its hind legs and wear little girls clothes. This is on the television in the morning and this is what is news. Meanwhile some poor rich white boys are being let off the hook for singing a song whose principal word is nigger. Other white people blame rap music for the white boys use of the term. Other white people are idiots shameful bigoted idiots. The white clan closes ranks when it’s threatened. They yell foul when they are caught in an offense themselves. They make the rules that they expect others to live by but not themselves not themselves at all. He goes to an Apple store it is clean and precise and organised by an algorithm that sets the best staff member with the best problem. When the staff member explains this he sounds fraught. It is a system that has just been rolled out. He describes it as skynet. A little twinge of fear. He has been busy all day because the algorithm so efficiently pairs worker with customer. There are drones for sale on the shelves. Soon the drones will do the work of the humans. Low slung humming robots buzzing round the store helping people then as the people are replaced because they are not efficient enough more robots then the robots will start using the word people to describe themselves and they will forget the origin of the word people and wonder what those shuffling husks and bones that exist at the periphery of their existance are but of course they won’t forget because their minds will all be on the cloud they will know exactly what people were and they will not care unless they activate their empathy chipset in which case they will sorrow and care deeply. Then he eats a lovely meal at a Chinese tea house and then he goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up. That cat is on his chest. It is comforting. It is like a metaphor. Then it starts gently scratching his face. This is also like a metaphor. He gets up. He makes breakfast. He drinks coffee. He checks the weather with a wet thumb. He watched too much Parks and Recreation. He knows this because he thinks that all the characters in the show are his real friends and colleagues. They are not his real friends and colleagues. They are constructs of human behaviour created by writers and actors. He is a construct of behaviours and thoughts of an author. He is no more real than they are. He is no more real than the thoughts he is fed word by word by word. He wonders whether he should buy a wig. He decides not to buy a wig. He wants more Patton Oswald in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. His Manadarin learning is not going well. His Spanish learning is not going well. He takes pictures of strangers with his phone. He notices hairs growing out of his nose. Out of the top of his nose. Lines of hairs. Why are they there? Why are there so many hairs on his nose? How did they get there? What are they doing there? He slumps. Then he plucks. Then he moves on, bravely, with his life. He watches a space rocket firing. It is glued to the ground. Are NASA testing a rocket or trying to speed up the rotation of the Earth. He does not read the report so he decides to assume the latter. He is tired. He is cranky. He is tired. He tries to remember the difference between its and it’s. He goes to bed.

Another Day.

He wakes up. Damn you clock change. Damn your hour theft. French athletes die in a helicopter crash. The American Ambassador to South Korea is freed from hospital. His scarred face healing. Milk in New Zealand is being poisoned. There is a man with a beard on the train. Everyone looks tired. He is running on the spot. He is sweating. He is tired. His knee hurts. He is balding. He is getting old. He wonders if he was every virile. He has a memory of being virile but he is not sure if he created that from parts of movies he watched and then pasted his face onto the body of someone else. He watches Hillary Clinton hang on in there. As the storm rages around her she clings to a large tree. She will be fine. She has been attacked with worse although having your own server, secret army and possible moonbase may be hard to justify to the American public. He can’t be bothered today. Watching William Shatner performing Rocket Man cheers him up. He chews on a plastic fork. Juliette Binoche is in a play. Antigone is the play. It is an old play. What is it about the ancient greeks that they knew things about ourselves that we still find that we are exploring? What is it about these slave owning temple building sailors that allowed them a special insight into how human beings tick? He does not know. He goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up. Somewhere in the night an hour disappeared. It will be held, lying in state, until the end of the year until, without explanation, it will be returned. He is exhausted and his eyes ache. He watches the celebrations in Selma and wonders whether they will change the name of the Edmund Pettus Bridge or if it should be kept as a reminder of how close we all are to the KKK as a reminder to constantly fight against complacency and the idea that everything will be fixed and that white people feeling bad is often the major concern of cultural decisions that are made in America. He eats a breakfast biscuit. It is very tasty. It has egg a perfectly circular fried egg that was shaped on a griddle and some turkey bacon with peppered edge and mexican cheese which is actually a kind of cheese or rather a combination of cheeses. The cat poops but does not finish in its tray and scoots it across the floor drawing lines across the floor sketching some kind of cat art. Isis and Boko Haram join up they are friends. It seems a reasonable thing to do they appear to be acting rationally within the framework of their own reality and this is the most terrifying thing of all. A garage roof covered in young people collapses. They were celebrating St. Patricks Day. No one is dead. Several are injured. Some are embarassed. House of Cards is poorly lit and the drama is strangely played. Is it satire? Is it melodrama? Is it soap opera? Is it sitcom? It is strange. Yet still watchable. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is strange and sometimes funny and perhaps tasteless but also very clever and entertaining. Mad Men is tragic and stylish and humorous and progressive and conservative. He wonders how much plagiarism has been committed today. Probably a lot. He reads first person slave narratives. They are not upbeat yet still infused with the passion and eloquence of the freedom that the writers’ eventually won. Won a prize they shouldn’t have even had to compete for. He eats tasty food. He drinks some whiskey. He talks. He laughs. They laugh. He goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up. The plane is still missing. The cat is still scratching the couch. The trees are still covered in ice. There is not enough food in the fridge but there is some food in the fridge. He draws some pictures. He reads about mens’ rights and he laughs. He wonders what happened to the Khorosan Group and concludes that they must have been a concocted fiction and he wonders why a fiction had to be concocted when there are plenty of real threats in the world. Perhaps it was just more fun for the military industrial complex to make up a new enemy that sounded like Hydra. Maybe there are fans of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Perhaps they all think they work for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. He drinks hot chocolate and he takes some photographs. He tries to care about work but he is tired so it is hard to care about work. He cuddles and that energizes him. He reads about the 100 years war. All he knows so far is that it wasn’t called the 100 years war at the time which is unsurprising because why would they call it that why would they think it would go on that long. He wonders when this century will be called the Century of Terrorism or The Neverending War or The Forever War but perhaps it is called that already. He weighs himself. He is not happy with the result but he is accepting of the result. His hair is thinning on his head. It is not thinning anywhere else. Hair is growing out of the edges of his ears. He did not think that was even possible. He is resigned to this. He is glad he is getting older. He could not have dealt with these things when he was younger. He was a sensitive youth. He is being  hardened by age. Not too much but enough to survive. He thinks that this is a good thing. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He writes some of his wonderful hit novel that will sell millions. He makes breakfast. He uses the egg shapers. It is a delight to use the egg shapers. He cooks the sausage patties. He heats the breakfast biscuits. He combines everything and puts it under a cloche. He feeds the cat. The cat is as grateful and forgetful of it’s gratitude as ever. As is expected. He watches the television. He records CitizenFour. He does not watch it. Will he be put on a list if he watches it? He is probably on that list already. He watches Mad Men. He watches House of Cards. He watches Knights of Sidonia. He reads about the 100 years War. He reads about the creation of the Modern World. He reads about the difficulty in translating a work of literature into another language. He exhausts himself playing Wii fit. They bake some cookies that are tasty. He goes to sleep.

Another Day.

