Theoretical Chicken Soup for the Hypothetical Soul

Pain Reliever. Fever Reducer. Fast Acting. One by one, I return the bottles to their places on the shelf. None of them says anything about curing existential angst. Shouldn’t your questions about the meaninglessness of life be concisely answered beneath the FDA label? Percent daily values of god and the devil? Aren’t people concerned about this? I move along the shelf, examining the varieties of cough syrup. From behind the bottles, a small demon launches itself onto my face.

Okay, I’m probably telling this wrong. Again. The real story is, I start looking at cough syrups because I am absolutely fed up with vodka and a demon jumps onto my face and asks “Hey buddy, want to see the paradox?”

“Sure” I answer. “Which one?”

“The big one” the demon says. His tiny claws cause a prickling sensation. “Just walk into that swirling vortex on the floor there.”

“Where did that come from?”

“This grocery store, it’s everything and nothing, built on the decaying carcass of physically embodied, undiluted chaos.”

“Oh.” I walk into the vortex.

I feel flattened, stretched, compacted. All the while, the demon is still hugging my face. Then we land. Hard. I get up, rubbing my head and for the first time the demon is sitting on my shoulder, stoic. I can feel the little needle pricks where he was attached to my cheeks and forehead. The ceiling above us is a glass dome, with fantastic colors arcing across it, inconceivable shapes hurtling through space. I mean, I think it’s space. I had never seen a six-dimensional sphere before this. Around us are shelves and desks filled with books and papers, all stained with ink.

“Welcome to the Library of Contradictions” the demon said.

“Contradictions?”

“The longest books are the shortest, fact is fiction is fact, the most beautiful poems are the most hideous and terrifying things you will ever convince yourself that you’re seeing. Don’t read those by the way. Which is to say, read them if you know what’s good for you.”

I pick an ancient-looking tome up from a table and flip through it.

“These books don’t have any words.”

“Exactly.” The demon hovers by my head. “You’re on the right track, chief.”

He flitters down to the floor and starts a winding path through the rows of book cases. I follow close behind, almost knocking over a rhombus-like globe, split diagonally by a zigzagging line labeled ‘Equator’. We finally reach a door, watched over by a one-eyed gargoyle.

“This is the Study. The Scribe sits inside. He can answer any question, but he only speaks a language that doesn’t exist.”

“But if he speaks it, it must exis--”

“Shhh.” The demon hops up on my shoulder and puts a finger to my lips. We walk inside.

The Scribe sits at the center of a giant clock, gears whirring, model planets spinning, pendulums and little wooden birds in constant motion. It fills the entire study with its impossible complexity. I momentarily wonder how the Scribe avoids having his absurdly long beard caught in the mechanism. He looks up from the massive book perched on his lap, ink dribbling from the quill pen in his hand.

“Yes?”

“Boss, this guy has some questions” the demon says, leaping to the floor.

The Scribe looks up at me.

“Hey, I can understand you!” I stammer.

He raises an ancient eyebrow.

“I just thought that if you spoke a language that doesn’t exist, I might not be able to--”

“Think harder” the Scribe interrupts.

“Well…obviously if we’re communicating, there must be some parado--oh. Neither of us is really speaking. So no matter what answer you give me, it’s not really an answer. It’s another question, because I’m the one supplying it.”

“Yeah, pretty much” the Scribe reclines. “You want a beer before you go?”

“Won’t the beer be something else?”

“No, beer is beer in every dimension. The universal truth is that there is no truth.”

“Another paradox.”

“Don’t think too hard about it, trust me. Remember Sartre? Yeah, he does my laundry.”

“Gotcha.” I take a sip of the beer. It’s delicious, but the brand appears to be a mathematical equation.

“See you around.” The Scribe waves as the Study fades to black. And I’m staring at the cough syrup again, beer in hand. I pick a cheap bottle of the generic brand to drink later, slip it in my pocket, and walk out the door. The guard doesn’t suspect a thing.

i.

