Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Day 100: 100 days of this

I probably should proofread everything I write before I send it.  Oops.


 
Coffee that was left in the coffeemaker was still warm and I had to decide if I should make new coffee or drink it.
Jerry was back in his apartment.  He stratched right above his ass as he pulled the cabinet with the coffee stuff in it open.  The sink leaked, but he didn’t pay for heat or water.  Lifting the coffee pot out of its station, Jerry noticed that the coffee from earlier in the week was still warm.  He swirled the contents of the pot and held it up to his nose, and it still smelled aromatic, like it had just been made.  Jerry moaned as he looked up at the filters and coffee, and then back down at the pot.
“It’s coffee time.”  He said to himself , a little shocked how his own voice sounded.
Some genius coffee machine maker must have thought of this, he thought.  It must reheat your coffee at the last minute, right before you’d not want it anymore..
A voice went off in Jerry’s head.  “Hey don’t you be drinking that coffee.”  It was an unfamiliar voice.  It sounded a little bit like a softball coach.  Jerry pictured a fat middle weight white man who may have done some amateur boxing at some point.
“You’re never too young for salt and pepper hair!”  Jerry said to his reflection, genuinely impressed by his salt and pepper hair.  He ran his hands through it upward, tilting his head into the low hanging bathroom light.  Exiting into his dormitory, he sighed, and wondered if he had really been that stressed. 

Jerry was suddenly back on the tall wooden stilts, it could have been years earlier.  The yogi who sat across from him, Sha-Ram, was long since deceased.  He had choked on a fish bone.
“There is no implicit meaning, it’s all subjective.  Take, for example, this dog house with the door bulging out.  It looks like someone has been leaning against it for years.”
With this, he stood up and gestured with an open palm at the dog house.
“When I said leaning against it for years, what did you think of?”
There is something humiliating about being a disciple. There are great men out there, but the objective is to be like them, not to worship them.  You want to work with someone, not for them.
“I guess… a dog dying in there after pressing itself against the side trying to escape?  Little did it know that it was a “pull” door, not a “push” door.”
“What did you notice about time in this metaphor?  Did the leaning seem to take place over any specific period of time?”
“No, just a long time.  It had to have been long enough to make the door bulge.”
“So, in other words, the predicate necessitates the action.  Even when we don’t know who our subject is.”
“That’s true, I think.  But what is it supposed to mean?”
“Metaphors don’t necessarily mean anything, their soul purpose is to create context and reinforce atmosphere.  Life is a juxtaposition.”
Jerry came to all at once, and lifted his head off of an elevated platform.  Lights bounced off of the mirrors behind the bar, the two stools next to him were open, but overall it was a crowded place. 
“Rosco?”  Jerry asked.
“Your buddy ain’t here tonight.”  The bartender leaned over the bar with a hand washing the inside of a glass. 
“When did I get here?”  A few chuckles from down the bar.
“He don’t remember, go easy on him.”  The bartender said.  “You came here with some girl at quarter after eight.  Looked like you two were having a great night.  Ring any bells?”
Jerry stood up and dug through his pockets, retrieving a white handkerchief and wiping his face with it.  “No, I can’t say I remember any of that.”  His watch was spun around on his wrist, and he twisted it back to face forward and checked it.  “Wouldn’t really matter what time it was, what day is it?”
A new customer, a lady in a green dress, had entered with a peacock’s strut and the bartender was gone, welcoming her.  Jerry grabbed a hand full of pistachios from a platter on a foldout table and shoveled them into his mouth.  A creepy looking extremely tall guy shot him a hostile look.
The TV was airing repeats of a sitcom, Malcolm and the Man.  Malcolm was a talking dog, and the man was a professional lawyer who took care of the dog after a series of mishaps made him its caretaker.  Unlike most talking dog shows, it was a widely known fact that Malcolm could talk, and people didn’t pay much notice to it.  As a matter of fact, he had developed a reputation as a real jerk.
“Marty.”  The man’s real name was Marty. 
“Yes, Malcolm?”  Marty said, popping a few ibuprofens.  He gritted his teeth and wouldn’t look over.
“Look at me, Marty!  For God’s sake!”
Jerry remembered this one.  This was the episode where Malcolm and the Man had “jumped the shark.”  They had a brief sexual encounter, and the guest director took the script in a different direction than the screenwriter had intended.  Jerry remembered, as a kid, that it seemed like Malcolm and Marty had some real chemistry, and it hadn’t been so weird that they crossed the line.
Soon, it was eight in the morning and the darkness had become midnight blue.  The whole world seemed to be passing through a blue lense as Jerry sat at the bus stop, a wicked hangover just a good nights sleep

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