Post by Crazy Chris on Apr 22, 2022 23:58:58 GMT -5
The world, to me, feels as if a fuse was lit, and now everything is exploding in light. The brightness is here—and even the mall appears to revel in it. The brightness, the cloud shadows, the mountains. The mountains, wallowing in light. The mountains, luxuriating in shadow. Okay—sky, clouds, land, roads, buildings, vehicles—sure. That’s fine, that’s fine. But… where is this all going? What's the endgame here?
The mountains are blue in the distance because the sky is blue between here and there. The blue of the mountains is the blue of the sky. North America, one hundred million years ago, was divided south to north by the Western Interior Seaway, by an ocean. And all of this was underwater. I just can’t get over that the mountains exist—the trees exist—the sky exists—that anything exists. All the rest makes sense though.
The same view every day, and it’s always beautiful, and disappointing, always boring, and interesting, nearly always the beginning of yearning. Near me, the view is only as wide as a parking lot, but it’s sixty-four miles long, and perhaps that wide at its other end. Even longer, thinking of the sky as a glass blue window onto space. Suddenly, a white flash from outside, not even a full second long. Something unexplained. Something that probably happens all the time. A man who had been sitting down, standing up. A truck that had been parked, driving off. A cloud that had been a cloud, different. And all morning, the feeling of being in a cocoon. Of imminent rain. And now, the clouds dispersing. The cocoon crumbling. The world opening up, at last. Or maybe not.
Sometimes, I like to daydream that this planet’s dominant species is not humans but human fields of vision—that my consciousness resides not in my brain but in or on everything I can see—that my body is just a device used by this field, by the real me, to move around and grow— that my brain is just a back-up hard drive for this angular cloud of sight and light and shadow and experience. That my brain is just a movie projector for the real show, except actually it’s a movie receiver, and the show is the thing, pouring into my eyes, sitting there in front of me, pushed along in front of me, gliding along in front of me, dragging me along behind it, because it needs me, because it is me. The same kind of show that the Dravers Twins will realize at Technical Difficulties. How this means that for the past few months, I have been enormous, a world, a field of wild vision at least sixty four miles long, containing mountains, and clouds, and forest fires, and a part of the sky.
Today my company’s managers came rushing in—a gray-haired, ex-military motorcyclist—a nice-enough guy doggedly committed to the illusion that we’re all one big happy family here, which we must be if he occasionally buys us all donuts, and which we must be if the company’s president once took us all to a baseball game. Never mind those employees just mysteriously vanish all the time and are never seen again. Never mind that anytime I’ve ever asked about these employees, I’ve been glared at and then blatantly lied to. That literally every lower-level employee here has to have a second job to survive—never mind that we’re all constantly spied on. We all get emails from the higher-ups referencing things they couldn’t possibly know unless they were reading our private exchanges never mind that twice, when Leslie has gone home before me, the company’s two managers have sat down at her desk, turned on her computer, and then gone through all her files, claiming to be fixing a bug. A bug that is similar to The Lost Stranger. You just can't seem to get rid of that pesky little shit!
Never mind that Leslie has told me they’ve done the same to my computer. Never mind that this sedentary job has made me gain weight, something I have never had a problem within my life. Or mind that isolation and silence is the devastating norm here, that we’re all like test subjects in an unkind experiment, that this job has made me so depressed, and that I am not the only one. Never mind all that, mind only that last Friday, the manager clattered into our office moving too fast and looking away, telling Leslie congratulations she was getting her own office, a window office—and telling the other remaining copywriter, Gena, the musician friend who helped me get this job, she was also getting a window office. Then telling me I was getting my own office as well, the windowless one I was already in, an obvious raised middle finger to me, especially with two other windowed offices still sitting empty, and no doubt this had to do with Leslie and I talking every day. In fact, the company’s president once told her, “We find it better for production when employees don’t talk to each other”—and no doubt this was about the company’s other manager, an all-grown-up sorority girl, finding out that I had criticized her in a private email to the company’s president—a legitimate criticism, as she had been underreporting the number of pages I’d been writing. Man, I really need to quit this job and focus on my OCW career. Why do I even need this job? I'm a fucking wrestler for crying out loud.