Black Eye

The first thing you should know is that it’s way too easy to look like you’re doing something important. Just because people don’t “get it” suddenly means you’re making a statement or something. Maybe it’s just a coping mechanism. Maybe I called her too many times. Maybe she had a project. Maybe she was fucking someone else. I don’t know. Obviously, I haven’t talked to her in a while. Maybe I just wanted to feel alive again, to get that same rush. Running as fast as I could into a brick wall feels about as intense as holding the person you care about. So instead of whispering “I love you” and feeling them breathing against you, you fall on the ground and laugh as hard as you can as tears well up in your eyes and you feel the blood coming out of your nose and mouth. And it feels absolutely fantastic and liberating, and the strangers around you, they don’t get it so they ask if you’re okay. So when you stand up, wipe the blood and spit and tears off on the sleeve of your $200 dress shirt and exclaim “I’ve never been better!”, for some reason they get confused. Well, I’m not here to be a goddamn tour guide anyway. Until they forget their jobs and their families and everything they thought they knew about happiness, they’re not going to get it. Until they throw away the preconceived notions and the caution, until they fuck around in the bathroom with that boy at work and punch the mirror afterwards and say “It’s okay that we see each other as one-dimensional” then bleed all over their progress reports before turning them in, they’re not going to really understand. This is therapy. This is healing.

Dear God, Why Am I So Well-Adjusted???

"You want what?" The therapist folded his hands and stared at me intently.

"I want a disorder" I said. "People will listen to me if they think there's something wrong. Can you just diagnose me with something?"

"That's not really how it works."

"Look. I'm fucked up. I can prove it! Sometimes I pay to see one movie at the theater, then when it ends, I sneak into another one. Without paying!"

"See, that's not a disorder. It's just slightly immoral."

"So you're saying I have a morality disorder? My conscience is in need of treatment?"

"I'm sorry, no. You're just kind of a jerk. I can't really fix that."

"Isn't wanting to have a disorder so badly kind of a disorder in itself?"

"It could be, but once I diagnose you, you will have been fulfilled and will no longer have the disorder."

"So I'd be in recovery and I would need--"

"No, no, you'd be fully recovered. There's no recovery period for a disorder based around the desire for a disorder."

"What about social anxiety?"

"I highly doubt that. I saw you hitting on that woman in the waiting room."

I put my head down. "It's only 'cause I'm so lonely."

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"I cut myself sometimes!"

"Do you really?"

"Yeah!" I held up a bandaged finger. "Last night I was chopping carrots for a stew and--"

"Please, just stop. I have people with legitimate problems to see."

"But I'm imperfect! I'm broken!" Security guards entered the room. "I have a fear of authority figures!" They dragged me out in the hallway, pausing to remove my fingers from the door frame. "Look at me! Look how far gone I am! Stop denying me treatment!" The receptionist and all the patients in the waiting room stared incredulously. "I'm a filthy exhibitionist!" I yelled as I started to unbutton my pants. "Also!" I turned to the receptionist as the guards regained their hold: "You're a beautiful girl and I would like to get to know you better!" I was being dragged towards the hall again. "Ask Dr. Whiting, he has my number! Maybe we could get din--"

And the door slammed shut. And security threw me out the front door. And I think I bruised my tail bone. And I began to wonder what humans would be like if they still had tails. I quickly ran to the side of the building, to Dr. Whiting's open window. "Sometimes I fantasize about having a tail! Isn't that the weirdest thing?" I could see the good doctor shaking his head and pulling the window shut. I began to wonder when the receptionist was working next. I planned to check my messages once I got home. Maybe if I'm crestfallen enough, I can at least fake depression. It's so goddamn difficult being happy.

Bears, Trees...

