Choose Your Own Adventure

Here are two memories: cracked lips and theater control booth. The rest is obvious.

That Over There

This is it. "Happy Audio" by Fennesz. I bought it purely on a recommendation. I didn't know the style, I didn't even really understand the review. It was just rated highly and I was into that kind of lifestyle, that kind of buy in. So I picked it up and for say three months I didn't listen to a word of it. A note, rather. It sat, oddly shaped package, not a standard CD crystal case. Paper. Larger. Sleeve. It was so pretty. And then I heard it, and I imagined that that was me, floating through the universe of equations, a pattern without meaning, but there because that is sort of the tendency of these things and our tendency to FIND these things...fuzzing, buzzing, growing. An inflection and you can tell it's changed but not really how, maybe the lead had a spiritual shift, of the psyche, of the intangible. The desynchronization that occurs to me suddenly and then it's fading back in, hard to tell but there it was. One knob. So slight.

Quiet

At 11:36 PM I was walking through a parking garage. It was nearly empty, I'd bolted from the theater as soon as the movie ended so the crowds hadn't made it out yet. My footsteps echoed in the concrete even with my rubber soles. My head was even, not bobbing as I walked. I got into my car, handed my validated parking pass to the attendant, and drove home. The streets were empty, or nearly so.

Debris

Even when it's all said and done, even after you've rebuilt and found some new wheels, there is debris. Not found immediately: this is the important part. Wrapped around a USB cable in a robot hairball you find the headphones that went with the new mobile phone. A memory card that you know you didn't buy. This book, I thought I had it in softcover...oh wait, here's my copy too. Polaroids from the past while flipping through a small blue box. Do you get rid of them? I don't. They have a Place in my own personal History. Reminders of good things but also the stupid fight over x1 x2 x3. "You're there then you're gone." We are the thread that connects our networks from beginning to end; perhaps there is a bottleneck somewhere, it's inevitable.