Before It Started

I was once like you—waking each morning to an alarm clock, jarring you from sleep, trudging to the bathroom to look at your sunken eyes and wonder how long the bags had been there under your eyes. I was once like you, shuffling out the door to fight traffic to get to a job that slowly and desperately sucks the will to live out of you, feeding some capitalistic juggernaut Leviathan—praise be to him! 

I had a person in the office who yelled on the phone about their positive Herpes results and "Damn that bastard!" I had a suitemate that took his lunch at the desk, spewing bits of food across the table between bites and comments about the weather that were wrong and a football game you either did not watch nor will watch nor ever had plans to watch where the food rests in crevices for weeks and turns to mold just the same as you realize you are wasting away and dissolving in this place. 

I was once like you—listening to the whisper of society echo in your head, telling you to work harder, sleep less, exercise more, eat cleaner, make plans with friends, spend money on gifts, eat less, work harder, be nicer, be more assertive, be more agreeable, the love you show is proportionate to the money you spend, be less agreeable, pay a therapist to find out what the right amount of agreeable is, be more agreeable, spend the whole hour at the therapist staring at the books on the shelf behind them, organized by color and height not topic, and then wondering if and when any of those books were read while you are nodding along in agreement to whatever they said, maybe wondering aloud, be more agreeable man, realizing you will need to work harder to pay for more therapy because you guess this makes you feel better, or something. 

You don't know.

But it's what the whisper says. It's the right thing to do.

I used to be like you, but now I'm not—I found a pen.

Hold on, author man. A pen? Why a pen? 

I'll get to it, just have some trust in the process.

I'm not so sure. I don't like how you are painting such a negative picture of me. Like, where is the fun in life? No is ever this blah blah blah about everything that is going on in their life.

Yeah. I know, you're right. But, you're a character, I'm establishing some sort of a vibe for you. The point is there is this list of things that I think a lot of people might relate to. I think these are pretty universal things at this point in the world. You know, feeling like your job is pointless, not knowing what the point of things are.

Sure, I get that, but why not have me just go adopt a dog and go to the park and throw a frisbee or something and realize that the whole point of work in this modern world is to be able to fund the things that we want to do besides work.

That's kind of what I'm criticizing... I mean, do you really even need the work? I'm not sure exactly what this book is going to be yet, but that is sitting at the middle of it. This idea that we are just kind of drifting through life, not really knowing why we are doing the things that we are doing other than the fact that we think we need to do them.

Are you sure that is how everyone feels and not just yourself. I mean, I think Jerry with the food is kind of gross, but, like, my toe nails are too long.

Yeah, but you don't whip your dogs out at work and start clipping your nails.

Yeah, but if I were at the beach throwing the frisbee with the dog and then someone came up they might be disgusted by the length of my toenails and want to go talk to someone else. Maybe you could make sure that I have well-manicured toenails.

Sure, you have well-manicured toenails. If it comes up later in the story I will make sure that your toenails are immaculate. Like foot model immaculate, people would pay for pictures of your feet if that is what you want to do.

I'm not so sure about selling the feet pics, but yeah, could I also have a dog?

The dog doesn't really fit into the story.

Fine, I'll settle for good toenails. Go ahead and continue with this pen nonsense...

Okay, try to keep the interruptions to a minimum.

Yeah, sure, but if you start waxing too philosophical, I might have to jump in and call out your bullshit. Nobody wants to read that shit. People just want to be entertained.

...anything else?

Nah, go for it, I find some pen...

One day, I found a pen, and an address was printed on the side. There was no name; just a printed address, and I listened to that whisper from somewhere other than the mouth of Mother society that told me to go and see what was at this address. I still have this pen.

Mother society?

It's an attempt at personifying society, like it's a living thing and it raises us to be a certain way.

Just fucking say society with a capital. Mother society is too much.

Fine.

A whisper sounded different that that of Society, and it urged me to go and find this address. I still carry this pen.

I hope it has blue ink. I like blue pens.