Remember that time we got lost in the woods? Remember how the stars looked? You were freaking out 'cause you thought we'd get eaten. Night in the woods. The bears didn't bother us, though. Maybe the bribe worked? I left a pack of hotdogs near the ranger station. Don't give me that look. That was a preventable tragedy. That ranger was being a dick anyway. It was a win for the bears, right? They were having a bad season as it was. No, not Chicago. Fuzzy bears. The ones with the teeth? Bear hugs? I gave you bear hugs, minus the claws scraping your back. That was your job. Better than your office job, I always thought. Maybe being with me was just as much a chore. I wanted to make it a challenge. The Army will train you, train you, train you to kill. I wanted to train you to survive, to thrive under the most adverse conditions. Bullets didn't factor into it. Getting lost in the woods did. Making any terrifying situation a beautiful one. Beauty is terrifying, yes? It worked both ways, too. Now you know why I gasped whenever you got undressed. Your eyes, intense and gorgeous and absolutely frightening. I don't think I could have loved without fear. It motivated me. It motivated you too, it motivated us. It led us to the woods. The bears, the rangers, their dark green trucks standing out against the vibrant colors of the forest. You didn't have to don camouflage. You fit right in with the trees, impressive, perfect, scarred, beautiful...and you scared me. And I couldn't lose you. And we got lost together. Sometimes the only solution is to do what you're afraid everyone else will eventually do. So I beat you to the punch. I had to. And look, there are the stars.

Zombies! Part 1

When our roommate Daniel died, neither of us were surprised. He’d been struggling with addiction for as long as we knew him. We all have, I guess, but Daniel was just worse at managing it. In any case, it sort of fell to us to plan the funeral. His family would probably show, but they figured we loved him way more than they did, so we’re suddenly responsible. They probably blamed us for the drugs, too. Adrian and I make for good martyrs.

I got home from work late, a few days after Daniel had passed. Adrian rushed down the stairs of our flat.

“Dude” he said. “Daniel came back”.

“Come on, that’s not funny” I replied. “Quit being a dick.”

“No, really! He fucking came back dude. He’s locked in the basement!”

“Adrian, quit huffing markers, man. They’re gonna make you impotent or some shit.”

“I haven’t been huffing markers! And even if I had, they’re way cheaper than real drugs, so lay off the marker-huffing.”

I slapped my head. “Jesus, it’s too late for this. How is Daniel locked in the basement? We left him at the funeral parlor. We saw him there. The viewing is tomorrow. There’s no way he could---”

A deep moan issued from the basement.

“Adrian, what the fuck was that?”

“I told you dude, Daniel came back! He’s a zombie or some shit.”

“A zombie?”

“Yeah, like you know…eats brains and stuff.”

“I know what a zombie is, Adrian. So wait…like, George Romero zombies or 28 Days Later zombies, cause the ones in 28 Days Later aren’t---”

“Aren’t really zombies. Dude, I know. You bring it up all the time. You’re the only person who could cock block me talking about what makes a zombie a zombie. You remember that party last week? That brunette? Fuck you, man.”

“I said I was sorry about that.”

“Whatever, don’t worry about it. We got way bigger problems now.”

The pounding at the door grew louder.

“How did he even get back here?” I asked. “Aren’t zombies supposed to be really stupid?”

“Hell if I know. He was standing on the porch drooling everywhere when I got home. I hit him with a shovel then threw him down the basement.”

“Shit, that’s your standard procedure for visitors. No wonder he’s pissed.”

Adrian turned around nervously. The wood door was starting to splinter.

“Well, we better re-kill him quick” I said. “His family will probably blame us triple if their supposedly-dead son shows up at his own viewing and starts chewing his way through second cousins.”

“Okay, I’ll get the rifle.” Adrian began to make his way up the stairs.

“Wait, dude.” I grabbed Adrian’s arm. “It’s open casket. We can’t have a viewing if half his head is blown away.”

“I didn’t think of that. Why didn’t he want to be cremated? Everybody should be cremated. If you’re cremated, you can’t come back as a fucking zombie.”

“Okay, calm down. We’ll figure something out. We have to. Why don’t we just call the police?”

