Anthology Complex (21 page)

The problem with being the person who is placing Silvio in this certain
category is that judging someone, in the grand scheme of things, is pointless.
Because we cannot define normal and abnormal realistically, normality is, just
like everything in space is relative to one another, relative to the judgement
of who is judging. Similarities will arise when judging good and evil. A cop
has a clear shot on a known drug lord, but does not have the lawful right to
shoot him. The cop knows if he doesn't take his shot now, the drug lord will
simply continue to evade the attempts of a poor judicial system and ruin the
city.

The cop takes the shot and kills the drug lord, but is convicted of
murder. This suggests we should only do right or wrong within the boundaries of
the law. Do not ever steal from the rich to give to the poor.

Our brains subconsciously try to differ things from each other. What is
good, what is bad. There is an idea that will tell you that all matter is one.
You are one with the person next to you, as well as the street you walk down
every day. You are one with that bird flying in the sky, as well as the Sun
that burns the back of your neck. But in order to survive, we must be able to
define certain things, and differ them from one another. That is hot, that is
cold. This separation is important in every thing.

Tao pulls up to his parking spot in front of the apartment building. The
question never comes. He never asks me about my composition notebooks. The
paper and pen that illustrate a distorted mind. Instead he asks me about a kid
who is bouncing a basketball about a block away. He talks about how we see the
basketball hit the ground first, then we hear it hit the ground second. He
loves this kind of stuff. I'm not sure what you would call it; it's not a
mirage or an optical illusion I don't think. Tao calls it a joke from God.

As Tao and I walk through the front entrance, he says how much better
the flowers make the building seem. We split ways and I return to a home with
no light. I sit down on my couch with a plan to fall asleep, but I never do.
Why can't I fully fall asleep. Rhetorical question with no hint of curiosity
implied by the lack of a question mark.

There is something in the back of my mind trying to push its way to the
front. How can I fix the wrong I've done to Julia. Did I ever really wrong her?
What exactly did I do that was unlawful or socially unacceptable? The lights
turn on.

The feeling I get seeing the lights turn on is indescribable. I guess it
could only be associated with the dependence that all first-world countries
place on electricity. When I look around the living room I see the smashed
remote, and then laugh. Now I'm staring back up at the light. MAX 50 WATTS.

I turn on the television, but it's not on the channel I usually have it
on. It must have reset. On the screen is an animated movie playing about a wolf
that befriends a deer. It reminds me of a story about a woman who could tell
apart one gorilla she had raised from other gorillas who looked exactly the
same simply based on the behavior of her gorilla.

I eventually lose interest in the movie and go into that half-asleep
mode. Not really sleeping, not really awake. Not really dead, not really alive.
However, I do have a dream that takes place in a dystopian-apocalyptic setting.
As if one or the other wasn't bad enough.

In the dream there is something wrong with one of my legs, and I'm
trying to run away from something, but I'm not sure what it is exactly because
I never see it. I have a radio attached to my hip, and on the radio I hear
about people being arrested for crossing a certain property. I wonder to myself
how there is still time for civilization when there is barely anything left to
be civilized about.

There's a knock on my door. It's morning, and I don't feel like I was
sleeping. At the door it's David and Sarah, with Lynne behind them. She's still
mad at me for acting like a child. Sarah tells me they are going away with
their grandmother, but that they will be back. As they begin to walk away I
stop Lynne and I ask her if she is going as well. She says no, she says she has
to work, she doesn't smile as she turns away. Man, what did I do.

For a second I feel humility, she doesn't even say goodbye. For some
reason it reminds me of the one time I saw my father cry. He was a very strong
person, so to see him cry meant something was disturbingly wrong. Like our
planet not being in the correct orbit space or something. If you asked me, I'd
tell you he was grieving for his wife and his young son, but that's just me and
my assumption. He would never tell anyone anything.

And just like I remembered something from reality, I remembered
something from fiction. The dream with the switches on the walls; I now
remember seeing another popular list of words. The seven virtues. Chastity,
temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility. I grab the
composition notebook from my bed and write down those words next to the other
words I saw in that dream.

If I keep remembering words, eventually I will have them all, and I will
be that much closer to having the master list of words that make a person who
they are. Behaviorally, sociological, psychologically, genetically,
biologically.

Chapter 36:

COMMON COMPLEX

Standing at the door of the life you choose to lead is a demon who is
calling you over, ready to let you in. The demon gives you no warning that what
comes next may be accompanied with addictions and obsessions. Physical
compulsion. Psychological compulsion. This demon doesn't even open the door for
you, this demon just simply stands there with a large grin. The demon doesn't
open the door for you so that when you realize you've made a mistake, you have
no one else to blame but yourself for opening that door.

Last night, I had a dream. I'm in my kitchen, and I notice that the
garbage bag is full. I take it out to the trash bin outside and throw it inside
the bin. As I turn around to go back inside a little girl who is riding her
pink bicycle almost runs into me, but she panics and instead rides into the
fence and falls off of her bicycle. I go to see if she is okay, and she is
bleeding at her knees. I ask her if it hurts because she isn't crying. She says
yes, and I tell her that I will go inside and get a bandage for her.