It rests with the others. It mingles and plots and conspires with the others about what there is to do next. The whisper becomes a murmur becomes a shout that begs commands to unravel this threadbare tapestry of society. It carves its commands in red blue across my mind.

Hey, stay out of the actual prose.

I told you that I wanted a blue pen and you didn't say anything, so I jumped in. If you don't want me to just jump in then let's have a discussion about it.

It's my story, I can have it say the things I want it to say.

Yeah, but I don't necessarily like the way you are painting me here. Blue is a little calmer. If a pen is telling me what to do, then I want it to do it with blue ink. Not red. Red is too aggressive.

That's the point. It's supposed to be a strong compulsion.

Blue is compelling. Have you seen the ocean. It's blue and the ocean always wins.

Ugh, fine, blue it is, I'm not a fan though.

You don't seem to be a fan of much, the way you are talking about society. You sure you're alright, my man?

I'm doing fine, thank you.

I think you're shitting yourself. 

Well, isn't that kind of what I'm saying above, we're all just kind of going through the motions. We're all "shitting ourselves" to an extent.

Nah man, I just want to throw a frisbee with my dog. That ain't shitting myself. That sounds pretty fucking rad if I'm being honest. Right next to that blue blue ocean.

You got the blue pen.

Yeah, but the paragraph is still kind of, red, ya know?

It lays in wait with the others. Its voice ebbs and flows with the others as it swells and swells until it comes down in a crashing wave, too relenting to be ignored. It builds and builds until it spills blue across everything, soaking and saturating my thoughts until it is all I can think about.

Happy?

That seems a bit more blue, for sure. 

Good

Okie dokie, what's next?

You're going to meet someone who moves the plot forward.

I assume I meet them at the address?

In a way

Okay, should I start or are you going to start us up?

I got it, hold on.

I went to the address on the pen and there was nothing there but a patch of dirt in a sea of concrete. There was a sign planted in the dirt and in bib block letters at the top it said "CONSTRUCTION HALTED" and that was all I could read from where I stood.

...So, I just arrive? Like, where did I come from. You're just plopping me down here like I don't exist outside of this story.

You don't exist outside of this story.

Okay...sure, that's a techincality, though, man. Isn't there some advice that goes something something imagine that your character's have full lives.

Yeah, I've read of authors basically writing book-length accounts of their characters before they even get to writing the novel or screenplay.

Yeah, so what's mine?

I didn't do one for you.

So, like, I just don't exist except for these few words?

Yeah, that's it, you don't exist. You're a character in this story that might expand into a book.

Well I hope it is a book because then I am a little bit bigger of a person at least.

What do you want from me?

I want some backstory. What was I doing before I started moving along here. Like, where did I come from, where did I find the pen, what was I doing. I think those are important things to know.

Can I do a flashback to what you were up to right before you headed out? Can we get to the point of the address before going off on a tangent about what you were immediately doing?

Yeah, I guess that is fine, but can you just tell me really quickly what you were thinking I was doing?

I guess so. So, you know how there are the cups of pens by the cashier at a restaurant. Like, the little diners where you have to go up to the counter to pay.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Why was I at the diner?

You were hungry. Why else do people go to diners?

Yeah, but why this diner? What was so special about this diner?

This is the diner you met your girlfriend.

I have a girlfriend and I'm acting this miserable about everything?

You had a girlfriend.

Ah fuck.

Yeah. She died man. You met her at this diner, but they found a brain tumor right after your two-year anniversary. You went to this diner on your first date and then went to it again for your first and second-year anniversary. You were planning on going there again on your third anniversary to celebrate her recovery, but...

She died. Why does that have to be my backstory! Fuck you for making that my backstory, now I feel like shit.

I didn't think of it until you brought up the fact that you didn't have one.

Yeah, but why does that have to be it? That is terrible.

You are the guy talking to pens to get a sense of direction in life, so that seems like what we had to do.

What do you mean 'talking' to pens? I thought I just found a pen that had some mysterious address on it.

Oh, well yeah, that's all the reader knows at this point, but you feel this almost gravitational pull to certain pens and they communicate with you in a sense.