“No way! We can’t bring cops over here!”

“Why not?”

“I dunno, man. I just don’t like cops.”

“Okay, we have to kill our former roommate, stuff him in a casket, and keep him from eating mourners, all by tomorrow morning. Can you think of a scenario where we would need police intervention more?”

“There could be two zombies.”

“Adrian, fuck you.”

“I’m just sayin’.”

We heard the door give way. A slobbering, moaning Daniel burst into the foyer. Well, not Daniel exactly. More a shell of Daniel, one bent on devouring us. His head was caked in blood from where Adrian had hit him.

“Shit, shit, shit. What do we do?”

“Hit him again? I’ll get the shovel.” Adrian started back up the stairs.

“Dude, the shovel is outside.”

“Oh, for the love of---fuck this, I’m shooting him.”

“I suddenly feel okay with that plan.”

Zombie Daniel was extremely uncoordinated, though this could be attributed more to Daniel himself than the zombie-ism. We rushed up the stairs.

novel idea, maybe.

When I was about to graduate high school, I asked my father why I always felt alone. No matter how close I was to people, I might as well have been thousands of miles away.

"It's our family's curse" he said. "We are forever alone. We can interact with the world, but we can never really fit into it".

The concept of a family curse sort of came out of left field, so I asked why, why we were doomed to be alone?

"We're not so much doomed as we have a responsibility" my dad explained. "Our ancestors made a covenant, a pact to accept great responsibility. We maintain the balance in the world. For every person who fits perfectly into their surroundings, there are people who do not, who observe the world as if looking through a window or at a painting. The man you see in the subway who is always alone, the silent people in your school or office. They are all of the same lineage as us. We are watchers, keepers."

"But you met mom, you had a family, several kids. Are you really alone?"


"We must continue the bloodline. I may love your mother, but only from a distance. We can never truly understand each other's existence on a similar level. It is a case of the cosmic versus the terrestrial, we just exist in different spheres. Once again, this maintains balance. You might feel extraordinarily close to someone, but when you wake up next to them in the morning, you may as well be on the island of Calypso. Son, you are very, very far from home."

It's all a matter of...

I have developed a new system of ethics. Well, it may not be entirely new, but it's from a different perspective at least. Most ethics deal with either a person's intentions when they perform an action or the outcome of said action.

My ethics are different.

I want to base the concepts of 'right' and 'wrong' on how you feel about the decision you made. Just shot up an orphanage and feel pretty darn good about it? Well, congratulations on doing the right thing. Helped an old lady across the street, but feel bad because you weren't really sincere about it? Shame on you. I hope you've learned your lesson about assisting the elderly.
Ethics are open to countless interpretations as it is, but I think this system simplifies things. We can all agree that feeling good about our decisions is the highest priority and therefore the most important criterion when it comes to classifying something as 'good' or 'bad'. Too hedonistic, you say? That's funny, cause I sure feel good about doing the right thing.

The Procrastinator

I froze time just before the meteor hit. I’m not sure how I managed it, I just remember screaming real loud. Maybe it needed to happen. It’s still hanging here, halfway through the top story of my house. Suspended. It’s cooled off, probably because molecular activity ceased when time stopped. I’m not sure what to do with it. I tried poking it with a broom, but it’s held fast in mid-air. Not that I necessarily want it to continue its descent into my living room. I should at least move the dinette set first.

Since I’m the only conscious human on earth, I’ve since stopped wearing clothes. The weather is always nice. I tried to dislodge the meteor with a bulldozer, and that didn’t work, but have you ever driven a bulldozer naked? I highly recommend it. In any case, I need to get rid of this thing. Or at least, I feel I do. You know those times when you worry, but your concern feels completely contrived? I’m not even sure if this thing still has acceleration. If it does, we’ll know for only about half a second. If I knock it out of its trajectory, I think we’ll be okay. I think we’ll be okay if I don’t do anything at all, too.

