Cast Away

They have forgotten more than you know.

On Saturdays I take pieces of furniture from the house and place them in the fire. Chairs, coffee tables and picture frames. It’s hard to describe the pleasure I feel seeing them change shape and shrivel in the flames. It’s like a cold wind blowing through my soul. I’ve discovered that different materials produce different colored flames. Sometimes, I pour white spirits on the furniture as it burns, to increase the effect. Sometimes a small slow burn feels better.

Recently, the latisimuss dorsal muscles of my back have offended me. They seem to have forgotten their training. It is my opinion that my lats may have forgotten more than a man will know in his entire lifetime. I have placed my lats under investigation. My lats are the subject of an internal tribunal chaired by clever lats.The tribunal will come to a unanimous and overwhelming verdict. The muscles of my mid back will be found guilty of high treason. My lats shall be banished into exile and replaced through the miracle of lat transplant surgery.

I once had a dream that I was Tom Hank’s bicep muscles in the film Cast Away. At the start of the film I am neglected, ignored and overweight. After the plane crash, as Tom learns to survive through a number of trails and tribulations, I too wrestle with my demons, becoming stronger and more focused, ultimately making fire to burn the parts of my psyche I no longer need. Of all the bicep muscles that have appeared in Hollywood movies down through the years none have spoken to me with such honesty and dignity. They tell me things I never knew about myself. They show me how to forget myself. They show me how to remember what counts…………

How can you ask me now to surrender my spear and return to the world ……… you who have taught me how to kill for survival, how to hunt another living creature, how to defecate out of doorways!

The latisimuss dorsal muscles of the mid back have little or no memory of an empty house that was once inhabited by real people. No recollection of a bust up refrigerator resembling a Dadaist installation. They cannot recall that the refrigerator door has been ripped off its hinges and inserted in the wall space behind. They may choose to forget that the sides of the refrigerator have sustained a number of heavy blows from a blunt object. They may ask if a clear attempt has really been made to light a fire inside……… even though they were there.

I find it peculiar to think that Hanks had to resort to talking to a volley ball head instead of conversing with the living, intelligent muscles of his own body. Surely the pectoral muscles of the chest and the tricep and bicep muscles of the arm make the best companions. It could be argued that existence itself is nothing more than a continuous conversation between the brain and these muscle groups, the muscles effectively becoming an extension of our own personality and mental make up. The triceps, biceps and pecks have replaced the eyes as the real windows of the soul.

I believe my ex lats are living in the attic. I believe this because I can hear them watching Dr Phil on the old 15 inch television I put up there in a box last spring. There is no tv remote which means channels must be changed manually.
From a window in the attic, the lats look down on the roofs of the adjoining buildings. The sun is reflecting off roof tiles and aerial steel.

As they work the biceps try to compare things which are by their nature incomparable. The authorities warn against comparing things directly. The biceps recall a conversation they have heard or a piece of furniture they’ve seen or some idea that occurred to them sitting on the toilet at three in the morning.

The biceps don't watch TV in the traditional sense. It’s just another piece of furniture, another tool, muted sound and marginal awareness of moving pictures in the time between sets of preacher curls and press ups. The biceps are active, moving and alert. If they sit still they’ll fall into a deep sleep from which they’ll never punch their way out. They would forget what we have become together.

Forget what is unimportant

She had a small birth mark on her neck, beneath her left ear. We sat on a black leather couch watching wildlife documentaries and ultimate fighter. Her fingers were small and stumpy and she smelled like cigarettes .I tolerated her weaknesses. I tolerated her strengths. I was relieved when she left. Although I felt released, I wonder now what color flame she could have made in my fire.


In the evenings I rearrange at random the insides of my desktop computer. I don’t miss the internet. I usually just ended up on Amazon, looking up albums I will never buy. I liked reading the reviews that customers had written for the albums. I preferred reading the reviews than listening to the 30 second song samples. I preferred to hear about what the songs meant to total strangers than finding out if they could mean anything to me. Sometimes the reviewers told a story or anecdote about when they first heard a particular song or album. I liked those stories.

Live now, live at all costs

When your airplane crashes in the ocean it changes you mentally. Sometimes you die, other times you live, but no one survives the crash. No one’s mind escapes intact whether it’s a physical or mental crash. The smell of death stays with you. You wash your underwear but the smell is under your skin, in your brain.

In reality, there’s no way Hanks would have sought out his wife after he got off that island. He would have blanked her. He would have spat in her face. He would have gone home and gathered together his furniture. He would have made a fire.

"Out of Africa"

Rabid Elephants

I take a mouth full of beer and decide against doing that again, it tastes like what I always imagined battery acid tastes like. And from the feeling in my stomach it was having a similar effect. As my eyes scan the room I think, ‘This is it, I always knew I would reach rock bottom some day and that day has finally arrived’. I was sitting in the worst shit hole bar in the worst part of town waiting for a guy I barely knew to give me a job. It wasn’t just my life that was falling apart, things were getting worse by the day for everyone. Paranoia was at an all time high, suicide and murder were everyday occurrences. Very little surprised anyone any more and it doesn’t look like getting better any time soon.

When I walked into the bar earlier, a body was being carried out.
‘Trouble?’ I asked the bar man who was cleaning a pint glass.
“Guy offered Jonny a peanut, Jonny freaked out, Jonny knifed the guy.” Said the bar man without even looking at me.
“Harsh” I said, “I know some people are allergic but that’s going a bit far aint it?”
“Huh!” grunted the bar man “Jonny hates peanuts cos elephants like peanuts. Jonny hates elephants cos that damn machine told Jonny his death would be cause by elephants. Now Jonny is going to the electric chair cos Jonny stabbed a guy who had peanuts which Jonny thought would attract Elephants.” The barman paused to pick up another glass. “Jonny was an idiot everyone knows that the only was to beat the machine is to surround yourself with what ever it says. Take me for instance 10 years ago I got a slip of paper that said ‘alcohol’. I walked straight out and bought this bar, haven’t been sick a day since. Machine don’t know how to handle it if you do that. Once Jonny saw elephant on that bit of paper he should have moved into a zoo. Sure one day a rabid elephant might maul him but I doubt it.”
“Ah…. Ya, makes sense I guess,” I said a little confused by the logic or lack there of, “So how’s the beer?” I asked in an effort to change the subject.
The bar man looked at me for the first time, smiled and said, “Best in Town.”

Back in the present I still couldn’t get over how many times the bar man had said ‘Jonny’. Man that was annoying, still not as annoying as that damn machine. It was about 20 year ago when it first appeared. For the super rich back then but soon the cheaper models started to appear everywhere. ‘Find out the answer to the only question you’ll ever need to ask,’ they said. What was that even supposed to mean, ‘Your born, life sucks and then you die’ that’s my motto. It’s simple, but people being people can’t leave well enough alone. No one is happy with A to B to C. No they have to meddle, You’re born, life sucks, you get a vague prediction of how you’ll die, you spend years being manically paranoid and depressed and then you die horribly. Ha, so this is where thousands of years of human evolution have got us. I think we would have been happier running away from some prehistoric monster at least then we would have something real to fear. Now we have only our minds to fear. Not me though, no machine was going to mess my life up. I was doing a good enough job of that on my own.

At that moment the door opens and my contact walks in. A skinny man with pale skin and dark eyes. He had the look of a tortured soul about him, he kept giving darting looks over his shoulders and had a twitch under his left eye.
“How’s the beer?” he asked.
“Best in town.” I say with a smile.