So, I jut went batshit crazy once my girlfriend died?

Actually, fianceè. 

When did I propose?

When you found out about the tumor. It was a show of support to her, that you were in this with her for the long haul.

I really loved her.

Yeah, you really loved her.

There was a chain link fence around the square of dirt keeping its unfinished state separate from the monuments of human ingenuity outside. I stood there on the sidewalk with cars and trucks making their traffic, with reflection of the sun shining off buildings' windows and steel cornices. The animals and birds that once roamed free here made do with manicured copses and signal poles and street lamps and sewer drains and slimy putrid puddles of human ingenuity. Sound and light reverberated from the pillars of symphonic humanity and the patch of dirt seemed even more dull and brown in the technicolor madness of society. I followed a pen here, but I was not fully there.

Alright, there you go again.

What do you mean?

Do I really have to say it? "Sound and light reverberated from the pillars of symphonic humanity...in the technicolor madness of society."

What's wrong with that?

You're really laying it on thick there with that. It sounds like you're trying too hard.

I am pretty sure that I just wrote that in one stretch. 

C'mon man, you're really rhapsodizing there.

That's the kind of thing this is going to be. That's just my style.

Just because something is your style doesn't mean that is the way you have to do it. You might try chaning it up a little bit.

I'm going to leave that one where it is for the time being. I'll think about toning it down a little bit as I go along.

Alright, good. What else do we have coming up? Where did this damn pen bring me and what's going on with me?

I probably should have moved on at that point, but that insatiable human curiosity of ours needed to know what was written on the rest of the sign. I walked the perimeter of this nonsensical chainlink fence casing it like a burglar looks for entries into some house with untold valuables inside. Except there were no valuables here.

I found a corner that was not tied down all the way and moved into this dirt empire. It wasn't just brown like I thought from the other side. There were flecks of green, little clovers growing, sprouting from the hard earth. Ants made their frenzied march with more order and purpose than the people trudging back and forth from home to work to home, back and forth, sometimes stopping to eat or fornicate. 

My skin prickled against the air—a cooling sensation fluttered with the dust. A finch hopped along pecking on dirt that did not scrape its beak down to a blunt object of human progress. A world was on this patch of ground, dull and brown and full of life. I inched toward the sign. 

Eh.

Why eh?

It's just eh, that's all. I wonder if you could have put some more detail into what was actually going on with the dirt patch. It's just kind of partial.

What isn't partial in the world though? Isn't everything just an incomplete picture that we grasp at making full?

Be careful, you're bordering on waxing philosophic...

It's gestalt. Everything is gestalt. We can only ever have an imperfect picture of what is actually there in the world and e just imagine the rest of it. Everything we see, everything we know, it's all some elaborate form of gestalt. We want to see things as complete even though everything is lacking.

Well, if that were the case, wouldn't you want to fill in the details, so it's...complete?

I don't need to though. I can give enough. I can give what you notice and then others might think of something that they have and fill in their own additional details. You noticed the clovers, the ants, the finch, and the breeze. You didn't notice the plastic bag that was blowing across the whole landscape because that didn't fit in with your image. You needed to feel like you were passing into something new because of where you were in life. You felt live the world was too much and you needed to take a pause.

So, are you saying that I just made the whole thing up.

No, I'm saying you're just like everyone else. You saw what you needed to see for that moment based on where you were with everything. Our moods determine what we experience.

You're in a mood.

We're probably all always in a mood. 

Is the lack of a mood a mood?

Probably.

Okay, so I missed the man-made aspects of this dirt patch because I wanted to see something other than all the man-made things in this world. 

That sounds like a decent interpretation.

What!? You don't know?

I'm not proclaiming to know everything.

But you're making all of this up.

I'm just reshaping things I've seen or heard throughout my life. 

So, am I you?

Not really, but there might have been some version of my life where I could have ended up like you?

So, who am I then?

Exactly.

God dammit, nope. Enough of this existential questioning. Let's just get on with the story. What happens next? Do I read the sign?

Yeah, you read the sign. Here's what it says: