Delusions of Adequacy

A Fictional Story by Wendy Clark Hudson copyright 2008

Prelude - Notes from First Person

This is not your typical roller coaster, as I am not your average thrill-seeker. For all intents and purposes, I had never sought thrills, but I recognized, after some therapy and research, that my brain was chemically wired with action and irresistible manipulation, perhaps to prove that I had to go along with what barriers of thought made someone like you, happy.

Now my mind accepts these powers: I judged you and I let it all go.

I hopped on to the bar and nodded at the stranger sitting to my left elbow. Then I engaged my perspective on the ride ahead of me.

As with all short, terrifying choices may untangle truths as we take a ride on or with them, this brief exercise was not unusual to my expectations. That is until my body washed upon the shore.

I fell so far within your love one cool summer night, and then retraced the trance that I hesitated to replace.

And suddenly, just as many had cried in the unthinkable absurdity of the senselessness, I leaned away.

The most unimportant events usually crept into my prominent speculations whenever my current situations(s) demanded attentive attention. Plenty of life’s events called for one’s absolute focus. I believed I enjoyed a mental scale of the substance of intense predicaments as well as an awareness of my place regarding the manner in which they beckoned me.

I walked more slowly and stopped to catch my breathe on that dusty trail  - which I had once jogged happily so many times past – and stumbled through the muggy air where you had once been.

The ultimate forecast was awful.

But it could have been even better.

Ch 1

We saw it on Friday on the road to Thompsonville, the wicker love seat, right out there, straddling the centerline. I gaped at Susan and she raised her eyebrows, her eyes wide and she uttered a gasp, which sounded like a high-pitched squeak - the likes of which I would have found peculiar at any time prior to this puzzle. I tapped on the brakes of my old Ford; still we slid on the slushy byway. We pulled to the shoulder about eighty yards past the chair. I looked into the side-view mirror. Susan was already out of the truck, with a very red face.

“I thought she burned it, Bobby!” She said and she slammed the door. Meanwhile, I stiffly swung out caught up to her, buttoning my jacket and pulling my hat down to block the Arctic wind. We both staggered and slipped across the icy interstate as she continued to antagonize me.

“I thought you said the bitch told you she had burned it with all the other shit!” She briskly shuffled ahead of me.

“Yeah, that really burns me,” I tried to joke, but immediately felt ashamed of my usual insincerity.

She whirled back to face me, demon-hell in her acrid green eyes and raised her pointed finger at me, almost like a condescending mother would, “WHY do you have to lie, baby? Goddamnit! WHY are you SUCH A FUCKING LIAR?” And with that she was off again, at least twenty yards in the lead of this race to my wicker chair. I hesitated a moment before moving forward. Maybe I was a liar, but not in this case... I started to contemplate that I couldn’t remember if I had or had not been untruthful or not, despite the overwhelming evidence which pointed to the non-charred wicker love seat covered in snow in the middle of the road.

“Hey baby, come on,” I called Susan with the most tender tone I could summon. Susan didn’t slow her pace. I chuckled under my breath with the nonsensicality of it all, all of it, and I picked up my pace. I held my breath and commanded a somber expression to my misbehaving facial muscles. Man, she was a enchanting illusion in this hallucination of my existence; her long, red tresses were protesting the gusts of wind, like twitching fingers covered with particles of snow that were also stuck to her black overcoat, her once dark boots were completely white.

I tumbled to the ground twice before staggering to her as she approached the old chair. My gut wrenched sickeningly while I watched her disgracefully started kicking it, and I mean beating the living shit out of it, first with her steel-toed boots and then with her gloved fists and purse. Frozen, I observed this obtuse performance – this display of violent rage – that my girlfriend had launched. My chair was actually being annihilated before me, standing on the barely-visible, yellow line. Damn, that wicker love seat had been with me more than any woman in my lifetime of failed relationships.

“Susan?” I touched her shoulder.

She would not acknowledge me. Brusquely, she seized the chair and sat down sternly, staring straight ahead into the great-big-wide unknown. I traced her gaze, imagining what she was really seeing now. The blowing snow became increasingly more intense; visibility was probably less than ten feet and glancing over my shoulder, my old Ford was nowhere in sight. I wanted to go home now: the fuck with Billy’s funeral, the will, my girlfriend, myself. The hell with it all –  all of it.  Even the wicker love chair. It was all one huge expanding disaster that never would dissolve in tandem with my constant need to swim – shit, even dive and do the backstroke through these obscure and polluted waters of the beaches I inhabited. True, my ex-wife was a pyromaniac. She often set things on fire when she felt broken. I was one of her broken belongings; I have the scars to prove it. Distractedly, I pondered why she hadn’t set herself ablaze by now. At this image, I uttered a half-snort, half-giggle. Ellen, my old hellion, or “Hell-ing” was an appropriate name for my ex-flame.

