02 - Paragraphs as Containers

Exercise 02: Patterns / Style / Paragraphs as Containers: Write five paragraphs of narration about one individual who has decided to stop spending so much time with a gang of friends. Each paragraph should be about an isolated problem [...] should have overlapping characters [...] Think of the paragraphs as tiny stories in themselves. Separate each paragraph with a space. 1000 words."

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Erik is useless to me now. Despite the fact that when we first met we were, temporarily, inseparable, I no longer have any use for his assistance: he has taken to spending too much time with the animals. Upon waking, he cannot begin his day until every creature inside of the cage has been accounted for. The green one, whom is called Spirulla, must be found at the bottom, buried beneath sand and dust, among the dead remains of whatever the cage fed on the day before; the yellow one, born Envellum, must be trapped with a flashlight that highlights its translucency, generally found floating in the midst of an absence of any debris or air; the pink one, Chiccccccccnago, is dead, Erik thinks, but every morning it must be dug up from the box it has been buried in (located within the cage) and examined under microscope so Erik can make sure all signs of life remain absent; the orange one, who was once called Poasitit, must be coddled and Erik must reaffirm that its name no longer matters; and the black one, Brikallaniag, must have the teeth it has grown the night before carefully plucked out with a pair of freshly sanctioned tweezers. After the morning ritual of the cage, Erik's own ritual can begin. The last time Mary and I were at his apartment we spent two hours looking for him, eventually finding him in his attic, hovering over the floor with a desk lamp and magnifying glass, carefully examining trails that he believed were left from the pets that he keeps in the cage. Both Mary and I insisted, repeatedly, that the animals could not leave the cage, and obviously had not left the cage, but he continued his arbitrary task, oblivious to the fact that the trails could have been left by common house snails or even simple traveling dust.

Mary is also no longer of interest. Her mother and father have been shipped back to the factory-farm where they were grown, feeding caged chickens and fucked vealcows that guarantee the farm's profits. Mary seems devastated: completely ignorant of how the events in a day are ordered. At 8:30 am, a half hour after she wakes up, she can be found getting ready for bed, and this action leads not to the bedroom, but to the garbage bins, where she seems to think she is carrying garbage bags, instead of the small stack of clothing that should be going into a washing machine she does carry. After her bin-deposit, at about 9:00 am, she begins cooking her dinner, generally something extravagant which she insists must be eaten before 11 o'clock or else her body will be too busy digesting to allow her to fall asleep. After dinner she hops on the bus towards her job: a job doing janitorial work in a retail shop in the hours before it opens. Having shown up 6 hours late for two weeks, she has been fired, but it appears that she can no longer tell the difference between being unemployed and being on the bus. Sometimes she tries to get off the bus before she has gotten on. Ryan tried to step in for the parents once, taking a day off from his own life to order hers, but all efforts proved futile when the next day, with Ryan back inside of his own schedule, she once again found herself going home to watch prime-time television before the sun had risen.

Ryan wants to tell me that he loved me but has discovered that my sex organs have been replaced with a metal box loaded with the echoes of the dead. He insists that it is "too much to deal with" and now no longer returns my calls. I know that, before I met him, he hooked up with Gary--who had a loaded gun instead of a soul--but with time their desire for each other faded.

The last time I saw Gary his heart shot at me and clipped my heels. This is what is responsible for my current state of inebriation. I died three times driving drunk but couldn't really hold him responsible for my condition until now. He's told me it was an accident and I had no reason to doubt him until: I heard from Christiana the other day. She's died sixteen times. I called Gary to ask about the circumstances, but he refused to offer any details. Instead, he tells me, he is writing a book about time travel that will fill in any uncertainties I suffer. He tells me the book itself will travel through time, but as it has not already arrived in my mail box I can only assume the book will never be finished.

I was in love with Christiana and the fact that we were both always driving drunk, but she has died too many times for me to try to maintain any sort of relationship. I expect she will die for good at some point, and frankly I have no interest in having to deal with how sad she will be about her final-death when it comes. My last lover died his final death in the midst of sex, and afterward we could never fuck again. Regardless, there are good things about Christiana: she used to howl into my box and join the voices of the dead when she was in a good mood, and her screams would temporarily shock my body out of its drunk composure into moments where I could color the air with cohesiveness. But her constant death gets in the way of my infinite ability to find the best in people. I can only love you when you are alive and screaming.