I was thankful Mom was off. She’d recently had to take a second job because she  couldn’t afford her house payment on the money she was making as a data analyst with only a  high school diploma. I set my bags down in the room and popped half the edible before heading  to the kitchen. Normally, we’d have had more people over for Thanksgiving. We had Dad’s  family over last year, and my uncle Alejandro, on Dad’s side, invited us over this year. But I’d  always felt guilty over the fact I don’t speak enough Spanish to converse with Dad’s family  fluently, unlike my cousins, who were full Mexican as opposed to my half, and who had grown  up speaking both languages. Today, it was just Mom, Dad, and my brother. There were my  grandma Virginia and my aunt Tami in their urns on the kitchen island in the front room, where  Mom worked at her day job, but they were only here in spirit. 

We’ve got a picture of Tami on the kitchen island. She and Mom both have a good tussle  of brown hair and the same smile. But Mom’s had her hair dyed blonde as long as I’ve known  her. She usually wears a cardigan and some comfy-looking utility pants. That’s what she was  wearing when I walked into the kitchen.  

“Is the food ready?” I asked, the edible working its way through my system. 

“Only if you give me a hug first,” Mom said, and we hugged.  

Thanksgiving dinner was the usual: a whole turkey, baked macaroni and cheese, rolls,  stuffing (with onions), green beans, and mash potatoes with gravy. It was all her cooking because  she had always been the one who cooked. I can’t remember the last time I helped. I was good at  getting food in and out of the oven and even better at getting food in and out of the container.  Whenever I was home, I would focus on washing the dishes. I had a knack for slotting them in  the right place in the dishwasher. My brother and Dad were good at putting them in the sink, and  Dad had gotten better at washing the dishes when he was mad at my brother for not washing  them; it was progress. I downed a tall boy of Hell Yes Ma’am beer that Mom got for me (it’s my  favorite beer because it tastes great and gets me fucked up the fastest) and went about putting  some food on my plate.  

Sitting around the table, eating together, it was hard to believe that my parents had  divorced ten years ago. They’d been back together for four years by now. Nice things happen,  sometimes. My brother and I are iterations of our parents. Matthew has Mom’s hair—thick and  wavy. I have Dad’s face—round. Growing up, people said Dad and I looked like twins. I’m not  sure if that meant I looked older or that he looked younger. Mom has always said she felt I look  like her—that is to say, white. She is one of the few white people to have said so.  

I ate while Mom talked. Dad ate while Mom talked. She was talking about how happy  she was to have us here as a family, how not everyone got to do that. When I finished, I felt full,  but I didn’t feel high, so I went back to my room to get the other half of the edible. It had only  been thirty minutes, not enough to feel the full effects. I should have realized that.  

The first time I smoked weed was when my friend had me huff on a bong. He had come  back from spending time with family in Oklahoma, where he earned his nuke med degree while  working at a Wal-Mart. He said all the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek Indians hung out at the  Wal-Mart, and they were tall, taller than he was. Anyway, he told me to huff through the bong  like I was eating ass. Never mind the fact that I’d never eaten ass up to that point in my life. Then  I remembered I was huffing it after he did, and I thought, “oh, wait.”  

I don’t use a bong because it’s too big to hide. Instead, I use my pipe—it’s a green  Gandalf pipe, except you can smoke weed in it. When I rip, it hurts my lungs and makes my eyes  feel like they’re on fire. But it’s worth it for just to feel like I’m sitting on a cloud when I sit on  the couch. I didn’t bring the pipe, though, because I didn’t want Mom to suspect anything. She  says she has a hound’s sense of smell. Instead, I dropped by this place called iHemp just before I  got home. It was on Stratford Road, just down the way from the Enterprise where I’d picked up  the Hyundai Elantra. At that Enterprise, I’d met a cute girl who, it turned out, was dating a  classmate of mine from back when. Like mine, his name was Nicholas, only he went by  Harrison. I remember the last time I saw him was in this cluster of auto shops beside a tree  barrier that separates Dad’s neighborhood from the rest of the city. I was riding bikes with a  neighbor once, back before my parents divorced, and that neighbor went crashing through the trees on his bike, making sounds like he was on a motorcycle. He rode in front of one of the auto  shops, and this lady, who looked a lot like Kathy Bates from Misery, came out holding a tiny  black revolver. I stood on my own bike, my fat thighs straddling the bar because the skinny little seat hurt my ass, and jumped when she looked at me. She went back inside like nothing  happened.  

Anyway, the iHemp was closing early because of the holiday. It turns out the store had  been open a few years, yet I had never bothered to come in. That’s mostly because weed isn’t  fully legal here in North Carolina, and I know that whatever I get here will be dogshit compared  to the edibles I had in Denver the previous spring. I bought four Delta 9 indica gummies for  eleven dollars, but the clerk packed five on accident, and I didn’t bother to correct her. She told  me to make sure I only take half the edible, so I could get a feel for how it made me feel. I said I fully intended on doing that, as that’s what I did in Denver, and that was a great fucking time. 

“No one wants to green out,” she said.  

Greening out is essentially an overdose on weed that, most of the time, people don’t die  from.  

“Oh, yeah, I know that’s like,” I told her, but what I didn’t tell her is that the last time I greened out, which was the first time, I had five shots of cannabis-infused cashew milk in one  hour. My heart pounded like a jackhammer, and it got hard to breathe. A friend who was there  with me walked me around my apartment neighborhood until we found a stoner friend of ours  who put me in his car and took us to the BestWay down the street. I hid in the backseat. The lights stretched as he drove down the hill. He put on some Chopin as he went inside the  convenience store for some whole black peppercorns. When we got back, he told me eat the  peppercorns and make a pizza for myself. He also had me throw out the beer I’d been drinking. I  eventually mellowed out after telling them “thank you for being here with me” ten times each.  

For me, a green out starts with a pounding heartbeat, followed by a sense of panic, which  is exactly what I felt when Mom told me she was going to die.  

“I think about Tami, and I know I’m going to die like that,” she said.  

To which I responded “wait, what?” Because Tami died of an overdose on some pain pills  and maybe a little cocaine. She’d died three years before this Thanksgiving, but in October,  which was her birth month. Mom had texted to wish her a happy birthday, but Tami never  responded. That was odd, considering she loved to talk. Mom later went and found Tami alone in  her bed, her finger pointing up to the ceiling.  

“What do you mean you’re going to die like that? Like an overdose?” I asked Mom. 

“Oh, no,” Mom said. “But I just realized that one day I’ll die.”  

Mom looked at me like what she was saying wasn’t any big deal. I felt my heart start to  beat faster, and I had to take a deep breath. The white fluorescents showed the lines on her  forehead and, all the sudden, I had second thoughts about finishing my second Hell Yes Ma’am. I  couldn’t figure out how to tell her this was the worse thing she could say to her lightweight  almost-thirty-year-old-son who was tripping his balls off, so instead I just nodded like it was an  every day thing she was telling me.  

“I’m going to take a nap. When I get up, do you want to take a walk?” I asked her this  because walking was what we did whenever I was home. I like walking with my mom. 

“Ok,” Mom said. “But it’s cold out.”  

I went to my room. For the most part, I just lay in my bed, trying to get some sleep. I  would occasionally go out to get some water, not trying to talk to anybody as I’d never been this  cross-faded in front of my family before. My heart was pounding too fast for me to count. I tried  to calm myself down, so I put on some YouTube. But I couldn’t stand anything in my algorithm  as it all had to do with the development of different nuclear bombs, so I put on a peaceful music  stream. I slowed my breathing, trying to listen to the music, and drank water. The worst type of  trip is where you lose your appetite, and that’s exactly what happened to me. I kept breathing and  checking my heartbeat, holding my hand to my chest. The guy kept thumping and thumping, and  I kept tossing and turning, trying to find the position where I wouldn’t feel my blood pulsing in  my ears. I hate hearing it beat like that.  

The last time I went to the doctor, the nurse told me my blood pressure was high. I told  her it was because I had white gown syndrome, which is when your blood pressure is elevated  when you visit the doctor. It’s a real thing, I swear. She told me I needed to eat healthier, and I  was reminded of all the times people called me fat when I was younger. I’ve spent a lot of time in front of mirrors, assessing the fat around my middle, torturing myself in trying to figure out  whether it’s growing or shrinking. When I jump rope in the gym, I watch each part of myself— cheeks, pecs, biceps, and stomach—move up and down with the rhythm of the exercise. I tell  myself I’ve come far, but I still check it afterward. I can never decide if I find it endearing or  hideous. Indulging myself in my vice is my way of forgetting about that, of not feeling guilt  about eating, if only for a few hours.  

My aunt Tami would take me to the Bagel Station on Stratford Road when I was younger,  all those carbs likely having something to do with my fatness. She loved to show me off at Pig  Pickins’, where she waitressed when I was a kid. Dad thinks the restaurant business is where she  got the things that killed her. In her later years, she worked for these jerks at a place on  Cloverdale. Mom said the manager treated Tami like shit. I remember going in there to say hello,  and her manager eyed us. Well, I eyed the fucker right back, and he went back into his hidey hole.  

When Mom came to see Tami, it was in this far-flung corner of Forsyth, bordering Yadkin  County. Tami had been living with her husband, this guy named Harold who really didn’t have  his wits about him. Mom said there were all these women in the house, unrelated to anyone who  lived there, and they were wearing big cowboy boots. In my daydreams, I call them the Coyote  Ugly Reject Crew. They all looked at my mother with disgust or scorn, the way she tells it.  Harold’s son led Mom to Tami’s room, and that’s where she found Tami, lying on the bed and  pointing up to the ceiling. No one had checked on her for a full day before they realized she was  dead. If I could trade Tami for anyone in that house, I would, if only just to talk to her again. The  thing is, Tami asked me to lunch the month she died. “My treat,” she’d said. I neglected to  answer her.  

Anyway, I got up because I knew I was greening out since I was thinking about death. I  went outside to where Mom was playing with our dogs and feeding the chickens. We have two  dogs, and God knows how many chickens. Our German Shepherd hates them. He’s always  barking at them and trying to kill them. The people on my parents’ neighborhood Facebook page are always complaining about the chickens, saying that residents are only allowed three chickens  per household per the HOA rules. I always want to complain about the renters who live next to  my parents. Over the past four years, three of them have died from drug overdoses or heart  attacks. And they’re all white guys with some Yadkin county accent. Instead of talking to me or  Dad, they just spit. Dad had some Yadkin county people over to get an estimate on building a  workshed. Once they left, they never returned his calls. If there’s a good Yadkin county person  out there, I haven’t met them.  

Anyway, I was trying to pet my German Shepherd because his fur was so damn soft, but  he was busy trying to tell the chickens who was sheriff around these parts, and he kept running  around. My pit bull was eating some leftover turkey, and a chicken was trying to get it from her. 

“They’re cannibals,” Mom said. “We have cannibal chickens.”  

I scratched my head, “we sure do.”  

I thought for a moment that maybe I should tell Mom what I was going through, but I  figured she’d panic worse than I was and take me to the ER. She had to take my brother there  once, when he screamed at a video game so much he burst a blood vessel in his eye. 

I thought better and said “do we have any whole black peppercorns?”  

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Why?”  

“The beer I drank is messing with me a bit.”  

“Oh,” she said. “What does it do? Help you not get drunk?”  

“Yeah.”  

“Ok, help me get the dogs in.”  

We got the dogs in after they chased the chickens back into their coop. Mom was talking  about how she’d have to go to work on Black Friday, but that we could still do some shopping  together. I had things I wanted to get, but I wasn’t thinking about those things, then. We went inside and, as Mom turned the corner to her room, I asked, “Can I get those peppercorns?” 

“Oh yeah, just look in the lazy Susan in the kitchen.”  

I went for it. I passed Dad, who was sitting on the couch watching TV, on my way there. I  eyed him in a way to see if he was watching me. Dad’s default look is to glare so that you see the  whites of his eyes, so it looks like he’s angry. I’ve been told I have the same look. I spun the  Susan until I found the peppercorns and took them to my room. I ate a handful, and my mouth  went dry in an instant. I drank some water, put the peaceful music stream back on, and tried to  take a nap. That’s when my brother Matthew came into the room.  

“You left your food on the table,” he said.  

“Oh, yeah?”  

“Clean it up.”  

“I will.”  

Matthew looks a little bit like Fernando Valenzuela, only lighter, enough to make him  pass. We’re different in that he doesn’t care about his whiteness or his Mexicanness. I think that’s  a good thing. Growing up, all the Mexicans I went to school with said I wasn’t Mexican. Even  my cousins in L.A. tell me I’m white. It’s usually white people who identify me as Mexican, my  overdosed neighbor who’d rather spit than talk to me, for example. My first girlfriend, who was  white, called me a short half-Mexican the first time we met, and I cried myself to sleep over that.  

We still got naked together, though, so I guess bygones are bygones. I remember how she  used to caress my stomach and tell me my body was perfect, and how I have never once had that  thought about myself. She eventually left me for this El Salvadoran guy whom we went to  college with. I guess she had the market cornered on chubby Latinos.  

There was a woman, a hardworking, intelligent woman, whom I got close to recently. I’d  flirt with her every chance I could get, and she’d flirt with me when she could get away with it.  Well, we both got way too drunk one time, and we were all over each other at a party. What I  remember is that she kissed me three times on my big cheek. Instead of kissing her back, though,  I asked her, leaning into her shoulder, “Am I Mexican? Tell me I’m Mexican,” and she said,  “you’re Mexican,” and then she went inside the house.  

Mom had said she was happy to celebrate Thanksgiving as a family, but I only ate one  plate before hiding in my room. We have a tendency in my family not to talk things unless  \they’re big issues that make us cry. Death, for instance. I hadn’t thought about Tami in years  before Mom mentioned her at the dinner table that day. I still remember her voice and her laugh;  I’ve caught myself laughing sometimes in the same way that she did. The last time I saw her was  at this house. She had come in from the basement on errands with Mom. She had grown older in  the years since I’d seen her last. She’d dyed her hair black, the way it was when I was younger.  Tami walked with a hunch and a shuffle on account of a car accident she was in as a teenager.  The windshield broke and some of it injured her uterus and hip, rendering her infertile. The only thing I remember about our interaction was my asking her if I was her favorite nephew. Only, I flipped it, saying “I’m your favorite nephew, aren’t I?” She pursed her lips and nodded, giving me a slight smile. I’ve wrestled with myself for years with my inability to answer her text. How  maybe if I had, we would have been able to do something.  

I thought about that as I lay in my bed. It didn’t occur to me, in that moment, that Tami  died in the same position. I now wonder what she got in using those pills. If she felt like laying in  her bed was like lying on a bed of clouds. I wonder if she felt the same strained heartbeat as I  did, if maybe she realized it had all come to a head, and if she realized she was dying as she did  so. Usually when I do things like this, I come to some realization about myself, vowing to be  better about something. By the time I wake up the next morning, though, I forget about it. This  was the one time I didn’t.  

My heart rate was finally lowering. I made sure the gummy capsule was locked up tight. I  remembered how Mom made a cheesecake and went for the kitchen. My body was on autopilot,  just searching for whatever could distract me from the slow drumbeat in my chest. When I  entered the dining room, though, my whole family was there. It was like they were waiting for  me.  

“Can we sing happy birthday, now?” Mom asked.  

“OK,” was all I could say.  

My family sang the song while I just kind of stared at the candles burning on the cake.  Mom loves to say “cha, cha, cha” between the verses of the song. I don’t remember what I  wished for as I blew out the candles. I thought about how Mom had texted “happy birthday”  down to the minute I was born, how we used to have so many more people over when I was  younger, and how that stopped happening as much. There was a Thanksgiving when all Mom’s relatives came over, and Dad got upset because they would eat and eat, but never help clean up.  Of all the people who helped clean, only my maternal grandmother Virginia did it, and she  wasn’t guilty of anything. Dad paid her back when he let her stay at his house as she was dying.  My parents had been divorced for six years by that point. I remember when Mom told Dad she  was divorcing him: it was because he wouldn’t take her seriously enough; it was because he  would never help the way he needed to; and it was because he wasn’t being a father. He told me  “I love you, mi’jo” as we sat in his truck while he drank a beer with the engine running. My  grandmother said he was her favorite son-in-law. He was only one who didn’t hit and wasn’t a  deadbeat. He had his issues, sure, but he worked past them in the way he could.  

Mom told me that as my grandmother was dying, she saw faces in the ceiling in the spare  bedroom at my father’s house, and would point out and name them for my mom: her brothers,  her mother, her father. Mom has told me she’s seen ghosts as well. I haven’t seen any myself yet.  

Mom cut the cake, handing out a slice to each of us. I bit into mine, and it was the best  damn thing I could have asked for. I continued to eat until I was full.  

The post Family History appeared first on The New Absurdist.

The woman’s bulging glasses make her eyes look like over-inflated glass balloons, pointed  needles at their centres for pupils. I wonder how she can write whatever it is she’s writing. I  wonder how she can glance at her watch. I wonder how she can see me. 

“Which ear?” she asks. 

“The right one.” 

“Is it painful?” 

“No. But it itches.” 

The paper bedsheet crinkles under the bony protuberances of my buttocks. I dangle my legs  from the edge of the stretcher, looking at the woman’s feet as she examines me, her head tilted  slightly to compensate for the weight of her enormous eyes. I notice she’s wearing steel-toed  work boots. They look new, and I’m impressed by the way the light glosses over the perfect  curve of the toe-cap, like the polished bumper of a Cadillac.  

“Is that everything?” she asks. 