The inhospitable wind continued to intensify and I broke from my daze to survey our surroundings. I instinctively reached into my slack’s pocket to retrieve a cigarette, and silently cursed upon recalling that I had quit last weekend. Susan was sitting next to me, crying softly with her face buried in her hands; her body was both trembling and heaving, perhaps because of the subzero wind-chill, but I suspected that was only a fraction of the shivering factor.

Then, through the dense blanket of blowing snow, there were two faint lights coming dead at us. For several seconds I blinked my blurry eyes and hazy mind…

Riddle me this: Alright… let’s see here… um, okay… so you got yourself: two headlights + two yellow lines + an ice-covered pavement + a girl in a wicker chair in the middle of the road, a huge snowstorm…

My heart came to a screeching halt and then I screamed at Susan while I tried to pull her by her sleeves from my tattered chair.

“MOVE!” I cried as I watched the headlights of the nearing truck smile and wink brightly at me. Besides the pulsating beams and the ten-ton weights in my shoes, I recall my screaming, “move,” both to the truck and to the crazy woman I was trying to communicate with in my lounger.

As many a story goes, parallel systems collided.

Perception was no longer within me, if you can attempt to comprehend; the material world with which I had been so habituated had abruptly altered validity, hence nothing substantially existed, intrinsically rocketed into my own mind the most incomprehensible state of every condition – of the preposterous phenomenon of tangible thoughts m

Consider the characteristics or conditions of all the substance in your intrinsic perception, such as the entities which one can identify as a solid state or a liquid state, (or even a gaseous state), and you believe you know by the very nature of the “subject,” to be just what it is, because that truth is fundamental. Now, suppose these primary dimensions of your reality are permuted, a metamorphosis which transforms every element, transcending everything so that it is the not only opposite of what it may have once been perceived as but the same in it’s lack of form and no law of the universe has any law or harmony, (the gaseous factors would really be astounding) and everything is nothing, and all that is or is not, is a contradiction of the same problem.

The concrete is now the abstract.

The trivium is equal to the empty paradox.

Pure lack of time and space.

Absolute zero.

For no conscious reason, my arms extended buoyantly toward the sky, or so I thought this to be something I did, and skimmed over the highlights of the great big unknown as it would travel with me where it would, with or without me, whatever, amen. This action led to my next transitory side-effect which was (after quickly reviewing the causal theory of epiphenomenalism (physical events have mental effects, but mental events have no effects of any kind) how very useless it was to philosophize at this time, how tired my mind was, then snip-snapping right on back to my strenuously draining brooding of the undetermined unknown and how that unknown was always about to increase in conscious life.

Everywhere.

Anywhere.

Somewhere.

There are the places at which you are not, or perhaps where you would rather be, not be, won’t be, the list within the list within the list is infinite, but my point is that the location of where you are (or where you ain’t) is probably the most important place you could ever be. Where you’re not is: any, some, or everywhere you could be, certainly, of course when you have but a critical amount of “time” remaining to reconsider every place where you ever were which led me to this last circumstance in which I was currently entangled, where I was not was anywhere but where I was, at a condition labeled as the end of one’s lifetime; this is the place where you last were, and your mind works itself backwards, instinctively and recklessly, and flashes these excruciating images, words, colors, lines and limits, gaps and speculation, theories, people, pets, regrets, media, motions, accidents, mistakes, recoveries, tastes, dreams, nightmares, mischief, games, fame, humiliation, embarrassment, acceptance, awards, rewards, faith, apathy, remorse, anxiety, true faith, true love, true sex, true blueness of the purest skies, waters, and eyes; good fortune, good graces, all those artistic creations….

The worst part, the most awful worst of all the worsts was terrible: The realization of having to contemplate how anything could be even worse than the worst realization you can contemplate. To me it was feeling that I was departing without saying goodbye; abruptly leaving the party early, sneaking out irresponsibly and silently, the one who didn’t even say, “later on,” and never came back.

During these mangled, mingled conjunctions of deliberation, of course I saw you step from the shade of the naked and lonesome birch tree beside the storm and closely followed by the truck that symbolized:

Me

You

Sue

And the Unknowns.

Ch 2 will be here soon.

“No Accidents Permitted.”

The tin sign in my mother’s guest bathroom still cracked me up whenever I read it. But I was long gone well before then; I laughed at everything those dark days.

“Your dinner is at the grocery store,” I read the sign on the mirror which sealed my agonizing fate: I was probably going to starve to death. I tore the note down and flushed it down the toilet. I giggled and remembered how this was going to be the summer of my liberation, reinvigoration, inspiration... and god dammit! I was going to make a big deal out of it.