No doubt this had something to do with the rumors I’ve since heard that that manager and the president, who’s married to someone else, are romantically involved, so of course he’s going to take her side. Regardless of what this may be about, it just leaves me feeling sick and empty, feeling drained of life, feeling like I’ve just given too much blood, and when the gray-haired manager rushed all of Leslie’s things, except her desk, over to the office directly across from mine, the 10 A Brightness in Everything Mike Smith of Albuquerque office with my window in it, and then that manager pulled the blinds down in that room, I could hear him saying to Leslie she’d need to keep them pulled far down to avoid sun-glare on her computer screen, telling her to always keep them pulled down—and why would he even say that if he didn’t know about the file on my computer, this file, the file I’m adding to now. Something I’ve added a line to a few times a day at most, that barely takes any of my time at all but that brings me a little joy— and then just like that, the only two things I’ve liked about this job—a fun, intelligent, beautiful friend I can talk with between tasks; and the view out the window across the hall, which I’ve loved, and needed, and identified with—were just gone, and they’re gone still, and they’re going to stay gone.
I can’t be staring into Leslie’s office all the time, that wouldn’t be cool, and those blinds cover most of the view now anyway—and I don’t want to believe the apparent message of all this, the message I can’t help but take away—the message that life is enormous and rich and right there and there’s no end to it, but it’s not for you, you just need to look straight ahead, be quiet, type, do the time, be unhappy, and produce—websites for plastic surgeons, websites for plumbers, websites for divorce lawyers, websites that mention certain key words a certain number of times and link a certain number of links.
Oh, and let’s not forget that mandatory staff meeting where we discussed the company’s new core values, and they all had to start with a C, and you suggested adding “Creativity,” and the company’s president said, “No, that’s not that important, we’re going to go with the list we have”—and don’t forget, at that same meeting, the sales manager who looks like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson but thinner, giving a speech about hope and change that was obviously just cribbed from Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and adapted to be about Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click Advertising. Because, well, that’s it, this is your world, a world of nonsense, a world of people so plain and unimaginative they would crash all this awfulness into the side of your building not on September 11, which would have had a certain poetic, historic weight to it at least, but the next day, on September 12, sheesh.
So, you might as well just look right at it, don’t look away, why look away, what else is there, there’s only this, the eighth floor of a mirrored twelve-story building, and on this floor are just two companies. This company—which takes up half the floor, and holds a long hallway lined with offices, with cubicles at one end, and offices throughout, and a reception desk, and notably outdated customer testimonials framed on the walls, and a break room, with a fridge and a soda machine and a coffee maker, and my half-empty office, and in my office, on my side, from left to right, is a black fling cabinet with a plant on it, and my desk with a few things displayed on it— bottles I found in the desert; a 1941 newspaper; a 1953 pulp western magazine; the computer.
And on the wall, a signed concert poster, and I know that all I need to see is the computer, and I know that that’s right, and I know that that’s wrong, and I know that outside there is no way to tell which clouds are growing bigger, and which clouds are going away. That outside there is a haze over the mountains, remnants of the fire, and a haze of light over everything else, remnants of the Sun, and I know that the only other company on this floor is a family law office, coincidentally, unbelievably, the exact same law office where my now ex and I met. I remember riding up in the elevator with her and there were mirrors on two walls of the elevator, and our images reflected back and forth into infinity, our reflections getting smaller and smaller, and it was like someplace else we had been before but different. Now whenever I ride that elevator, I see myself reflected alone, myself getting smaller and smaller, and for that reason, and for the exercise, I usually take the stairs, and climbing all of those stairs, it just kills me, every time, and really, it just never gets any easier.
“Just like this job of mine, there are many mirrors and windows in the OCW. The Dravers Twins are reflections of the boys Dan and I used to be. Young, immature and think they have everything needed to secure a win. Well boys, you better guess again, because your arrogance is going to get the best of you at Technical Difficulties. We’ve beaten you once and we’ll damn sure beat you again….
The Lost Stranger and his mystery partner will fare no different fate either. Once we enter that maze and retrieve our tag titles, we’ll walk right out of the Outback Maze and prove to you and everyone else why we came back and are the best tag team around in OCW. We didn’t just come back to be champs for a short term. No, we came back to the greatest tag team champions in OCW history. At Technical Difficulties, Dan and I are going to prove that we belong here and why we won these titles in our very own match. No one is going to take these from us and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anyone change that…
It's going to be one hell of a crazy ride boys. That’s the gospel of Crazy Chris: Chapter FUCK! Verse YOU?”