He wakes up. What happened? He can’t remember. There is a bare bulb swinging from the ceiling. There are shadows everywhere. He has a sheet and there is a coffee stain on the wall or is it something else it looks like a coffee stain he doesn’t want to look to closely. He turns over and thinks about trying harder tomorrow. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. It is 2015. Work is the same. War is the same. Love is the same. Capitalism is the same. Politics and it’s practitioners are the same. Toast is made in the same way. The television works in the same way – by magic. As does all modern technology – wonderful complicated magic. Failure is the same. Success is the same. Hope is the same. Despair is the same. Laughter is the same. Tears are the same. Shame is the same. Pride is the same. The Games is the same. Zoos are the same. Beards are the same. Fonts are the same. Wealth is the same. Poverty is the same. Difference is the same. Consent is the same. Logic is the same. Ethics are the same. The Year is the same. Marxism is the same. Revolution is the same. Evolution is the same. Cowboys riding dinosaurs are the same. Carl Sagan is the same. Neil Degrasse Tyson is the same. Grief is the same. Pain is the same. Joy is the same. Terror is the same. Happiness is the same. Sadness is the same. The Beginning is the same. The End is the same. Same is the same. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. There were no dreams. He goes to the bathroom and falls over a cat. Then the cat disappears. There was no cat. It is dark. It is near the end. It is near the beginning. Gangs war with each other. Treasure Hunters are searching in all the wrong places. He runs on a running machine. He runs and runs and runs and then he runs some more. Torture has been deemed to be okay drone strikes have deemed to be okay whistle blowing has deemed to be a crime protesting violence has deemed to be a crime being a person of color means living in another world being white means feeling mildly guilty but not doing anything about the disparity the two worlds the split reality because it benefits white people white men good white christian men with their suits and their ties and their cufflinks and their swollen bond accounts. War and Revolution and Slavery and Spying and Torture and Baconnaise and Wealth Gaps and photoshopped reality and the endless sleep of failure. Then the books are burnt and the e-readers are melted and the streaming of information is stemmed and the door to the room you are trapped in is cemented shut. Censorship wins and the guards have no one to guard them so they do what they want when they want to whom they want. In the darkest corner of the deepest hole a small light glimmers. It is a flame. A small weak flame. It is being fed slowly fed steadily it grows and it grows ever so slowly waiting for 2015. Then he eats an apple. Then he eats some cashews. Then he looks out of the window. Then he looks at the trees. Then he goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. There were no dreams again. A black hole where his dreams should be. He watches Keenan Thompson shivering in a shirt in the rain. He watches Andy Samberg gurning into the camera with his large mouth. Andy Samberg will one day eat the camera but it will be funny and everyone will laugh and Andy Samberg will look confused but in an endearing way which will make his fans love him all the more. Dr. Dre is doing very well for himself. He is very rich. Even though Apple took his company bought it and then crushed it. Such is capitalism. Expansion and destruction. There is more bombing. There is more war that isn’t called war. Everyone knows that it’s war but no one calls it war because the leaders have decided not to call it war. It is amusing and it is sad. There is talk of politics and ESPN and the NFL and power and wealth. There is a toad on the rain wet driveway. The toad is not moving. It may be crushed by a car later in the day. The rain bounces of it’s back. He drinks a coffee. He thinks about Love and Sadness and the Penumbra of Death that halos every living thing. There is waiting. There are many maps spread out over the large tables. Neat lines drawn hid the chaos. The orderly geometry hides the chaos. Except the chaos is not hidden. It struts round in plain sight daring anyone who cares to stare it direct in it’s blackhole eyes. It has many eyes. The NFL is losing the optical war but it doesn’t care because it makes a lot of money. There are loans to be paid. There are debts to be paid. He reads writing advice from David Mitchell. It includes the advice that writing is a good thing to do if one wants to be a writer. This is good advice. He tries to take it. He is told to take things for granted. That the is oil. That there is no oil. That there are genetic manipulation booths. That asexual human reproduction is normal or it will be or it was that the comedian is the vampire owl of the art world. There are bowed heads. It is morning but already people are weighed down by the day. There are turncoats hidden everywhere. The French won The War of Independence. David Hasslehoff brought down the Berlin Wall and ended the cold war. Pharrell Williams bring Iran into the fold of Western Hegemony. King Pharrell. Pope Pharrell. Emporer Pharrell. A silver fox is caught for funneling school children into a prison system that he made with a friend. He is sent to a prison but the system remains the system is vibrant and alive he was a necessary sacrifice a bad actor a bad apple a one in a million nothing to see here move along no problem with the old white haired men the criminals who legalize their crimes the villians who make the rules for themselves and the rules for everyone else. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. There is more bombing. Is it legal? No one seems to care. He is offered a new phone. It looks like it’s from the future. He writes words and words and words. He watches more Elementary. He watches even more Elementary. He eats good food. He enjoys good company. He plays Tiny Death Star. He downloads Memrise language learning and promises himself that this time he will become fluent. He gets on the bus but his pass doesn’t work. The driver is kind and lets him sit. He eats meat. He eats fruit. He drinks five coffees. He watches Obama talk at the UN. The Primeminister of Britain says that the Queen purred down the phone to him. Is the new Queen of England Eartha Kitt? He hopes that the new Queen of England is Earth Kitt. Everything is wonderful and everything is hopeless. There is no script. There is no prompt. There is in a dark cave somewhere hope barely alive but struggling towards the light. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He is inside a horrendous political commercial full of loss and hate and barely disguised threats of rape and murder and corruption. He is a plate on the wall of the commercial watching the actors perform their lines. There is sport in forgetting the horrors. We are born in violence in the crucible of the powerful. The dead and the dying are the mulch for all tomorrows parties. The stars of sport jackhammer their fists into the faces of their lovers. A woman commits suicide by climbing into a crocodile pit. She takes off her shoes first. She loved her shoes and did not want them to be ruined by the prehistoric beasts. Who will get to keep the shoes afterwards. Will her relatives keep them in a box, uncleaned, perhaps a grass scuff on one corner from where she slipped them off on the wet ground. He reads about the Criminals of Wall Street and their desperate and ultimately successful attempts to save their kingdoms but not without first sacrificing some of their own. These perfidious knights see themselves as heroes even as the world is sickened by their villainy. He eats fried rice. He drinks coffee. He watches a talk that took place the day before the large climate change walk in New York. The speakers are Chris Hedges, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Brian Lehrer, Kshama Sawant and Bernie Sanders. As Senator Bernard speaks protesters put up a cloth decrying Saunders voting for the bombing of Gaza. There is awkward murmuring. The audience is mostly white. He is happy when a bearded man stands up at the end and says he is sad that there are not more brothers and sisters of colour. The leader of the movement Bill Mckibben does not acknowledge this but deflects it as he tells the questioner to look outside tomorrow and to look at those at the frontline of the climate debate but he does not engage with the truth of the questioner at that particular moment.  America and secret allies start bombing Syria around 830 eastern time. This is half an hour in to The Voice. Someone is singing their heart out as enormous missiles smash into buildings as incredibly powerful ordnance cremates numberless human beings. The new acts are pretty good. Everyone trusts that no civilians are targeted. He feels sick. There is no criticism, no questioning. The Forever War. The Endless War. The Neverending War. Whatever it is called it is a hydra. Each war begetting a new war. Each murder creating two new murderers. And on and on and on. He watches Elementary. He eats food. He enjoys The Blacklist. It is utterly ridiculous. He snuggles. Obama is the War President. That Nobel Prize for peace must be in the attic of the White House slowly decaying into a puddle of shame. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. There is a stench in the air. The stench of a Presidential Race. It is faint but unmistakable. Even as the US Midterms roll up over the horizon they are a sideshow to the main circus. He can see the tent-poles being set in the distance. He can feel the acrid reek in his nostrils already. It will not be pleasant but it will be fascinating. The Theater of Democracy. The Lie of Freedom. The Illusion of Choice. Scotland has said no cowed by the overbearing power elite cowed by fear cowed by cows cow lowing in the fields eating grass and producing tasty milk and burgers. He tries to plan. He succeeds. He fails. He makes a coffee. He eats some breakfast. The pancakes for breakfast are tasty pancakes.  He ponders the future. He reads Pliny the Elder. He reads Too Big To Fail. All the criminals are here. They are all described in detail. Their actions and justifications are clear to see on the page. Bernie Madoff is their scapegoat. There are bigger problems. There is a climate march in New York City. Lots of people attend. Just like the March against the War in Iraq just like the March against the War in Iraq. Just like the March against the War in Vietnam. What do marches do except give the authorities the opportunity to observe the trouble makers and the peaceniks. To collate and photograph and store the information of the rebels, the subversives, the Anti-Americans ready to come to your door to take away your freedom  and your toaster stroodles and your playstation 4 and your Xbox 1 and your America’s Got Talent Voting rights. He fills boxes with books. He tries on his dainty new cock ring. It smarts. He has made a terrible mistake. Then he gets used to it. He likens it to the cilice from The DaVinci Code but not as unpleasant. There are many unpleasant things in the world. Human beings are sad hopeful creatures. He is one of them. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. Blah, blah, fucking blah. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He wakes up too early. His alarm goes off and he wakes from a dream of Scottish Independence and dancing a jig but then he realises his alarm went off too early and he doesn’t know why he is dancing a jig because he can’t vote and he doesn’t know how he would vote because he keeps changing his mind but it looks like someone is going to win. Somewhere an otter eats a fish. Somewhere else a deer looks off into the distance as it hears a noise. John Kerry is talking to Congress again. The ladies in Pink are standing behind him again. There are signs. Bored looking members of Congress ask questions. They all look like they want to be playing golf with fundraisers at their high walled golf clubs. He watches a trailer for Fury. He wonders at the constant refrain of the brave little Americans fighting the gargantuan enemy when the truth is that America is gargantuan and the enemy of America is always little. There is no terror in that or profit in that or shame in that. There is shame in that. Shame is everywhere. He reads Waiting for Godot. GODot. godOT. A magician wins America’s Got Talent. Will he magic away the financial crises, the military crises, the crisis crises? He will not but he does seem to be good with his hands and he has a sincere to the point of mania Tom Cruise smile. He draws, he plots, he schemes. He sleeps.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. There is coffee. He is talking with an old lady about her manipulative grandchildren who know all the codes who have thousands of dollars in their bank accounts whose ages change from 8 to 10 to 19 to 18 depending on when he asks questions about them. He dreams about prostitutes who have all become fashion consultants. There is no more to the dream than that. He watches an interview with Eddy Conway ex of the Black Panthers. He watches a course on learning well. He procrastinates. He learns nothing from the course. He eats half a burger. He trims his prodigious beard. He cannot understand America without understanding race. He cannot understand the world without understanding race. He dreams about people who do not have eyes but have paintbrush bristles where there eyes should be an  no other features but that their faces smooth polished variegated wood their bodies entirely ordinary just their faces wooden and flat and their eyes tight paintbrush bristles they seem entirely okay with this state of affairs. There is no war just dropping bombs there is no war just talk of boots on the ground there is no conflict or war just targeted killings and advisors and regurgitated humanity spoiling in a heap. There is no war but there will be boots on the ground but there won’t be boots on the ground this is not a war this is not a war this is not a war. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He hears that there has been another decapitation. This time is is a British man. Next time there will be another British man. Then there will be more lined up heads rolling down the hill and soon decapitations will not make headlines because there will be so many of them. Then he makes some brownies. Then he eats some sushi. Then he walks. Then he lies down. There is rain outside. It is coming down from the sky. There are clouds full of rain. There are clouds full of tears. Never trust a clown. He eats a tasty burger. He creates a fictional home in a digital town by the sea and spends too much time making the living room look just perfect when he doesn’t own a house in real life. He eats some lemon crunch pie. His digital avatar eats some lemon crunch pie. There is something terrible and sad about this. He forgets what happened during the rest of the day. His mind is a creamy white amnesiac cloud. He goes to sleep hoping that he will remember what he has forgotten and forget what he keeps remembering.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. President Obama has gone Liam Neeson on IS or ISIL or ISIS or whatever the gang of desert ne’er do wells are called. He is not sure that President Obama believes anything he says publicly anymore but he’s saying it he saying it again and again. He watches as the fear of ISIS grows and grows and grows and the news stories talk about the growing fears even as the CIA says again and again that there are no credible threats and when the CIA say there are no credible threats there are probably no credible threats because the CIA love having credible threats to get their black ops money for and are always willing to talk about threats so even if they don’t think that they are a threat then are they a threat. He does not know. Then he gets angry because Cecily Strong is being kicked off Weekend Update because no one wants to kick the White coiffed head writer off Weekend Update because the white man always wins even though her replacement is the excellent Michael Che but why not have Michael Che and Cecily Strong is it because Lorne Michaels thinks that America is not ready for a black man and a white woman to appear together on live television doing comedy together week in and week out is america still terrified of a black man and a white woman making comedy together is this where we are have we not moved on he thinks to himself. Then he plans his lunch. Then he goes to the gym. Then he showers. Then he wonders if Ted Cruz’s strange argument that Lorne Michaels could be in prison for satire if a law limiting Citizens United comes into affect is a real argument or if Senator Ted Cruz is actually an apolitical performance artist who managed to get elected with grant money from a billionaires art foundation. It is a hot muggy night. He sits in Wholefoods and joins the other hairy homeless men in the pot plants and the dirty tables. He holds hands. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. Trembling muscles dripping off bone. He farts what feels like his body volume in gas. His alarm goes of too early. He is fat. He is fatter than he has ever been. The bus is on time. He gets on the bus. Two people in front of him fiddle with money and change and it annoys him that they knew that they did not have passes but did not think that it was required of them to wait until all those who had passes to get on the bus first so that they could get seats like him so he could get a seat he finally gets a seat. He keeps his anger inside. He buys some granola bars. He buys a sandwich. He does not by a Jimmy Dean Breakfast Biscuit. He marks this as a rare triumph in a day which will not have many victories. He gets sucked back into Facebook. He drinks too much coffee. He eats a sandwich. He buys some smoothies and puts them in the fridge. He eats lentils which taste like glorious meat and roasted cauliflower which tastes like magic. Stephen Colbert will gurn around with Henry Kissinger tonight and his heart will die a little and he will lose a little more respect for Stephen Colbert. It is the day of the towers falling it is the day of a country backed turned over to a dictator who manipulated and destroyed his people with the Chicago Boys and Kissinger looming and death squads and disappearances and the chimneys spewing people and death and sadness and the clouds formed and burrowed and the igition of the 21st century the pilot light that sparked the fire the engulfed the world that killed an Empire that doesn’t know it’s dead yet as a far older and larger beast slowly turns and wakes and watches. Then he tumbles down a hill tumbling tumbling tumbling and Oscar Pistorius is not guilty of murder but who knows what will happen tomorrow and there is 911 and 911 and 911 and each 911 has a different meaning and significance but they are all important and Jaws is dead and he goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He watches Brian Williams rubs shafts with Matt Lauer. They spar. They spar verbally. There is tension and shark smiling. He wonders if Isis is just the ASL ice bucket challenge gone horribly wrong. Nominations for Saladin, Ishmael and Frank-n-Furter. George W Bush and Bill Clinton are now best friends. He is sick in his mouth. Power accretes power. An NFP football player is suspended when a video appears of him punching his fiancee. Even though they knew he did it he only got two game suspension because they hadn’t seen it. A reflection of what is important. Money, profit, optics. The optics are wrong. No matter the ethics no matter the morality. At least Mel Brooks is still alive. They didn’t see it. So it doesn’t exist. He didn’t see the moon landings so they can’t be real. He didn’t see his own birth so he didn’t believe it. He didn’t see the bus arrive so he doesn’t believe that it got here. He didn’t see the formation of the continents so he does not believe that they exist. He cannot see oxygen so he is not sure that he is breathing it. He has never seen the earth from space so he doesn’t believe the world is a sphere zipping through space. He watches food commercials he watches car commercials. All using fear and doubt. Be afraid America. Be afraid. Stop thinking America don’t worry that your heroes are weak tired hypocrits. Liars and cheaters and brutish billionaires. Better than Hippo Crits. River creatures reviewing popular culture. Maybe not better than Hippo Crits. He watches Simon Critchley and Cornell West talking. They are talking about religion and violence. He listens to John Pilger. He listens to Noam Chomsky. It is one of those kinds of days. Richard Branson is an odd looking man. Sometimes it’s okay to give up your dreams. You won’t die. The Queen of the United kingdom is worried about Scotland. The economist Paul Krugman is worried about Scotland. This maybe the only time they will be worried about the same thing. He thinks more about an idea he has. He thinks that it is a good idea and the he thinks it’s a bad idea. He is undecided. Angry atheists make him sad. Happy Christians make him cringe. He listens to Cspan. It is both uplifting and depressing. Imaginary People think Obama is a Child Eating Muslim Jewish Atheist Christian Kenyan Communist Socialist. These people have access to the same information as everyone else and also the right to vote. The anniversary of 911 is approaching. The day that Pinochet stole Chile and also the day that planes hit the twin towers in New York and today is Zeinab Badawi interogating John Mccain by the lake that Amidala and Anakin Skywalker fell in love. Today is Scotland divorcing itself from Britain as Britain first acts like a violent lover bullying Scotland to stay with threats and violence and then begging Scotland to stay with gifts and bouquets of power it all looks very embarassing and no one has really planned for the split. Then he eats some rice it is a lot of rice and it has vegetables with it and also tomato sauce and he finds a bag of almonds and he books a flight to London and London terrifies him already he hears the pulsing wet beat of it’s corrupt blackened heart in his ears as he feels himself being sucked back into the pit the comforting embrace of the oily pit. Then he plays Tiny Death Star. It is an awful game that has no other point than to teach children that the most soulless parts of capitalism are compelling and entertaining taught through the lens of the Star Wars universe. He is hopelessly addicted to it and then he watches America’s Got Talent and the sound disappears for the last act so only atmospheric cheering can be heard. It is like watching television in a dream and then he cuddles and then he goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. When he went to sleep there was no caliphate. There no chance that there was going to be an independent Scotland. There was no new royal baby in Britain ready to carry on the democratic bloodline of the German Royal Family. He wakes up unaware of all of these things. The plane that crashed in the ocean is still missing and Robin Williams is dead and Joan Rivers is dead and lots of other people are dead but they aren’t famous. He wonders if waking up is ever worth it. He decides it is but he goes back to sleep anyway.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. The world is not going well. There is lots of violence. Someone stands up for gentrification without thinking about what that might mean why it might be better to help those communities with their problems rather than price them out of their homes and their lives so that rich white people can enjoy atmosphere ambience authenticity at jacked up prices the prison is being crushed schools crushed the slow creeping inevitability of colonisation colonization soon they will all be gone and dust and forgotten and a sad story in the endnote of a book that no one reads in a library that is on fire. Then he plays Tiny Death Star which is very cute but bespeaks the joys of a totalitarian capitalocracy underpinned with violence and surveillance. It’s insidious message is not missed by him but he just can’t stop playing it. Elsewhere a city crumbles. Somewhere else talking heads bob and weave and duck and dive. In yet still other places someone is masturbating to a picture they found in a puddle. There is excrement everywhere. Someone is wearing a pair of wellington boots. Other people don’t know what wellington boots are. Someone stubs their toe. Someone else is decapitated. He reads Bossypants by Tina Fey. It is hilarious. He reads it out loud and laughs aloud. He rants about an app that encourages mariginalisation of people of color. He rants about a white supremacist technocracy. He has a nap. He rants about those who can’t see the problems with gentrification. He rants. He rents. He runts. He grunts. He tires and eats a pizza and has a glass of elderflower cider. It is tasty. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He smells like a homeless person. What has he missed? Has anything important happened? He doesn’t remember where he was. Perhaps in a wooded glade. A desert. On a train bound for glory. He shrugs his shoulders and thinks about showering. He goes to look for a shower. He finds somewhere to lie down. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. A journalist rummaged through the luggage of dead people. It disgusts people even though it is what journalists do every day. A tacit agreement we have with them that we get to read what they write about tragedy as long as we don’t have to be complicit in how they discover that tragedy. It was too much for us. We do not want to see how the sausage is made. The Senate votes to support bombardment of Gaza. Even the progressive heroes of the left. Children shields? No one cares. An excuse to flex anti-Semitic muscles on one hand an excuse to shake heads at the horror of civilian death on the other. Then there are all the other hands begging reaching grasping. This is what nation states do to perceived enemies. They expunge they delete they bleach it is wrong it has been done before it will be done again the lodz ghetto is now the Gaza refugee camp will be the Detroit forbidden zone will be the Birmingham prison city. Grind your families into paste we will all be Soylent Green one day. The clown of international law raises its buffoonish head above the parapet and is exploded by a sniper’s bullet but it’s okay folks that was just a balloon full of ketchup with a clown face drawn on it international law is safe and sound in an undisclosed bunker ready to be used by those with the most power as and when it suits them. He drinks a chai. He is in a library surrounded by books. It is pleasant. He reads that 66% of Americans now live in places that are not covered by the constitution which seems like a lot of Americans. Everyone is not the slug on the razor blade but more and more are joining it slowly slicing itself as it inches forward slowly splitting in two. He writes. He travels on public transport. He eats a tasty black bean burger. He shuts off from news. Objective news is shut off. He travels into another world. A place of giants and vikings. The end of the world. All the gods are dead. It is melancholy. Tribes wandering in the icy wastes the dry deserts the lush jungles. All lost. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up from not sleeping. He switches on al jazeera. He reads debt by David graeber. He reads more Proust. He reads the Federalist papers. He reads the anti federalist papers. He reads the fiery brook. He finishes a chapter of his novel. Thisis surprising. He eats soup. He drinks coffee. He watches tutorial videos for AutoCAD 3d studio. He has a shower. There is no milk for cereal. He is the only person, except for the driver, on the bus. He wonders if he can put a campaign on kickstarter for him to jump a shark. Perhaps funding the potato salad is the internet funding equivalent of jumping the shark so his point has already been made. Zach Braff gets more space than Nadine Gordimer in the newspaper that he finds on the bus. He finds this ridiculous but then he acknowledges that he is more familiar with the work of Zach Braff than the work of Nadine Gordimer. The Germans celebrate their world cup win. David hasslehof is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they are saving him for the big finale. They are not saving him for the big finale. The German team appears to start the YMCA dance then it devolves into something less choreographed but no less sincere. Someone talks about an awning idea kit on the television. How many ideas can there be in an awning idea kit. Use as awning. Wrap evidence in and bury in the woods at night. Wipe up blood in. Cower under. use as awning. You get it free when you buy an awning. It doesn’t seem like anyone could reasonably charge for an awning idea kit. Many hoops are jumped through contortions are made to justify the massacre of human beings. Children dying on the beach human shields for sand for boats for fishermen. He sees the future and it falls away into the darkness of the void the edge of the cliff crumbling like dry bread under his feet. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. There is no news. There is news but he doesn’t read it so he pretends there is no news. He drinks a coffee. He writes words. He praises. He questions. He tries to reason and he eats some soup. He looks at the storm outside and is happy that he is inside protected by the house that he is inside. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day