When I’m not trying to budge the meteor, I look at my wife. She’s still in bed, frozen in sleep. Perfect, gentle. This is the only way I ever imagine her. I think I’m more in love with the concept of her than the actual woman, anyway. She looks like a lovely painting, one I can walk into. The art museums and galleries won’t let you stroke the cheek of Aphrodite. You can’t feel her halfway through a breath, the warm air still gathered around her mouth. This is my motivation for doing nothing. Everything is so much more bearable and linear, more real when it is standing still.

Other people were frozen in much more incriminating circumstances. Like the peeping tom down the street, bunched up in his trench coat. I’m tempted to move him outside the house of the gun enthusiast across from us. Not that I haven’t already engaged in my own forms of terrorism. I spent a week (I estimate) expertly inserting chapters from the Kama Sutra into where Revelations should be in all the bibles at our local church. It’s a much happier ending.

I even figured out how to work a printing press and made my boss new business cards that say things like “our impending corporate merger makes me touch myself”. I hope 700 cards is enough for at least most of our downtown locations. Supply and demand, you know. In any case, I’m making the world a better place while I try and keep it from being destroyed. Or maybe I just destroy things more subtly than the meteor. I painted a face on it yesterday. We get along, mostly.

The problem is, I keep getting distracted. I’ve been considering locating every squatting dog in the city to the dining room of that fancy restaurant that always takes our parking. That’s another full week, not that I can tell. I am entirely too productive when there is no passage of time.

I bounced a tennis ball off the meteor today. I wore my baseball glove. It’s the first time we played catch.

When this first happened, I felt an urgent need to get rid of the thing and unfreeze time as fast as possible. Now I feel a sort of solidarity with it. Even if I find a way to keep it from destroying Earth, I’d like to keep it. It might make a nice centerpiece in our living room. A 45-ton coffee table.

I pretend like I’m going to set things straight in a timely manner. I plan to call my mom more often. I’ll try and be a better husband, for real. I picked up some necklaces for my wife, for when I can talk to her again. But it’s not going to be anytime soon. Tonight, I’m sitting on the meteor and watching the perpetual sunrise.

Use the Proper Terminology

I have this problem where I don't know how to deal with boys. Being a boy, I thought this would be easy, but gay boys act more like girls. Or maybe more like boys and I just don't know it. It's not like I know how to deal with girls either. When a coworker says "Wanna fuck?” how seriously are you supposed to take it? Bathroom or janitor's closet? Elevator? Do you want space to lie down? Do you want me to lie down? Will we cuddle afterwards? Will you touch my face? I have a lot of dishes to do...

I told him I was free that Thursday. I was serious, at least.
Communication is difficult as it is, but it's worse when you throw sex into it. The expectation (at least as I perceive it) is that you finagle your way around the issue and drop hints without getting too creepy. I have a tendency to get too creepy. I just think we're all better off by being forward. So don't be surprised if you jokingly ask if I'd like to fuck you and I pull out my planner.

How's Monday looking for you?

Drawing: Day 4

Fuck this.

about microwaves...

So, about microwaves. You know the ones that have the dial to set the time and markers around it in 10 second increments? I have one both at home and at work. And for some reason I always set it between the markers. I guess it feels less committal, like I can take my food out earlier, because it started at a random time anyway. I don't have to follow through with a strict 2 minutes of heating. I set it to 1:57 dammit, so there was no promise that it wouldn't end at an equally arbitrary time. What I'm trying to get at here is, could this be a shadow of other facets of life? Maybe I say I'll meet friends at arbitrary times too, so it doesn't feel as structured. This probably drives them crazy. No, I do not see my friends as microwaves. They are infinitely more important, despite the fact that they cannot warm leftover Chinese food without it getting awkward.So I guess this is to say there's a legitimate reason why I am sometimes terrible at planning. I think in terms of numbers that ultimately don't matter. If I am late for an appointment with you, I'm sorry. It's only because I promised the microwave I would see our journey through to the bitter end.