The mountains are blue in the distance because the sky is blue between here and there. The blue of the mountains is the blue of the sky. North America, one hundred million years ago, was divided south to north by the Western Interior Seaway, by an ocean. And all of this was underwater. I just can’t get over that the mountains exist—the trees exist—the sky exists—that anything exists. All the rest makes sense though.
The same view every day, and it’s always beautiful, and disappointing, always boring, and interesting, nearly always the beginning of yearning. Near me, the view is only as wide as a parking lot, but it’s sixty-four miles long, and perhaps that wide at its other end. Even longer, thinking of the sky as a glass blue window onto space. Suddenly, a white flash from outside, not even a full second long. Something unexplained. Something that probably happens all the time. A man who had been sitting down, standing up. A truck that had been parked, driving off. A cloud that had been a cloud, different. And all morning, the feeling of being in a cocoon. Of imminent rain. And now, the clouds dispersing. The cocoon crumbling. The world opening up, at last. Or maybe not.
Sometimes, I like to daydream that this planet’s dominant species is not humans but human fields of vision—that my consciousness resides not in my brain but in or on everything I can see—that my body is just a device used by this field, by the real me, to move around and grow— that my brain is just a back-up hard drive for this angular cloud of sight and light and shadow and experience. That my brain is just a movie projector for the real show, except actually it’s a movie receiver, and the show is the thing, pouring into my eyes, sitting there in front of me, pushed along in front of me, gliding along in front of me, dragging me along behind it, because it needs me, because it is me. The same kind of show that the Dravers Twins will realize at Technical Difficulties. How this means that for the past few months, I have been enormous, a world, a field of wild vision at least sixty four miles long, containing mountains, and clouds, and forest fires, and a part of the sky.
Today my company’s managers came rushing in—a gray-haired, ex-military motorcyclist—a nice-enough guy doggedly committed to the illusion that we’re all one big happy family here, which we must be if he occasionally buys us all donuts, and which we must be if the company’s president once took us all to a baseball game. Never mind those employees just mysteriously vanish all the time and are never seen again. Never mind that anytime I’ve ever asked about these employees, I’ve been glared at and then blatantly lied to. That literally every lower-level employee here has to have a second job to survive—never mind that we’re all constantly spied on. We all get emails from the higher-ups referencing things they couldn’t possibly know unless they were reading our private exchanges never mind that twice, when Leslie has gone home before me, the company’s two managers have sat down at her desk, turned on her computer, and then gone through all her files, claiming to be fixing a bug. A bug that is similar to The Lost Stranger. You just can't seem to get rid of that pesky little shit!
Never mind that Leslie has told me they’ve done the same to my computer. Never mind that this sedentary job has made me gain weight, something I have never had a problem within my life. Or mind that isolation and silence is the devastating norm here, that we’re all like test subjects in an unkind experiment, that this job has made me so depressed, and that I am not the only one. Never mind all that, mind only that last Friday, the manager clattered into our office moving too fast and looking away, telling Leslie congratulations she was getting her own office, a window office—and telling the other remaining copywriter, Gena, the musician friend who helped me get this job, she was also getting a window office. Then telling me I was getting my own office as well, the windowless one I was already in, an obvious raised middle finger to me, especially with two other windowed offices still sitting empty, and no doubt this had to do with Leslie and I talking every day. In fact, the company’s president once told her, “We find it better for production when employees don’t talk to each other”—and no doubt this was about the company’s other manager, an all-grown-up sorority girl, finding out that I had criticized her in a private email to the company’s president—a legitimate criticism, as she had been underreporting the number of pages I’d been writing. Man, I really need to quit this job and focus on my OCW career. Why do I even need this job? I'm a fucking wrestler for crying out loud.