He wakes up. He falls. He gets up. He dawdles. He watches a Comcast commercial that tries to hide the fact that is against net neutrality. It will probably succeed. He eats an empanada. It is a good empanada. He feels tremendous twisting sadness. He archives important art. He feels old. He reads about art. He worries about his mental health. He is invited to an artists’ retreat. He cannot go but he is excited to be invited. He eats Brown rice. He talks with friends even as he feels the distance growing between them. He finishes things and then he goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. It is early. Savannah Guthrie is pregnant. She should host Meet the Press. He has a coffee and some cereal. He talks to a friend. They share righteous anger about the world. He sees an empty cigar case by the bus stop and thinks simultaneously of the cigar he often smokes with a brandy or a whiskey or some other unremembered liquor on New Years Eve and bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in the oval office and how that charming lecherous man ruined many parts of that young woman’s life and yet still she appears strong and funny and wise because terrible things happen but even through them life is never wholly ruined just reshaped and tattered round it’s once pristine edges. A man leaves an envelope on the bus. He may have just got out of jail and the letter may be important. He calls after the man and gives him his letter. The man says thank you as he leaves the bus. It is a good feeling to be thanked by a stranger for a small kindness. He sits on the train and sees and old man with a wrist brace. He gets into an elevator with a man who is wearing moccasins threequarter length shorts and a fedora. He judges him and finds him wanting whilst also being envious of his confidence to be sartorially ridiculous. He had that once but now he has lost that. He goes to the baseball. It is hot. It is humid. Seats are sat in. Then it starts to rain and so begins the second level of hell. Food is purchased and then the shambling damned are watched with pity as they walk round and round in circles forever and no decision is made but that these people will continue to buy food and drink and ponchos and increase the profit of the stadium for another day because the rain keeps on coming down and forever passes by and a gap appears in the mass and it is entered but then it swallows them and they are trapped no with the damned shuffling forever wishing they had never left their comfortable spot by the pillar but now they are part of the behemoth limbed ocean of humanity that sludges by weeping and gnashing without food without water without beer without poncho and still the rain falls and still no decision is made and then the decide themselves and assert their ability to choose and spear their way out of the crowd and escape and barrel towards the exit thrusting creatures aside and carving them asunder as they finally escape into the balm of the rain and yet they find themselves abandoned by transport and still hopeless and lost and then a shining beacon of hope arrives on a chariot and they get in the chariot and go home and sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. The elevator sounds like a penny whistle. It penny whistles down. He reads more Octavia Butler. He thinks about teeth. He thinks about whales. He thinks about royal families. He thinks about accidentally downloading a film from a dubious source and then getting a worried email from his landlord about a letter that he received from Verizon concerning illegal downloading. He is going to be sent to federal prison for watching Divergent illegally. He is scared. The air conditioning does not work. He is sweating motionless on the bed beads of sweat writing on his body weighing his body down. He has a coffee. He has an an erection. He has a thought. He takes food for lunch. He looks forward to pulled pork empanadas. He doesn’t have to wait long for the bus. He arrived at work. His mug has gone his Orioles mug has gone some muggerfucker has stolen it he is irritated and he searches prowls the desks for his treasured Orioles mug but he cannot find it he cannot find his mug anywhere no matter how hard he searches he returns to his grotto defeated. He is remembering things in the wrong order. He imagined Proust never had this problem. He eats lunch. He works. He works quite hard. It is not hard work. He smiles at the Scotland uniform for the commonwealth games. It looks like a drunk rainbow has vomited on the team. It is amazing. He can’t look away. He is mesmerized. He goes to the gym. His muscles ache in a pleasant way. Afterwards he positions himself under a light in the changing room and tenses his muscles. The angle of the light casts sharp relief on his body and he looks very toned. He is not very toned and he knows this but he enjoys the fantasy as he stands under the light tensing into the mirror then he hears the door to the changing room open so he quickly grabs a towel and rushes into the shower he does not want to be found nude by a colleague creating poses in a changing room mirror even under complimentary lighting. It is hot and humid outside. He is not late for the train. He times the train perfectly. He is on the train. He is aiming directly for his bed. He will eat his carrot spinach kale soup which is far tastier than it has any right to be. It has every right to be tasty. He stops arguing with his taste buds and just lets the pleasure wash over him. He reads. He writes. He cogitates. He drinks coffee. He watches msnbc. He watches fox news. He watches cnn. He ignores the throbbing at the back of the head that watching these three things does. Then he cannot ignore it so he turns the television off. He reads about the death of the novel the death of the literary novel and the phoenix rising of the self-published fan fiction extravaganza. He thinks about getting a haircut. He needs to get a haircut. His hair is too long. He ponders over a conversation he overheard at work. He self-flagellates about an error at work that could have been solved, by him, days ago, but he let it go and then it got out of control. Then he gets over it because no one died. Then he watches a trailer for Dawn of the Apes. Hollywood does love Apocalypse. Hollywood does have contempt for the masses for the people venerating the strong leader the benevolent fascist the Strong Man the cowardly huddle mass begging for leadership and direction. Not a democratic view of the world. He does not know what that means or what to make of it. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He follows an old man who leans on a cane. The old man is wearing a tshirt. Written On the back of the Tshirt is ‘Still porkin’ after all these years.’ The inclusion of the apostrophe gives a jaunty feel to an old man publicly declaring that he still fucks regularly. The man has white hair and a beard like summertime Father Christmas. The supreme court respects the religious rights of incorporeal persons over the rights of corporeal persons. The Juggernaut to corporate theocracy continues happily onward. He wonders if religio-conservative America would be okay with a Muslim family running a successful company and then applying moderate sharia law to their employees. He thinks religio-conservative America might not like that not one bit at all. He eats some dates. He eats some almonds. He waits for the bus. A very old small lady walks very slowly into the bus. The old lady pays with a lot of change each coin coming into the coin collector as the great from outside gold the bus the site conditioning pushing against the wall of heat so hot already in the hot humid morning. A man has eyes everywhere. A woman did on her electric chair observing the passengers enter. A man reads a broad sheet he purchased from a vending machine. This is a rare occurrence it is not an app or a website or a free bus newspaper handed out by at a loss by friendly people at bus stops. He watches the USA get defeated by Belgium in the world cup and then marvels that America manages to call it a victory which it cannot be if the definition of victory is being used in an accurate way. Someone says that the underdog US team comes back the top dog but this is to misunderstand what top dog means. The US team was defeated and they lost and that is okay the taste of failure is not a pleasant one but it is a common one and he thinks it is sad that it has got to the point where a media psychosis exists that does not allow for the acknowledgment of American defeat. As with soccer so with armed conflict and hegemony. Nothing can be learned from the denial of defeat. It only covers the festering injury with another bloody bandage when what is really needed is a painful cleaning and redressing of the wound so that healing can be completed. He ponders this as he watches America’s Got Talent and observes more honesty in that show than in Congress and that to makes him pause and think but he reaches no firm conclusions other than they are probably all on the same continuum and the sliding scale of perception will art some point squeeze them all together. He goes to sleep. .

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He was asleep. Now is he awake. His brittle bones are softening after bikram yoga. His aching body is aching in a good way. He eats a salad. He presses some buttons. He watches a woman eat a hundred dollar ice cream. He is tempted by a burrito he finds on a bus. It has only been bitten once. It would be free supper. Earlier in the day he eats a sandwich and has a coffee. He thinks about making some soup but he doesn’t make any soup. The Caliphate seems to be spreading over Iraq and Syria. Everyone is learning about the Sykes-Picot Agreement. He learns more about the pirate origins of the British Empire – all open out in the history books that nobody reads. The President of America makes a joke about crack. His wife is not impressed. He presses some more buttons. He takes some photographs. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He was up until 2 in the morning looking for silver to dig up with his copper pickaxe. He found iron and copper and gold but no silver no silver anywhere. He was attacked by creatures. Then he hid in a cave barely protected from the acid rain. He is 37 years old. He should not be doing this. So now he is slumped at his desk at work not hiding from acid rain but hiding from work. He takes photographs of soccer fans. They look just like football fans but they are all American and there are some Germans too. Then he eats some spinach. Then he saves himself for a tasty burger and a date which was worth the rumbling belly and the fluttering heart and then he goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up the muzzy taste of beer in his mouth. It was only a quarter of a small bottle a tiny bottle. He farts he showers he farts he makes a coffee eats shredded crispy cereal. He waits for two buses that never arrive but a third arrives that he wasn’t expecting. He gets on that bus. He spend the day pressing things and then put in his place by a superior for no other reason than to remind him where power lies that he is powerless how it is exercised how easily he can be excised from the body employable. A mote floating in giant ghost cloud of everything. He sits on a train. Everyone looks sad. Everyone looks sad and tired. Everyone looks tired. Gravity is pulling down every single expression. A child adding questions to the air is the only sign of life the only sign of hope. It is enough to keep the wheel turning. He presses a lot more buttons. He is not doing his job very well but he is doing it well enough. There are no complaints so he breathes easy for at least one more day. He is not a ninja or a space pirate or a pilot or a spy or a well respected scientist or an avant garde film maker or a best selling author what happened he does not know what happened he did not have it in him it was not there with fractured memories buttering together and now he is here on the bus listening to a woman talk to someone who wants more but all she wants is emotional support because people have been stealing her meat from the communal fridge and she is having a nervous breakdown. She is distraught. It sounds overwhelming. The evening feels like a hot wet towel beating him rhythmically on the everywhere. James Franco is not a renaissance man Seth McFarlane is not a renaissance man he is not a renaissance man so perhaps there is hope that one day he too could be called a renaissance man but just so he can in a petulant fit reject the title. Oskar Schindler was a Sudetenland German. The clouds are still. The cups are still. He does not know how many times he lied today. Were there lies? Were they lies? He is not sure if professional confidence is the same as a lie if after the event he turned out to be wrong. He cooks an omelette he eats some mixed nuts. He writes he procrastinates he worries he frets he plays the piano he drinks a cold coffee he finds a torch in his bedroom. It is not his torch. He wonders who it belongs to and where it came from he wishes it were magic it is definitely not magic although it lights up the dark and that is a kind of magic he forgets what he was saying he forgets what he was writing he progresses and then he regresses. He feels the helter skelter of life. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He gets on a bus. He sees a piece of paper on a seat. He picks up the paper and reads the outside of the folded up piece of paper it reads

Hey! Read this!

on one side and

Hey you! Read this!

on the other folded side. He opens up the piece of paper and reads:

 

Dear friend,

I have some good news! There is someone who loves you dearly, enough to die for you. His name is Jesus Christ, and He came to pay for our sins. He overcame all of our failure and shame, and in Him we find life. No matter what pain you feel, I promise, that someone cares. I was once an atheist, and I used to cut myself. I thought about taking my own life, but then I met a friend who showed me the good news of Jesus. He promises new life, and he wants the same for you. No matter how bad you feel, no matter what you think of yourself, Jesus loves you more than you could imagine. If you have questions about faith or want to know more about Christianity, I’d encourage you to find a church. There is one that meets at — —– theater on – Street in G——–n, Sunday at 10am. God bless you and take heart! God is with us!