When I get inside my apartment I head for the bathroom and I find a box
of bandages. On my way out, I go through the kitchen and I see that the garbage
bag is full yet again. I look through the door that I opened to go throw out
the trash, and I see the little girl still sitting there waiting for a bandage.

I look at the garbage bag one more time, it's still full, and then I go
back outside and put the bandage on her knee. I tell her that her knee is as
good as new, and then I watch as she walks her bicycle across the alley. I look
back through the door that is still open and I see inside my apartment. I'm
thinking about how I just threw out the trash, and how the trash was filled
back up again. I walk a few feet and I open the garbage bin that I just threw
the trash into, and it's empty, as if I had never actually thrown out the
trash.

So I go back inside, take the trash bag back outside and throw it in the
garbage bin. Now I know that I've thrown out the trash. However, when I go back
inside my apartment, the garbage bag is full yet again. I go back outside to
see if the garbage bin is empty. It is. I repeat the process one more time to
see what happens, and when I come back inside to see if the garbage is finally
thrown out, I see that not only is it not thrown out, but that there are now
two garbage bags in the house; one in the trash can and one on the floor next
to it. I think to myself, this must be a joke from God.

I pick up both garbage bags, and instead of going outside to the trash
bin next to my apartment building, I go to the next one over and throw them in
there, but it doesn't make a difference as when I return back home, there are
five garbage bags resting on the floor of my living room. I start to laugh
angrily.

As I'm laughing, I hear the engine of a large vehicle. When I look
outside, it's the garbage truck collecting garbage from our neighborhood. I run
outside and catch up to them and tell them that I have four more garbage bags
to deliver as I throw the one I was carrying inside the back. Because they are
patient and kind gentlemen, they wait as I throw the remaining four garbage
bags into the truck, and not to your surprise, when I return home I can't see
half of my living room because of the garbage bags that have magically appeared
out of nowhere.

Two by two I fill up my car with as many garbage bags as I can, and then
I drive down to the downtown area of the city and find a city dump where I toss
all twelve garbage bags over the fence. I drive back home, and to my surprise
there are as many garbage bags in the living room as there were when I left, so
it must be working. I take the remaining bags to the city dump and toss them
over the fence, and then when I return home I find that I cannot open the door.

As I continue to try to open the door I feel something pushing back
towards me until the door finally breaks and a mess of garbage bags come
flowing through. My laugh becomes a bit more angry.

I kick one of the bags out of frustration, and then pick it up to take
out to my car. After my car is filled with garbage bags, I start the engine,
but the car won't accelerate. The car just sits there, parked, but running. I
take one of the garbage bags out and decide to walk to the transfer station
instead. Maybe I might see one of those garbage men and they might be able to
help me with this problem.

I'm halfway there, walking across the city with this bag over my
shoulder when the bottom completely rips open and the contents fall out. A mess
of black and white notebooks. As I stare down at the composition notebooks, my
knees begin to feel weak and I can stand no longer. I find a bench and sit
down.

As I sit, reflecting on the path I have avoided, I see a familiar face.
It's a man who lives on the first floor of my apartment building. Tall, skinny,
middle aged white male who doesn't seem to notice the people around him. I have
walked by him many times in the building but he has never acknowledged me. In
some ways I am the same.

The first-floor man walks up to me and hands me a box of matches, and he
tells me that I have to destroy it before it destroys me completely, because
the next time I might not be so fortunate, and then he walks away. I look back
at the mess of black and white, and I go to kneel before it, but I can't find
the courage to set it on fire. If I'm not willing to destroy my problems, then
I will have to carry the burdens where ever I may go. I cannot just simply pass
them on to someone else for them to handle.

The dream ironically reminds me of the story about a man who constantly
had nightmares for dreams when he slept. One day he visits a church in Africa
at the request of a stranger, and he realizes that his dreams are not actually
dreams, but memories of horrible things he'd done in the past. He hadn't really
slept for years, not until he realized what he was carrying. In the same
distorted context, the story reminds me about a quote that implies that
"dreams are the answers to questions we don't yet know how to ask."

Chapter 37:

IN BETWEEN THE STORIES

Tao is in my kitchen complaining about how I have no good cereals. He is
here often unless he is away on a trip or something, and he is the one reason
why I would move out of this apartment building. Maybe I would find the courage
to live in my parents' home, the one they left me. I guess I don't want to move
now because of Lynne. Maybe because of her kids, too. David, he could probably
care less if I moved away, but there is a feeling that I get when I make Sarah
laugh or smile. The same feeling makes me realize she will be just like her
mother when she is older.

I tell Tao that if he wants good cereal, that he should go buy his own.
He asks me to come with him to Chase Mart, the store I usually buy my food at,
but I tell him that I don't shop there anymore. He asks me why, and I tell him
that I had an argument with the owner of the store. He asks me what the
argument was about and I tell him that it was something stupid, that it was my
fault.