Fragmented Transmission From A Ghost Satellite

The head running slow, churning, moving up a long, steep hill in the last hours of darkness. Already a few early birds, noisy, to keep me company.

Here, take a look at my disaster movie, my shoebox full of footnotes, my personal wasteland. All my sleepless nights. While you are sleeping, while you are dreaming, I am still on my feet, moving from table to table with a pen in my hand, taking orders in a language I can no longer understand.

You’d think the confusion would be condensed, but you’d be wrong. You’d think you’d eventually find your way into some kind of clearing, or perhaps even a long valley with a wide river. You’d think the middle of the night would be the mind’s Big Sky Country. Wrong again. I keep hearing astronauts in my right ear, lost, forlorn, the transmission fractured and breaking up. Sometimes their exhausted sorrow sounds almost like yodeling.

It wasn’t an astronaut, but a truck driver who once told me, “Where there’s gasoline a fella can usually find him some pussy.” I’ve never attempted to corroborate that statement, but I have discovered that where there’s gasoline a fella can usually find him some beef jerky.

My God, I get tired of dinosaurs, stomping all over automobiles and knocking over patio furniture with their tails. Seriously, all I’ve ever wanted is to know my shit.

I cooked a burrito in a microwave oven. There was little pleasure involved in this procedure, very little pleasure. (“Make your own leaps.” —P. Metcalf.) Cue singing of angels. Believe me, I know a little something about neutral objects. I raise rubber children in tiny jars.

No getting around it: you have mostly chosen. Others might find more peace, or consolation, in a revelation like that, if, in fact, you’d like to call it a revelation. They keep making the hole bigger, so you can swallow more, so you can bury more in the hole. There are moments when you can literally feel the earth tilt beneath you, your heart swaying dully in your chest like an empty bell. Ladies and gentlemen, I am not going to stand here and sugarcoat it. I am simply unable. I can find nothing positive whatsoever to say about recent events in the region. I’m afraid it’s the same old story: lame fucking white men, many of them grossly overweight, swinging sledge hammers.

There it is, there’s the familiar thump of the newspaper at the front door.

Something crippled and almost recognizable creeps towards you with the first bruise of light from the east. Come on now, kiss your fat little fable goodnight and let’s just see if it wakes up still resembling truth.