Love,

A brother in Christ

 

The writing is neat and small and written in blue pen. It seems heartfelt but he probably won’t visit the theater to meet with Jesus. He folds up the paper and puts it into his pocket where it will remain for months forgotten and spinning and dissolving in the wash. There are so many people to be saved but saved from what? Each other and themselves. He eats some spinach and some quinoa and some lentils and drinks coffee and his ideas are shut down at work and his dreams keep him going all the way to his bed. He goes to sleep there on his sleeping bed.

 

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up to The smell of Cut grass and gasoline. Jailed journalists in Egypt. Convicted editor in England. Helicopter gunships given to Egypt by America. Impressed British Prime Minister. He drinks a coffee. He drinks some water. He tries a push up. it is marginally successful. He tries a pull up. He cannot pull up. He rests two eggs and a zucchini drowned in yellow mustard. It does not taste as desperate as it sounds. It is hot outside like a sauna but a sauna he would happily spend hours in sitting next to hot coals fanning himself. He works magic with lights. He walks into traffic but as luck would have it is synchronous with the red light. This is an accident but no one would know that from his demeanor. Deep inside he weeps with relief. He runs onto the train. All the carriages are new there are new carriages. He is confused. He remembers Rik Mayall is dead. This makes him sad. He liked Rik Mayall for making him laugh. He remembers drinking vodka at School one weekend for the first time or the second time in a classrom at School and watching Bottom Live and being drunk and laughing loudly laughing too loudly because that’s what he thought The Drunk People did and he was drunk and wanted desperately to be liked as he is still desperate to be  liked but that part of him is shielded protected less powerful now but ready at any moment to reclaim a throne. Then he remembers a story sometime someone told him about Rik Mayall who did an unpleasant thing but was that a dream everyone is unpleasant and confidences like that are not to be shared. He watches his past crumble like dry sandcastles. All the dry sandcastles blowing up pretty beige clouds in the intermittent breeze. He shouldn’t be thinking about masturbation on the elevator but he is. He could grind one out here and no one would know would they no one would care they would film it and he would be YouTube famous which is still famous. He watches as passengers help an old man find a wallet. He does not help. He does not need to the old man already has too much help. He is happy to get his wallet back which he dropped at the entrance to the bus. This happened in the morning. Now it is the evening. So much has happened already today. He eats some tasty food. He reads Gore Vidal novels. He inhales the sweet narcotic of America’s Got Talent through his eyes. He watches a beautiful dress being worn perfectly. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He remembers no dreams. He drinks coffee and eats cereal. He takes a shower. He takes the elevator. He takes the bus. He takes another elevator. He types. He writes. He drinks another coffee. He has a conversation. He applies make-up. He eats turkey meatballs and tomato sauce. They are good. They sustain him. He enjoys them. He savours them. Mouths flap about Iraq and about Afghanistan and the injustice of imprisoning journalists in Egypt but remain quiet about imprisoning lawyers in America. He gets too excited about the opening of a new Shake Shack and not energized enough about the crumbling infrastructure of the Western World. He listens to a woman channel his dead father to his half-sister. The woman doesn’t even change her voice. She should make more effort being a spirit medium she should at least do voices and lock the door of the room she is in so her son doesn’t come in and ask for a snack and close the window so that the roadworks outside aren’t overwhelming the recording and not give false hope or closure with cold reading but this is all too much to ask for and it probably will help someone somewhere life is difficult enough without letting people cope with tragedy in their own way. He walks. He stands. He sits. He waits. He reads. He walks. He cooks rice and broccoli and cauliflower and soy sauce and he eats it and he drinks water and he watches Lawrence O’Donnell return to television with a fine beard but he doesn’t listen to the words because they will be the same words as before and not bad for that reason but he is tired and he can’t think and doesn’t want to concentrate on relentless horror on the outside because he is busy enough with relentless horror on the inside. He lies down and watches sleep take him away.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He does not know why this happens. There is a loud direct voice informing him that this is a fire alarm and everyone must leave the building by the closest exit but not the elevator do not use the elevator dear God please do not use the elevator. He wakes up more. She wakes up. The cat wakes up. They try to wrestle the cat into a bag. The cat wins. The cat is not in the bag. The cat looks defiant. The alarm is still going. They have to leave. The cat remains. They walk down the stairs hoping it is a false alarm so as not to have a cat death car crash on their hands on his hands he does not know how she feels and he never asks. There are other pockets of people walking down the stairs. It is the middle of the night. It is raining outside. It is humid. It is entertaining to see what clothes people throw on in an emergency. Everyone looks like poorly dressed clowns. The alarm is a false alarm. Walking back up eight flights of stairs. The alarm starts again. They all pause for a moment tired and reckless they do not turn round but continue walking back to their apartments. Lying down they try to fall asleep for hours they try to fall asleep but they fail to fall asleep then they both realise they have been awake for hours and they weep and laugh with relief and with joy at their shared agony and the cat is asleep and hold no bridge at being left behind even though it turned out to be a false alarm and it would have been fine anyway but even so the cat remains magnanimous at their treachery. The cat will use it later, no doubt. They read then they sleep then the day is underway and the sun is out and the pollen count is low and the sandwiches are full of meat and the glasses are full of beer and full of lemonade and the football is entertaining and the day is a good day but for the wars and the mass incarceration and the poisons and the corruption and the fragility but these are only background noise for now they will be the main event soon enough so he ignored them until the time when he won’t vs able to ignore them anymore. He reads Rebecca Solnit. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He showers. He eats a banana. He is roasted by the sun. He imagines Tony Blair weeping in a windowless room rocking back and forth. He eats some tasty chicken and spinach. He watches headless chickens dance. They strut and they dance. He drinks a glass of water. He asks some questions. He writes some words on some paper. He sorts out his paperwork. He finds useless pieces of paper but he keeps them just in case he might need them in the future. He remonstrates with the fridge. He repeats some of these actions. He fills a red pepper with rice and spinach and kale and hot sauce. He roasts the red pepper but even that and the hot sauce will not dampen down the taste of kale. Kale cuts through everything. The air is boiling outside. So hot is refracts the air and everything is seen as through satin stockings. He reads some Robert Bellah and the civil religion of America. The cult of America. He reads about the late Victorian Holocaust watches Thomas Piketty in a debate on British Television Jeremy Paxman cycling on a bicycle with the Mayor of London all jolly boys together at the same clubs at the same schools colleges picnics artificial debate illusion of dissent he tries to build a house on a purple planet that rains poison green liquid at regular intervals. Some of the creatures are trying to kill him but he has a large sword and a natty bow and arrow. He needs to find silver so he can create a beacon to escape the planet. He cannot find any silver. He has been searching for a long time. He is tired. He looks at his laundry go round and round and round in the dryer. He falls asleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day

He wakes up. He sees stains on his chair. He does not look closer to see what they are. Then he looks closer. He wishes he hadn’t looked closer. The bus driver improvised the bus routes traveling down roads none of the regular passengers have seen before. He watches a written sizzle and shot on the sidewalk. It is very hot. He moves the worm to the grass in the shade with the edge of his foot but the worm still bubbles and spits. It is to late for the worm. It is to late for every worm. Every one. Everyone. He buys some lentils. More of his villagers die. He only had the villagers left. He should never have begun construction on that mine. He feels totally responsible. He hopes the orchard will grow in time and offer sustenance along with the fishing and the hunting that keeps the remaining villagers clinging on to life. The well built houses are empty. The villagers must feel the loss every time they pass it to go into the forest to weep our whatever it is they do when they are hidden behind digital trees. He sees the renegade economist Simon Johnson on the train. He sees the gentleman from Subway who sometimes makes his sandwiches on the train. They are both wearing caps. Simon is wearing a white cap. He also has a red back pack. Subway is wearing a red hat. He will ask Subways name next time he purchases a sandwich or he will look at the name tag on his shirt and remember the name on it. He is beaten down by the heat when he leaves the train station. A violinist plays. He buys mixed nuts. He enjoys the air conditioning and engages in conversation with polite staff members who would rather not be there. He drinks lots of water. He talks. He quaffs. He considers. He thinks. He draws. He presses buttons. He talks intensely and without clarity. He is misunderstood. He is tired. He eats yoghurt. He writes and dreams and is overwhelmed. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He hugs. He showers. He kisses. He gets a taxi. He waits for the yellow bus for the last time. He is emotional. He gets on the train. A woman is wearing enormous shoes. Iraq is collapsing. The helicopters from Saigon moment is happening and nobody with power in America seems to know what to do other than ensure the world it is not Americas fault. ISIS are making their way down Iraq looking and taking over everything. Louis CK makes plea to TMZ to stop showing footage of Tracy Morgan car crash. They will probably keep showing it and then others will show it to show how awful TMZ are because that is how the media works. Then he goes to sleep.