Of course I did not know how I would execute this fluffy goal. I used my new dance technique and waltzed the hallway pretty well all the marble floor was covered with my shoes and ended up I the kitchen. I grasped a butter knife and imagined myself cutting an onion loaf, then gasping as I cut the bread while it shrieked in agony. I said softly and condescendingly, “Bread. You are food and you shalt not scream,” to which the poor loaf replied, “Take the margarine! It isn't even real butter!” I roared madly and swayed over the cutting board dizzily contemplating my state of mind.

Man, do I need a plan.

I need a plot: A sketch, a motive, an order; a lot of rich ideas in a conscious and chronological structure to guide my inattentive idleness in a clear direction.

I tossed the fake loaf into the trash and headed out the side door for a morning stroll through the swampy, wealthy, expensive, gated neighborhood. I headed east with my pocket compass functioning – I tended to get lost with or without it – but I had it so that this way I had something to blame for my directional mishap, should the case come up.

The deep south had a strict manner of informing and reminding one how unnatural the great outdoors were when one found oneself outside in the thick of it. I sweat like the born northerner who I was while the bugs of impossible shapes and sizes collided with each other in midair trying to bite, sting, kill and who knows what else they had on their dirty little cell-sized minds when they hissed and spit at me. From the moment I had shut my mother's screen door to when my new Converse touched the asphalt of the sidewalk, the waves of buzzing tore at my eardrums. The nagging lack of stability and my unusual equilibrium was a growing concern for me as I grew older and less balanced, but today's disconnection I encountered in the southern heat was all too much for me – every time I staggered towards it.

Centuries later I was at the end of the driveway, I wiped the sweat off my brow with the back of my forearm and gazed at my mother's house reconsidering my walk and other life decisions that only I could remember. Instead of going on or turning back, I stretched my arms in front of me my hands facing outward in front of my chest and I fell straightforward, down into the thick swampgrass of the lawn – a move of nonstrategic condemnation – where I expected nothing else but my mind to take inventory of my intentions.

I woke up in a bright room. My eyes were blurry and damp.

“Just a seizure?” Somebody asked somebody else.

A scraggly, bearded young physician sat beside my bedside. He closed his folder (stereotypical, I thought) and put it under his arm. He brushed my cheek and grinned slightly at me, favoring his right lips, and his face contorted into a pleasant smirk of sorts. “Again,” he said with a yawn-like vocal expression, “probably heatstroke.”

He rose from his chair and stretched his neck and turned to face the window.

“Jesus” he said disinterestedly, “there's going to be a boomer.” He looked and me and nodded.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Well, you'll live.” He walked toward the door and paused. He turned around. “Just remember to use an umbrella and don't get dehydrated.”

“Okay. Later on, then.”

“See?” He walked back to my bedside and patted my head. He scuffled back to the door.

“Call if this happens again. We can do a cat-scan.”

“Yeah.”

The door softly shut behind him. I put my Converse on and my shirt. Stared out the window for a moment to gauge the distance between the thunderstorm and the bus-stop, then my mother's limousine appeared in the parking lot. I watched it pull up to the front of the building. I closed the blinds and made my way out of the maze of holding rooms to the front desk.

I started back on foot and never quite made it home.

Misconceptions and Unattended Ideals

Today is January 21, 2008 and I am starting a revolution shortly.

I decided to go to the gym to blow off some steam. But deciding that was a huge hassle, what with having to go buy a gym membership card, purchase some shorts and tennis shoes, drive to the facility, ask for help from stinky yuppy types who wish they were as skinny as me, then likely suffer a self-doubt inclined panic attack, go to the emergency room, rehab, quit smoking, quit the gym membership and remember not to let them continue to bill me for a membership fee, argue with customer non-service kids who said since I paid for a year and signed a contract, they were not authorized to give me any more customer service as I paid for the year anyway. I am not sure this country has ever sucked worse.

So then I decided to go to the bar to blow off some steam, like any other healthy, good-looking, 30-something hipster.

Godspeed

this entry has been deleted by the author

All rights violated.

The January of Your Discontent

Prelude

More FICTION copyright 2008 wch

Dear Diary/Dad/Mom (my spase envadirs)…

Today are teacher taut us how two right. Right or left, back or front, firstly or secondly, most importantly, eye learn how too correct my mistakes. I donut make alot of mistakes but when I dew, the letters our scrawled out all over my paper like a stupid alphabet.

Are teacher says that we cannot git a goud education if we donut have a righting class at skool; but more importantly, I no how to use the semicolon. That imformation makes me very wise and smart. Like my friends can’t tell when I am lying, my step-dad kant tell me how to do the grocery list, and my cat is stupid. My dumb teacher is so dumb but I gotta transfer bc he is a jew. I can drive soon anyways,

The others I learned at skool. Grammer is dumb but I have to pass my AST eggsham if I want to go to collage far away from my parants. I learnt two spell the words syllibell and what a amoeaba is. This is thinking that concradulations our inorder bc I have two weaks left until garaduaton!