No doubt this had something to do with the rumors I’ve since heard that that manager and the president, who’s married to someone else, are romantically involved, so of course he’s going to take her side. Regardless of what this may be about, it just leaves me feeling sick and empty, feeling drained of life, feeling like I’ve just given too much blood, and when the gray-haired manager rushed all of Leslie’s things, except her desk, over to the office directly across from mine, the 10 A Brightness in Everything Mike Smith of Albuquerque office with my window in it, and then that manager pulled the blinds down in that room, I could hear him saying to Leslie she’d need to keep them pulled far down to avoid sun-glare on her computer screen, telling her to always keep them pulled down—and why would he even say that if he didn’t know about the file on my computer, this file, the file I’m adding to now. Something I’ve added a line to a few times a day at most, that barely takes any of my time at all but that brings me a little joy— and then just like that, the only two things I’ve liked about this job—a fun, intelligent, beautiful friend I can talk with between tasks; and the view out the window across the hall, which I’ve loved, and needed, and identified with—were just gone, and they’re gone still, and they’re going to stay gone.
I can’t be staring into Leslie’s office all the time, that wouldn’t be cool, and those blinds cover most of the view now anyway—and I don’t want to believe the apparent message of all this, the message I can’t help but take away—the message that life is enormous and rich and right there and there’s no end to it, but it’s not for you, you just need to look straight ahead, be quiet, type, do the time, be unhappy, and produce—websites for plastic surgeons, websites for plumbers, websites for divorce lawyers, websites that mention certain key words a certain number of times and link a certain number of links.
Oh, and let’s not forget that mandatory staff meeting where we discussed the company’s new core values, and they all had to start with a C, and you suggested adding “Creativity,” and the company’s president said, “No, that’s not that important, we’re going to go with the list we have”—and don’t forget, at that same meeting, the sales manager who looks like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson but thinner, giving a speech about hope and change that was obviously just cribbed from Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and adapted to be about Search Engine Optimization and Pay-Per-Click Advertising. Because, well, that’s it, this is your world, a world of nonsense, a world of people so plain and unimaginative they would crash all this awfulness into the side of your building not on September 11, which would have had a certain poetic, historic weight to it at least, but the next day, on September 12, sheesh.
So, you might as well just look right at it, don’t look away, why look away, what else is there, there’s only this, the eighth floor of a mirrored twelve-story building, and on this floor are just two companies. This company—which takes up half the floor, and holds a long hallway lined with offices, with cubicles at one end, and offices throughout, and a reception desk, and notably outdated customer testimonials framed on the walls, and a break room, with a fridge and a soda machine and a coffee maker, and my half-empty office, and in my office, on my side, from left to right, is a black fling cabinet with a plant on it, and my desk with a few things displayed on it— bottles I found in the desert; a 1941 newspaper; a 1953 pulp western magazine; the computer.
And on the wall, a signed concert poster, and I know that all I need to see is the computer, and I know that that’s right, and I know that that’s wrong, and I know that outside there is no way to tell which clouds are growing bigger, and which clouds are going away. That outside there is a haze over the mountains, remnants of the fire, and a haze of light over everything else, remnants of the Sun, and I know that the only other company on this floor is a family law office, coincidentally, unbelievably, the exact same law office where my now ex and I met. I remember riding up in the elevator with her and there were mirrors on two walls of the elevator, and our images reflected back and forth into infinity, our reflections getting smaller and smaller, and it was like someplace else we had been before but different. Now whenever I ride that elevator, I see myself reflected alone, myself getting smaller and smaller, and for that reason, and for the exercise, I usually take the stairs, and climbing all of those stairs, it just kills me, every time, and really, it just never gets any easier.
“Just like this job of mine, there are many mirrors and windows in the OCW. The Dravers Twins are reflections of the boys Dan and I used to be. Young, immature and think they have everything needed to secure a win. Well boys, you better guess again, because your arrogance is going to get the best of you at Technical Difficulties. We’ve beaten you once and we’ll damn sure beat you again….
The Lost Stranger and his mystery partner will fare no different fate either. Once we enter that maze and retrieve our tag titles, we’ll walk right out of the Outback Maze and prove to you and everyone else why we came back and are the best tag team around in OCW. We didn’t just come back to be champs for a short term. No, we came back to the greatest tag team champions in OCW history. At Technical Difficulties, Dan and I are going to prove that we belong here and why we won these titles in our very own match. No one is going to take these from us and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let anyone change that…
It's going to be one hell of a crazy ride boys. That’s the gospel of Crazy Chris: Chapter FUCK! Verse YOU?”