“Yes, I think so.” 

She retrieves an iPad from the counter nearby and tells me to fill out a few forms. I take it  from her eagerly. Form filling is a hidden delight of mine and I fly through these digital pages  with a wide grin, my teeth glowing bright. I put check marks over the handsomely bolded little  squares with as neat a print as I can manage. It is hardly distinguishable from the original  typeface. I fill out dates, names, signatures, time stamps, employee IDs, social security numbers,  blood types, genders, disabilities, pronouns, body fat percentages, sexual orientations, preferred  room temperatures… 

When I finish she takes the iPad back and tells me I may return to work, and I have to  suppress a disappointed sigh. I step through the door and start down the hallway. It’s a very long  hallway. There are exactly 32,000 cubicles in the hallway, stretching out for 40,000 kilometres  across the arctic tundra. This is where the best Companies have built their one-hallway  warehouses. It is a revolutionary system designed to limit the mental strain on employees by  making navigation as simple as possible. A perfect marriage of architectural prowess and  emotional productivity. There’s nothing simpler nor quite so peaceful as walking an arrow straight hallway. There are no diverting paths to confuse, no hideous posters promoting a holiday  you’ll never celebrate. I belong to cubicle number 26,356, and I know precisely how to get there,  right down to the last step. As I walk I like to imagine there is another person walking next to me  in the other warehouse belonging to the other Company, with nothing but two walls and a foot of  empty arctic air separating us. I listen to his steps and sometimes if I really strain my ears I can  hear the sounds of his shoes against the ground, echoing. 

But I have this thought in my mind and I’m beginning to grow anxious, for the truth is that I  did not tell the woman everything about my ear. Indeed it itches, that part was true, but it is much  more than just a tingle. It feels like something is living in there, crawling, nesting, egg-laying and  mate-eating in the valleys of my brain’s folds. A tunnelling insect washing its hands in my  cerebrospinal fluid, chewing on all the fat and the protein. I wish I had a woodpecker’s tongue so I could reach up there and swat it. I read once that woodpeckers can wrap their tongues around  their brains, securing them in place for their jackhammering. They hold onto their minds to avoid  losing them. I wonder if humans will ever evolve this ability, if only to relieve these phantom  itches of the mind. 

And yet there are times when I can hear a sound, a vocoded wrinkle through those tingles and  itches. I can hardly make it out unless I stand very still and hold my breath. It’s a voice. A throaty  song. Harmonious inflection and modulation, and it loops like a melody in a song. Four bars,  eight, curling through my brain like a snake biting its tail, or like a woodpecker’s tongue, and I  admit that image is profound, perhaps religious. I’m sure it means something. It must mean something. 

I am back at my desk. I watch a woman through my computer screen. She points to a  whiteboard behind her on which a chart has been sketched with black marker. I read the word  “postpartum,” written by who I assume was this same woman. 

“Individual,” comes a voice from behind. I stand up quickly, pushing away my black  synthetic leather office chair with the back of my knees. I see a balding head pop up from beyond  my cubicle’s wall, and then another and another and another and another one after that. I hear  them stand, 5,644 individuals in front of me, 26,355 individuals behind. 

I feel a tap on my shoulder and I turn to find a small-statured woman looking up at me. I am  frightened by her unblinking, incessant gaze, and how her eyes seem to roll in their sockets like  billiard balls. I wonder how she can see me at all. 

“Yes?” I say with a soft tone of polite expectation. 

I hear the rest of the individuals sit back down to resume their work. The sound is a cascade  of rustling cloth and mechanical clicks. 

“May I see your identification badge?” 

I hold out the rectangular plastic tied around my neck and she scans it with her iPad. “How  long have you been working here?” she asks. 

I check my watch and glance up and to the left. Up and to the left means you’re digging  through memories. It means you’re taking an innocent moment to pause and recall the truth.  There is nothing suspicious about looking up and to the left when asked a question. Up and to the  right, however, means you are making things up. It means you’re lying, and I have never lied. I  make sure to look up and to the left. I linger here a moment and I make sure she sees me doing  this. 

“About a year.” 

“One year?” 

“Eleven months. I started on the thirteenth of September last year.” 

She smiles, her lips like elastic bands stretched over the skin. “Thank you very much for your  hard work.” 

I smile and nod. It feels good to be commended. That is what I love about this Company:  they are always commending their employees. If they gave me a plaque I would hang it up above  my chair in my cubicle so that it can shield my mind like a dreamcatcher and make me smile in my dreams too. 

“When was the last time you had your Top-Up Training?” Her smile is gone now and she is  looking down at the iPad in her hands. I sneak a glance at the screen and see a cartoon clown  hopping up and down. It extends a gloved hand in a thumbs-down gesture, shakes its head and  frowns. 

“Pardon me?” I ask, somewhat more harshly than I intended. 

“Your Top-Up Training.” I can see mild alarm growing behind her giant eyes. “I don’t think I’ve been given Top-Up Training.” 

Mild alarm turns to intense distress. 

“I need you to come with me so we can do your Top-Up Training.” 

I follow her out of my cubicle and back up the hallway. To my right, the taps of my shadow’s  shoes follow us from behind the wall. 

I am led into a small beige room with a single plastic chair in the centre. It looks like the  nurse’s room I was just in but a plaque on the wall reads Top-Up Training Room, so I know it  must be a different room. The woman tells me to take a seat and then leaves. 

I sit. Fluorescent lights pillage the top of my bald head. I can feel the rays jackhammering my  skull. Surely this can’t be healthy. I remember reading how harmful fluorescent lights can be,  and I am sure they’ve been banned. I’m shocked to find them at this Company. I make a mental  note to file a complaint. 

There is a TV screen in front of me. It switches on, and all 70 inches suddenly alight in  images flashing on the screen, so clear that I could as well be looking through a pane of glass at  the real things behind it. There is an image of an ant lying dead in the corner where the black  rubber bases of two walls join together. Its soul rises up slowly from its corpse. The image  lingers here a moment before switching to a close-up of a woman walking in pearl-white socks.  She walks into the camera and the camera moves backwards with her feet. The audience can’t  see her face. There is no sound. I can’t even hear the buzzing of the fluorescents anymore and  now that I think about it I can’t recall there ever being a buzzing of the fluorescents. 

The image changes to a medium-closeup of an ant walking along the edge of a sidewalk in  what appears to be a city. I assume it’s New York but in truth I can’t see anything of the city that  would justify this assumption. There aren’t any cities in the arctic. Tires are hurdling past the  right of the ant and shoes and legs and the hems of people’s pants on the left. The ant is wearing  six socks over its six legs. I find this curious. Why wear socks if you won’t wear shoes? Wet  socks are a miserable experience. Surely any creature can appreciate that, big or small, self conscious or otherwise. But the ant doesn’t seem bothered. It walks with no clear destination in  sight, no mound of melting ice cream on the pavement, no puddle of spilled Gatorade, no half eaten Twix in its wrapper. The ant simply goes and the camera follows. I wonder if there is some  meaning being assembled here by these series of shots. There must be. No sane filmmaker would  stitch two shots together without there being some sort of rope to tie them together. Perhaps there  is something to be said about the insect-human-insect shots. The filmmaker (I guess at Fincher,  Bong Joon Ho, Gerwig) must be trying to illustrate a point, to paint a painting, to tell a story, to create an image. I adjust my position in the plastic chair. There’s a scrape of the leg on the tiled  floor and I flinch, unaware of how long it’s been since I’ve been subject to sound. I decide I do  not like sound and promptly attempt to slow my breathing so as to create as little of it as  possible. I hear a faint voice whisper into my ear and I stick my finger in to try and claw it out. 

The image changes. I see a paper bowl on a desk. Artifacts fill the screen around it—Kleenex  tissues, supplement bottles, a pouch of nail clippers and a nail file, two keyboards, water bottles,  headphones… The bowl is centred and I take a moment to appreciate the image. It is a beautiful  image, with bands of grainy sunlight from an off-camera window and a puddle of drifting dust in  the air, moving as if they too are feeling the laziness of the Sunday evening. The bowl is filled  with powder. It’s too fine to be soil or dirt; too light. It looks like ash, but it’s too brown to have  come from cigarettes; too fine and not quite flaky enough. This bowl is not an ashtray, at least  not in the traditional sense of the ashtray, as in a tray for the ash from one’s cigarette. It appears  to be an incense burner. I even spy a small cylinder of rolled-up printer paper taped to the rim of  the bowl where I presume the wooden end of the incense stick is to be inserted, and as it burns,  the bowl catches the falling ash. But there’s something else inside this bowl, something  glistening from within the mound of orange-brown powder. I squint and lean into the screen. I  blink. I remove my glasses and then put them back on again. There is definitely something else  in there, something not a by-product of the combustion of an incense stick. It is silvery and  metallic, and it reflects the sunlight like a mirror. I don’t know what it is and it makes me  anxious. I stand up and bring my nose up to the screen, nearly grazing it against the warm  quantum-dot LEDs. 

The image changes. There are the same socked feet as before, still this time, sitting close and  nearly touching as the woman they belong to sits in a subway car. I can’t see the woman’s face,  nor even anything above the shins of a pair of mahogany corduroys. The image lingers for  several minutes and I begin to feel uncomfortable. Like an ant watching from under the seats,  hiding behind a grimy bolt and a strewn candy wrapper. How long will this shot last? It’s been  years. I want to look at the incense bowl again, the one with the buried artifact. In there is hidden  the meaning of all this, I know it. I need only understand. The train’s brakes squeal and the  woman’s legs sway to the left of the frame. The train comes to a halt, the woman stands and the  socks walk out of the frame. I let out a breath of relief. I stand but my head hardly clears the top  of the mangled candy wrapper next to me. I glance at the goo of chocolate still inside, a growl  rising from my abdomen. Then the screen fades to black. Credits roll and I discover that David  Fincher was indeed the director. Charlie Kaufman was the screenwriter, the ant was played by  Rupert Grint and the woman was— 

No! How could I have missed the name? I must have gotten caught up with all the names  ahead of it that my eyes simply skipped over! 

Woman #1: An— 

I remember the first letters: An. 

My brain throbs and I feel very anxious. 

The screen is off and the room is silent. I stand like this for a while. I can’t hear any buzzing. 

I can’t hear anything. I stand and think about that thing buried in the bowl. I think about the  woman’s name. I think about David Fincher’s intentions with his choice of shots. I think about  Charlie Kaufman’s intentions with his choice of plot. What are they hiding from me? That ant in  socks, that buried object, that deliberate skipping over that woman’s name? Something is off,  like a puzzle piece in the wrong spot. I can feel it, and I intend to uncover it, the meaning of it.  Because I know it means something. 

It must mean something. 

I hear the sound again and it’s haunting. It’s the uncanny valley of human noises. A synthetic  voice. A manufactured cry. I can’t place it. I resist the urge to itch and instead stand still and  observe it. I can’t place the gender, I can’t place the age. It’s simply a voice. The voice. The  amalgamative voice of every human who’s ever lived. I arrive at this conclusion after what  seems like hours and am promptly exhausted. The voice has been looping in my head for the last  week. Upwards inflection, vibrato, pause, upwards inflection, downwards inflection—a vein  nearly bursts in my temple. 

The door opens behind me and the woman with the billiard eyes steps back inside. She hands  me an iPad and tells me to take a survey about my Top-Up Training experience. I nod and take  the iPad, excited again. It asks me to rate the training experience on a scale of disappointing to extraordinary. I tap meagre, three above disappointing, two below extraordinary, and just above  unsatisfactory. The iPad then asks me to explain in at least 3200 words why I selected merely  meagre. It is phrased in a somewhat passive-aggressive way and I wonder if I’ve offended  someone in some way. I explain that I missed the name of the actress playing the role of Woman  #1 and that I believe this to have been a deliberate slight by David Fincher and Charlie Kaufman.  I explain how the writing was pretentious, the shots nonsensical, moving from insect-woman insect to incense-woman while never resolving back to the incense in a proper 3-act structure.  There was no explanation as to why these transitions were made, why the shots were cut in such  a way as they were, and why the actress playing Woman #1 never even had her face revealed let  alone named in the credits. I finish with 4,406 words and hit next. The screen buffers. I hope it’s  another essay. 

It’s not. The iPad flashes the words, “Thanks. I’ll be sure to forward that to HR,” and then  proceeds to rate me as merely meagre. I am outraged. I am seething. This is reprehensible,  disgraceful, detestable… 

The woman leads me out of the room and I walk back to my office and take a seat back down  at my desk. I resume the video playing on my computer screen. A woman points to a chart  behind her with the word postpartum written. 

I used to dream of my father when I slept, but as of late my naps have been dreamless. My  ear tingles. I can feel the ant digging through my brain, erasing my memories of him. He killed  himself with a panini grill and a bathtub. The grill, if my memory serves, had the slogan “So  good you’d grill your socks!” printed on its box. It was a repulsive attempt at marketing but it  just so happened that my father’s body was still wearing socks when I found it in the bathtub, and I will never understand why. Until the day of my own death, I will have this one fact about  my father hanging over me. I ponder it every day. Sometimes it takes up the space of a single  thought, sometimes it is a train of them, but I can always count on it to make an appearance. I  used to see it in my dreams, but not anymore and I think that is perhaps a good thing. Some  people need to pinch themselves or recite an affirmation to awaken from a bad dream. I need  only observe my thoughts. If I am not dreaming, then I am real.

A man will electrocute himself in  his bathtub with his socks still on. Do not ask why. I know you want to, but you can’t. You have  to accept it, and that is the tragedy of the world. You could sprout hairs in your eyes and the  doctors will name a new disease. You could find a cat mangled in your dryer, fur singed and  limbs shattered. It could blink and hop out, trodding on grotesque anatomy, but you are not  dreaming. You can pinch your arms and recite your affirmations, but you have to believe it  because it is happening. You could awaken prematurely in the operating room and find a band of  clowns dancing around you in silence. You could fly over a mountain range and see the land  flicker like a dying fluorescent lightbulb. You must believe it. You must believe all the absurdity  you see. Catch it in your arms and let it nuzzle at your elbow. Let it grow on you. Let it fester. 

I awaken with my finger in my ear and a savage itch just beyond its reach. Something is  moving around in there. I scream and pound the side of my head but the itch doesn’t go away. I  grab the water at my desk and pour it into my ear. I remain still for several minutes, my breath  held, my eyes open and bursting from my skull. 

“Individual.”  

I stand up quickly. My bald head drips water onto the carpet. 

“You’re over your sleep limit,” says the woman. 

“No,” I reply. 

“You get thirty minutes every two hours. You’re thirty-two minutes over.” I check at my watch. “Oh.” 

She tells me I must go into the Late-Employee-Form-Filling Room and fill out the Late  Employee Form. I obey and start down the hallway. My wet shoes squeak against the floor, and  through the wall on my right I can hear the mysterious man walking with me. I laugh because I  can hear his shoes are wet too, reverberating little squishes. 

I find myself back inside the beige room, fluorescent lights irradiating my brain. The room is  empty save for the chair and the giant TV. I don’t see any forms or iPads. I peer into the hallway  outside and see nothing but rows of cubicles fading into a distant point. Maybe the form is  online. I reach into my pocket but my iPhone isn’t there. I start to panic, tearing out my pockets,  spilling coins and mints, my Gucci wallet, the keys to my P.O. box. My ear erupts in a terrible  spasm of itches, more shards than tingles, and I scream not from pain but from the knowledge  that I can do nothing about it. I start to develop a wheeze, violent arrhythmias in my chest that  feel like the walls of my heart collapsing on themselves. I think about calling 911 and then  remember I don’t have my iPhone. I burst into the hallway, sweeping the pale green walls for any  landlines. I begin to speed-walk down the hall, mindless in my misery. My wheezing echoes  ahead of me and I am reminded briefly of my companion on the other side. I hope he isn’t suffering like I am. I hear the voice all around me and I beg for a different sound, anything but  this, these incessant scratchings inside my ear. They have never been so loud. I am weak, I am  sick, I must report it, I must warn somebody, I must… 

I peer into every cubicle I pass. Most are empty, but every few thousand cubicles I see a Van  Gogh gallery within the four fabric walls, or a man on all fours, bent like a desk. I see a thin  humanoid creature feeding cat food to a dog; a woman rearranging the organs in her abdomen,  watching herself through a vanity mirror across the room. I see a cubicle flipped upside down, a  man sitting in a chair stuck to the ceiling watching a woman point to a word on a whiteboard.  Cubicle number 12,846 contains a rainforest. Cubicle number 9,812 contains two seconds of a  pornographic scene playing in an infinite loop. 290 is a void of white—I don’t linger here. When  I reach the end of the hall I find a blank wall. The cubicle at the end states that it is number 1,  and it is empty. The itch grows worse as I turn and make my way back down the hallway, faintly  aware of my companion hurrying with me from behind the wall. I wonder if he’s also got an itch  in his ear, and I wonder if he’s also punctured his tympana trying to claw it out. 

