chriskaasi

Im staring at two cranes stretching up into a puffy industrial sky. Traffic is dead-stopped for miles in both directions. Im no one, going nowhere. The person beside me is no one too. He has a nondescript face and is vaguely redneck. He may or may not be smoking a cigarette. I glanced at him and lost interest before I glanced back to the two cranes in the sky and the miles upon miles of traffic sitting dead-stopped on the freeway. I wouldve counted the cars, but I did the math and it doesnt add up to anything. Its late afternoon in early spring. The construction workers in the median look like a picture that nobody took four black men in orange vests, slightly off to my left laughing. Theyre walking in slow motion its an end of the day walk a beer commercial walk walking toward their cars walking toward their place in this traffic walking toward home or a restaurant or a bar and TV and sleep and an early morning alarm clock and a drive to the job site where theyll stand in the middle of the road beside two large cranes stretching up into a puffy industrial sky and hordes of nobodies will sit dead-stopped in traffic looking at them because theres nothing else to look at on an indistinguishable day during an indistinguishable week during an indistinguishable month during an indistinguishable year, but Im almost certain its late afternoon in early spring.

Its nighttime now and Im walking through a large chain store. All of the merchandising is lined with subliminal signs that say want and need over the top of a graphic of a young person wearing or holding the wanted or needed merchandise which obviously serves a purpose or fills a void that the store patron now realizes they have. There are no pictures of old people in the merchandising signs even the signs which portray a product that would normally be used by a mature person are advertised with young people of all ethnic varieties, though they all still somehow look white regardless of how Asian or black they are. I wander further down the aisle to a section of DVDs where a dying man stands perusing the shelves. Hes probably in his early fifties, but he looks much older. Its unclear whats wrong with him it looks either like AIDS or liver-failure. Hes much too thin and his skin is jaundiced. I stand near him, fascinated by his decay which is seemingly taking place right before my eyes. On closer inspection, his skin is very yellow. He looks like an alcoholic, which is strange because I was just reading about John Coltranes death at age forty from liver failure, which made me think of Jack Kerouacs death at age forty-seven of liver failure, which made me think of my own enlarged liver at age thirty-one which forced me to sober up after drinking through a full decade. Im instantly filled with an overwhelming compassion for this dying man. I stand there secretly praying for him in my head, but I know theres nothing I can do theres nothing anyone can do the progression of death officially makes him an island hes his own sinking ship that no one can save. He stands before us untouchable, decomposing at an alarming rate. I wanna put my hand on his shoulder. I wanna tell him I care. I wanna serve as a life-preserver pulling him out of nothingness and back into being, but Im decomposing too, only at a slower rate as is everyone in the store. And it becomes more apparent that everything is a trek towards nothingness. The only variable is the rate of speed. I pick up a CD. I pick up some shorts. I pick up three shirts because these are things that I want these are things that I need to distract me from the brute fact of inevitable nothingness. And when Im dead, theyll all pass into the past tense theyll be things he wanted. Theyll be things he needed. And I wonder if my objects will feel weird hearing people refer to me in the third person no longer an I no longer present tense no longer a subject, but an object myself and I remember hearing that comment the other day in life the body exists as both subject and object, but in death, it exists only as object it exists solely as object-for-others (Sartre).

Ten minutes have passed and Im standing at a gas station under bright fluorescent lights. Its just after 10:00pm and people are getting ready to go out for the night. This is the extroverted mainstream the walking dead life is lived purely at the surface level for them, death is something that happens to other people or so far off into the future that it has no real meaning right now this is real for them right now cars are real right now cell phones are real right now clothes and clubs and getting laid is real right now being seen is real and hip hop and pop singers and movies and television. This is Flatland. Im pumping gas, lost in my own death when a silver Honda Accord pulls into the space directly in front of my field of view. Its a tan good-looking couple in their early twenties. The girl steps out of the car, but then leans back into the drivers seat to grab something. Her jeans are low-cut and I can see the top of her ass, which for one brief second pulls me out of this murky nothingness gives me hope or at least some kind of comfort I see such a strong affirmation of life in the top of her ass and the small of her back just that brief thought of sex seems to transcend everything. I walk inside to get a coke and pass her and her boyfriend in the drink aisle. Her voice is raspy and sounds like too many cigarettes or worse, speed. I pay for my drink at the counter. The clerk is tall and fat, with a few piercings, tattoos and a slicked-back-for-work mohawk. Hes pure sexual abuse as a child manifesting in would-be anti-social behaviour if it hadnt become so mainstream nowadays. I say, Thats good work there., alluding to his tattoos. He pulls up his sleeve revealing a cool naked lady shes demonic or a goddess I forget Its the kind of thing a gamer would like. Our conversation fades quick.

Out in the night air Im thinking of how everything is defined by its relation to everything else. This only makes sense in context with that the absurdity that the word dictionary can only be defined in a dictionary the absurdity that the word definition can only be defined with a definition. It feels like there are no absolutes no firm ground to stand upon. And with that notion, even all of my somethingness starts to feel like nothingness. I am what I am not. And I am not what I am. Everything is clear. The sky stretches out forever at night. Space is a vast nothing thats filled with something.