Income, Outcome
Dental adventure. Here I sit in a waiting
room, a sound reminiscent of power tools carries through the walls. My teeth
have always been good to me, but I have not always been so good to them. I
can’t remember how long ago it was when I last had my teeth checked. 17 years?
I remember being told that my teeth were very good. I was surprised at the
time, since I hadn’t been taking very good care of them. At that time I decided
that my teeth must be indestructible, and I would not ever need to return to
one of those places. Power tools. Will they renovate my face?
Income. Outcome. Words rain down like
monsoon. Exterminator? I don’t even know ‘er!
And there I was, flailing in the grips of
wordlessness, making noise on paper. It felt like the end, like I would never
write again. And then, later that night, as I lay in bed, I realized that in
fact I contain all stories. All I had to do was think about the story, rather
than the words, and everything else gets taken care of.
A window frame is a fine thing. The glass
inside it is made of sand.
Everything
Well it’s only a paper moon, hanging over a
cardboard sea, but it wouldn’t be make-believe if you just fucking believed in
me
I was on my way home, as usual. But… when I
passed that store called “ Parties, Balloons, Anything”, I noticed something I
had never seen before. Under the street sandwich-board sign, the one with all
of the helium balloons hanging upwards from it, there was a hole in the ground.
I approached cautiously. When I was right up close to it, I noticed a faint
light coming from it. Going down on all fours, I looked into the hole. It
seemed to stretch on forever and what’s more, there was a faint music coming
from in. Carnival music “Oom-pa-pa Oom-pa-pa Oom-pa-pa” The hole, which was
really more of a tunnel, was bedecked with fairy lights, which of course
explained the faint light.
As I looked closer, my head crept further
into the tunnel. The smell of party poppers. Suddenly, I felt my head being
pulled, as if it were a champagne cork.
POP!
My head whooshed through the hole, my body
flapping along behind it like a streamer. As I slowed I tumbled tumble tumbled
to a stop, to find myself sitting in a barber’s chair. Not your usual average
kind of barber’s chair, this one stretched way up high. This of course meant
that the barber had to stand on stilts. As he cut his own hair, mine grew
longer.
Why I suck at auditions.
“The idea for this commercial is that you
are a busker, doing amazing tricks on the street, but everyone is watching
someone nearby, who is eating a hamburger,” Said the agent.
“So I’ve basically got to be less
interesting than a hamburger”
The casting lady responded to this with
awkward silence.
“You’ll be engaging children at the tennis,
wearing a ballboy costume. The most important thing is that you are good with
children.”
“Oh, I love kids. Couldn’t eat a whole
one.”
A stifled giggle from the other auditionee.
Silence from the casting lady.
Ivan, this is you from the future!
Yes, I have a red pencil now. Otherwise,
despite several minor epiphanies, I’m pretty much the same. Do you want some
advice? Hmm. Be brave, say what you feel. Don’t hang around somewhere when it’s
time to go. Oh and, er, I love you.
Another day, much like the others before
it. Drink the coffee, catch the train, feel good, feel bad, dream of things,
wait for that thing, that gold-plated opportunity.
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