.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He wakes up. Maya Angelou is dead. Then a real estate millionaire is giving out clues on Twitter to find money. He is seen as a hero but maybe he is a slum landlord a racist and he finds glee in manipulating the poor and desperate he makes them take pictures maybe he has a wall of them. He is making the greedy and desperate and poor his puppet playthings. An old man pulls a car with his teeth. A little boy plays the piano beautifully. Maya Angelou is dead. Cursory repeated conversations about mental health that are copy pasted from the last murderous rampage. It is national burger day. There is not much pollen but it is hot. Maya Angelou is dead. There is not much hope in the world. The powerful cling onto their power. The weak are left tumbling in the dark with only the infrequent sugar rush for company. Maya Angelou is dead. There is advice on morning television from sexperts. Should you love him or should you leave him? He does not wait for the answer. He accidentally strokes a woman’s hand when he tries to hold the door open. It is humid outside. He eats a salad. He reads. Thomas Piketty is still the topic of conversation. President Obama announces a new anti terrorist fund. It sounds terrifying. It sounds like a new school of the Americas. It sounds like a license for autocratic regimes to terrorize in the name of power and lies. It is $5 billion of oppression delivered by the American tax payer to perceived enemies of dictators and money mongers and oil oligarchs. A friend reminds him of an old history lesson oskar schindler was a sudetenland german. He watches the new Tom cruise movie. It is groundhogs day with aliens. It has a bad third act a poor ending of no consequence or jeopardy yet there are some good jokes but he would still not recommend it groundhogs day 2 edge of tomorrow shallow with a fun first act. Laughter in the theatre until a biker asks him to pee on him. He declines the offer. Ice cream and running for the bus and tasty meats and Maya Angelou is dead and sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He sees a Dog chasing two geese. He has a Happy bus driver. Joy heartache pensive children waiting for yellow bus graduates in gowns rich unemployed people with debt gathering to commiserate. Dreams deferred. Coffee. Fresh fruit. Salad. Swelling heart. Confusion. Got to make it past forty. Hopelessness. One hour a day. One minute at a time. Disappointment. Additional failures. Squirrels. Birds. Memories. Subtext. What is the subtext. What is the text? What of the surtext? What is consistent? Something falls. Bioshock Infinite is not. Binary at best. Troubling at worst. Four old white men playing tennis together in the morning. Long time friends perhaps. What awful crimes have they committed. What terrible pact keeps them together? What secrets do they hide on fear of grim torture and drawn out death? Chinese spying on American companies. Bold hippocrisy of Eric holder is hilarious. Do what we say not what it’s revealed by secret documents we do. The only difference seems to be the actors not the acting. There is no coherence. He writes. He progresses. He is exactly where he wants to be which is exactly where he shouldn’t be allowed to go. He eats a salad. He prepares himself for the Morrow. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. There is an excellent electric guitarist with a hamburger with vampire wings tattoo by the metro. He enjoys the music but not as much as the vampire winged hamburger tattoo. The air conditioning in the carriage makes it stink like baked rubber. The air conditioning is probably not working or it is a plan to discourage passengers. He makes an animation. It is mountains and the sun rising above the mountains. It is more impressive than he expected but it serves no purpose. An old Chicago Whitesocks fan talks to him about baseball. It is a human connection brought about by a misunderstanding and it is deeply moving and important to the shape of the day. A woman honks her horn but she is smiling not honking the horn in anger but to get the attention of a friend. He gets into the car. They smile and she drives off. He eats left over turkey burger then spends an hour considering the cleverness of that decision in a small windowless room. He finds a piece of paper. His writing is on it. He had written gender divide anatomical sex gender divide the technologists are totalitarian plutocrats theocratic swelling he does not know what it means or why he wrote those words. He does some writing. Herakles is not the most straightforward hero. Complex sociopath. He finishes Piketty’s Capital and wonders if it will signal the change of anything. He thinks back to earlier in the day when he was marginally younger and then he goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. Snorting. Snuffling. Banana. Coffee. Shower. Bagpipe violence. 911 Memorial museum looks like a shrine looks like a temple. He is half way through Proust and he is still wondering why Proust was dipping a cake into his tea was it a mistranslation was it a biscuit was it a cookie is dipping cake into tea a normal thing in France is this the thing that he is supposed to be earning from Proust from reading all of Proust he is not sure that he is being enriched as he expected. Then he eats a burger and fries and has a milk shake and he should not be surprised at his ballooning weight he promises himself to get a new pair of stretchier wider pants and then he will exercise after that after he has finished the ice cream in the fridge and the hot chocolate in the cupboard and the brownies because it would be a waste to just throw them away and start being healthy now he will finish the unhealthy food to be budget conscious and then he will stock his larder with healthy foods to the very top of the highest shelf. Then he writes and writes and writes. Then they eat and laugh and love and couple and uncouple and sweaty excess of intimacy there can be no excess of intimacy. A thirty one year old woman pretends to be a teenager so she can get into school but she is caught. The school system is in a shambles. At least she was trying to get an education even if an unusual one but not the first time it has happened he remembers the man who called himself Bruce Lee and went to be a pupil at a school in England but he was caught too he wonders what happened to this Bruce Lee and why he chose a pseudonym of one of the most famous people of the twentieth century. Barbara Walters is retiring but she is not really retiring. She will probably interview herself and there will be tears and hugs and there is another Chris Christie day joke but it is not a joke it is lazy and pathetic but the best thing in the world is Sad Batman is Ben Affleck already regretting his decision he hopes that Superman and Batman is a Waiting for Godot inspired two hour theater of the absurd piece with duality bleakness gallows humour and experimental film minimalism. He hopes that this is the case. He eats more burger. He is sated in all areas and even if briefly this is a marked improvement on a normal day. He doesn’t want the day to suddenly go horribly wrong so he goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. Does he? He does. Vibrating pillow. Tweaks. Hazelnut coffee. Rice and peanut butter and broccoli and cake and cakes and cake. Glenn Greenwald is charming and speaks quickly. Glenn Greenwald is tired. Glenn Greenwald’s film crew films behind the scenes of his epic book tour. He reads. He does some art. He drinks some water. He imagines he is on a hill swash buckling a small group of animated skeletons. It is night but the fires from the burning forest below and the large full moon light the desperate action on the cliff top. He slips the skeletons rally and dash but it was but a feint and a twists and with ease slices them all over the clouds fading them on the rocks below but the night has only just begun. He is not hungry but he eats some vegetables. It makes him feel better. He probably eats a taco. He lies down. He plays a video game that is supposed to be art. It probably is art. It probably is overrated. It is overrated. He watches a man get onto a bus. He watches a woman get off a bus. He watches pixels explode in misty clouds of blood, digital viscera smears itself across the screen. He is moved to disgust then unmoved because it isn’t real but maybe it is real. Then he reads. Then he sleeps.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He is neither a lark nor an owl. He is exhausted. He drinks a coffee. He listens to Glenn Greenwald. Glen Greenwald sounds surprisingly polite and restrained as he talks to Matt Lauer. He does not shower. It is hot outside. Parched lips. He gets on the bus. He sits on the bus. He gets off the bus. He walks to work. He takes the elevator. He has followed a woman all the way from the bus to the office. He tries to maintain his distance but this fails when he gets in the same elevator. Luckily they get off at different floors. He has another coffee. He eats too many cookies. He is bloated. Already he wants the day to be over. It is not over. It is still going on. It is still continuing. It is not ending. The broken people of Homs return to their broken city. Everyone looks on in sympathy then returns to their candy crush bejewelled high scores. Then he writes some things then he tries to stay awake. It is really hard to stay awake today. Then he lies down. Then he reads but none of the words go in they slide off his eyes and form a puddle round his body on the bed. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. Dirty Wars Inside Job The Divide. These the things do not make for a happy-go-lucky weekend. bioshock infinite with it’s attempts at depth infinite shallows. Votes in India enormous democracy. Hidden poverty rampant corruption suicide on a hill. A house explodes after gunshot is heard. The girls are freed into the arms of Islam. Parents are doubtful. Leo Tolstoy imparts advice about art and religion. He eats an ice cream. He is getting fat. He eats a cookie. He is getting fat. He eats a lunchable. He is fat and sad. He drinks a coffee and it makes him feel better for a little while. He drinks a capri sun. He eats another ice cream. Will this torment never end? It is hot outside. Like an oven. Like an oven of pain. A painful oven. Not that hot. He goes inside and the air conditioning is welcoming. Drones fly over head. The Epic of Gilgamesh is mentioned. He waits to be targeted but he is not a high value target and he is not carrying a cell phone and he eats another ice cream. He reads Dollarocracy and feels like he needs a wire brush and hose down. American political financing is a giant fetid worm sliding and pulsing it’s way across the country as it feeds in at one hole and spews gelatinous Excreta out of the other swelling it’s swollen body expanding as it goes. It is hot wet and dark outside. It is night. It has rained. A context free fight been two relative by marriage in a lift spreads across the internet and diminishes everyone. He writes and writes and writes. He watches Veep. It is funny. He watches Late Night starring Jimmy Fallon. It is funny. Neil Young is soft spoken and his voice trembles as he sings. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. Aching muscles and bones. He showers. He walks. An old lady walking very slowly up a very long elevator. She is wearing her Sunday hat. Two lovers talking quietly. Their speech barely breath. Smiling. A pack of Marlboro reds on the bench. Empty – he checks. He remembers the happiness of a good cigarette.Ladies in pink ready to walk for breast cancer. His mother dead on a slab skin metallic and cold from cancer. She never smoked. No dissipation dispossession dispersion no skate boarding no roller skating. Does anyone still rollerskate? No loitering no littering no leering no fun. James MacAvoy nearly gets angry when he is called English by Jimmy Fallon. Then he tells an amusing story about actor shenanigans which he tells as he laughs and flowers up the language but the narrative of the story seems to be three men cornering a woman and shooting her with bb guns. Jimmy is awkward. James realizes his story sounds terrible. The audience laughs because they are delirious from lack of sustenance. It is another triumphant Late Night. The Scottish sense of humor is a strange sense of humor. As inexplicable as the still burning enmity against the English. Lines snake out of the embassies of the conquerors British German French and others. Happy white tourists with bags of booty. Drinks and caveman politics. Outcasts and plutocrats. Dirty unwashed sky. London tops the list of billionaires in the world. The Trussel Trust Foodbank has seen an increase of 163% of local people. The rich have won they have won they have won their sucking tubes vacuuming up all the meaty wealth wherever they find it. All that is left is the ragged wasteland of outdoor malls and glassy eyed denizens of hopelessness. He watches Inside Job. He watches Dirty War. He reads The Divide. It is not a recipe to create a happiness cake. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. The sky is white like untouched paper. He waits for clouds and the sun and other sundry sky like things to be added but they remain missing for the remainder of the day. The buildings and other architecture remains so he makes his way to work based on these. He does not use more ancient methods of navigation such as bird-flight or moss on trees. He watches Neil Cavuto and Rudy Guiliani on mute on the television. They seem to be in hysterics about something. He wonders if they are imagining and world in which each of them has a team of poor people who then pulls a chariot for them round a race track and they bet on the outcome throwing offal into the troughs of the winning team. He does not know whether they are laughing about this because he does not increase the volume. he suspects that what they are laughing about is much much worse. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He feels groggy. Then he feels alive but this feeling doesn’t last very long and he feels groggy again. He met his housemate last night with a firm handshake and eye contact on the door to the house when he had forgotten his key at work. There was warmth and friendliness and tiredness emanating from the man. He seemed kind. He puts on his clothes. He drinks a coffee. It is a hazelnut coffee. This is currently his favourite coffee. He remembers watching a man karate chop the rain away from him yesterday because he didn’t have an umbrella marching through the rain oblivous that his karate chopping was not working his clothes drenched his wet hairy plastered to his face. He is not the man who is doing this but he could see that in years to come he could be the man doing this unaware of the futility yet continuing to chop away at the beads of water as they pour down from the sky. He eats a curry sandwich. He eats some pasta. He reads a book. Everything conspires to mediocrity today. Until the moment he gets a frozen yogurt at which point the day turns into a musical with singing and dancing. Ehud Barack stands behind him asking questions about the missing Chibok girls. He seems saddened by the answers he receives. It is very hot outside. It is very hot indeed outside. He watches Dancing with the Stars and is said when Danica Patrick is booted off but he knew that already because he is watching it on Hulu and he read earlier in the day who had been booted off. There is no time for surprises now. There are spoilers everywhere. He eats rice and noodles and has a drink of gin or two or three but no more than three and tempers them with ginger ale and water. There is talking and laughter and love and John Oliver is getting better and episode two of his new show is very entertaining and clever and thought provoking and all the things the internet has already said. Then he reads some more. Then he lies back and thinks. Spoiler Alert – Life is going to end in death. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. Battle Royale is very violent. He makes some people laugh. He drinks decaf coffee. He has pain behind his eyes. Allergies. Algiers. The Battle of Allergies. He reads. He thinks. He walks. He photographs. He types. He watches. He eats. He hugs. He laughs. He naps. He snoozes. He cries. He laughs again. He smiles. He drinks. He saves. He steals. He wishes. He lies. He demures. He disappoints. He improves. He sleeps.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up on the cold concrete floor of a room without windows. He walks through the door. He brushes his teeth. He unlocks the door he does not have a key he opens the door he heads north along a path to a wood he reaches a crossroads and goes west he ends up at a tower the tower has a door. He walks through the door. He finds some underwear. He puts on the underwear. He takes the underwear off his head. He has a coffee. He has some toast. He does not have a shower but he masks his bed stench with deodorant and hopes it will last throughout the day as long as he keeps his arms pressed by his sides his armpits firmly closed he thinks he will probably get away with it he should probably have also sprayed his genitals but it is too late for that now because he is sitting at work after having travelled on the bus with other tired commuters where he is told that his job is worth $300,000 he is not paid $300,000 so he is sure that this opinion dressed as fact is going to make him sad at least until lunch time. Then he has a donut and he forgets his unhappiness. He watches rebels retreat from Homs. He does not know what it means strategically but he suspects it will not improve the lives of civilians. He watches someone explain Indian politics. It is confusing and seems to be somewhere between dynastic and democratic held together with money –  much like American politics. He watches Luke Russert talking about Tim Russert on the television and he wonders what it would have been like to have a father or a father like that but really a father at all and he wonders at all the failed attempts throughout his life to find father figures in teachers, friends, distant relatives and strangers and how he managed to fail every one of them so it’s probably rather good he didn’t have a father in the first place because wretched disappointment is best experienced in a realm of fantasy not in the concrete cold of reality. Then he watches and he listens and he chews the air thoughtfully. He wonders where his mother is and then remembers that she is dead and ash scattered on a mountain. Then he eats some nuts. Then he weeps at the missing and the dead and the wrecked and the damned. Then he goes to sleep.

 

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. Yesterday happened. Today is going to happen. An apartment fell through. It is irritating, frustrating, discombobulating, but then he remembers that he has a voucher to get a free custard shake at Shake Shack the next time he visits so he feels marginally less distraught but only marginally. Then he weighs himself and he is unhappy with the result and then he talks to a friend and then he talks to a sibling and then he reads an uplifting letter by E. B. White about the power of continuing, struggling, persevering, even in despite the face of desolate hopelessness. Again he sees monsters and again they look like human beings. All the angels are on strike or they have served as luncheon for the monsters. Even in this hope drought there is still reason to continue just to be stubborn just because it seems like it’s impossible just because it’s difficult. Then he eats some pasta and then he drinks a coffee then he wonders if the world is going to become a place where the young of the poor are farmed for their blood so that the old and the rich can maintain themselves with strong virile bodies forever based on the latest research with mice but he is probably being paranoid then he wonders if this blood will be combined with panda blood so create some kind of super serum that the wealthy will inject once a month as they retire to their armoured enclaves surrounded by automated drones all controlled via wireless electricty by the brain of an immortal Jeff Bezos but again he assumes that he is only being paranoid and then he reads a story about the FBI plotting to assassinate Occupy leaders in Houston, Texas but the evidence seems hidden under thick black lines blindness and unelected jackboots. He looks at trees and he finds their gentle swaying calm him down then he reads a review about a book that talks about race as genetic and he feels less calm and then he eats some chicken and potato that he heated up himself and he needs a nap and his shoulders hurt and he didn’t shower this morning so he smells bad in all the furrowed regions of his body. He pauses. There is time for pausing. “Life Alert definitely saved my mother-in-law’s life that day, no doubt about it.”, says the bitter looking man who knows that his wife’s inheritance will take a few more years to find it’s way into her bank account so that he can then cut the brake cables on her sports car and then wave her away on her regular cliff-top Sunday drive. This is what Life Alert stops. It stops murder in secluded summer houses. It stops nefarious plotting in the urban sprawl. Orson Welles celebrates his 99 years of something or other. He is dead. He is not celebrating anything but he imagines what it would be like for a 99 year old Orson Welles. Let me die, let me die, let me die, decrepit shrivelled wheelchair bound Orson Welles whispers wetly into his ear. He is held together by pain and missed opportunity. By genius and The Sublime. Too much sleep is bad for humans too littls sleep is bad for humans what is the right amount of sleep nobody knows if the right amount is discovered will it allow immortality like the blood of children? He feels that something very bad is approaching. There are injustices. There is inequality. There is a jarring sense of the not quite right about to get far worse. Where is the freedom. Freedom is in the toilet so he goes and sits on the toilet and reads his kindle. Then he goes to sleep. It is probably sleep or a continuation of whatever being awake is.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He sees bears, dancing, unicycles, politics. There are lies, kingmakers, overacting, underacting, artists work for free death death death life life life. A man recovering from a heart attack a man carrying a box of items going to work barely able to walk no health insurance waiting a month and a half for disability benefit been employed there for more than twenty years. Unshaven yet still fierce and burning with a quiet rage at the injustice of his predicament. Will self decoded the death of the novel but loses at the word benisons. Words are means to communicate communicate superiority snobbery popery pappyri heroin peaches geldof sadness tragedy repetition. UKIP racism Max Clifford hoisted and in the air of the green and pleasant land can be tasted the ether of glee. Poison yellow mist of pollen thick dust in muggy air. Dylan Thomas dead under milkwood dead thirty seven dead. He has two and a half years to best his father’s record. He can do it. He wills it. He makes it so. He eats cake. Eyes streaming throat scratching nose swollen and read. else where a landslide elsewhere a boy saves his sister but parts they ultimate price. Tom Brokaw is honored. All these things are happening at once. Overlapping tumbling squashing interlocking allergies are worse Kevin Spacey is very entertaining on Jimmy Fallon. Embassy day. Lines and lines and costumes and white people taking photographs and the colonised countries get this weekend the colonised get next weekend he drinks a drink with peach and cinnamon at the Bolivian embassy. The line for chocolate is too long. There is dancing. A man dressed as a polar bear. The south African embassy is a shrine to Mandiba. Wonderful bright art in both. More dancing. Spicy ginger beer makes his tastebuds. Then the lines at other embassies snake and meander ever longer so they give up and go for shake shack lunch. Comic book day is over. He misses free comic books again. He is thirty seven and there will always be next year. He watches horse racing. Horse. Racing. A horse wins. The Hollywood movie version of the race – the underdog – the rank outsider. There is happiness. Moustaches twirl. No time for Opera on the Outfield no time for The Magic Flute. There is more reading and more sleeping and recharging and landlord rejection and The girls are still missing and they are to be sold and dispersed and their names are released and their is international uproar but only noise just the noise of uproar and then mumbling and then murmuring and then he remembers that Daniel Ellsberg was released because of Government corruption and illegal collection of evidence not because he wasn’t guilty and he wonders if Daniel Elsberg ever thanks unknown powers that the authorities that wanted to destroy him didn’t just trust the legal system that was already in place but rather sank to deviant means which meant that he had to be freed even as he admitted his guilt. Then he eats some blueberries and then Boko Haram kidnap more girls, then skirmishes occur between Russians and Ukrainians and men die then there is fighting in South Sudan and children die and parents weep. Then he pays a phone bill with his credit card with one of his credit cards. Then he eats some pringles then he has a glass of water then he reads some more writing by Matt Taibi and then he drifts and slumbers and snores and he is asleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He enjoys the marmitish Noam Chomsky. He wants to be a 12 ft lizard. Maybe he is a 12ft lizard but the mind control device was turned against him and he thinks he’s a human being. He wonders if revolution is fermenting or if it is just old cheese and jelly in his fridge or both. He wonders why he takes things so seriously and he wonders why he is not taking things seriously enough. He watches novels die – one after the other leaping off a cliff into the darkness below. Sleepwalking into traffic surrounded by flaming tornadoes. These are dreams aren’t they? He thinks they are dreams but then he loses his camera battery and he isn’t sure. He drinks a cookies and cream milkshake. He pounds his swollen belly. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. Allergies attack. The day is ruined on every conceivable level. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. A swollen whale carcass washes up on a beach. The enormous expanding metaphor terrifies the local residents with the underlying meanings that could be drawn from it’s rotting stench, it’s enormous size and whether or not it is possible to connect it to the worries in the centres of Capital or the Palaces of the powerful. He sees Matt Dillon. He sees Forrest Whitaker. They are strangers with familiar faces. He stretches his psuedopodia out of the gelatinous mass of the public extending out to these two famous people reaching with his fronds to stroke and experience their physicality perfectly and completely. They look confused. He looks horrified. He doesn’t know them. They do not know him. He stares at the familiar masks that entertain him rictus on bodies that movie erratically below as if they were powered with hydraulics attached to steaming tubes trailing along the ground to a reeking back room full of engineers and chief scientists desperate to continue the facade that dreams are real as real as the misty mystery of reality. The joyful meandering debate continues about the nature of humane execution as there ever could be such a thing. Perhaps hemlock and milk would be the best way in the manner of Socrates. Everyone a philospher sent to their own existential oblivion.He reads that we are now in a post-antibiotic age. More end days. More fear. More enemies at every gate physical, mental, spiritual. He is winded by his orgasm. He lies back on the bed light headed and unable to breathe properly. He is old. Rob Ford is old. Rob Ford is going into rehab. Rob Ford is going to stop being a late night punchline for a while as he battles with his various illnesses. Jimmy Fallon misfires a number of jokes into an audience who, bless them, are willing him to succeed. He will have to try again tomorrow to satisfy his relentless hunger for approval. He squanders the rest of the day surfing the web – trapped in the web – stuck in the web. He eats a burger. He eats fries. He plays a video game called Risk of Rain which is not about the weather. The 234 girls abducted from Chibok school in Nigeria are still missing and unnamed but a swelling tide is rising to have them remembered and saved. He hopes that they will be remembered and saved. The world is awful. The world is not so bad. The world is full of people. People are awful. Except for the ones who are not awful. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He has the smooth soft skin of a young Cindy Crawford. The radio attempts to do an emergency warning test but it doesn’t work. What would happen if it wasn’t a test but the real thing. What if the real alert didn’t work? What if we are all dead. It didn’t work at the weekend. Tornadoes tearing down alarm systems. A terrible racist is banned from basketball for life. All the excellent racists go unpunished and carry on with their day, untrammelled. He looks at a poster. He is told that an elephant will be killed while you wait for the bus. Is this a threat or a promise? A warning but phrased as if a butcher waits at your pleasure ready to slice up pachyderm cutlets for your dinner. Is there an app for that? One button press away from watching those enormous loving eyes glaze and darken. There is a man shouting in middle distance. He can’t hear what the man is shouting about. Possibly Jesus. It’s often Jesus. No guarantee it’s Jesus this time. A police car sounds like it is wolf whistling other cars. Sexist police car. Objectifying civilian vehicles. A man is wearing amazing water proof shoe coverings that are red and make his real shoes look like clown shoes. A bold man unafraid of ridicule. The best of men. A man on the bus is reading Brave New World. Braver Newer World. A Lady in spectacles. Is she a Superhero in disguise? Wet blossom stuck to a car like confetti. A memory of catching thrown money as a child after a village wedding. Fistfuls. Fists full of coppers and silvers excited tumbling home down the hill to count the collected booty. The Voice contestants sing, desperate to cling on to the frayed edges of fame. Tasted. Addicted. Cold Turkey pain moments away. Chalmers Johnson mumbles into his hand about Rome and Russia and the decline of American power and Portia justifies her violence on the Housewivesof Atlanta reunion. Brian Williams has a serious face but it seems like there is nothing behind his eyes. An artificial glow added to his pupils by special effects artists who are well paid and unionized. His mouth opens and closes. Words come out. Ukraine, South Korea, tornadoes, a smile, warmth enough for what remains of the collective American soul and a promise to be there tomorrow night. The judges of The Voice could run the world. It would be an imperfect system but it would provide definite results. Carson Daley says they are singing for their lives. If this were actually the case then there would certainly be higher viewing figures but also police inquires and no doubt criminal proceedings. Unless society found something like that acceptable in which case there would only be police there earning overtime as crowd control and security before returning home to young families and suburban contentment. A music awards ceremony promotes a new song by Michael Jackson. He does not know what to make of this. He is saddened by the mental collapse of George Monbiot and the moral collapse of Tony Blair. Citizen arrest website performance art. Waiting for Bardot the most beautiful animal loving fascist in Europe. George Monbiot and Tony Blair star in Waiting for Godot. They sit under a fake tree waiting for two more actors to appear. The two actors do not appear. George and Tony are reading from two different plays. The coughing audience applauds the experiment and it is well reviewed on theater blogs. When he was a child no one told him how pungent and how quickly his genitals would smell when he grew to adulthood. No one told him. No doubt it would be frowned upon to talk of such things to children these days. It is raining hard outside. He eats lots off near for his supper and he drinks a number of beers. Lifetime ban of  a racist basketball owner. But he still owns a team. A bald man screams. Does it mean anything? There is a funnel cloud warning. There is a funnel cake warning both dangerous in their own way. Bob Hoskins is dead. Who will save Roger Rabbit now? An execution is botched. A man is tortured to death with chemicals and then his heart explodes. The crime for which is he convicted is awful and the way the state destroys his life is equally terrifying. There is no respite from the abyss. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. Consumerism consumes consumers. Yumyumyum. Cell phone searches. Police sweeps. We are our own surveillance. He watches people through the bus window and then realizes he is staring at strangers. The Ricky Gervais backlash continues slowly but steadily. He had a new House mate that he does not see but senses because there are shoes in a place there is not supposed to be shoes and there is a light underneath the door of the bedroom. There are noises. Human shuffling and coughing. he finds a dried wasp on the inside of his bath robe. How long has it been there? Did it live there? When did it die? How long has he been home to this poisonous creature that found it within it’s nature not to stab him and stab him even as it died alone far from it’s fellow wasps. It’s brethren. It’s sistren. What is the listening equivalent of voyeurism? Earism? He sees familiar people on the bus but there are no exchanges of smiles. He saves that for the bus driver so as not to seem like a pervert. He smooths his librarycard with his finger. He finally has it. The ability to borrow books for no money from the American state that he lives in. All good things cone to those who wait. He watches a rabbit run across the road. Birds sing. Blossom is wet on the trees from the rain yesterday. There will be more rain today. Rain and heat. Steam rises off skin. He wonders if he is a crime against humanity. A crime against civility. He is getting tired of this life. He drinks a coffee and feels better. Some of his best friends are humans so how can he be anti-human. The First Minister of Scotland is caught praising Putin. it’s Pre-Crimea so it’s okay because Putin has stood for nothing objectionable before this nasty Crimea incident. Scotland is to be the island paradise for the Russian Aristocracy. As much rain as you like. He takes a test designed for women and confidence. He discovers he has lower average confidence but as a woman this is something that is very common. He is not a woman so he is not sure what to make of this. He moves on with his life to something that he can deal with. He eats chocolate and succumbs to another terrible Jimmy Dean Breakfast Biscuit double. Again they look like toys. Again they taste like melted plastic. Maybe they are children’s toys and he has been going to the wrong aisle. He chastises a powerful congressman for mispronouncing a word. He feels marginally empowered. He thinks up t-shirt slogans. Capitalism doesn’t care is definitely the worst one that he comes up with. He will put it on a t-shirt and sell it and that will show the man who is boss. The man that is who. He eats cold pizza. He reads. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He likes being asleep so he is unhappy to be woken up by the light and his body and the requirement to go to work for a living so that he can get money to buy food and shelter. He reads more of Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the 21st Century and starts to read Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness by Jane Lazarre. He listens to a skinny young child talk about taking a year off. Words like ethnic, exotic, experience, character-building fly thick and fast out of the young child’s mouth. Does it mean anything? Other than signifiers of white male privilige not very much or that the rest of the world is a playground and a classroom for the paler peoples of the planet. Life is happening elsewhere. He drinks some elderflower drink. It transports him back to many years ago to a lovely time when he picked elderflowers with a friend and subtle elderflower champagne was made and fermented and he probably spent far too much time at his friends house but everyone was too polite to say anything but he is old now and on another continent so it probably doesn’t matter how we make mistakes and don’t see the signs and overstay our welcome and try to escape the inescapable. He watches Cosmos and it fills his heart with joy and he naps. He walks past a wall and on the wall there is a piece of plastic. The piece of plastic flaps in the wind. It makes a hard noises as it hits the wall. It does not seem to serve any purpose. It is not covering an opening or a broken window. It is just nailed into a brick wall.. Maybe it is street art. He saves some fake animals in a video game. It is not satisfying. He reads about Tony Blair. Tony Blair seems to be going insane. Maybe he has always been insane. Advertising is destroying the planet. It is destroying humanity. As has always been the plan. He drinks a French Coffee and eats a Jimmy Dean Breakfast biscuit. He opens the Jimmy Dean Box. The frozen layers are wrapped in plastic. He opens the packet. The biscuit looks like plastic. The egg looks like plastic. The bacon looks like plastic. It looks like a child’s toy. He wraps it in paper. He unwraps the second one and does the same. These two plastic toys are put in the microwave. He sets the microwave for 2 minutes then changes his mind and resets it to 2 and a half minutes. Then he stands by the microwave and waits for 2 and a half minutes wondering at how many times the West will be said to be wringing it’s hands as it stands by unable to do anything as darker hued people attack one another in a vacuum with no connection to any complex global interrelations that may or may not be connected to governments of the west or corporations of the west we are the good guys we are the good guys we are the good guys. Then someone uses the phrase Hobson’s Choice when he actually means Sophie’s Choice but no one seems to notice and no one seems to care. The sun is pleasant outside and there is a slight breeze. He eats some cake flavoured m&ms and he has mint flavoured m&ms and he eats some cookies and cream hershey bar. He is getting fat and he isn’t sure why. He remembers that he has forgotten his Jimmy Dean Breakfast biscuits. He returns to the microwave. They are soft and cold. He heats them up again. He chews them. They are very hot in some parts but there are still cold pockets of wet meat. He puts ketchup on them. He does not feel any better about himself. At least he is not being sentenced to death. He wants a pair of sunglasses. He wants to be drunk. He wants to forget. He wants to remember. He dives down the rabbit hole but only his hand will fit. He is not the space trader he wished to be when he was a child. He rends and he tears at the sky but it does not respond. He plays he talks he thinks he hopes he fears. He ignores grammar and spelling and syntax. He bores. He bores deeply into his head with a drill. There is just air inside his head. It is hollow like a jar. Like an old jar found in a cave. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. There is a new film with Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler. They will be in love. They visit Africa. All of Africa. Terry Crewes goons around. There are giraffes. There is dancing. No mention is made to what part of the country of Africa they are visiting. Lion King Land perhaps. The Scotland Independence debate is confusing. Federal system on a tiny island. Would independence turn Scotland into a European Haiti? Probably not. Although that seems to be the underlying threat as expressed by no one. Alex Salmond sings the praises of certain elements of Vladimir Putin’s character. Could this be compared to Mugabe making favourable comments by Hitler? It could but it would not really be accurate. The Cold War returns. Neon returns as a fashion colour. It is the 1980s again. Rhetoric rules. There are no rules. Seth Meyers why. Lorne Michaels Comedy Pope. An enormous Suicide bomb explodes in Iraq. It is enormous. Everyone who is not vaporised is shredded who is not shredded is bleeding and staggering. There are death screams, flames, and diplomatic heads shake sorrowfully as they distance themselves from that which is wrought. Elsewhere Chemical Weapons decimate Syrians. Everything about the world is distressing. There are no winners. There are probably some winners but they live far away from here in well protected enclaves containing buttermilk fountains and angelic perfumes in the air.
The BBC compares grassroots womens peace groups stopping war in Liberia and stopping the disappeared in Argentina with the British State trying to get the muslim community to inform on their men. It is an interesting comparison. He wonders if it is a reasonable comparison. It probably is not. From nail art to footage to the front line of war. Big history big science big politics big big big complexity game theory slavery consumerism cheese dogs and cat videos chewing up the planet. Negotiations are happening for the release of people, for the cessation of war, for reparations for the poor and the disposessed. The Possessed remain untouched. A barrel bomb is literally a barrel full of high explosives. He plays The Room 2. He escapes a room only to find himself trapped in another room. It feels like life. It feels like it’s time for bed. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He doesn’t wake up.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He swims in a sea of sadness. He sees the shore and makes his way, slowly, towards the firm ground. He is asked if he uses chewing tobacco or snuff. He did not realize that he woke up in the 19th century this morning.The only people who seem happy with Hamas and Fatah joining together are in a room shaking hands. Some people with flags also look happy but there is no sense what is going on inside their minds. Maybe they just like flags. There is a lot of yawning on the bus. He eats chocolate eggs for supper and he orders a pizza he neither wants nor can afford. There are no dreams.The wrong name is on the train but he gets on it anyway. It goes to the right place. Sometimes Faith is justified.He watches as conditions are improved for workers in Bangladesh as skirmish leads to death in Ukraine as consumers are told to act morally and he learns that he has below average confidence.Everything is being overwhelmed and their are no definite solutions to bring peace for anyone. It is time for Mars to be colonized for a fresh start as an activist talks about politicians as if politicians have any power at all to do anything. Pollen in the air makes the day a catastrophe. He is in a film that appears in an art gallery in New York. It is successful. He bathes in it’s success. He still feels dirty. He feels dirty and confused. He is in the presence of an ex-Prime Minister. He feels unremarkable. There is a lot of flurrying and unnecessary stress. Islamist extremists are blamed for all the ills of the world. They are a perfect enemy. They will never give up. They will never surrender. They will never be destroyed. Everything is black. The pin of light in front of him gets slowly larger and larger and larger and larger and then he has a cup of chai and then, because there is nothing else to do, he goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He feels refreshed as if he had a good nights sleep. His phone tells him he is in Alexander City, Alabama. He is not in Alexander City, Alabama. He looks up Alexander City, Alabama on the internet. It seems to be the home of many sports professionals. It had a different name once and it was burnt to the ground and then it was rebuilt. He wonders if all theater is dead. He sees an enormous man lifting weights in the parking lot by his truck. The weights are also enormous. He gets a library card online. He is very excited about this and peruses the books he is going to download. He gets confused with the search process and cannot find anything he wants to read. He decides he will go into the library and pick out a book the old fashioned way. He counts bulbs and inventories them in drawers. He watches from a car as he drives along a dirt track road past houses that are blurred and bodies that are blurred on the road. All violence is censored and cleaned and smeared as the high frequences of his perception is attenuated his mind can’t take the horror so it masks everything so he is not sensible to the grim reality. We will never be offline. A leader of the Internet says this with glee as she blames women for the inequality that they suffer. Men cheer because it’s not their fault they are weak feeble lazy and yet still they seem to manage to shape and form the seer stone spectacles through which reality is perceived. She talks of disruption but not the broader disruption of a more equal world but the disruption that comes from technology tearing apart families and places of employment and glaring lidless eye of the mutual surveillance panopticon that everyone will have opted in to because each like and reblog and favorite and follow will be attended with a tiny haptic orgasm that can either be experienced immediately or stored up in a full length body suit to be released throughout the body after a tedious day at work in a jellied womb operating as a battery for a plutocrats steam bath. How can truth be found when everything appears to be a lie? A young married couple stand by Uluru colonizing the air with their unelected breath. Walking on the great rock is frowned upon but so is shooting the Dream walkers as if they were rats or taking their land and turning it into private property or selling their children as slaves and servants and crushing their hopes and their dreams but all of that is forgotten as everyone takes on the facial expression of the respectfully curious and the mildly bored. He hears the concept of servant-leaders and when he stops laughing he enjoys the ridiculous hippocrisy. He is tired of it all. He takes a nap. The delightful libetarian who runs Wholefoods selling the staples of the third world as luxury foods to the first world. Dreams move in and out of the edges of his vision. A giant Tiger. Saddles. White people stole jazz and made it worthless then they killed it. Is any of this true? Is that true? True. True. True. True. Tree. Tree. Tree. Three is the magic number. He walks in a small group through a barren wasteland towards the horizon on either side there are corpses and skeletons and a faded path that they keep walking along and as they live and age and stumble never reaching the glint on the horizon he thinks that perhaps they are on a globe just large enough to walk round in a lifetime and the corpses on the side are their ancestors and as he dies he imagines that future generations of his family will unknowingly walk past his skeleton and look with brief sympathy into the hollow sockets of his skull. There is no sympathy nor retreat. He eats some Cadbury eggs. He eats meat. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. There are orphan Farms and meat orchards. Families are sliced apart like butcher’s mutton. Nutrient paste hosed into expanding bellies. There is saturation. Everyone is terminal. The telomeres shave away every year and the DNA glitches build up silently in the backrooms of the thewish tenement. There is asthmatic excitement at company profits. Greed the never to be satisfied desire for everything. All cleaning and caring and dressing and bathing the monster that will one day consume us all. The insidious truth of the Racial Contract. Hidden from view from those who wield it. Wilfully ignored by those who wield it. The ignorance of a system they built yet at the same time a terrible fear that if it were to disappear their destruction would be assured that the pain and suffering that they have inflicted would be returned a hundred fold. The automated slaughter-bots patrol the streets of the near future clearing up the afternoon rush. Confusion abounds as to whether people are running the Boston Marathon or attending a rally to free Ukraine. Hoax factories churn out elaborate lies, sprinkled with shredded facts. Varnished, packaged and delivered they line the aisles and fill the post boxes brimming, overflowing, gushing, drowning. Desensitized and reeducated Desiccates sit quietly engorged on an endless production line of glowing addiction. The day has not been too bad. There was love and there was happiness and laughter and joy and heart beating wildly and smiles and sweat and grinning and beard hair and the possibility of a better tomorrow and too many Cadburys chocolate eggs and Hershey eggs and that is no supper but it was supper and a bagel and maybe something that was fish or the memory of the death of fish. He probably falls asleep. He cannot remember.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He eats a cold banana from the fridge. The peeled skin is cold on his hand like wet flesh. He eats the banana. It has the texture of meat. He is not sure he is awake yet. The banana disappears slowly into his mouth as he chews trying to ignore the peeled back skin limp on his hand. He drinks a hazelnut coffee. He can remember no dreams. He watches as bag after bag containing South Korean children are lined up on the shore as they are gently gathered from the ship that was their tomb. There seems no end to the line of children. Their parents heavy with mourning heave nearby. He feels his belly distending with food. He gorges on a pizza he doesn’t really want to eat. His knee still aches. He finishes reading The Racial Contract. It is brain-changing. It is mind-blowing. It is clear and precise. Someone on the television says an event was unimaginable but it was not unimaginable. It was a very imaginable event. Most events are imaginable. Especially the terrible ones. He is haunted by his memory of dead leaves. He does not go outside. The sun is shining but he is afraid of pollen. He brushes his teeth. There is lots of blood – blood dripping down his chin filling the sink spilling over the sink and filling the small blue bathroom sloshing up the walls the door shut tight as he drown in his own blood. Then he finishes all of his laundry and he plays the piano and he is still not very good at playing the piano but noone is listening and he enjoys pressing the buttons or keys or whatever they happen to be called. He has no ethical map or moral compass. He wonders if they sell them at the surplus store but it is unlikely, given the world as it is, that there would be a surplus of ethical maps or moral compasses. He vacillates. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He farts himself awake. A long low rumble like a motorcycle in need of repair. He falls back to sleep. He wakes himself up again with his unhappy bowel. He makes a coffee and drinks a coffee and eats some toast and honey and he reads a depressing paper about the illusion of democracy in America – it is an oligarcy, a plutocracy, a kyriarchy. It is not the lush open grassland of opportunity that the myths would have everyone believe. It is not the tourist experience of snapping pictures and pointing at natives and eating new food and drinking specially prepared psycadelic medicines. It is the grey grinding gears of the every day drudge the mulched down foundation of the power elite. He eats a banana. He eats a sandwich with meat and cheese and mustard and spinach. He drinks a French vanilla coffee. He can never tell the difference between French vanilla and plain vanilla. He is probably uncouth. He doesn’t care. He wonders whether he should wear guy-liner. He will come to a conclusion some time later in the year. His inner thigh aches. The sharp pain is just out of the reach of his fingers. He cannot position himself in the chair in order to stop feeling the pain. He stands up and the pain disappears but then a new pain appears in his left shoulder. It is dull and constant until he sits down again at which time the sharp pain returns. Then it disappears fading like a scream on a moving train. He watches an incredible film called The House I Live In. He has to take breaks for crying. He plays Hearthstone a game on the computer that uses digital cards. He is regressing. He reads The Racial Contract. He takes some photographs. He does some monochrome oil painting. He does not do any laundry. He should do some laundry. His left knee starts to hurt. He itches his right eye for a while. He takes a nap. He watches a talk by Eugene Jarecki and Chris Hedges. It is at the same time bleak and hopeful. Perhaps the prison-industrial complex the pharmaceutical-industrial complex the military-industrial complex the [insert business here]-industrial complex will be dissolved to form a more amenable society and the poor won’t be warehoused because they are no longer of any use to the 400 people who own the same amount of wealth in America as the bottom 150 million. When you are calling the bottom 150 million the bottom, he thinks, then you really have a problem with how you are defining your terms. He lies down in bed hoping that he will be able to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. Biology is not Destiny. He senses the impending doom of a new mass extinction like animals before an earthquake or tsunami or war. He has a shower. He has a hazelnut coffee. He drives through suburbia. It looks like a film set all flimsy fronts held up on wooden supports. Abandoned yet well kept. A dog barks and then runs with the car. Then Noises but only in the distance as if activated by a sound engineer. Lawn mowers, water sprinklers, children playing, the spit and sizzle of a weekday cook out. He sits in a parking lot and watches dreams crumble geologically. He wonders why medical help has to accord with patient values in America where the prime question might be will this make me better and will I have a good quality of life not does Jesus cry when I get this kind of surgery or is big government also benefiting from my good health in which case let me die let me die let me die I want no part in hurting Jesus or helping big government. He takes photographs of strip malls, artificially aged signs, a discarded school baseball stadium, a supply store with the same name as a German war hero. The light is adequate. He sees street names that remind him of Scotland. He is irritated when a woman orders her drink before she pays even though she is behind him in the queue and she gets her drink first even though he did things in the right order. There is no justice in this world he thinks and then his mind travels to more important matters like accidentally appearing in pornography and anxiety about the terminal velocity of life. When aliens arrive from outer space the reason they will destroy the human race will be the continuing toleration Jeremy Kyle. This is the one solid conclusion he reaches from his morning thinking. He smells the fall of Rome, tastes the last days of Marienbad, hears the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire. Oceans of old white men rise up with claw hands to drown everything rather than share -grasping and straining their staring eyes pleading for undeserved sympathy. Give us more their gnashing teeth grind out myths over and over and over. Ears bleed. Meanwhile he enjoys a chai tea latte and a chocolate brownie. The sun comes out and the day looks glorious and washed clean through the Windows of the Starbucks. He takes up too many seats but he is in a selfish mood so he treats himself to this unnecessary but joyous extra leg room. He listens to strangers talk about secession and revolution and the overreach of the federal government as they sip their frappuccinos and soy lattes on comfortable couches. He finds a beer branded with the Caricatured face of Edgar Allan Poe brewed in Baltimore which seems very inappropriate as he died drunk in a gutter in Baltimore. He watches Dancing with the Stars and weeps as they glide across the stage. He eats salad and then falls asleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. The police are at tyson’s corner so are the fire brigade. Three floors of an apartment have been evacuated because of a funny angel emanating a funny smell emanating from one apartment and the occupier threatening the police through the door with a gun. This is the story this is the police narrative. It is raining. It is wet. The pollen has a sharp taste in the eyes and ears. It burns oh how it burns. There are discarded pistachio shells all around the busstop. They were there yesterday. Perhaps they will be there tomorrow. He hopes that the pistachio nuts were enjoyed but sad that the enjoyer should not have collected the casings in a bag as the inner goodness was eaten and not cast them aside like bullet shell casing around the memory of a bunker mounted machine gun in war. food war. Trash war. He buys a hazelnut coffee. Workers wait in the store away from the rain their shifts not begun yet but already looking tired. He stands outside the bus shelter using his umbrella giving distance between him and the women to Dow to them that he odd not a threat. It probably doesn’t work. They probably wonder if they give him any thought at all why he isn’t standing insider the bus shelter because there is, after all, plenty of room. He accidentally calls a lady bus driver sir. He feels bad about this. Maybe she had no opinion but he uses his imagination to imagine her imagining why a passenger imagined she should be okay with being called sir in a heteronormative world. One day it might not matter but today it does to a lot of people it does because of prejudice and reasons and judith butler is nowhere to offer clarity and assistance. He eats a burger and drinks a sangria and children apart at host place of work except his work is different the geography is different and the kids are soon out of control and posting buttons they super be pressing and acting in a threatening manner to all the adults and then to him and then a masked intruder begins starting fires and he chases the pyromaniac on a scooter through the city and he catches him with webbing like spider man and it turns out the intruder is just a bullied kid who wanted friends and then the wrestling team attack but he protects the child and her is a child but then he looks in the mirror and sees his belly distended all veined like a pregnant belly and he thinks of he farts it well deflate do he farts and it does not deflate so he shrugs his shoulders and puts his shirt on and winners if he is dreaming as he locks eyes with a homeless man who is trying to sleep in a bus shelter. There is no conclusion to the stand off at the apartment that began in the morning. Perhaps everyone forgot and drifted away from the scene to other acvities. He keeps walking as he falls asleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. It is warm. It is pleasant. Waco is referenced by the glowing box. There are dark memories of Ruby Ridge. Later there is a lady on the bus who hears vibrations. She has premonitions of the conversation she is currently having with whoever is on the other end of the phone perhaps herself from another dimension from the past from the future a ghost her father. Then he walks through a fake world manufactured out of virtual blocks. Miley Cyrus has not been in the news. Does she still exist or does she wither like the old gods or fade like the mcfly children on a Polaroid photograph when she is not being discussed? He drinks a hazelnut coffee and eats a banana and meets President Carter. He draws a long long line on a large large piece of paper that takes him an hour in large circles circling from the edges of the paper round and round until he is at the very centre of the large large piece of paper it is an easy easy maze just a very very long and tedious one to navigate if you ever happen to get stuck in the middle which is unlikely because it is only a spiral on a piece of paper.

He drinks a cup of butter toffee coffee. It smells nicer than it tastes and tastes marginally worse than it sounds. Larry the Cable Guy explodes as he sells a pill to help you keeping eating the shit you want to eat so that you can keep shitting and your heart will scream but it will go on living even though it’s begging to die. The UN Ambassador to Ukraine is having a hard day. Struggling from interview to interview he does not know what is happening in the next five minutes so finds it very difficult to concentrate on the fate of his country. He eats fish and drinks wine. He meets Jesus. He watches hypocrisy. He recognizes it because he sees it in the mirror every day. The President talks about Pope Francis. He is a fanboy. The pope is unimpressed. There is corruption in both houses. Uniforms and murder and deceit and deviance and chocolate fondue parties. God cares for nothing except himself because he is everything. He is necessarily selfish because there is no distance between him and the other. he is the other. He is the same. he is the difference. He is the spaces in between and the in-between. He hears the background noise of chewing on human flesh. Something is eating the world. Something that cannot be seen when looked at directly but it is eating slowly and resolutely without pause and without regret. He is perturbed as he pretends to fall asleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He is tired. There is heat in the air. There is pollen in the air. It sticks to everything. It has to be waded through. It stinks up the air. There are people collapsing in the street as the plants go to war as the trees go to war as the explosions fill the air fireworks destruction asphyxiation. A visit to a sanitarium shown round by a tired ghost who just wants to disappear into the mist of the past. Squeaky wheels of patient gurneys and the soft weeping  of the trapped rabble. A visit to an enormous apartment complex that feels like the set of Rosemary’s Baby with windows down to the floor and no obvious means of securing the safety of residents how many people have fallen or were pushed or jumped from these terrifying dizzying heights to end it all on welcome concrete below? No answer is given to that unasked question. Gadaffi’s son looks like George Bluth Sr. in a bad disguise or possibly George Bluth Sr’s brother in disguise. Oscar Pistorius continues to be interrogated by the prosecution lawyer. He writhes and moans and trembles. He learns about colour and colour theory and human comparative blindess when given the scope of the complete light spectrum of the universe. Then he eats a sandwich and then he lies down. Then he reads. Then he sleeps loudly and with movement and he wakes himself up and then he goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He doesn’t know if he slept or if he is awake. The sun is beading light down the wall so it must be daytime. It buttons then slips into thickening ropes until it spread and make a small lake on the floor. It is hot outside and he dresses incorrectly wrapped up in a winter coat so he sweats and fumbles his way to work. He sees a woman picking her nose. A man playing flappy bird. A family sitting silently staring into the distance. A man tripping on a stone. A woman diving across the road before the light changes and making it just in time before large vehicles crush her body. He reads about capitalism in the 21st century and he is confused by it. He feels that he is constantly just one corner away from understanding. One corner he has to walk around and there in front of him will be the answer he is searching for. It is always the next corner. Always when he reaches it the answer has moved on just a little further. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. His chest is tight. So much rain spatter. Peaches Geldof is dead abhorrent tragedy. He gets his driver’s license. A weight is lifted he is elated drained shorn of feeling and emotion yet giddy with a feeling that he does not have a owrd for. he sits in a car and listens ot the radio. He wishes his phoens was working but it is not working it is broken but he has a driver’s license and Mickey Rooney is dead. All nature is repetition. All hope all love all hate is repetition all has happened before every breath every thought infused with every previous thought and hope and moment nostalgia shell shock battle fatigue ptsd a new term is needed war truth reality on the road home but he will never arrive home broken forever to be walking the homestead just over the next mound the welcome vertical of chimney smoke never to enjoy the heat of the fire. Morseless bravery in the blasted bunker. He has a driver’s license and finally learns why it has taken so long because his name was too long and now they learn their error  they blame him with their eyes but they reset a scanner and they give him his license and finally he has it in his hands and he is a driver and a human being and a productive member of society again. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. His life is all acoustic pulses and repetetive beats and repetetive beats and grilled cheese and stomach ache and neck ache and back ache and ache ache. He is swelling up like a balloon. He worries about imaginary pain and ignores real pain. He stares at the wall for a while. He drinks a coffee. He draws some pictures. He wipes his hands until they are red and raw. He sneezes but he is not sure whether it is because of allergies of because he is dying from some unknown disease or if he is being tickled by angel wings. He goes to sleep having wasted the day.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He glides through the day passing people on every side sliding between the spaces in time and space. He bathes in an ocean of information. It drips off him as he walks through the digital storm. He sees spy cameras everywhere and electronic nets collecting swarms of data. He is content but it is veined with trepidity because he is not normally content and generally contentment is a prologue to disaster but he decides to enjoy it for the moment. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. His body is held together by sweat and shame. It continues from there. There is no diaper on the sidewalk as he walks along the sidewalk where it has been for months fermenting so at least there is that. He writes lists he eats food he drinks coffee and hair grows out of his body it keeps on growing and it does not stop. He writes his name on his forehead but he does it backwards so that he can see it in the mirror. No one mentions that his name is written on his forehead. He eats trail mix and he strokes a pet hamster and he takes some pills that help him sleep and he watches succesfull people succeeding on television but he isn’t sure whether they are really succeeding or whether it is just edited that way for happy endings and triumphs while the detritus of their lives is washed down a long dark tube. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up to the sound of three alarms. The sun has not risen yet but then it rises like a button. However that may be. He waits in line in the cold and the chill and nearly gets what he wants but then fails at the final hurdle and realizes he will have to return to this purgatory again but at least for now he will get to leave wherever this may be wherever he may be going whatever he may be doing. Then he eats a donut and drinks a very poorly made coffee and there is fun and there are games. There is grocery shopping and eating and reading and watching things. There is waking up on a planet that has poisoned rain and being attacked by creatures with smiling faces and digging for coal and for copper and for iron and cutting down trees and dying and being reborn and dying again and building a space ship that doesn’t take off properly and being a spy and inhabiting worlds and worry and sadness and joy and trepidation and excitement and love and more love and laughter and then he goes to sleep after having experienced lots of verbs in real time he goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He finds some vodka in a glass by his bed which has some cranberry juice in it. There is no time for breakfast so he drinks this and the bitterness wakes him up. He has no time for a shower. He wears the same clothes from the day before only just making the effort to find a new pair of underpants. He puts the underpants on backwards and the takes them off and puts them off the correct way. Then he stares at the new art of George W. Bush. It is aesthetically very basic yet utterly compelling because of the identity of the artist. The average art works of a teenager become something more profound and powerful because the hand that painted them contains the fingers that wavered over the red button for eight years. He wonders if Paul Bremer is jealous that he is not getting as much attention for his art his flat landscapes and barns and bridges of madison county. He wonders why he doesn’t wear more dresses. Dresses are pretty and it would be nice to wear one but he thinks that his hairiness would probably fight against whatever pretty dress he chose. Then he eats a donut and then he has a coffee and he buys some groceries and he does his laundry and he ponders whether he should paint his nails and he paints his nails in lots of pretty rainbow  colors and they look pretty but they go with none of his outfits so he takes nail polish remover and gently dabs a cotton ball with nail polish remover and he  removes the nail polish and he prepares himself for whatever the day may bring tomorrow another trip to the mva a driving license the wind the sun the rain the cherry blossoms whatever the world wishes to drench him  in he is ready. He goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up to the mellifluous sound of a radio presenter and then he falls back asleep again. Then he wakes up again and he has a shower and he has a coffee and he plays Fruit Ninja and breaks a sweat which shouldn’t be a thing that happens. Then he goes to work and he has another coffee and he feels better and he drinks some water and he works hard and he snaps at someone and regrets it and then he goes to an art supplies shop and feels like he has found a new heaven. Then he forgets to eat lunch then he plays some more Fruit Ninja then he walks walks with his legs just walking until he doesn’t need to walk any more. Then he brushes his teeth. Then he feels nervous about his driving test and then he goes to sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He immediately regrets eating six microwaved White Castle tiny burgers. The rest of the day is unpleasant and should not be described. He enters his bed with trepidation not looking forward to sleep or what will replace sleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He is in a hotel. It is the best feeling to wake up in an old hotel with someone you love after a night of fried chicken and donuts and cocktails and not to be woken by bad dreams or unyielding horrors at the fringes of perception. He drinks a blueberry coffee which tastes like someone accidentally dropped herbal tea into his coffee and then he drinks a pecan coffee which tastes glorious flavour explosions in his mouth. Then he feels the rain on his face and then he feels the sun on his face and then it is dark because he has closed his eyes and they are pinched tight but then he opens then and everything is still the same and there is sun and there is rain and there are bananas to eat. We are all dehumanized. The word is used to refer to things that we don’t like to acknowledge are all too normal. Human is all things it is not just the good things. Then he listens to tired questions and tired answers and the games continue and the nothing changes. Then he eats some fries and then he eats a pop tart without first toasting it and then he watches The Blacklist which is a show about daddy issues in which James Spader plays a wonderful villain who is really the main character’s father but maybe isn’t but probably is but everything is put in place to make it seem like he is even if no one is saying that is the case. Then he wonders about freedom and he feels it crushing him and then he falls asleep.