Drawing: Day 0

So I've decided to try and teach myself how to draw, because frankly, I'm tired of sucking at it. That, and I've had this how-to-draw book sitting on my bookshelf since I got it for my birthday five years ago. And also, I don't really do much besides work and go to class once a week. Now that I feel adequately justified wreaking havoc on the visual arts, I'm going to go and give that sketch of a bottle another shot. Shitty shitty image uploads to come!

Old, old old.

I’m pretty sure I’m dead, because I walked into this diner three weeks ago and my side order of mashed potatoes still hasn’t come. They keep giving me coffee though. Except I don’t think it’s regular coffee. It smells like coffee, but it’s teal and tastes like mango and lets me see into peoples’ souls when I stir it.

“Hey, where are my potatoes? I ordered them like three weeks ago.”

“You’ll get them in another 4,563 years. In the meantime, do you want a paper?”

“Why does everything take so long here?”

“This is Purgatory. Things aren’t supposed to be efficient here.”

“Purgatory is a 50’s diner?”

“Purgatory is the world in which you died as seen through your eyes.”

“So if I looked through the eyes of someone else…”

“That’s why we give you the coffee. Drink up.”

All the busboys have wings. I’m not sure why I didn’t notice that before.

“Why can’t I go outside?”

“You can’t just walk out of purgatory. Sorry.”

“But what’s outside, then?”

“You see that fancy restaurant across the street?”

“The one with the glowing valets?”

“Yes. That is hell.”

“Oh. So where is heaven?”

“I’m not really supposed to show you, but-- follow me.”

The busboy had to fold his wings to get through the doorway labeled “Employees Only”. We were in the parking lot behind the diner. It smelled like grease and incense.

“There it is.” The busboy gestured to two young people kissing in a car. They morphed into new people every few seconds.

“That’s heaven?”

“They wouldn’t rather be anywhere else. Neither would you.”

“Where is god?”

“He died a while back. 1972 on the Christian calendar. We still miss him very, very much.”

“Things don’t just fall apart without him?”

“What is there to fall apart?”

“How do prayers get answered now?”

“They weren’t answered before either.”

“Elijah, what are you doing out there?”

“I was showing this man heaven.”

“Oh. Well, tell him his potatoes are ready.”

“Looks like your time’s up. Eat your food and talk to me.”

The potatoes were kind of cold. I couldn’t feel myself swallowing.

“Welcome to heaven” said Elijah, holding open the door of a 1959 Chevrolet.

She was sitting on the seat.

…………..

……………….. …….

“Catherine?”

Story

I still have dreams about you sometimes. Hold on, this is probably going to come out wrong. But I still do, I dream about you. And I wake up feeling guilty and happy all at once. And alone, but not really. The way you feel when certain impossible things seem feasible, for a split second. Like how it could be feasible that you’d happily work a crappy dishwashing job as long as everything else in your life is in check. The moment when you reach in to the brackish water to unplug the drain for the fifth time in an hour and say to yourself “this is not so bad”. When you are completely neutral and feel nothing while you work one way or another. Time stands still. You could be this way forever.

Except for your hands. Your hands betray your age. They are your conduits to the outside world, they are affected and scarred by what they touch. These marks may be visible or may be misleading. The way you touch someone, the moment is recorded. Your fingers dig into his back. You always said I had feminine hands, beautiful but unnerving. Are my conduits faulty? Maybe they betray nothing. Is that what we want? The naked honesty you see in hands, people don’t try to cover it up. Most don’t realize it’s there. I hope you look at my hands and see everything I am too afraid to tell you. Everything that cannot be verbalized, no matter how articulate you are.

I thought about all this today at work. I imagined the exact moment I would put the thoughts on paper, and I thought about my dream, reviewed every detail. I can’t explain this dream. This is something you will have to decipher on your own. Take my hands in yours, examine them. You’ll probably find what you’re looking for.