Everything in cubicle 13,001 has been turned inside out, including the man sitting in his  office chair. He watches me with the back of his eyeballs as I pass. In 16,046 there is a thin  humanoid creature feeding dog food to a cat. In 29,049 there is a man without a mouth standing  on his desk. 30,108 is filled with a thousand boxes of vegan Q-Tips. 31,474 contains a clown  without makeup. 31,832 is an abyss that drops into an infinitesimally small point, at the end of  which I think I can make out a Coca-Cola billboard flickering in the distance. In cubicle number  32,000 there is a bright red landline bolted into the fabric of the wall. I pick it up and dial 911.  The line rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and rings and

I notice the door at the end of the hall just ahead. There is a bright red neon EXIT sign above  it, as well as some text on the door warning that an alarm will sound if it’s opened. I can hear the  symphony of the wind outside; the ice blowing in frigid tycoons. I’ve never heard it roar so loud.  I drop the receiver and step toward the door, place a hand on its cold metal panic bar, and push gently. The alarm blares behind me as I step outside. The world is dark, lit only by the white light  spilling from the hallway behind me. I can feel my skin shrivelling up against the frigid air. The  ground is soft under my feet. I look down at the snow, the fine white powder blowing over my  shoes like dust. Spells of it blast my face. I can vaguely hear the sound of crashing water in the  distance, massive chunks of ice breaking and splitting against a glacial tide. I look to my right  and see an array of hallways like the one I just came out of, extending out into the dark air like a  mirror in a mirror, only their doors are shut. To my left are more of the same hallways, except  there’s a door ajar, the one belonging to the hallway immediately next to mine. A giant ant stands  in the swirling snow, pearl-white socks stretched over its six legs, staring at me with pinpoints  for eyes. 

Sometimes I wonder where everyone went. There are thirty-two billion people on this planet  and I haven’t seen a soul. I don’t see anyone in the streets. I stroll in deserted supermarkets  listening to nothing but my tiny feet against the linoleum floors. I feel as if my skin is in a constant state of being torn. As if my brain is one giant spool of sinew and is being stretched and  knotted, pulled apart and then crushed back together. The world is so infinitely complex. It’s too  much for me to bear. I have so many desires, whims, things I was chasing thirty-two minutes ago that I no longer care about now. I have not seen another face in decades. I’ve forgotten how  mouths see, how eyes talk. I hallucinate these things, these humanoid features over the slates of  flesh I see sagging over the fronts of people’s heads, melting off their skulls like cheese. I think I  imagine the features correctly but there’s no way to be sure. At times I think I’ve made the eyes  too big, the lips too puckered, too downturned, too melancholy. I’ll cry when I step on an ant. I’ll  nurse it back to life, perform CPR, give it three pairs of white knitted socks and send it back on  its way so I may recognize it if I see it again. The world only exists because I dream it. Because I  picture it and mold it into what it is. I don’t even know what my own face looks like. That too I  model and form with the tips of my nail-bitten fingers. My head is throbbing. I feel tremendous  anxiety. I wish I was dead, and yet I am a grain of sand in the Sahara desert. I am a hydrogen  atom in a collapsing star. I am a dead ant’s soul rising from its corpse. I am a puddle of meat  dissolved by light, my ego dissected from my solid form. I am the naked brain of a dead man. 

I find myself standing in the light of the hallway behind me, listening to the sound in my ear,  the voice that has never plagued me so loud as it does now. I hear the distant echoes of a  woman’s voice on the intercom piercing through the blaring alarms, telling us that it is now time  for our stretches. I do not obey and they will be here soon to ask me why. They will tell me of all  the benefits of stretches. They will prescribe me only the most effective antidepressants. They  will remind me how grateful I should be for having been born after all the wars and the famines  and the poverty. They will show me photographs of skeletal children. They will tell me we are all in this together. 

As I wait for them to come I reach down and grab a fistful of snow from a mound at my feet,  but it’s too powdery to be snow, too light and too dusty. I see a glimmer of silver inside it. Ants  crawl in and out of an opening near the crest of the mound, flecks of black blinking over a  glimmering object. I reach in and dig it out, the insects swarming over my fingers. I don’t know  what I’m holding. Something mechanical, electronic. Something that was once used to listen to  music, or tie a shoe, or deliver a baby. Whatever it is there is no doubt that this is the source of  the sound. I put it up to my ear and listen, and there is no doubt that it is a voice, one spoken  from the mouth of somebody long dead. It loops. I wonder if it is a remnant of this person’s life,  like permanent shadows from atomic bombs. Voices still in echo, neurons still reacting. 

The woman tells us to move on to lumbar rotations. I cross my six socked arms around my  abdomen and rotate. I listen to the countdown. My head doesn’t hurt anymore. I do not feel  anxiety. I wonder about the silver thing in my hands. About the sounds it makes, the faint ticking  of some mechanism inside, bleeding through a veil woven with the voice of everything I’ve ever  been. I know it means something. 

It must mean something. 

The post An Ant In Socks appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Today marks exactly five years since I decided self-annihilation was not an option. I had chosen  the method. (pills, in case you’re wondering). The time and place were still undecided. I was at  home, looking through the books the previous owner had left in the basement. I found a  collection of essays by Schopenhauer and began to browse. 

It’s not often I find five remarkable sentences in an entire book. I found six in that one—and I  hadn’t even properly started reading. 

One line in particular resonated in that darkest of hours: “Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.” 

I’d worn my suffering like a crown, believing the universe had singled me out for mockery. Now  I saw the truth: existence didn’t care enough to mock. The pain would pass not because I  mattered, but because nothing did. That this was the crest meant only that soon—blessedly,  terribly—I’d feel less. 

In an age where unhappiness was treated like a software glitch, Schopenhauer’s “All life is  suffering” cut through me like mountain wind shredding fog. For the first time in years, the  world stood sharp and terrible—but clear. 

The book didn’t offer answers—just life’s darkest truths, told in a tone so oddly gentle, it felt  like someone handing you a mug of tea while informing you that yes, everything is pointless. 

Of course you’re suffering. Honestly, I’d be concerned if you weren’t. You feel hopeless? Good.  That just means you’re paying attention. 

Schopenhauer didn’t save me. He gave me the vocabulary for despair. For the shipwrecked, even  a flawed compass is precious. I was thirty-three. My career had gone up in flames, I’d lost my  savings chasing biotech stocks, and my girlfriend was sleeping with my best friend. By the time I  found that book in the basement, my life already read like a cautionary tale. And somehow,  Schopenhauer made it sound like I wasn’t alone.I started to appreciate his ways—and even tried  applying them. 

Two years later, I realized I was probably the only self-identifying Schopenhauerian I’d ever  met. We’re a rare breed: rarer than people with grey eyes, slightly more common than cats who  pay rent. 

I deleted my LinkedIn account, shredded my résumé, and dumped my textbooks—the remains of  a degree I’d abandoned years ago. Next went my business plans, useless course certificates, and every scrap of ambition I’d been stubbornly clinging to. They were nothing but deadwood, yet  I’d treated them like sacred relics. 

I burned everything tied to my future plans in an empty flower pot. The yellow-orange flames  were mesmerizing. The scent of burnt dreams? Intoxicating. They had represented hope, and I  was sick of hope. I welcomed hopelessness with open arms. In fact, I was proud of it. As the  wise man said—he who has lost all hope has also lost all fear. It wasn’t just a clever maxim. I  felt it. Last time I went to the dentist, I was about 17% less afraid. If that’s not progress, I don’t  know what is. 

Food became fuel. Clothes, armor. Schopenhauer had feasted on roast beef and metaphysics; I  subsisted on rice and rationalizations. He had inherited enough to write his books  uninterrupted—I had just enough to cover rent. I rented out my flat in the city and moved to a  small town. The town I chose had a library, a cemetery, and forests that outlasted every fool  who’d ever walked through them—myself especially. 

I accepted his metaphysical framing only in part. Schopenhauer’s Will—the blind, thrashing  engine of life—was, in his view, inescapable. Suicide wouldn’t extinguish it, only the  individual’s experience of it. That made some philosophical sense. But I wasn’t looking for  metaphysical coherence. I wanted a way to survive. 

There were reprieves from suffering, he insisted—ways of stepping outside the Will’s grip.  Immersion in beauty, especially music. The contemplation of art. That was his medicine, and I  decided to try it. I wasn’t the artistic type, but he didn’t demand talent—just appreciation. A  decent internet connection handled the art part, mostly via algorithm-curated playlists and  streaming services that claimed to understand me better than I did. The beauty was all around  me, in the mountains and forests. That part required effort. 

I walked in the forest. Climbed mountains. Read. Listened to music. Watched films.  Emotionally, I was detached. Less involved. Progress. 

Life was peaceful, suspiciously pleasant. Good enough to threaten my pessimism. Not terrible— just philosophically unlivable. An upgrade, honestly. 

The ashes of my ambitions still smelled like printer ink when I left town abruptly. No one knew  where I’d gone. In my now-vacant apartment, I’d left one last note—Schopenhauer’s words  taped to the fridge like a grocery list: 

“Happiness must come from within.” 

Which explained why I’d failed to find it elsewhere. 

A final thought for the tenant to discard.  

My journal’s opening page bore his second commandment: All sorrows spring from others. 

Beneath it, a tally in smudged ink: three betrayals, eleven heartbreaks, forty-seven stupid  arguments. The evidence was irrefutable.  

The world rewarded two breeds: the blissfully average and those cunning enough to exploit  them. Schopenhauer had names for us outliers too—the ‘unsocial intellects’—while the exploiters  earned his label ‘sociable scoundrels’. I knew which camp I belonged to. 

His observations cut so close to the bone, I sometimes checked the publication date—impossible  that he’d written this about me specifically. Yet there it was: my inner life dissected a century  before my birth. No flattery in recognizing the match; only the uncomfortable precision of a lock  fitting its key. 

On solitary morning walks, I never once wished for company—the forest needed no audience,  the mountain views no witnesses. ‘A man can be himself only so long as he is alone,’  Schopenhauer wrote, and I finally understood: solitude didn’t reveal my authentic self so much as  incinerate the false ones. Unseen. Unjudged. Unburdened. This was the freedom he promised— the kind only those who love solitude can recognize. 

I never expected the tranquility to last—naivety had burned away with my business plans.  Within weeks, the cracks appeared. Morning walks became mere exercise; birdsong and rustling  leaves turned to background noise. Trees shed their majesty, becoming just living wood. Rabbits  might as well have been alley cats.  

The forest scent, like my morning tea, registered only as ‘pleasant.’ I moved through the woods in  a haze of rumination and hypothetical arguments, while actual grunting animals argued their own  Darwinian debates nearby. Wasps conducted aerial strikes. Even mountain summits offered only  fleeting triumph before the plodding descent.  

Schopenhauer had warned: ‘Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination.’ Now I understood— my paradise hadn’t vanished; I’d simply completed its autopsy.  

Reading fared no better. Each paragraph became a skirmish against distraction. I switched from  Schopenhauer to supermarket fiction—champagne to boxed wine—but the words had lost their  alchemy.  

Boredom’s tide kept rising. YouTube’s respite grew thinner with each video—soon even  distraction would fail. The old man’s twin poles held me fast—’Want and boredom are the axis  on which human life spins.’ No wonder I felt dizzy.  

Of course I’d seen it coming. The real question was whether I’d rigged the outcome—another  failed experiment in living. His philosophy, like all strong medicine, turned toxic in excess. Yet I  kept swallowing it; the placebo still numbed better than reality.  

The epiphany struck mid-stride: I needed to create, not consume. An absurd notion for someone  with a blank creative résumé in a town where culture went to die. But I’d journaled obsessively  once. Words, then—the last resort of the desperate.  

That evening, 800 words about a cursed island temple emerged. By dawn, another 800. Not War  and Peace, but Tolstoy never had to stave off existential collapse before lunch. For the first time  in years, I felt something resembling life—though I’d have taken up competitive gravedigging  for the same relief.  

Next, a conscious parrot who savaged its owner. Two weeks of grinding revisions birthed 2,000  bloodless words. The bird’s insults now seemed prophetic: “You call this writing? My droppings  compose better prose.” 

Ten days. Two hundred words. The weeping psychopath story flatlined. That first story’s ease  had been a fluke. Now every sentence was a shovelful of dirt—not building anything, just  digging myself deeper. 

The wise man’s prescription—art as antidote—worked in theory. I mainlined classical music,  chasing those three-minute Mahler reprieves when the void receded. But like any drug, the magic  dwindled. The Ninth Symphony’s triumph, the Goldberg Variations’ precision—all dulled  through repetition. Pop music’s hooks snapped faster, leaving even birdsong more nuanced.  

Film proved worse—endless conveyor-belt distractions. I scrolled streaming menus like a  prisoner at mess hall, finding only pacification, not art. Other forms demanded energy I’d  incinerated years ago. Each “solution” just postponed the inevitable reckoning with silence. 

That evening, I opened my journals—at first, to understand what had gone wrong, or so I told  myself. But soon, I found myself re-reading the same paragraph, again and again, until the words  lost all meaning. When I finally broke free, I fell deeper—spiraling through memories I thought  I’d buried, things I had no desire to revisit.  

I tried to write. Just a few lines in the journal. It would’ve been easier to teach a particularly  cantankerous crow the Lord’s Prayer than to coax a sentence out of my mind. 

I tried watching a movie. Nothing artistic—just a generic action flick with guns, car chases, and  explosions. Half an hour in, I realized I’d lost track of the plot somewhere around the third  explosion. 

My house sat on the edge of the forest, far from town. The next day, I decided to change things  up. I’d head into town, walk through the center on a busy Friday evening. I wasn’t expecting  much, but at least it would be something. 

The streets were empty. All the shops were closed. Turned out it was Sunday. 

Days blurred into each other. Evenings arrived and I couldn’t recall that morning’s actions.  Dishes piled up despite skipped meals. When a friend called, I let it ring. I didn’t want conversation – not with friends, not even with the grocery cashier who attempted small talk. I  responded with eyeless nods. Rude? Probably. Did I care? Not particularly. 

This wasn’t living – just intervals between failed distractions. 

And this, I realized, was how despair crept back: 

Not with drama, 

but in silent rejections. 

A meal ignored. 

A call declined. 

A word unspoken. 

The next morning, it was pouring. I found a parrot perched on the window—gaunt, drenched,  and shivering. I opened it. She flinched a little, but looked too weak to fly away.  

“Don’t be afraid, little birdie. Come inside. It’s warm in here.”  

She eyed me with suspicion.  

“I’ve got pistachios.”  

She fluttered in, scattering rainwater everywhere.  

“Putain! It’s cold outside.” She shook her feathers like a disgruntled umbrella. “And don’t call  me birdie. My name is Clementine.” She said it with the exasperation of a French aristocrat  correcting a peasant.  

My uncle, a psychiatrist, once warned me: “Talking to pets is fine. It’s when they answer that  you’re in trouble.” Normally, parrots repeat simple phrases. But Clementine? She held up her  end of the conversation.  

That’s when I knew: either I’d lost my mind, or the universe had finally gotten interesting. “Nice to meet you, Clementine. I’m Martin.”

“Where are the pistachios?” 

I brought her a fistful. She devoured them like they owed her money. When I started drying her  with a towel, she stiffened.  

“Easy! Don’t ruffle my feathers.”  

“You know,” she muttered, “none of this would’ve happened if that imbécile Mike hadn’t rubbed  me the wrong way.”  

Third conditional. Impressive. 

“Who’s Mike?”  

“Some crétin I was shackled to for a while.”  

“Care to explain?”  

“Jenny—his terrible girlfriend—ate my last cashews. So I pooped on her head. Mike called me a  ‘dirty, ungrateful, mangy bastard.’” She paused for effect. “Can you imagine? I flew into a  storm. Been living off breadcrumbs and leaves like some common pigeon.”  

She let out a sad little squawk. 

I almost felt the wise man patting me on the back—that or the ghost of my uncle’s psychiatric  judgment. Either way, Schopenhauer’s words echoed: “Compassion for animals is intimately  associated with goodness of character…”  

The rain had stopped. I walked through the forest, where the scent of wet earth still held its  magic. When I returned, Clementine was perched on my desk, eyeing my journal like a  disapproving editor.  

“Mon dieu! You journal too?”  

“Hardly anymore.”  

“That’s a relief.”  

I was in a better mood. I opened a book.  

“What are you reading?” 

“If you must know—Schopenhauer.” 

“Sounds like an STD.” 

“Close. German pessimism. Same symptoms.”  

She hopped closer. “You live alone?” 

“Yep.”  

“What do you do for a living?”  

“I don’t work. I don’t have to.”  

“Then what do you do all day?”  

“Walk. Read. Watch films. Nothing, really.”  

Her crest flattened. “You must be bored out of your wits.”  

“Not out of them yet. But I’m getting there.”  

“How long have you been here?”  

“Months. Fled the city after my life imploded.”  

“Let me guess—job, money, woman?”  

“All three. Girlfriend cheated with my best friend.”  

She tilted her head, black eyes unblinking. “But you haven’t started over. You’ve just…  stopped.”  

I shrugged.  

The pause stretched until her beak snapped shut with a decisive click. “You’re not working.  You’re wasting your life.” 

I choked up.  

Then teared up.  

Then fled—because nothing makes a grown man run faster than a parrot lobbing truth grenades. Circling the house like a caged thing, I tried to claw back control.  

Truth hides in philosophy books. But when it shrieks from a parrot’s beak, it’s so naked you  wonder how you missed it. Then the worse realization: you didn’t miss it. You let it rot in your  blind spot.  

How many other truths were buried there? The dread slithered in then, sticky as resin. What  now? Stuck. Paralyzed. Thinking until thinking became its own torture. Distractions failed. The  rut deepened. 

I walked back inside. Clementine watched from the curtain rod, silent for once.  

The couch swallowed me whole. I stared at the ceiling, a dull headache pulsing behind my eyes,  until my thoughts dissolved into static, eyelids dragging shut like weighted curtains.  

When I woke, the room was dark. Seven hours gone, yet my body felt heavier than before.  Walking to the kitchen felt like climbing a sand dune with an anvil strapped to my back. Dinner:  two stiff slices of bread and a wedge of cheese that tasted of dust and resignation. 

“For a man who doesn’t do much,” Clementine said, “you sleep pretty well.”  “Shut up! I didn’t ask for your opinion.”  

She flinched. “Jeez! What’s up with you?”  

“I’ve got more than enough on my plate. Spare me the bird-brained commentary.”  

“If you don’t want me around, just open the window and I’ll fly away. No need to be a connard  about it.”  

I sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”  

The apology changed nothing. I slumped at my desk, staring at a blank page until my eyes  burned. At some point, my body gave up—head thudding against the wood. I woke at dawn, stiff  and hollow, sunlight scraping my pupils like sandpaper.  

The walk might’ve cleared the fog—if I could’ve mustered the will to stand. Breakfast? Too  much effort. Hunger would drag me to the kitchen eventually. Until then, the couch waited, its  cushions dented with the shape of my surrender.  

“Mon crétin,” Clementine said, “go eat something. You look weaker than a vegan cat on a  hunger strike.”  

Strangely, that did the trick. I got up, had some breakfast, and then forced myself to read.  

I started with Schopenhauer—some essays, a few pages of The World as Will and Idea, and my  own notes. Quote after quote, they rang hollow. Had he ever believed his own words? Or was it  just performance—a symphony of suffering composed to impress now long dead Germans?  Could it all be just marginally interesting, ultimately pointless? Was his entire body of work just  a quest for validation, cloaked in humility? I’d always suspected a massive ego, tucked behind  his unassuming prose. Worst of all—had I wasted years worshipping a ghost? The deathly  fatigue had loosened its grip—enough to drag myself out for the morning walk.  My usual route took me over an abandoned railroad bridge, a local dare—rusted bones strung  across a gorge deep enough to turn a man into pulp. That’s where I saw her: a woman perched on  the edge like a crow considering flight, her legs swinging over nothing.  

Mid-thirties, maybe. Clothes as plain as a hospital wall, hair half-escaped its tie. No backpack.  No camera. Just the kind of stillness that screams. 

I could’ve turned back. But as my foot hovered over the bridge’s rotten plank, Schopenhauer’s  words slithered in: “Compassion is the basis of morality.”  

Did I believe that? Not really. Did I care? Even less.  

She shifted closer to the edge.  

“Quite a view, isn’t it?” I said.  

Her stare was all fractured glass—startled, but not the good kind. “Yeah. I guess.”  “You come here often?”  

“No.”  

“I do. Every day. Never sat like that, though. It’s dangerous.”  

“What’s it to you?”  

“This bridge is my favorite spot. If you fall, they’ll shut it down. I’d have to find a new route.”  She smirked. “Compassion isn’t your middle name.”  

“How about you do us both a favor and step off?”  

“Or what?”  

“That’d be selfish. Besides, I want you to meet my parrot.”  

A snort. “That’s a hell of a pickup line. Given the… circumstances.”  

“I’m flattered. And hey—never too late to not do something stupid.”  

I held out my hand. She stared at my outstretched palm like it was a trap. Or a test. Then, with a  laugh that sounded like a sob, she took it. 

“Mary.”  

“Martin.”  

“I gotta go.”  

“So soon? Let’s swap numbers first.”  

“Why?”  

“Clementine will be furious if you don’t.”  

“Your parrot.”  

“The one and only.”  

She sighed, scribbled digits, and vanished.  

I walked on, half-convinced I’d hallucinated the whole thing.  

When I arrived home, Clementine eyed me from the bookshelf.  

“Cheerful, aren’t we?”  

“I wouldn’t go that far.”  

“Care to explain the face?”  

“Saved a woman from jumping off a bridge.”  

“See? Good things happen when you stop wallowing for a change.”  

“Rude, aren’t we.”  

“I prefer honest. Any chance of meeting her again?”  

“Unlikely. Though you helped save her, indirectly.”  

“How?”  

“Told her I wanted her to meet my parrot. She thought it was a pickup line.”  “A pickup line?” She flared her wings. “I’ll show her a pickup line.”  

“By pooping on her head, I presume?”  

“That’s for big crimes—like stealing pistachios. For her? A simple connard will be enough.”  “How considerate.”  

“I know.” She preened. “My mercy is a curse.”  

That evening, I half-watched a movie, half-read a book, and fully failed to focus. Days bled  together in the same haze. Mary’s face kept intruding.  

I had her number. But why? Had I actually meant to use it, or was that just another impulsive lie  to myself? A part of me worried about her. The other part—the louder part—knew that wasn’t  the whole truth.  

The thoughts spiraled. By Thursday, they’d calcified into a single sentence. I typed it before I could  overthink:  

Picnic by the bridge? Saturday at 11? 

My finger hovered over the send button for five full minutes. I tapped it—instant regret.  

A picnic by the bridge she almost jumped from? I’d never been a ladies’ man, but this might be a  new low. 

The obsessive loop stalled. Then my phone buzzed.  

“Deal. I’ll bring sandwiches.” 

Sarcasm? Sincerity? The ambiguity would haunt me until Saturday.  

When the day came, I arrived early, basket of snacks in hand, thermos steaming, picnic mat  rolled tight under my arm. I gave it a 90% chance she wouldn’t show. Pessimism had rarely  failed me.  

Then she appeared—her own basket swinging, mat tucked under her elbow.  Either my math was catastrophically bad, or pessimism was a liar.  

“Hi Mary.”  

“Hi! You picked quite the… memorable spot.”  

She eyed the bridge’s edge where we’d first met but said nothing more. We spread our mats in  silence.  

“Tea or coffee?” I asked, thermos in hand.  

“Tea, thanks.” She watched the steam curl between us. “So you’re not from here.”  

“No. Just a few months.”  

“And what brings someone here of all places?”  

“Starting over.”  

“In this town?” Her laugh was sharp. “The only things starting here are bad decisions and fungal  infections.”  

“I didn’t come for the nightlife. Just the quiet.”  

“Ah. So you’re either an eccentric millionaire or…”  

“Or?”  

“Hopeless.” She sipped her tea. “Which is it?”  

I turned my cup in my hands. “My career imploded. Lost my savings on biotech gambles. Caught my girlfriend with my best friend. The usual tragedy, just… louder.”  

A pause. The wind carried the scent of her shampoo – something floral, out of place here.  

“That sounds like a vacation, not a life,” she finally said.  

“It’s not. I’m staying.”  

“Why?”  

“Enough about my disasters.” I nodded to her hands – chipped nail polish, a faded tan line where  a ring might’ve been. “Your turn.”  

“I’ve lived here all my life,” she said, crushing a blade of grass between her fingers. “Same dead end office job. Same fake smiles for coworkers who’d forget me by Friday. Every day…” She  exhaled sharply. “Every day this place takes a little more. And one day—soon—I’ll have nothing  left to give.” 

“Christ. That’s—” 

“Bleak? Yeah.” She smirked. “You should background-check your picnic partners better.” “Lucky for you, I specialize in bleak.” I tapped my temple. “Certified pessimist.” “Family?” 

“None that count.” 

“Same.” She studied me. “So this ‘starting over’… How’s that working out?” 

I told her about the burning—textbooks first, then plans, then ambition itself. “Now I just… exist.  Read. Walk. Try not to want things. Schopenhauer called it—” 

“Wait.” Her eyebrows shot up. “You actually read Schopenhauer?” 

“The Will isn’t exactly light reading.” 

“You’re not eccentric.” She grinned. “You’re an endangered species.” 

“Then you’ll love my parrot.” 

Her laughter erupted—bright, surprising, like sunlight cracking through deadwood. It startled me  into joining her. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed without bitterness. 

We talked until shadows stretched across our picnic ruins. At the gate, she hesitated.  “We should do this again.”  

Not a question. A dare.

As I walked home, I felt something warm flickering in my chest. For the first time in months— maybe years—my mind wasn’t gnawing on itself. 

What had I done, really? Shared a picnic. Talked to someone—really talked. Did I want to see her again? I did. 

Was I walking straight back into the old trap: desire, boredom, collapse? 

Maybe. But the void had already hollowed me out. What did I have to lose? 

A few days passed, less unpleasantly than usual. The picnic had done something to me—I’d be  fooling myself if I denied it. I gnawed at the question like Clementine at a pistachio: What next?  I wanted to see Mary again. She seemed open to it—she’d even said so. But should I ask her out?  And if I did—then what? 

Did I actually want a relationship? Or was I just lonely? The former sounded naive, the latter  pathetic. What if she asked me out? Or what if we both let it wither into nothing—the easiest  outcome, and the most hollow? 

“Tell me about this new crush of yours.” Clementine said.  

“She’s not my crush.” 

“Yeah, right. You know what’s worse than a crétin? A lovesick, sad, pessimistic crétin in  denial.” 

“You know what’s better than a parrot who doesn’t know when to shut her beak? A taxidermied  parrot.” 

“Connard. Fils de pute.” She lunged at my hair. 

I batted her away as she shrieked and fluttered off to perch on the lampshade. I texted Mary: 

“The Knight’s Revival? Tomorrow at 6?” 

The Knight’s Revival was the only decent place in town for a date. 

A date. A word I hadn’t even entertained two weeks ago. 

My phone buzzed. 

“Sure.” 

The following evening, I arrived a bit early—just like I had for the picnic. Did that make me look  desperate? Or just punctual? A date isn’t exactly the time to be fashionably late. 

Hi Martin!” she said, snapping the rubber band on her wrist twice. A habit, I’d learned, for when  the silence threatened to swallow her.  

“Hi!” 

“So… how’ve you been?” 

“Fine, for the most part. You?”

“Hanging in there.” 

“What have you been up to?” 

“The usual. But I’ve picked up a new hobby. I call it historical cooking.” 

“You mean reheating leftovers?” 

She burst out laughing. 

“No. I find recipes from the past online—medieval chicken dishes, Roman soups, that kind of  thing.” 

“And you call me eccentric.” 

“Well, between trying to live your life based on what Gloomy McGlum wrote two hundred years  ago and cooking old-timey recipes, I think I come out looking pretty normal.” 

“Looking at it from that angle… you might be right.” 

Then I hesitated. “But seriously… I’m worried about you.” 

I lowered my voice. “You haven’t been—back to the bridge, have you?” 

“No.” She toyed with her napkin. “It sounds cheesy, but that short conversation we had really  changed my mind. You cared. Not in a preachy, intrusive way—just calm. Matter-of-fact. No drama.” 

“Well, I…” 

“And don’t bring Schopenhauer into it. You’ve got a heart. A good one, I might add. Might as  well admit it.” 

I didn’t know what to say. A lump rose in my throat. My eyes prickled. She gently reached out  and held my hand. Her touch felt electric. 

After a few quiet moments, I cleared my throat. 

“The apple pie here is excellent. So is the cheesecake.” 

We both ordered pie. The conversation flowed—light, funny, warm. None of us mentioned  bridges or dead philosophers. 

An hour later, we said goodbye. 

On the way home, I felt light-headed. Dizzy. Disoriented. 

I collapsed onto the sofa. Clementine looked at me from the bookshelf and said: “What happened to you? You look like lightning hit you.” 

“That’s not entirely inaccurate.” I said grinning. 

The next morning, I walked over the bridge again, replaying the previous evening in my mind.  There was something between us—something real. I could engage with it, let it grow, see where  it led. Or I could let it wither and die. The second option would be safer, cleaner, even logical— but it felt cowardly. Inhuman, in fact.  

The first option? It might end in nothing. Or worse: another heartbreak, maybe even more  painful than the one that drove me out of the city. But honestly did I care? I knew what I wanted.  And life was still suffering. That much hadn’t changed.  

But suffering is interesting. When you share it with someone else—especially someone who  shares it back—it becomes more bearable. The compassion of the other soothes your pain. And  your own compassion soothes theirs. It’s a strange feedback loop that lessens the weight, without  denying it. 

In isolation, suffering festers. It becomes rumination, then paralysis. 

Schopenhauer had warned that nearly all human sorrow springs from our relations with others— and he wasn’t wrong. But sometimes even sorrow is better than numbness, detachment, or  deathly fatigue. 

Existence still didn’t seem to have a point. His vision of life, driven by a blind, aimless, restless  Will, still rang true. But why not appreciate the rare glimpses of warmth? The little reprieves?  Schopenhauer believed beauty was an escape from the Will—ephemeral, yes, but real. And what  had happened between Mary and me… it was more beautiful than anything I’d found in solitude. 

He would’ve scoffed at it. But he could shut up. The man fell hopelessly in love with a  seventeen-year-old opera singer in his sixties, who wouldn’t give him the time of the day. I was  doing significantly better. 

The Will couldn’t be escaped. That much I granted him. But maybe—just maybe—it could be  resisted. Not through detachment, but together, with someone you cared about. 

That afternoon, I began writing again. Words spilled effortlessly onto the page—page after page  in my journal. Then I started a new short story. Effortlessly. Even joyfully. 

This time, the words came easy. I had something to write about— 

and, for the first time in years, someone to imagine reading them. 

A few days later, Mary texted me: “I cook a killer mushroom risotto. Dinner? My place. Tomorrow?” 

(No emojis. No coyness. Just Mary—direct as a paring knife.) 

I replied before my pessimism could catch up:  

“Gladly.” 

I arrived at seven exactly—punctual, not eager. (The chocolates I brought, however, were  embarrassingly expensive.) 

“You’ve got a cozy place here,” I said, setting them on the table.  

“Thanks. It’s not Versailles,” she deadpanned, “but the rats only visit on weekends.” 

The place was full—not cluttered, but alive. Houseplants spilling over shelves, paintings leaning  against walls like old friends, a piano with sheet music frozen mid-song. A bookshelf stretched  the length of the room, its contents unevenly stacked but loved. Even the furniture, which  should’ve overwhelmed the space, somehow fit—each piece chosen with stubborn care. It was  warm. Lived-in. Compared to her flat, mine felt like a waiting room where no one ever arrived. 

We drank—enough to soften edges, not enough to blame it later —then sat to eat. “That was incredible. One of your historical disasters?” 

“Please. Family recipe. Stolen and improved by yours truly.” 

She swirled her wine. “So. What has the great pessimist been up to?” 

“Writing. Life’s still a chore, but now it is tolerable.” 

“Wow. That’s practically optimism.” 

She snapped the rubber band, then caught herself and forced a smirk. 

“Then arrest me for reckless thinking” 

“Gladly.” 

I met her gaze. “Schopenhauer would’ve called this a capital offense.” 

“Good thing he’s dead.” 

The kiss wasn’t a decision. It was a surrender—to her, to the moment, to the terrifying fact that  he never mentioned: sometimes the Will wants you to lose. 

The next morning was Saturday. I called her around ten.

“I had a great time last night. I just wanted to thank you.” 

Then, before she could reply, I added: 

“Why don’t you come to my place? We could take a walk in the forest. Grab lunch after.” “Sounds good. I’ll be there at eleven.” 

She arrived just as I finished vacuuming. 

“Pretty spacious,” she said. 

“Yeah. I lived in a small apartment before. Never had a detached house. Or a yard.” 

Just then, Clementine swooped in from the kitchen, like a feathered missile, landed on my  shoulder, and shouted: 

“Look! He’s a total imbecile. He’s head over heels in love with you. Why don’t you two just get  on with it?” 

“Shut your beak.” I muttered. 

Clementine tilted her head toward Mary. 

“Connard! do I look like a pickup line to you? And never touch my pistachios.” Mary blinked, then laughed. “So you really do have a parrot. Is she always this delightful?” “You wouldn’t believe.” 

Then we headed out, into the forest. 

Clementine still perched on my shoulder. 

As we walked, the forest hummed—not the hollow quiet I’d grown used to, but a living thing.  Birdsong tangled in the branches, real this time, not just echoes in my skull. Clementine ruined  the poetry with a squawk about Mike’s sexual prowess. Mary laughed, and I—for the first time in years—didn’t brace for the silence to reclaim us. She snapped the rubber band absently, a  quick snick-snick against her wrist, then reached for my hand. The pendulum still swung—but  now, sometimes, it brushed against something warm.

The post Schopenhauer And The Swearing Parrot appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Today was unit’s first visit to Packard Public Repair Center. The primary  complaint was subjective dysfunction in the left arm.  

In unit’s words: “There’s like, a pain shooting up to my shoulder when I move it.” Standard cyborg mechanical testing was conducted. Functional flexibility was  achieved, though there was a clicking sound at full extension.  

From the transcript: “clack-clack-clackclackclack.” 

Unit made expressions of discomfort throughout but was compliant—thus, it was  concluded that the unit’s dysfunction is merely subjective. Follow-up visit was scheduled  at unit’s request, and unit was instructed to monitor subjective pain.  

3/15 

In today’s follow-up, unit insisted on being given a replacement arm. In unit’s  words: “You’re a repairhuman, you’re supposed to help me, aren’t you?” Standard mechanical testing was conducted. Functional results were the same,  though unit was agitated throughout assessment. To report unit’s words: “Believe me when I say it’s getting worse. I can’t even cook dinner anymore without it acting up.” Unit was asked to elaborate on the significance of cooking, specifically whether it  was a component of unit’s work responsibilities. In unit’s words: “No, it’s just for fun.

I’ve been doing it since I was a kid, so like, helping my dad. Pork chops and garlic fried  rice and all that. I try to do it every day.” 

No further action was taken. 

Supervisor.auto: Good work dissuading unit from requesting new  arm, in accordance with Cost Saving for Public Centers. 

5/10 

Unit reported experiencing arm dysfunction while at work. As such, the  Occupational Questionnaire was administered. 

Unit selected both “exclusively monitor-based” and “does not require heavy  lifting” in Q5 and Q6 respectively. Unit listed occupation as “part-time Facer for  Finerone Manufacturing.” Because repairhuman was unfamiliar with this line of work,  unit was asked to explain. 

From unit’s transcript: “So being a Facer means I sit in on these really gnarly cases where Finerone is being sued because one of their products failed. Like today, we  had a case where a cyby tried to use Finerone’s Super Duper Oil and choked to death on  it because the safety nozzle on the can was defective. Then the cyby’s kids came home  and found him that way. So yeah, gruesome.  

Anyways, my job is pretty much to listen to these cases while they film my  reaction. If I smile while hearing about a case, then like, I guess that legally means  Finerone can say that cyborgs aren’t affected by the issue because otherwise I would be  visibly upset. So yeah, that’s Facework in a nutshell. Couldn’t do it for more than 4 hours straight, which is why I’m part time. And yeah, I know I would get private  documentation through Finerone if I was staff, but you couldn’t make me do that unless  you like, took my brain out.”  

Supervisor.auto: Unnecessarily long and detailed transcript excerpt detected. Q5 and Q6 already provide adequate info for cross-checking documentation coverage. Cyborg repairwork should be thorough, but not thorough to the extent of wasting time.

During interview, unit verbally confirmed that the work was exclusively monitor based. Because the function of unit’s arm is objectively irrelevant for the completion of  their work tasks, no further action was taken. Follow-up visit was rescheduled. 

9/8 

Unit checked in to the Center at 5:24pm for a scheduled appointment at 6:00pm.  Due to a shortage of staff, wait times were longer than usual. 

Supervisor.auto: Disgruntled language detected. Avoid making written reference to “short-staffedness.” Remain productive and optimistic, Repairhuman Jess. 

Unit was finally seen at 8:42pm. Unit’s disposition was irritable, and they  reported worsening dysfunction. In unit’s words: “Nowadays, it’s not just that it hurts to move, but to hold still. I was glad they finally called my name back there because  seriously!”

Standard mechanical testing was conducted. Functional flexibility was impeded:  unit’s arm locked up involuntarily upon full 180 degree extension, followed by loud  electrical sounds. From the transcript: “snapSNAPsnap-SNAPSNAP.” Unit expressed audible discomfort throughout assessment. 

Functional impediment was graded as Level 1. As such, Rehabilitation Plan was  initiated, consisting of 10mL Finerone Canned Joint Fluid daily intake for 100 days. Unit initially disagreed with Rehabilitation Plan. In unit’s words: “Sorry, it’s just… It’s made by Finerone, and you know… Isn’t there anything else?” Unit was made aware that no alternatives were covered in unit’s documentation.  Because unit seemed unfamiliar with the implications of documentation coverage, it was  explained in simple terms that alternatives would have to be paid with unit’s own  money. 

After initial hesitation, unit provided written consent for Rehabilitation Plan. 1L  of Finerone Canned Joint Fluid was dispatched to the Supply Center in unit’s vicinity. Throughout visit, unit’s general affect was tired, likely due to the 3 hour wait  time.  

Supervisor.auto: Second instance of disgruntled language detected! Avoid making negative reference to “3 hour wait time.” It is expected of cyborg units to wait patiently and agreeably for service at Public Centers. 

Follow-up visit was scheduled after 60 days of Rehabilitation Plan. 

11/7 

Unit confirmed adherence with Rehabilitation Plan but reported new concern. In  unit’s words: “Yeah, so the fluid’s been making my whole arm feel numb, which I guess isn’t like, technically pain? But I’m not sure if it’s better to feel numb than painful,  right?” 

Standard mechanical testing was conducted. Full functional flexibility was  achieved, and the previous clicking and snapping sounds were absent upon extension.  Unit’s disposition was cautiously optimistic. In unit’s words: “I guess I’ll have to wait and see if the numbness goes away. But anyways, thanks for seeing me again,  Repairhuman Jess. I know you’re busy, but I feel like you sincerely care about me.” Unit brought a thank you gift. From unit’s transcript: “It’s homemade coconut  yam cake. I spent all night making it, so there’s that.”  

Objective measures indicated Finerone Canned Joint Fluid have provided an  improvement in arm function. No further action at this time. 

Supervisor.auto: Self-congratulatory language detected, specifically the mention of “thank you gift” and inclusion of the transcript excerpt in which unit describes feelings about repairhuman. Avoid reporting irrelevant (ie., not outcomes-based)  elements, as your time could spent better elsewhere. 

11/27

Unit showed up to the Center on own accord. Visit was unauthorized. Unit’s  disposition was confrontational, and they refused to wait to be seen. From unit’s  transcript: “So yeah, the numbness went away but then like, the pain came back worse than ever. The pain’s so bad, I’ve had to drop out of like, 11 cases just last week, and  that’s when Finerone put me on probation. You have to do something.” 

Unit was probed about the timeline of dysfunction recurrence. To report unit’s  words: “I mean, it started when I ran out of joint fluid last week.” 

Repairhuman revisited the Rehabilitation Plan, and it was deemed that unit  should not have run out of Canned Joint Fluid until 32 days later. When probed about  the discrepancy, unit admitted to taking >10mL/day Canned Joint Fluid for the last  several days. From unit’s transcript: “I found that if I took enough, the numbness spread from my arm to everywhere, and being numb made it easier to get through the day. It  was like, I no longer was really thinking about what I was seeing in my cases or what it  all meant, so I was able to do back-to-back shifts like nothing. Taking the fluid makes it  possible to cook again too! I mean, the flavor of the food doesn’t really come through to  me anymore so I don’t eat what I make these days… But my housemates do! Anyhow, all  in all everything was good and productive until I ran out of the stuff. Then things got  really bad. So can you please just get some more sent over to the Supply Center? They  can’t give me anymore without your approval.” 

Unit was informed that because of their misuse, no additional Canned Joint Fluid  would be provided to the Supply Center, as per the terms of unit’s documentation.  Unit began to cry. This became open weeping, which was disruptive to the  Center. As such, the unit had to be subdued. 

Rehabilitation Plan to be reassessed at a later date. 

11/30 

After review, it was deemed that unit’s issue with Canned Joint Fluid was one of a behavioral nature. Because Repair Center does not handle behavioral dysfunction, repairhuman sent recommendations for Behavioral Reprogramming Specialists via  remote correspondence. 

Unit replied to the message: I reached out to your recommended specialists, but  none of them are covered in my documentation, and they’re too expensive to pay for  with my own money. With all due respect, I don’t have the fucking time to go searching  the city for a specialist that’s covered. I need Joint Fluid now. My probation just ended  SO I HAVE TO DO CASES 24/7 OR I WILL LOSE MY JOB AND I AM IN PAIN. Do you  understand? I thought you were on my side, Repairhuman Jess! 

The unit’s message was deleted, due to incendiary language, and no reply was  sent. 

Supervisor.auto: Negative facial expressions were detected when  you checked unit’s message today. Remember to avoid unnecessary outbursts such as crying, as it puts a strain on staff and leads to delays. 

A follow-up visit was scheduled to re-assess unit’s arm dysfunction.

12/28

Unit informed Center that this would be their final visit, due to a change in documentation coverage. 

To report unit’s words: “Being put on probation scared me. Like I knew I had to make things work, no matter what. So anyways, I found some knock-off Joint Fluid  online and started taking it round-the-clock. My Facework performance went up once I  was numb again, and soon I went from barely managing 1 case a day to doing 30-40 no  problem. My manager saw and promoted me to full-time staff. So yeah, now I have  private documentation, courtesy of Finerone. Anyhow, they need me to close out my file  with the Center. So let’s do that?” 

Standard mechanical testing was conducted. Functional flexibility was achieved,  but upon completion of assessment, unit’s left arm fell off.  

Reattachment failed, though unit did not seem concerned. In fact, unit laughed. In unit’s words: “Well, I mean, I just don’t need it anymore. At this point, my life is pretty much round-the-clock Facework, then taking Canned Joint Fluid. Neither of  which require a left arm, really.” 

Unit was asked about cooking. 

Unit did not answer. After not saying anything for a marked period of time, unit finally commented on the fallen arm.  

From transcript: “Keep it. Maybe someone else could use it.” 

Unit left the arm behind at the Center. It was subjected to standard detached part testing, deemed to be unusable old tech, and marked for disposal. 

The post Case Study: Left Arm Dysfunction appeared first on The New Absurdist.

“It?” is all I can muster. 

The short man trembles with some strange, almost religious conviction. 

I feel as though I’ve forgotten something important. 

“You know very well what I’m talking about,” he growls, snapping me back into the moment. 

“I honestly have no clue,” I mutter, sitting down. I’ve been here one minute and I’m accused of a crime. 

The short man balls his fists, two small hams quivering with anger, and slams them on my desk with a sharp bang! 

“Don’t play dumb with me. I know you’re responsible. Thief! That is my property. That whiteboard defines my work, my legacy, and I will not be disrespected.” 

A whiteboard? There are dozens scattered throughout the office. What makes this particular whiteboard sacred? 

“I just got here. Is it possible you misplaced it?” 

“Misplaced a five-foot-tall whiteboard?” he snarls, eyes wild. “That board contains the sum total of my thinking, my diagrams, my very soul!” 

I glance around my cubicle, my desk, computer, and walls. No whiteboard. It must be exceptionally important for him to lash out like this. 

“All the information I need is on that whiteboard. It’s irreplaceable,” he says. 

“You didn’t keep copies on your computer?” I ask.

“So anyone could access my ideas on the shared drive? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? No. I won’t make it easy for you to steal everything I cherish.” 

He buries his face in his hands and exhales sharply. 

My stomach drops. Did I move a whiteboard? Maybe I touched it? Maybe I rolled it away without even realizing? I can’t remember. Why can’t I remember? 

“Pay attention! Where is your shame? You will show me respect!” he snaps. 

I look at him, puzzled. Maybe he’s confusing me with someone else. Or maybe I’ve been demoted to the office scapegoat. 

“Give it back, or I’ll escalate this to the supervisor.” 

“Go ahead! But unless I’ve been rolling whiteboards around in my sleep, I’m not your guy.” 

The short man’s face crumples like a wrinkled mask. Sweat beads on his forehead, dripping down as if he’s standing under a spotlight. 

“Disrespectful thief!” he bellows, spittle spraying. His finger shakes, a trembling spear of accusation. 

“You’ve robbed me, and you sit there, like a fool. That board is everything, it’s my life’s work, my proof of existence. Where I’m from, rules are sacred. Break one, and the universe splits at the seams, vomiting a hell so fierce even devils scramble for shelter.” 

Turning quickly, he storms out toward the supervisor’s office. 

I stand and peer over my cubicle wall. One by one, heads poke out like meerkats on the savanna, watching for predators. 

The short man gestures wildly in the supervisor’s office. The supervisor leans forward, locking eyes with me. His sharp stare pierces my chest. I shiver. I don’t think he likes me.

The door creaks open. 

“We will get to the bottom of this,” the supervisor says gravely. 

His eyes fix on mine and they say: Here. Now. 

As I walk toward the office, the short man stomps past me, possessed by all the devils in hell. I catch a glimpse of my face in the window of the supervisor’s office and see the face of an unkempt stranger staring back. The meerkats watch silently, eyes wide, as I enter the lion’s den. 

“Please sit,” the supervisor says. His tone is flat but firm. 

I sit. His desk towers over me, littered with coffee mugs. The one facing me says: But first, coffee. 

The walls are lined with diplomas and a single photograph, a tree on a hill, barren and dead. As if a skeletal hand is reaching from the grave. A family photo sits on his desk: his wife in an orange sundress, her smile strained. His two daughters wear identical expressions, solemn and heavy, as if they understand the weight of existence. 

“Do you know why I’ve called you here?” he asks dryly. 

“It seems a whiteboard has been misplaced,” I reply in the same tone. The nagging feeling I’d forgotten something swells into a full wave of fear. 

“Misplaced? How does one misplace a whiteboard? Can you misplace a desk? A chair? How about the office itself?” 

“Of course you can,” I say. 

“Nothing happens in this office without my approval. I control the very air you breathe. Are you suggesting I authorized the removal of company property?” 

I stare. Is he serious? 

“Everything in this office is as it should be. I work day and night to maintain order in a world of chaos. Every person in my machine is meant to do one thing: produce. Until today, we held a perfect balance. Now the balance is disturbed. Disturbed balance is like a disease, leave it untreated, and the organism dies.” 

In this moment, I realize. I forgot to brush my hair this morning. What an oversight. If I can’t manage that, what else have I done without realizing? 

“All I ask is that you prove you didn’t steal the whiteboard. Simple, right? If you can prove your innocence, the matter is closed. If not, we are talking about disciplinary action. Perhaps termination.” 

I nod reluctantly. 

“Everything from this point on will determine how we proceed. Do you understand?” 

I nod again. 

“Do you know what happened to the whiteboard?” 

I shake my head. 

“Have you ever touched office equipment that didn’t belong to your section?” 

I hesitate. Of course I have. I nod. 

“So you admit it,” he snaps. 

“Admit what?” I ask, confused. 

“You admit to tampering with company property in direct violation of policy.” 

“I admit I’ve touched office equipment,” I protest. The phone rings. 

“Return to your desk,” he says, turning away. 

What just happened?

I stand, dazed, both fists clenched as I walk back to my desk. 

“Oh, and take some pride in your appearance. Coming to work disheveled reflects poorly on the company.” 

As I sink into my chair, the office is silent. Everyone stands, watching. The meerkats are on guard. The lions have caught the scent of prey. 

I stare at the blank glow of my computer screen. 

The weight of sins I never committed crushes my chest. I wish I was the culprit. At least then I could control my fate. I’d strangle this farce in its crib. 

Instead, I sit here. Innocent and guilty all at once. Schrödinger’s employee. 

A tall man appears at the edge of my cubicle. Menacing and brutal. His hands look as though they could crush the life out of me. 

“Come with me,” he says sternly. 

“Where are we going?” I manage as I grab my bag. 

“This way.” He walks with purpose, but slowly. 

We move to the back of the office. The lights are dimmer here. A dying bulb flickers; it’s near death. 

A row of doors greets us in the growing darkness. 

“Here,” the tall man gestures to an open room. “Continue your work. Someone will be along shortly to collect you.” 

The room is barren. Four walls. No window. The desk is empty except for a single chair. 

The door slams shut. 

I sit. The chair groans under me. As I lean back, its spine gives way, and I nearly topple over.

How can I work without a computer? They want me to stew in guilt. A guilt I shouldn’t feel, but it’s flooding me all the same. Did I do this? No. Of course not. I would remember. Wouldn’t I? 

I should shout at the top of my lungs, “I am innocent! I’ve done nothing!” 

Instead, I sit in silence, judged and exiled. 

Time dissolves. Minutes, hours? I can’t tell. Humans spent centuries mastering time, measuring it to feel in control. Yet here, time is meaningless. 

Soon they’ll come to walk me out like a criminal on his final march to the gas chamber. 

Will the meerkats avert their eyes when I pass? Or will they jeer and chant in unison: 

“You’ve earned this! No mercy for the wicked! Finally, his reign of terror is over!” 

The chair screeches. The walls close in. 

How much longer will I wait? 

I should storm out. Seize my fate. Preach hellfire like a Baptist minister: Sinners! Every one of you is a sinner, and only through fire can you be forgiven! 

But I don’t move. 

I lean back in the broken chair, staring at the ceiling lights. I close my eyes, letting the glow filter through my lids. I imagine golden light washing over me, purifying me. 

Grace. 

“Sleeping on the job?” 

The tall man’s voice cuts through my baptism. He stares down at me with cold contempt. Those hands balled into fists.

“He’s ready for you,” he says. 

Here we go. 

I stand and follow him. Thoughts of thick crowds, gallows, and a swinging noose swirl in my mind. 

But the office is silent. No faces. No jeers. Of course, it’s not a public execution. It’s a purge. Silent. Efficient. 

The supervisor stands with arms crossed, fire burning in his eyes. The meerkats are gone, burrowed deep underground. 

“Sit,” he commands. 

I sit, my stomach in my throat. 

“Sir, I would like to say…” 

“No.” He raises a hand. “No need to apologize to me. It is the people you should be apologizing to. The group is more important than the individual.” 

I shift unsteadily in my chair. 

“You’ll give a formal apology to the entire office,” he continues. “Additionally, you will be docked a day’s pay. You’ve been here all day and failed to even log in. You have cost this company enough with your disruptions. Any more inappropriate conduct from you, and I will replace you. Understand?” 

My face burns. Rage coils tight beneath my skin. I nod once, stiffly. 

“Good.” 

He smacks his hands together sharply. CLAP. “You’re ready, I hope.” 

We exit the office into a sea of faces. 

“Attention, everyone!” the supervisor shouts. “We don’t allow unprofessional conduct here. When a cog is out of sync, the whole machine breaks down. Now it is time to set the cog on this machine back into place.” 

He turns to me. 

“Well?” 

Blood drains from my face. Every eye pierces me like a blade. 

I should shout my innocence. Condemn the system that crushes us all. But the words won’t come. Why can’t I think of anything? 

“I apologize,” I whisper. 

The supervisor cuts me off. 

“There. The affair is over. No more interruptions, back to work.” 

He faces me. 

“No more screw-ups. And please, catch up on your hours before you leave.” 

I walk towards my cubicle and pause a moment when a familiar figure catches my eye. The short man sits at his desk, typing away, oblivious to me. 

I glance at the printer as it hums to life. A single sheet slides out: a comic strip. 

With a smug satisfaction he reaches over and clips it to a whiteboard. 

I hadn’t noticed it at first. The whiteboard stands there, whole and unremarkable, a monolith to this short man’s whole belief system. 

Multiple comic strips are clipped across its surface. I stare at the back of his head. 

“I see it’s been returned,” I say quietly.

“What? What are you talking about?” he replies, not turning around. 

“The whiteboard. It’s back.” 

He pauses. 

“Hmm… So it is,” he mutters, still turned away. 

I wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t. He’s already forgotten me.

The post The Idol appeared first on The New Absurdist.

But why? 

It’s hard for me to say that old phrase, ‘the kids are alright.’ Especially these days, where it seems that having emotions and showing them somehow equates to being weaker than your peers, or having less resolve to the pains of everyday life. And beyond that; showing positive emotions, like excitement for things to come, or even love. Why is it that we’ve decided that showing love and affection is weakness? 

‘Nonchalance,’ as the word has been assigned to this phenomenon, is something that was popularized by the mass media spread of Tik Tok. Things like this, such as ‘mewing’ or ‘clean girl aesthetic’ (you can name a few, there are thousands) become ingrained in the media that many people, young and old, are consuming. It starts as something weird and needing to be explained, creating curiosity, eventually making itself clear through thousands and thousands of people claiming to subscribe to that concept or idea. 

What’s different about Nonchalance, I think, is that it seems to affect the younger generations a lot more than the older. This is what makes it particularly harmful and even dangerous. The overwhelming damages we were left behind post-pandemic, such as the 25% increase in mental health issues (according to WHO), I believe play a role in the orientation towards the younger folks that exist online. Our world is not the same one we knew before we spent two years away from it, confined to our living rooms, watching as the shift took place. There are some people who say things didn’t change, that this was inevitable and the pandemic only made it seem this way. But the children, the young minds that knew the most important years of life as separation, plastic walls, and distance, those are the ones who would feel it the most. 

The kids, for now, aren’t alright, because what else have they known? There is so much hatred, confusion, and pain, for some it’s easier to push those things to the side, pretend as though they aren’t really there. When was there time to learn how to process the many pieces of everyday life? We were so busy doing everything we could to get the masks off the children, we forgot about the minds that hid behind them. Now, they are scrambling through the brambles of growing older with their only guides being terms that have drifted far from their original meanings, trends that push them further into the patterns of quick dopamine rushes, and coping mechanisms that do more harm than good. On top of all that, the constant horrors that are constantly taking place in our world on a global scale can become overwhelming, and many kids never learned how to regulate those fears and worries. 

I won’t claim a bias case for my own sensitivity. I have always been the kind of person who feels things very deeply — my own emotions, and the emotions of others as well. As a child I always had to be the first of my siblings to get my shots at a doctor appointment, because if I heard their cries from the needles I would be in tears almost instantly. They’d stab my tan skin and send me out to the waiting room. I have always been, and still am, the kind of person to bear all the weight of hurts, pains, loves, joys. I can’t imagine being any other way. Sure, there are times when being this way can feel almost burdensome, worn down by extremities and sorrows that can become consuming in every corner of my life. But, without those feelings, especially those good ones that come with the light parts of being human, I would not have the people in my life that I love so dearly, or the experiences that have made the person I have the opportunity to be. And even if this applies a bias to my argument, it would be unfair to say that there aren’t other people who are just the same, who feel as I feel. 

Who are we as people without feelings and emotions? Every part of being alive is about how we react to the things we see or the things that happen to us. I’ve seen people wanting to blame the kids for wanting to be ‘nonchalant,’ pinning them as soulless or lost. But how would kids know any better when they’ve barely been shown as such? To love, hurt, cry, scream, and laugh is all human, all vital to being. The slow joys of an evening spent with friends, or the prolonged blues of losing something or someone — both are two small parts of a larger whole, one that could never be replaced by nonchalance or dopamine hits that come and go seconds at a time. That is the vital difference between then and now.

So then, the question is: how do we recover from this? What will it take for the pendulum to swing back? 

It has to start small. In the ways that we not only treat the ones who are already pushing it all down, locking away the feelings and shutting off — but all the people around us. There is always time to spend loving, learning, showing, crying, laughing, and there shouldn’t be any shame in those things, no matter how daunting the world around us may be.

The post Vulnerability in the Time of Indifference appeared first on The New Absurdist.

If he were to look up, he might see his own reflection in the mirrored ceiling of the elevator. An anonymous dark head, an anonymous gray suit. But Virgil is not the type of person to look up. Instead, he tilts his wrist so that the face of his watch blinks on. Six minutes early. Perfectly on schedule. 

Virgil is headed to the third floor. In fact, the elevator will only deliver him to the third floor. What actually lies on the floors above, the land of vision and dental and paid vacation time and conference calls with the CEO, he does not know. And however splendid floors four-through-seven are in reality, Virgil’s imagination is constantly concocting something much, much greater. 

The elevator doors glide open. Already the office is dotted with faces, eyes that twitch up when they hear the mechanical thunk of cogs sliding into place. Across the rat-maze sprawl of cubicles, Jude Esperanza is standing in a cluster of employees, waiting for his turn to speak. Jude, too, looks up when he hears the elevator. Jude’s eyes land on Virgil’s face, and stay there. 

Virgil imagines the office as a slaughterhouse. Meathooks swinging from heavy wrought-iron chains. Bodies pale and doughy, strung up by the ankles. Featureless masses of skin and sinew, strawberry-red muscle and cauliflower-white fat. Nail gun, bone saw, twine. Bodies heavy and ripe for the picking. 

Virgil blinks when he hears the elevator doors start to drift shut. The office is normal again, clean and white. No hooks, no white hanging bodies. He slides his foot forward into the doors’ path. For a second they just hang there, nameless hunks of machinery. Then, a groan as they slide open again. Shaking his head like he is trying to dislodge a stubborn shard of shrapnel, he shoulders his messenger bag and walks to his desk. 

Floor-to-ceiling windows colonize the west wall. Outside, the smoggy sky, easy fodder for habitual daydreamers. Past the asphalt parking lot a smudge of black against the snow, high-rises compete for dominance over the skyline. It is a bitter, brisk day. Comparatively, the inside of the office is sterile and warm, an incubator. 

The sound of a completely superfluous briefcase being slammed on a desk makes Virgil look over. Darcy, sliding her rolling chair over the linoleum, waves. 

All of the cubicles in CronosTech offices are made entirely of glass. It is supposed to symbolize something, Virgil reasons, but he can never quite figure out what. It makes him feel like an object on display. At any rate, Darcy can always see him through their shared wall, and seizes onto any moment of accidental eye contact as an invitation to chat. 

“Hey, you!” she chirps. “How’re you holding up?” Six weeks since the operation, and Darcy is still perpetually interested in Virgil’s health. 

“Fine. You?” 

“Oh, alright. My knee’s been bugging me again.” 

Virgil frowns, an appropriate facsimile of sympathy. “Sorry to hear that.” His hand twitches toward his mouse. Darcy, not finished, inches her chair towards him. “Did you hear,” her voice the stage-whisper of the unrepentant workplace gossiper, “That 

Jude got the implant?” When she says implant she points to her temple, although Virgil knows the implant is located at the back of the skull. 

“Isn’t that confidential?” Fragments of light glint off of Darcy’s round glasses. Virgil feels a headache coming on. 

Darcy ignores him. “I mean, I’m not totally certain, but it makes sense, right? I always got the impression that Jude would do anything to get a…competitive edge.” The implant, as it is colloquially known, does not yet have an official name. Still officially in testing, the offer to install it had been cordially extended to select employees at CronosTech. When one really considers it, the name feels like a misnomer. The unassuming little chip does not truly implant something new inside its host, but takes something away. The idea for the implant is this: humans, in modern day, developed countries, no longer have any need for the sensation of hunger. Certain innovators and entrepreneurs, funded and championed by CronosTech, consider hunger an evolutionary excess, as useless as the vestigial tail, and a nuisance. So, they began developing a procedure that could eliminate it. Virgil, of course, eagerly went under the knife. 

When someone is hungry, they are uncomfortable, and therefore less productive. Since the operation, Virgil’s focus has hardened, sharp as the edge of a scythe. He’s at the top of his game. He finishes work quicker. Completes extra tasks. All the while, he feels lighter, buoyant. It’s like a tiny but impossibly heavy rock in his stomach has been extracted. 

Darcy huffs at his lack of reaction to the news. “I just thought you’d like to know.” Jude is the only person on the floor who Virgil considers his direct competitor. He had been promoted to the second floor only a few weeks after Virgil, and was mere days behind in the ascent to the third. And now the (alleged) implant. Virgil has the sinister impression that the man is gaining on him. 

He realizes he’s been staring out the window. A powdery white cloud speared on the spire of a high-rise, a car backing out of a parking space. He turns back to his computer, and gets to work. 

Lunch break still hasn’t stopped feeling strange. Each day watching his coworkers take their meals from the fridge, food smells mingling together: leftover half of a burrito, BLT on sourdough, kimchi fried rice. Sitting around the break-room table, sidelong glances, everyone pretending they don’t know or haven’t guessed. Making small talk: weather, layoffs, weekend plans. The rational part of Virgil knows that he does still need to eat, despite the lack of hunger signals to his brain, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling like he’s faking it. 

Today he extracts a deli sandwich from the fridge, ham and cheese, with his name scrawled across the side of the packaging. The break room is curiously empty for the time of day. The coffeemaker burbles diligently in the corner. 

The door swings open as Virgil unwraps his sandwich, background chatter and keyboard clacks seeping in from outside. It’s Jude. 

Partially stooped and awash with the bluish light of the fridge. Jude’s long hand wrapped around a tupperware container. 

The whir of the microwave settles into the otherwise quiet room. Virgil’s sandwich tastes of nothing. Jude is staring intently at the microwave like it contains the answer to an essential question. He is an unreasonably tall man, almost Muppet-esque with his oversized, gangly limbs. The wispy ends of his hair cover the nape of his neck, where the incision scar would be. If it were true. 

The microwave beeps, and Jude sits opposite Virgil. He avoids eye contact in a way which Virgil considers a purposeful slight against him, as he pries off the lid of the tupperware. Steam rises languidly off the liquid within. Who in their right mind brings soup to work? 

“How are the reports coming?” Jude has the low sort of voice that hums in your chest. “Fine.” 

“Anya says she wants them done by Tuesday, did you get that email?” 

“They’ll be done.”

To watch Jude dip his plastic spoon into the soup, blow on it, and bring the spoon to his lips, is almost unbearable. Something about it repulses Virgil. He yearns desperately to avert his eyes. Yet, he does not, and instead watches Jude’s Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. Something passes in his expression, his mouth tightens and his nose crinkles almost imperceptibly, which Virgil recognizes. His suspicions confirmed: Jude has gotten the implant. 

The loading symbol is an ouroboros, never satisfied. Virgil clicks the mouse impatiently, although he knows that will only slow the machine down more. FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS: functional computers. 

The weekend had passed uneventfully. Virgil spent Friday night watching old sitcom reruns, went grocery shopping on Saturday (shopping expenses lowered since getting the implant; no use splurging on on pricey ingredients when it all tastes the same), and on Sunday called his mother. She chided him for not going to church, and interrogated him about his mental health. She was convinced that the implant was bad for him, and monitored carefully for adverse side effects. Throughout the weekend, the image of Jude bringing the spoon to his lips and swallowing painfully would suddenly appear, unbidden, in his mind, which he stamped down with the vehemence of a cowboy crushing a snake beneath his boot. 

The document loads at last, and Virgil is once again free to insert figures into his spreadsheet: numbers upon numbers. Dollar signs, expenditures, profits, slotted neatly into the green and red checkerboard. Everything in its rightful place. 

There is a tapping on the glass of his cubicle, like a bird pecking at a window. When he looks up, Virgil expects to see Darcy’s owl-eyes peering at him through the fishbowl of her cubicle. Instead, he is met with Jude’s cool dark stare.

“Sorry, it looked like you were in the zone there.” In the zone sounds stilted, almost ironic, coming out of Jude’s mouth. 

“Yeah, well.” Virgil rubs at a sore spot on his neck, which continually reappears despite CronosTech’s patented ergonomic chairs and keyboards. “What’s going on?” “The reports? I’m supposed to pass them onto Anya, and you said on Friday—” “Oh, right.” Virgil had finished them, in what some might consider a frenzy, after his and Jude’s lunch conversation. Then he had promptly forgotten about them. “I just need to print them out. Give me a second.” 

Virgil opens the document, and the ouroboros returns. His mouse hovers over the print button. Jude taps a bony finger against the top of the cubicle. 

Virgil presses PRINT. He rises from his chair at the same time that Jude starts to move towards the printer. 

“I got it—”, “It’s fine—” 

Their voices overlap each other. Eyes track them across the room, their buzz of adrenaline. Virgil and Jude plant themselves on either side of the printer, as it hacks and shudders like a cat coughing up a hairball. Over the plastic hull of the machine, Jude’s jaw is set and his eyes are hard stones. He looks wildly uncomfortable. Is he sweating? The printer spits out a sheet of paper, then another. Something unfamiliar churns in Virgil’s stomach as he watches Jude pull at the collar of his button-up, exposing a narrow strip of collarbone. 

Virgil imagines a butcher’s shop. Dull thud of knife hitting cutting board. Thick strong hands knuckling slabs of meat tender and pliant. Cleaver glinting, silver-toothed smile. Pool of red bleeding pink at the edges as it glugs down the drain. Raw crimson scent that settles at the back of the throat. Intoxicatingly sweet. Virgil takes a deep breath in.

The printer sighs, and the third sheet of paper is released. Virgil darts his hand out and grabs the stack. Jude tries to do the same, too late. His hand jerks out and slams against the printer with a thunk. 

“I’ll take these to Anya myself,” Virgil says coolly. 

When he returns at last to his cubicle, Darcy is, as usual, not working. “Jesus, Virgil, what was that?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

It is not until he sighs and clicks open the spreadsheet document again, the blue light washing over his face, that he realizes what the strange churning feeling had been. It was hunger.

The hold music is a rendition of one of Beethoven’s concertos, distorted and fuzzy over the phone. Virgil stands under the awning of the bus stop, watching the rain pour. A car rolls by, spraying up a sheet of water. A single bulbous drop lands on the patent leather of Virgil’s shoe. 

Beethoven comes to a stop. A laconic voice on the other end says, “How can I help you?” “Hi, yes, I’m calling to get in contact with Dr. R—?” 

“This is his office. What is this regarding?” 

“He implanted the CronosTech, uh, thing in me, and it’s malfunctioning.” “Are you experiencing any of the following symptoms: swelling, fever, dizziness, fatigue, memory loss, hearing loss,” The voice rattles off. 

“Well, it’s just that I’m hungry again. But it’s not a normal hunger, it’s stronger, it feels… weird. Bad.” Virgil takes a gulping breath. “I’m not myself. I’m thinking strange things.” “So.” The word is heavy, drawn-out. A shuffling of paper, a sigh. “Dr. R—’s earliest appointment slot is in February. We can have you come in then, if it works for you?”

Virgil leans his head against the cold metal of the pole, feeling slightly faint. “Hello?” comes the voice. “Are you still there?” 

“Yes,” Virgil says. “February works fine.” 

The receptionist confirms the details of the appointment, and Virgil resuscitates frozen fingers to add the date to his phone calendar. He is shoving his hands in the pockets of his coat when someone ducks under the awning beside him. 

Jude nods in greeting. Virgil forces his face into a smile. 

“I’ve never seen you take the bus,” Jude says. 

“I normally Uber.” Finances have been tight. 

Jude nods thoughtfully, like Virgil has just provided some keen insight. 

Virgil looks back at the ground. The gutter is congested with slush, gray-brown and sluggish. The churning in his stomach is back. 

“Do you ever feel,” Jude says into the thick silence, “Like you’re being compartmentalized?” 

“What? No.” 

He glances over his shoulder. “In there, I mean. At work.” 

Virgil shrugs. 

“I just…” His eyes are darting around, like he’s hunting for some secret camera or enemy agent. He looks into the headlights of oncoming traffic, pigeons resting on a telephone wire, the shuttered windows of the building across the road, but never at Virgil’s face. “I’ve been feeling claustrophobic, lately. Yesterday I nearly hyperventilated in the elevator. The third floor is so small all of the sudden. It’s like I’m a figure in a spreadsheet, and I’m stuck in my stupid rectangle. And I can’t move, even if I wanted to, until they decide it’s time to slot me into the next compartment. And maybe the next compartment will be a little bigger, but maybe it’ll be just the same as it’s always been.” 

Virgil doesn’t know what to say. He thinks he should defend CronosTech, something about the ingenuity of the company, the beauty and symmetry of it. If Jude doesn’t like being a tiny cog in an immaculate machine, that’s his problem. But the words aren’t coming, they’re stuck somewhere in his small intestine, forming a hard knot. 

“I don’t know,” Jude says. “I just feel like there’s something missing. A hole. Something like that.” 

A distant rumble. The screech of heavy, unoiled machinery. The bus is here. Jude steps towards the bus as the doors swing open. He looks back expectantly. “I’m taking the next one. This one doesn’t go to my place.” Virgil lies. The thought of 

close, humid quarters, of beads of moisture trickling down the windows, of heat and fabric and skin, of Jude’s bobbing Adam’s apple, makes him feel sick. 

The rain does not let up until the next day. Puddles in the office parking lot shimmer iridescent like the hard shells of beetles. The sun pokes reticently out from behind a fat gray cloud. Darcy is humming an infuriatingly cheery tune, breathy and soft. Virgil supposes she’s cheerful because it’s almost 5pm, when they can all pack up and go home. But Virgil will be staying late tonight. 

Anya had pulled him aside to point out a miscalculation in his most recent report. Virgil could only stand there like a chastised child, heat creeping into his face. It is unreasonably time-consuming, to fix all the incorrect dates and numbers that had spawned from the initial miscalculation. His eyes are heavy marbles in his cottony skull. Perhaps, on a brighter day, an automated solution to this problem might have found its way onto the FUTURE IMPROVEMENTS list. 

Jude is pretending their rainy conversation never happened, that he never admitted his secret seditious thoughts. He is smiling widely at everyone, baring his big chemically whitened teeth. 

All the while, the pit in Virgil’s stomach expands and expands. He had eaten his deli sandwich today, for the first time in weeks, ravenously. This did nothing to quench the hunger. It boils and palpitates within him until he is certain it will spill out in a great wave, flooding the office with a tide of want. 

Darcy says goodbye as soon as the clock strikes five, power-walking to the door with the tenacity of someone with a hot date. Virgil lacks the energy even to roll his eyes. By the time he inserts the last corrected figure onto the document, the sky outside is the color of wet charcoal. The date of his appointment with Dr. R— could not seem farther away. The printer whirrs and spits. Infernal machine, always complaining. The office is nearly deserted; the motion operated lights over every cubicle but his own have long shut off. His own, and one other, on the other side of the room. Through layer after layer of distorted glass, he can just barely make out the figure sitting behind the desk. 

Virgil takes the papers from the printer, warm like a hand, and tries to ignore the pounding that now thrums in his skull. He is ready to double over from the hunger. He lays the corrected reports down on Anya’s desk, hoping that the speedy correction might win back her favor. 

When he looks up, Jude is there. He’s breathing heavily; Virgil can almost imagine he feels the breath on his own cheek, goosebumping his skin.

The look on Virgil’s face might have registered as surprise in Jude’s mind, because he says, “Sorry to startle you.” 

When Virgil doesn’t reply, he adds, “Burning the midnight oil, you know.” “Me…too.” Virgil manages. 

“But I’m done now.” 

“Me too.” 

Virgil drags his eyes up from the floor, up Jude’s improbably tall frame. For the first time he looks, really looks, into Jude’s eyes. Inkwell black. In those eyes Virgil sees reflected the same hunger that dwells rabid and desperate in his own stomach. The wave inside him crests, foams over. 

Virgil stares. Jude stares back. 

Then, two snarling beasts, they are upon each other. A passerby glancing idly at the scene might have seen a pair of lovers, but lovers do not generally tear each other’s throats. Virgil’s teeth sink into Jude’s neck. Jude drags his nails down Virgil’s back. Blood, hot and sweet, rushes into Virgil’s mouth. The taste of iron and sweat. Jude clutches Virgil’s head, knots his bloody fingers into his hair. His face pressed to Jude’s neck, Virgil swallows to keep from choking. Jude clamps his teeth into Virgil’s shoulder, tearing away a soft chunk of flesh. 

The two dedicated CronosTech employees, locked in their embrace, crash into the nearest cubicle, which shatters into a kaleidoscope of broken glass. There is no time for efficiency, shrewdness, precision. Their work is simple. Simple as the food chain. Simple as carnivorousness. 

It is as if Virgil has been eating gravel all his life, and now he finally has tasted food. Hearty, lush, instinctual. Meanwhile, Jude writhes against him. His teeth ribbon Virgil’s flesh.

Virgil’s shoulder burns, ache laces through him, but the taste is so magnificent he does not care. He will gladly take hunger if it means such bliss.

The post Saturn Devouring His Son appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Making cloth is such a beautiful and humble practice. I am obsessed, especially because so much time and labor are involved in weaving. Within a rapidly changing world which prioritizes tech, my discipline and motivation to produce meaningful thought provoking work remains the same. I am invested in processes that are not digital, or adapted from technology, but human driven. Slow and simple traditional methods which continue to be reliable, with the use of hands instead of computers. In a capitalist world where commerce overtakes creativity for the sake of profit, my only investment is to hand produce work with commentary on what I deem neglected and important. I don’t really care about selling the clothes from my runway shows, or producing seasonal garments; my runway shows are there to tell stories, and my work is there to whisper my obsessive ideas, opinions (and sometimes secrets) to the mass public. 

A Bloodline And Their Rituals.

Growing up in East Los Angeles, we get our nutrients from the corners. East Los Angeles is where my unnamed neighbors sit next to me on the public buses and crowded mercados. It’s where artisan hand painted eyebrows became a fad and rosaries dangle from our throats. Where frightening gunshots get mistaken for fluorescent firecrackers, and add warmth to our atmosphere. Where we spill our teeth over our subhuman occupations during the heat of the summer.

The concrete is meticulously tattooed with graffiti, so pure, however its expression is often misunderstood. Our blood; it gets misplaced with a type of sticky tar. Our skin sizzles in the summer as we congregate under the sun in fields or in manufacturing factories scattered across this country. Our sweat drips and pools around our ankles, as our labor becomes someone else’s commodity. The community I was raised in, it places me under its tongue, and I’m absorbed into its gums. It’s dangerous. 

I come to realize how my Chicano identity and Latino background has become the originating genes to my body of art work and craft. The working class struggling family and community I was born into aided my drive for innovation, and a lust for “honest art” which to me, is realistic, relatable commentary on underprivileged lives. I come from a culture of people you never see featured in popular magazines or media. Our lifestyle is evident and purely valid, however I continue to find narratives of our existence to be misconstrued. I want to showcase truth and honesty. This is the significance and integrity I wish to provide through destacarse. My apparel work and runway collections have always been really personal and intimate. 

Experience From Losing Teeth

One of my first professional runway showcases featured my Fall Winter 2015 collection titled “The Boy Who Dreamt Of Losing Teeth”. This collection was inspired by my discharge from a psychiatric mental hospital. The collection focused around recovery and phototaxis organisms. The color pallet for the clothing juxtaposed dark colors such as navy blue and black, but with neon orange and faded blues. Some garments also had dead moths sewn into the linings or behind clear plastic. The models graced the stages with bloody noses and bruises (makeup, of course) and I hand constructed metal face masks that also had moths and butterflies clustered onto them. I was twenty two years old. 

Another significant collection was my Spring Summer 2017 collection titled, “Sinnerman”. This collection was really a menswear collection but had very feminine details such as hand pleated tulle ruffles and lace. Some of the male models walked down the runway in knit dresses. This collection was inspired by gender and binary oppositions regarding human sexuality My models also had their arms dyed in Japanese ink to physically represent the “illness” of being queer onto the body. This period of my life allowed the DNA for this collection to unfold willingly. 

The next collection which I feel pushed me to extend beyond personal realities and enter into political commentary was my Spring Summer 2018 collection, “Travieso”. This collection was born in the era where children were being contained at borders in cages and unmentioned presidents were specifically targeting brown immigrants. “Travieso” was a collection that drew inspiration from both the Bracero Program in the 1940’s but also the Zoot Suit Riots. I think American society heavily (and secretly) relies on immigrants for staple industries such as the garment manufacturing industry and agricultural industry. Around this time, I had gotten fired from my job for whistleblowing cruel mistreatment towards the undocumented immigrants in the company. “Travieso ” showcased garments that had hand sketched, tattoo inspired cultural imagery screen printed onto select pieces. 

The layout of this show forced the audience members to be separated by a chain link fence that ran along the runway. Audience members were seated on both sides of the fence, looking at the clothes on the models and the audience on the opposing side of the fence, as a border. This emphasis of separation was crucial to my strategy presenting a blatant division of people that I wanted to provide commentary on. It was obvious and it was cold. Lastly, the model who opened the show was wearing a hand draped chunk of metal chain link fence. This wearable piece was inspired by the reality that immigrants in America always carry the weight of the border on their shoulders.  Intersectionality is a very fascinating format, and with my work, I want to introduce narratives that allow my audience to resonate and understand immigrants, and the underprivileged. I hand construct every garment in my collections, and am hoping to showcase a new collection after I graduate from RISD. This collection will be  titled, “Dolores”, which means Pains in Spanish. My fingers are crossed. 

Left Image: From “Travieso.” Right Image from New Collection, “Dolores.”

Weaving Possibilities

I am currently developing woven textile work and learning how to weave while earning an MFA in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). I got accepted into RISD with no prior weaving knowledge, and so here is where I am completing my full circle of garment development. I feel like I have enough knowledge and experience on how to produce a garment; the final link that was missing from my skill set was the ability to produce the textile for the garments. Now I am learning how to weave both by hand and machine to produce the woven structures for my garment. I learned how to use an eight shaft floor loom, and soon I will learn how to weave using a Dobby loom and industrial Jacquard loom. Making cloth is such a beautiful and humble practice. I am obsessed, especially because so much time and labor are involved in weaving. 

  My label, destacarse., was formed originally to showcase abstract garments. Since then I have been transitioning my brand to highlight Chicano culture and what I deem as “East Los Angeles realism”. Now, I am in the early stages of investigating how my brand can really produce nearly 100% hand made and housemade goods and artwork without outsourcing. I know after I graduate, I will expand my work and products on a somewhat larger scale. Slow fashion is the way to go, and I am even considering how to find a way to produce all the textiles for my garments as well. 

  I value handmade work. Where there is technology, there is ease and a lack of trial. The trial for error is supremely human. Technology and its abilities are a major crutch on civilization. We no longer solve math problems in our head or on paper, we use the calculator app on our iphones. We have no need to write grant proposals for non profit organizations, we now use AI. Chronic convenience suffocates human motivation. All these shortcuts diminish our ability to think creatively and independently. However, as we, a society continue to use technology to solve all our problems for us, at the same time this is happening, we are beginning to undervalue the ability of craft and handmade. There is a tremendous amount of trade and skill that goes into constructing a garment, so why are seamstresses getting paid subhuman wages? Why are there declining artisans worldwide who specialize in shoes, apparel, handbags etc. Why are there no longer special members in each family who sew clothes for the family and mend on a domestic level? I think one answer lies in the creation of the assembly line, pushed by the industrial revolution. The disassemblage of craftsmanship was caused by the expansive mass producing assembly line; where employees are forced to remove themselves from a “start to finish” process, and only perform a one step task repeated in a production line. Hand making, the skill to be able to build and make something on your own, is a weapon against capitalism and in some ways can be the most political step away from government, because you no longer require monopolizing companies to sell you goods and services. In my opinion, we have to relearn these archaic ways of life. 

 I still find myself unsatisfied by all these absurd systems. At the moment, I find myself caught in the jaw of an art school. My past and future are flashing before my eyes like a fire alarm signaled during a therapy session. I come from a community where art is labeled as “Folk Art”, instead of “Fine Art”. Beyond all this I have realized that my integrity and dedication to my craft has gotten me to where I am today. Since high school, I am doing exactly what I set out to do to my surprise. I still have so much more to learn and experience. I still want to study textiles and denim manufacturing in Okayama Japan, too. Dedicating my life and labor to design and craft has been challenging, but I have a feeling that things will eventually work out. I feel like I am in my own little golden age. 

The post Dissecting Destacarse appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Since I don’t want to be a physical girl I’d settle for being an intangible idea. A symbol of a girl. The thought that my physical form simply represents a girl, a girl that signifies some greater principle or dogma, is attractive and cathartic. A girl so singular yet all-encompassing, free from the burden of constructing a complex identity. To be treated as a religious or political symbol, rooted in the Earth and its history, would mean to be treated with the dignity and respect of a perfect representation. Whenever I pass by a mirror I think of my dog, and I don’t look myself in the eyes. I pretend I’m a universal girl, on the cover of a newspaper or a missing person’s poster. I pretend I’m a vessel for communicating the decay of society, or a new mascara brand. Only looked at for what I symbolize. 

I was reading The Name of the Rose, and found a passage that stuck out to me concerning singularity and universal ideas. Eco writes: “I found myself halfway between the perception of the concept ‘horse’ and the knowledge of an individual horse. And in any case, what I knew of the universal horse had been given to me by those traces, which were singular. I could say I was caught at that moment between the singularity of the traces and my ignorance, which assumed the quite diaphanous form of a universal idea.” I stopped to picture myself as a horse, as Adso of Melk, as a girl. My skin clasped around my bones tightly. I was caught up in the dissonance between universal symbols and individual meanings. 

I remember my trip to Istanbul, when I stepped into a mosque that was not a mosque at all, but a coalescence of holy worship. Half mosque, half church, remnants of conquest were vivid and visceral on the walls of the Hagia Sophia. Its religious purpose had always been dictated by whoever ruled over Constantinople, and to the current Turkish government it was undoubtedly a mosque. Christian and Islamic paintings blurred into each other, ending abruptly in destroyed ruins. They were erased and painted over by hand; the symbol transformed at the whim of men. On metro walls in Vienna, I saw how swastikas became grids for tic-tac-toe, passerby filling in the X’s and O’s as the symbol slowly deteriorated in form and meaning. Originally, the swastika was a cultural and religious symbol implying fortune and well-being. I somehow felt its development was buried deep within the metro walls, until it finally succumbed under a graffiti artist’s hand. 

In the dawn of Yugoslavia, my great-grandfather embraced the atheist label. An aspiring academic, he had studied theology in Sarajevo as a young man. To him, religious scripture was merely a text to be critically studied. His wife, on the other-hand, adorned the hijab; a label of staunch resistance to his intellectualism. Obviously, he could not be an intellectual with a covered wife, as these two universal ideas had no point of intersection. When friends visited their home or they attended public events, they reached a compromise: my great-grandmother would wear a wig, so that he could maintain his reputation and she could maintain her faith. Their identities meant virtually nothing in relation to each other only a few years prior. The symbols seemed stronger than the very individuals that created them. Engulfing them in false universality, strict and unforgiving. 

I believed symbols are so entrenched in history and connotation that I forgot they are so malleable. I watched them break, bend, and stretch, yet still had faith in their durability. “A cowboy rides into town on Friday, stays in town for 3 days, then leaves on Friday. How did he do it?,” my grandfather asked me when I was a child. He still loves to ask me riddles, and always the most ridiculous kind. The horse’s name was Friday. I know that now. Back then, I wouldn’t have fathomed that response. It’s instinctive to always assume the name ‘Friday’ denotes the fifth day of a week, a symbol of time passed. The riddle shows how hesitant we are to accept the fallible nature of symbols, that Friday is the fifth day of a week but it can also be the name of a horse. There is nothing essential about the name ‘Friday’ to the passing of time; ‘Friday’ can be changed by governments and drawn over with spray paint. Much like Eco’s horse, the horse in my grandfather’s riddle is far from a representation of a universal idea. It’s only our ignorance that gives it such a form. 

Perhaps becoming a symbol would not be very different to what I am already. Perhaps the vulnerable flesh of a living, breathing girl is not very different to the vulnerability of an obsolete symbol. Both require theatrical fabrication, and elaborate myths about their supposed power. I look in the mirror once more, smiling. I am not a universal girl. The horse’s name was Friday.

The post The Horse’s Name Was Friday appeared first on The New Absurdist.

Can you tell me anything about the name MAROU?

You know what, when I was younger I would always hear these names like Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, and be like that’s a great name. These people were just born with these names? Well then they were destined to do this. Angela Peters? I can’t really see that on a marquee or anything, “Now Starring Tonight Angela Peters!” It just didn’t have that feel to it. So I was talking to my sister one day, and I thought if I really want to do this music thing I want a name. Then I can be whoever I want. I can have this new persona, I don’t have to be this shy Ang who’s too scared to even sing in her room. 

But I love that it’s not like you’ve created a persona, it’s simply that you’ve grown into who you truly are, through doing this. And it’s genuinely you, which is lovely.

Yes! So my sister was just like, “alright let’s think of a name.” And I kind of wanted it to be just one name, one word. We were at Whole Foods one day and my sister was like “what about Marou?” And I was like, “huh that kind of slaps. How’d you just think of Marou like that?” We’re in line just buying kombucha or something. And she’s like, “oh look at that chocolate bar over there, it just says Marou.” I saw it and I was just repeating the word in my head over and over like, yeah, that works. Later I was fooling around with the font and stuff, like do I want uppercase first letter, all lowercase? I figured no, I want it all caps, just MAROU. So it hits you. 

A statement.

This is MAROU. I started signing my name as that at open mics and I love it. It fits. At first it felt like this person I would step into, but now, hi what’s up I’m MAROU. I’ve really grown into it.

Before you were MAROU, do you remember what first got you into music? 

You know, I was thinking about it yesterday, it’s crazy because I remember this vivid memory of me being in first grade (laughs) and we were doing this thing of like “oh what do you want to be when you grow up?” And I was really into American Idol. I would watch it all the time with my mom, like Simon Cowel, I think it was Paula Abdul, and Randy Jackson, and I told my teacher, “I want to be a singer!” and she was like “What? No!” and I was like “Okay.. I want to be a vet”. Which is weird, because I never really had any interest in singing back then, but I was like “oh that’s cool”, you know. It wasn’t until middle school, when my brother went to the Cayman Islands, and brought me back a ukulele that I started getting serious about an instrument. But then I was like “okay I can’t just play it, I have to sing too”. 

It just felt like that was a natural combination. 

Exactly, and I think even before that I always liked singing, but I was never confident in myself, because I was like, a kid. I remember when Adele was really hitting it big, I was singing her in first grade. I did a talent show and I think I sang Rolling in the Deep. (laughs) I had no reason to be singing that song when I was that young. And oh my god there was a talent show in fourth grade, where I hula hooped for one half, and the other half I sang Who Says, by Selena Gomez. 

A classic. 

I mean it was bad, it was really bad I will admit. So then I played saxophone for a few years in school. So I had little bits and pieces growing up. But I wouldn’t say I really started getting into music until my brother bought me that ukulele when I was 12. I learned Riptide, of course. I was really into Leon Bridges, so I started singing him. And then that’s when I made a youtube channel, and was like “I want to be youtube famous, I want Ellen Degeneres to discover me”. So yeah I was really into Leon Bridges,  I played some Ariana Grande. But the thing is I was just not confident in my singing abilities. 

I would tell my mom, “Hey mom I’m going to go upstairs and record a youtube video, please stay downstairs until I come get you” And she was so cool she was like, “okay do your thing”. And sometimes it would be hours. I was too hard on myself I think, because if I messed up just even a little bit, which no one could hear but myself, I’d be like no I need to start over again. And the videos never took off or anything, but it was fun. I’d come home from school and be so excited to learn a new song.

When did you get your first guitar?

My dad had one, so I always had one in my room. I always looked at it, but I never picked it up, I was too into ukulele to try anything else. But then, the pandemic hit and I remember I was just so bored. I remember getting tired of the ukulele, at least the standard one, because it was so high pitched and it didn’t really fit my voice. I bought a baritone ukulele, and that sounded more like a guitar. So when the pandemic hit I was like, why don’t I just learn guitar, because I’m already kind of playing it. 

It was April 2020, and I told myself I was going to learn the hardest song for my level, then everything else will be easy after that. I tried learning Blackbird by The Beatles. I never finished it, because I was like nah this is too hard for me right now (laughs). I also really loved writing, and I was really impatient with trying to learn chords on the guitar. I had so many songs but I didn’t know which chords to match my lyrics up to. So I would just make up chords, and be like “yeah that sounds good, let me just go with that.” That’s what I was doing for a while, I wasn’t really learning guitar, I was just doing my own thing. But it was fun. 

Do you think the pandemic and all that time spent at home encouraged you?

Yeah definitely. I was a senior in highschool, so I’d have online classes in the morning, and then my sister and I would go on our daily run. Then I’d have the rest of the day to myself, so music is what I filled my time with, which was really nice. 

You mentioned Leon Bridges, do you want to talk a little more about your influences? 

Leon Bridges definitely influenced me. I think I liked his soulful singing. It was more of the style I wanted to get into. He was the gateway into what I later listened to, like the musicians and music I love now. My sister also influenced a lot of my music tastes. 

Hmm I also remember I listened to one song by Big Thief…

Oh, okay, actually this is about to get deep.

It was the summer after my freshman year of college and I was home. I was studying animal science so I figured I had to get an internship related to that. I started working at this wildlife refuge, like 2 hours away from my home, it was insane. I’m from Jersey, and Jersey is pretty big, and this place was on the border of Pennsylvania. I was an unpaid intern…and I was working there like six days a week, and it sucked. Anyways, I had, or have, really bad OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, where you have intrusive thoughts and then compulsions. 

My brain will be like “oh I need you to touch this” or “turn off this light switch five times or else this is gonna happen.” And the “or else” part was always a fear of mine. 

So that was just really bad for a while. 

I’d wake up and it’d be like, “Don’t get in the car today or else, you’re gonna die on your way to work.” I would be so scared on this long drive in the morning because of that. Even though I knew nothing was going to happen, that’s just the disorder I guess. So the two hours in the car to the animal refuge and back was just horrible. The whole way I was driving was just, “Don’t switch lanes or you’re going to get hit by a car”, or “Don’t do this or this will happen.”

So I was having a miserable time, and I remember Mythological Beauty by Big Thief came on. And there was something about it, because I just relaxed and I wasn’t thinking about any of the bad things that might happen. So from then on, I listened to Big Thief for the entirety of my car ride, and that just became my routine. I’d wake up and immediately start listening to them, because I was like as long as I’m listening to this, my mind isn’t thinking about anything else. That’s initially how I got into them. Adrianne Lenker’s voice was so soothing and I was starting to relate to the lyrics. I remember they were my top Spotify artist for the year because you know, two hours there, two hours back really started to add up. 

Now I would say they’re really an influence because of their writing style.

Back then I depended on their music, because it shut my brain off, but now that I’m past that stage in my life, I can appreciate them more as a band and less as a…

A lifeline? 

Yeah, yeah exactly (laughs).  

Inspiration

I wanted to talk about your writing process. Before you started playing music, was writing something that you did often? 

Well when I was playing ukulele, I wasn’t really too big into writing, I don’t think I had anything to write about honestly. I do have one embarrassing story though. I was in second grade and had a crush on a guy at my school, and I wrote a little song about him. And for some reason, I don’t know why I did this, but I set the song about my love for him as the background of the family computer! I was so embarrassed because my sister saw it and was like “what is this!!” and everyone was just laughing at me, which I probably deserved (laughs). 

How old were you? 

I was in second grade! I think that incident probably discouraged me without me knowing. When I started playing the ukulele I didn’t really write too much, it really began when I picked up the guitar.

A lot of the songs you write are about relationships right?

Yeah! (Laughs)

What kind of relationships are you often thinking about when you write, or create? 

I’d say 95 percent of my songs are about romantic relationships, about guys I’ve dated. And it always used to be about the same kind of guy. About me getting myself into these situations where I know I shouldn’t, but I do anyway.  Just things that don’t really work out, or I’m in it, and as I’m in it I know this isn’t going to work out but I stay anyways. I know I shouldn’t but I do. 

So it’s more singing about yourself, rather than these people. 

Yeah, it’s me singing about how I know I deserved better, and the ways I grew from those things. Like I’ve experienced going through all that, and yet here I am. 

I sing a lot about my relationship with myself too. The OCD, how that was tiring and lonely, and I felt like I was going insane. And then my sister, I have a song called Sister…about my sister.  Because she’s really been my best friend and has influenced a lot of the music I listen to now. She would always share her music with me. I have some lyrics, Sister, why don’t you come back home / Sister, why don’t you pick up the phone. We’re eight years apart, so she’d be in college and I’d be home, wishing I had her to talk to. So this song is just about, being the youngest sister and needing my best friend to help me through high school and stuff. Another lyric is, am I gonna be like you? Because I’ve always looked up to her. 

She went to grad school for photography, and I think if it wasn’t for her taking that path, I probably wouldn’t be as confident as I am now following my own path. Because my brother is a big science guy and pursued aerospace engineering, and when it was my sister’s turn she went to art school, and my parents were like woah. She kind of broke the ice ya know, so now with me doing music I think I’m able to just do it. Like, okay my sister did it so now I can do it. I’ve always looked up to her for that, I just think she’s the coolest person ever. 

So yeah, I tend to write songs about my romantic relationships, my sister, and myself. 

On that concise note, if you had to choose three words to describe your genre, style, content, what would they be? 

Hmm, okay you know what, I started writing my spotify bio recently and I actually really liked what I wrote there. Okay, I would say… (laughs) but I don’t want to sound like, full of myself. 

Disclaimer everyone, she’s not trying to sound full of herself!

I mean, probably haunting, introspective (laughs) wow this is good, and vulnerable I guess. 

Don’t you have a song called Haunted? 

Yeah I do! I like storytelling through my songs. I try to get people to feel like they can see what’s going on. That’s why I would say vulnerable and introspective. 

Getting Started

What has performing live been like for you so far? 

Well I knew once I went to college I was going to have to get over my fear of performing. I knew it was going to suck, but I was ready for it. I was working at this coffee shop, and everyone was just the sweetest. One of the managers was in a band and he invited me to open for them at their house show! I had never sung in front of anyone before. He was like “yeah this could be your big debut, open for us at our house show! It’ll be chill, we’ll have our friends over” and I was like “what!” And I knew I HAD to do this, this would be the start. 

So I did it. I remember I was so nervous and my voice was quaking, but I got through it! The next year I started playing at the open mics the cafe would have every week. I was getting good feedback which I really needed to boost my confidence. At one point I was like okay, I’m ready to move on to bigger open mics.

I was living down in Kingston RI, and I guess the big city was Providence. I called up this place Askew, which was the first open mic I went to here. It was January 2022, and there weren’t a lot of people there which was nice. I got some great feedback from a guy called Jake, I remember I saw him walking and he had on cowboy boots, cowboy hat. I was at the bar getting a water and he came up to me, and was like “that was awesome”. He was up next and his voice just blew me away, so I thought “well if this guy thinks I’m good I gotta keep doing this.” 

After that, any free time I had I would just practice for the open mic. Like practice, practice, practice. And every Monday night I would go back to Askew. That was definitely when I got my foot in the door. The next year I switched majors, which then took up a lot more of my time and I wasn’t able to do music as much. That destroyed me. So I was like alright, during the summer, I’m just gonna take a break from everything academia, and I was determined to move to Providence and do what makes me happy for three months. I wanted to immerse myself in music and work a job that allows me to do that and see what happens. 

So that brings us to this past summer. 

Yes! (drums on table) 2023 baby! 

MAROU takes off!

(Laughs) Thank you. Yeah, I mean I told my parents I wasn’t going to do an internship, and they’ve always been supportive. So I moved to Providence, and lo and behold, typed in “coffee shop jobs providence”,  cause that was the only thing I could think of. Pretty soon I started working as a barista which was great because I had my evenings free for music and performing. I was doing Monday nights at Askew, Wednesday nights at the Parlor, and then in between trying to book shows. Wherever I could, whenever I could. And that’s the happiest I’ve ever been, it’s been awesome. 

I remember one day sitting in my bed being like damn, if high school me could see me now, she’d be so surprised. 

And proud!

And proud! It just felt so right, everytime I stepped on stage. 

When I was 12, my sister took me to see Matt Corby, this indie singer from Australia. We were front row, and I remember standing there and his voice was so deep and rich. It stirred something inside of me, and I was like I don’t know what this feeling is, but I want to feel this all the time. I don’t know how, but I need this. I don’t know if I’ll be behind the stage or in the audience, but I know I have to be in this music thing somehow. 

So when I started doing these shows, I felt that again, which was really cool and very reassuring. Like here is that feeling I’ve been trying to figure out, this is what it’s been trying to tell me. The moment I felt that again I was like holy shit! I solved it! I solved the puzzle! It was my first show of the summer at AS220, and I went home after and just cried because I was so happy. 

Do you have any pre-show rituals?

Normally I call my mom and dad (laughs). I’ll be like “heyy I’m bouta perform.” Because they’ve always been supportive of me, so I like to let them know I’m doing this, not only because of me but because of them too, like “thanks guys, talk to you after!” So I do that. 

How has collaborating with local musicians in Providence been for you?

I will say, this guy Daniel Pond, who is part of Scaffolding, has definitely been a musical guide of sorts around here. He knows almost every musician in Providence. He was my go to this past summer. If I needed musicians for a gig, or recommendations for a  new amp, he would be my guy. Or if I was like “hey how do I go about playing a show at Red Ink” he’d be like “I’ve got a show lined up for you.” He’s been so awesome. 

The Making of an Album

Last year you released your EP There’s Time for Me, and there are some really special songs on there. 

Let’s see, all of the songs I’ve written, I’ve written after a mental breakdown. That’s the only way I’ve written songs up until now. I would try and sit down if I had extra time and write stuff but I just couldn’t. Nothing creative would come out. It would only happen after I got so worked up, I would be in my room between 11pm-2am and just start crying. Then I’d get mad at myself for it and want to channel that into something else. So I’d pick up my guitar. Sometimes I’d just strum a chord and instantly words would come out and it would work. 

One of my songs I really like, Midday Mourning, was written about my ferret Mimi. My freshman year of college I was really missing her.  One night I was crying and I told myself “I’m tired of crying, it feels like, not useless, but what am I crying for” you know? So I picked up my guitar to see if writing a song would give me something to put all that emotion into. I strummed two chords and the words came out, without writing anything down. But now I’m in a place where I haven’t had a mental breakdown in a while, cause I’m actually genuinely happy. So I’m kind of in a rut now honestly (laughs). That’s the only way I’ve known how to write songs so now I’m like “what do I do!” Which is great because I’m happy, but music-wise I don’t know what to do. 

You also released a music video alongside the EP for your song What If.  

So a year prior to making that video, I had expressed on my instagram that I was interested in recording my music but didn’t know where to start. So my friend was like hey I have all the equipment, come to my house with like five songs ready and we’ll record an EP. And I was like HUH? REAllY? So yeah, we did that. Later that year there was some delay with the release, and I was itching to keep creating and to get something done, so I was like what if I made a music video to release with the song! I had all this creative energy I wanted to do something with. I picked the song that meant the most to me, What If,  and I went looking for someone who could help me put all these ideas together.

How was the process of creating the video, and seeing one of your songs come to life in a visual sense? 

My friend Hayden Carr-Loize is a film guy in addition to being a musician, and he was super interested in the idea. We met up one day to brainstorm, and I knew how I wanted certain pieces of the video to go but not everything. A week later he sent me a storyboard and a full script. He was on that shit. I remember reading it and thinking, this is fucking perfect, I love this. So everyone got together and we recorded in New Jersey. We didn’t have specific places in mind, we sort of wandered around and certain things worked out.  At first I thought it was going to be really nerve wracking, but like I said it just felt so natural. Then we headed back to the city and ended up on Roosevelt Island.

 Oh! And there was a dance scene! This was one part that I knew I wanted in it. I wanted to choreograph a dance scene at the end. I love dancing, I won’t say I’m a great dancer but I love it. So yeah I choreographed it and I’m so proud of it. I knew I wanted it to be the ending of the video, I knew I wanted it to be sunset and I’d be doing this dance. So we’re on the island, up on a hill. I lay out this blanket and I just go for it. Again, I thought I would be nervous because I’ve never danced in front of anyone. Singing is vulnerable and dancing is a whole other thing. It felt so great.  Not the whole thing made it into the original video, but they did record a clip of the whole dance, which I actually just released as an alternative music video!

It was a very important music video, because it was about OCD. I wanted to encapsulate everything I’ve been through with it, and the video ended up doing exactly what I wanted it to. The dance scene was me releasing a lot of those feelings, and starting new. 

By the time the music was ready to be released I was going through a really hard time, I was going through a break up, and I really needed a win. This video definitely felt like it. 

This reminds me of something we were talking about earlier; the idea that art is not only what you do, it’s who you are. 

That’s exactly what I sing about. Like the OCD. That has had such a hold on my life for so long, and that’s why I sing about it. It’s who I was. These relationships too, I put them into song because they’ve had some kind of role in who I am today, they have shaped me. The music is a product of what I go through in life. Art is not only what you do, it’s also who you are. It manifests into what you create.

Reassurance

Could you tell me what you’re most proud of, music or otherwise?

I think number one, it would be that I’ve gotten myself to this place where if you told me to sing right now I’d be like “yeah alright get me by guitar and I’ll go right now.” If you asked me that back in high school, I would just freeze, and the fact that I can just do it now is pretty great. 

Okay wait actually, you know the thing I’m most proud of right now is my Red Door show I did this past summer! The Sharon Van Etten cover band that I put together. Let’s see, the venue was putting on a benefit show for Sojourner House, and it was a woman-led cover band event. There were a bunch of bands playing – they were doing Taylor Swift covers, Alanis Morrissette covers, and Blondie covers. There was an extra spot for a band and I was so fortunate enough to snag it last minute.

I had one week to put a band together. And this was going to be the biggest event I had done yet, like the streets were going to be closed off, there was going to be a stage, it was outside, insane. Sometimes the way I prepare for these things is I don’t really think too much about it until the day of, or else I freak myself out. So I was like, okay I know I need to get this done, I know I need to put a band together. I gotta practice, but I’m not gonna think about it otherwise. 

I was texting people I knew who were musicians, I needed a guitarist, bassist, drummer, maybe a keyboardist and then I’m good. I got all that together, and it was so great. I love being part of a music community where I can just be like hey, anyone want to play this gig with me? And a bunch of people are just like “Yeah totally!” So we met up to practice just three days before the show.

 Lets see, Keith Haupt was on drums, Niels Versavel on bass, and Ethan Dowding on guitar. We ran through like five Sharon Van Etten songs, and they had never really listened to her, so they were like we’ll just follow you, which was sick. And it went great! 

We ran through it again on Friday and then we just went for it! Saturday it was go time, and I remember being on stage and realizing this was the first time I had performed with a band, especially in such a large setting. I was also performing songs that weren’t my own. It was exhilarating. It was so fun, and I want to do this all the time. I thought singing by myself was great but no, I need a band! Having the crowd clap and cheer, it was just even more reassuring. 

Was it one of the larger crowds you’ve had? 

Oh yeah, it was the biggest crowd I’ve had yet. I know they didn’t just show up for me specifically, but even still being in front of that many people was great. 

So you mostly perform your own songs?

I mean at open mics I’ll do a few covers here and there, but if I’m doing shows I’ll do my own music. This was the first time I sang all covers. Not only was I playing somebody else’s songs, it was a cover band, so I was also trying to give off her energy on stage. And it just worked out, it felt so natural.

The next day I posted the performance and Sharon Van Etten saw it! And she reposted it! And she said was so honored. The fact that my idol said she was honored I sang her songs, was even more of a – I’m gonna say it again – reassurance. 

That you’re on the right path.

Exactly, that I gotta keep doing this, I gotta keep going.

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