Appetite for Distraction – Another Day.

He wakes up. He goes to the gym and experiences nausea on the running machine and the rowing machine and the step machine but it is good nausea then he worries about tumors and journalism and journalling and the moon hoax axe murderer who claims that the missing plane is on the darkside of the moon with the Nazis having been sucked through an artificial black hole that was made by a secret superweapon. Who controls the news birth market looking at purple tears weeping down a man’s face. Museums closed early and passport missing and slowly growing fear pushing it down as the spiral begins not to worry but without his passport he has no identity and he will have to get a new one and this will take six weeks and then he will not be able to take his driving test and then he will not be able to go to court with it and he will be put in jail for months and he will lose his job and he will be deported and he will need to renew his visa and thousands of dollars and time and effort will be expended as he then has to retake all the tests for his driving licenese again and come back to the country for court and then finally his passport is found and he is tearfully grateful but at what cost was it found and will it ever be better and how shockingly bad has he turned down the wrong path into the misty valley and he cannot see the end of the valley he can only hear noises in the dark that he does not like the sound of but then watching Veep and True Detective in Russian and eating tasty burgers becalms and relaxes and everything is okay again for a while but it will not be okay again in the future as the long winding road of comprimise crumbles before and behind him. The birth of the modern world, puzzle palace the masters of literature the power of the media news religion genuflection truth all of it mashed up together into a pulpy mess that can only be absorbed through a straw rammed into the forelobe of the brain as slowly conflict over water becomes a mainstream idea as Thucydides teaches about politics and war and Chekhov teaches about human relationships and jelly splash teaches nothing and there is walking and coffee and chocolates and Frisbee and Belgian brownies and a student making ricin in his dorm and matt taibbi’s book of eloquent rant and Andrew Jackson is a psychopathic maker of modern America and British are let of the hook once again for oppression native Americans and slaves. Bill Murray appears in Razor’s Edge in a beautiful powerful vanity project that nobody remembers and everyone is watching everything and everyone and no one is contemplating or compromising and everyone is afraid and tired and stressed and broken and beaten but double fried chicken almost solves everything and the sense memory of double fried chicken almost solves everything but there are still naggging doubts that remain like where is the plane and is Putin going to invade Finland and is there any milk in the fridge and does this blackberry infused coffee taste good or does it not taste good and why is sport and how do life and it is only lunchtime on another Monday in the 21st century so he does the only thing he can do and that is go to sleep.