Wednesday, January 19, 2005

The Drifter - chapter 5

Ah the life of unemployment. What shall I do today. Might as well enjoy it. I have a couch, a TV, a fridge full of food lets see what's on.

Channel 2 .... crap,

channel 3 .... crap,

channel 4 ... crap,

channel 23 ... crap

channel 37 comedy I guess that'll work.

“I've already answered it, what are you talking about how can I have the answer if I'm the one doing the questioning?”

“Just because you've asked the question doesn't mean that you don't have the answer. It's like connecting the dots. You don't know that if you connect point a to point b that you will have a cat, until you get to point z. You've found point z before connecting points a and b and now you have confused your mind to the point in which you can't find your way to the answer.”

“I don't think that I'm the one doing the confusing around here.”

“On the contrary, I have laid out the clearest explanation I could. Though the clearest explanation doesn't have to be the most apparent. Sometimes coming to the conclusion on your own will help you to embrace the concept to the point in which you will not only grasp it but also fully understand what you must do with this piece of information.”

by Zach Chisholm

Sunday, January 16, 2005

The Drifter - chapter 4

“May I speak with you in my office?”

Oh great, A meeting with the boss. Well at least I get a glimpse of the outside world while I'm in his office. There will be delusions of grandeur and everything. I can vision myself sitting in a desk in a real office with a bunch of drones underneath me kissing my ass and obeying my every command like a well trained dog. Weeding out those bad apples and defining the meaning of “bad times” for them when they lose their job and can't start a new one because I won't give them a good recommendation. Ah yes to be an office manager, the power of having something when you really don't. You still have to answer to those in the corner offices and the nice seats in the board room.

“Come in. I've noticed that you haven't quite started to fit in here yet. How long have you worked here, six months?”

“I believe that is right.”

“We here work as a team and when someone isn't fitting in to that team we have to correct that and make sure that this machine stays well oiled.”

“Are you trying to fire me? Or are trying to rebuild me.”

“Well I have tried in the past to get you to change your ways, but taking extended lunches, coming to work whenever you feel, and leaving at five when you haven't put in a full eight hours is not what I call a team player. And what is this, a tee shirt with some hobo printed on it?”

“It's Pig Pen.”

“Who?”

“The first Keyboardist for the Dead.”

“Oh, I was a Deadhead, until I got a life.”

A life! He calls this a life. Strangling himself with a suit and tie everyday. Sitting in the same cramped room seven days a week, fifty to fifty-one weeks a year. Telling people what to do while he just fumbles through paperwork figuring out how to make things run more efficiently.

But wait, didn't I envision myself in his chair didn't I want his job. What is it that compels me to be like this man I hate. The success, the money, is that all the greed of power and money has reared its ugly head in the very core of my soul that I have lost sight of who I am.

Man this is getting confusing, first I'm in some exit-less town, then when I found the exit I became the only resident of a bridge in the sky and the only known consumer of a pedestal of fruit and now I'm traveling in mid flight across a sky with no visible walkway beneath me, no viable way of being transported if any motion is involved. I have found myself in a predicament that to my knowledge is a first. No one has ever came up to me and told me, “You want to hear something strange? Well I was Hitchhiking this one time and I went to far. So far that I couldn't find my way out of this deserted city for weeks. Then when I finally did, I walked up this staircase for weeks until I arrived at this bridge in the sky that went on until I realized that I was walking on air.

Well now that I have summarized my reality, I guess I should figure out what is next. Though that has not been up to me for some time now. Just then a whirlwind flew around me as I felt like Dorthy, nay Toto as I felt clutched in the grasp of a larger being as I flew through the air. Up and down left and right, diagonal up three and over one I flew while I lay limp knowing that whatever may happen it will be the last thing I expect.

What!

Did I black out?

“Yes you did”

For the entire time I had been here - weeks, months, however long it had been, I had yet to come in contact with anything living – even the fruit had been dead.

“Where am I?”

“That will be revealed when you are ready, right now it is best if you just relax.”

“Relax, I have been traveling through the most strangest places of my entire life and you tell my to relax. I have been in seclusion for months and all you can tell me is to relax. No food, no companionship, no stimulation of any kind and all you can tell me is relax. I have been locked up in the most depressing city I have ever known of, Strolling across the most unusual bridge in the sky - that could have instilled a fear of heights into anyone - only to be taken away so that I found myself hovering a few thousand feet in the air - just to wonder if I were about to fall to my death if I took a wrong step.

Now I am here in, wait I can't see anything. Am I anywhere. There is Nothing around me,

no color,

no substance,

no air,

no feeling.

Where Have you Brought me?”

“You have already answered that.”

by Zach Chisholm

Friday, January 14, 2005

The Drifter - chapter 3

The cubical next to mine needed to be fumigated for the over sized talk radio host that was coming out of the speakers. Every day I had to listen to that bloated voice talk about how he couldn't understand why people would put metal in their lips, tongues, prince alberts, where ever they please. Why they would marry their own sex and why they should vote for apes. Then I remembered why they act the way they do, they're scared into it, placed in the balance of power with the weight of fear that grabs them and pulls us all down into the quagmire of international hatred.

So I go back to listening to my British news and American talk radio that weighs out on the other end of the scale to level out the playing field. Those who respect the rights of all humanity and fight for those constitutional rights given to us by the forefathers of this country. I keep reminding my self that “The only thing we have to Fear, is Fear it Self.” Someone is hiding that from the people these days.

“What are you listening to, may I ask?” Comes the authoritative voice of the office manager, ridding in on his high horse from the realm of the outer offices that have walls that reach the ceiling, a door, and a window to the outside world.

“Oh, you don't recognize it?” I retort.

“Yea, It is that comedian I used to think was funny, at least when he was on that late night sketch comedy show.”

“What changed your mind, it didn't happen to be his politics?”

“No,” Trying not to sound obvious, “I just don't care for him anymore.”


What is so bright?

the sky overhead was clear and a bright sun was shining down on me, penetrating my eyelids to the point where It didn't matter if they were shut. I sat up looking at the vast pillar of fruit in front of me so I started to gather it and stock up my backpack for whatever lay ahead of me on this bridge in the sky.

After loading down my pack with more weight than it had seen in months I staggered off in the heat of a rising sun with a body that had to be reassured that it was awake.

As I walked the scene stayed the same, slowly the bridge carried me across the sky, and slowly my body woke up to realize it was under more pressure and lacking protein from the newly introduced diet of fruit, "Its was better than nothing," I kept telling my self. Wait a minute, why the hell was there fruit in the middle of this bridge, then again where on earth is a bridge like this. Nowhere that is where. I new I was somewhere other than earth or at least had hypothesized that when I couldn't find a way out of that previous city. Then Again I found a way out or at least a extension thereof that was less depressing and had some kind of substance to fill my belly with.

Now where am I going?

Will there be more food

Will there be some kind of companionship

Will there be some kind of drink,

I'm dying for a drink

a beer

wine

I would even drink that stuff in the box

I need a 12 step program

or at least 12 steps that would lead back down to my life

unless this bridge leads somewhere truly amazing, I'm always up for that. Paris, New York, the mountain range of - well any mountain range

Wait a minute

where did the bridge go

looking down at my feet I realized that there was nothing under neath them but the ground and a few thousand feet of air and clouds between me and it. Though I wasn't falling.

Should I stop walking?,

or would that make me fall?

Should I stay walking straight?

when would I know to turn?

Should I keep looking down?

where the fuck am I?

by Zach Chisholm