Luv,

yer dotter

"Dissection of the Question" June 2008 - to answer your question here.

Is this a rhetorical question?

The nature of the dullness gently cracked me up because of the pure waste of typing you took in order to post that.

And then I decided to respond.

So now, sit back and let me tell you a thing or two about what I think and have never had the time to say - nor the motivation to let myself be heard. But tonight, maybe you will listen to me.

Surely, a lot of new bands in Colorado are good and noble; some are "better" while some are "worse" - - I believe that you are cool to even give it a shot in this town of Denver. But hey kiddo, only one band can actually be the notorious BEST. Just like only one of them can be the worst. I think that your question begs many other questions.For instance, why do people ask so many pointless questions?

Change is constant. Therefore, the best new band happens every day or so. It keeps happening. The best new band is no better than the next new best band who rolls along and takes the stage and makes you think they are the next new best band but, like, then they aren't new anymore but then there is a new band. How long until they are not "new"? Could you please be more vague? You should have asked, "Who is the best new band in history?" Now, that would have been kind of funny and tempting to answer creatively!

Oh, well.

Rhetorical question #1: Can you please refrain from potentially ruining this message board by spilling stupid questions which waste our valuable cyberspace?

As much as Denver needs another wealth of helpful professional rock stars online, and we would love to invite all the music scholars who wander over from the DMB with their acute insight to edumacate our intellect with their magnetic communication and lead us to wise decisions via their (general) static boredom; as much as we need these inspiring poets of our DMB generation who make history every time they log in make themselves proud in their awesome experiences told so helpfully (no offense to B - he is my friend has always been smarter than all of us), people will continue answering the same redundant, narcissistic, stupid questions. Then who will have the BEST Board of thoughtless, self-absorbed rock stars; a greatbignewshinymessageboard of the Denver's best of the bored artistic.

Now, the question should have been, who is the NEXT best band? Who will be the next BIG thing? Do you want my opinion? Do you want me to hear your band because you are new? Okay. Where are you playing?

Or do you think anyone wants your opinion? Do you want a fact which uses generated data from experts, statistics, and sales? Or... Is there a contest going on that will prove who is the best and make the promoters or owners of a venue a lot of money?

If you care so much, why can't you even bother to write a question like a 5th grade graduate? Are you trying to ask smart people with taste and have a conversation with that or are you as bored as you are boring?

Point-in-fact:
The good folks at THE MUSIC BUZZ have actually launched a site that could be a place where the Colorado music community participate with other thoughtful musicians and fans and promoters who work together and who play together. Go ask this question somewhere else please. Please don't let this become another DMB. Please go back to it if you are one of the very cool kids who have a profile there. Please do not post here. Please. No one needs two DMBs, man. Please.

If you have ever read the DMB and never posted (even drunk) then stay here and let's talk about

I have to ask some questions finally. Finally! I have to ask some questions because I want you to listen.

I am wondering if perhaps you need our feedback so that you could check out some new bands. Maybe you have run out of bands and you have seen them all so you want some fresh bands to go see and have new experiences and you don't care what genre or style, you love music and you want nothing more than to find out what we think no matter who we are or who we aren't. But slightly, I suspect that you have an agenda.

What is your agenda?
 
And can you give me a list of new bands? Is this multiple choice? May I write a band in? GET IT?

Are you looking to go dancing? Are you new in town?

AND WAIT! Again, what constitutes a NEW band? When does a band become part of the category of best band? Or best old band?

OR -who is going to reinvent themselves musically and step in and take over? Who is going to be the next legend? Who is going to be here long enough to make a name in this town?! Who isn't?

Semi-good news:

New bands are always a glimmer of hope and love in a town where the favouritism is abundant. New bands may get the attention of one of the prominent few Denver promoters to whisper sweet nothings into their ears and give them a shot. If they are true newbies, the band members hang onto the words of these "promoters" because they are getting attention, feedback and a sense of self-inspiration but will the promoters are not interested in them but how much they can earn as a mentor who invests bullshit and somehow gets away with it. The band is only NEW while they are still innocent. Then the band goes away when the promoter finds the next new BEST band.

I guess this information is obvious - but what is the point?

What is the point of telling everyone what band is better than the next? Who are you helping by judging who is better and who will sell more records and who will be the next big thing? Who are you to tell a "community" who is the YOU think is the BEST?

I love a lot of new bands. And old bands. And new books. Old reruns of "My So Called Life." Old friends. New friends. All beer. However cheesy, I love the brilliance inside those creative mind(s) who surround us the most. I love the songs, music, artists, writers, anti-contenders and contenders who are the real thing, man; the ones who are madly beautiful and inspiring and give you a reason to want to create.