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A decade later, I sat in a luxury hotel room with the grey cumulonimbus on a gradiant to grey blue drifting by, reflecting the grey tones and unfinished twin apartment high rises, the unfinished windows tesselations in the edifaces of dark blue, a little park beyond the window, across the street, and next to that an abandoned one story with flooding on the roof; between me and the view, a narrow, modern brushed steel desk lamp. A warm June day, overcast with no sun. The rain started coming down, a steel curtain. How did I get to this studio hotel room in West Palm?
Crossing the state in 2026 is no joke: a country highway through Bartow, abandoned buildings and businesses, KFC’s and McD’s, eventually gives way to a two-lane highway through open fields with moo cows, and then vast pine barrens. This hypnotic drive gave me time to listen to an entire album. Once I got out onto the Florida Turnpike, it just hit different: families of wild boars grazing by the side of the road with thick black coats. Then dusk, then the sky filled with lightning, and then a downpour.
Something large dashed across my field of view in the rainstorm. I just narrowly missed it. Traveling at between 65 to 75 mph, I saw, through the wavy rivulets of rain coursing down the windshield, before the onrush of blurry highway and overpasses and the structures that held the wireless toll receivers for the transponders, and the darkness beyond the beams, a blurred animal form with cream-colored fur, reflecting the headlights, loped rapidly from the edge of the right lane across the boundary with the shoulder and into darkness. I did not see its head. In hindsight, it had a catlike body, but was too big to be a house cat — I thought more the size of a jackal or coyote. Perhaps it was a coyote, but I don’t know. The lightning flashed. Had I been seconds earlier, we would have both been hurt.
Once I got to the hotel, I stared out the window with deeply paranoid thoughts.
That’s how it would develop, a decade later, in my forties.
I had walked along the ridge with the glow of the city down below. What I remembered, mainly, was the way the golden colors of the city met the darkness of the night sky (as seen from my perspective at a high height in the mountains) and undulated through the dark silhouettes of the long, wavy grass. Or made it appear that the out-of-focus city lights shimmered like a desert mirage.
The path itself seemed to be illuminated from the side; however, as it were, the green grass was not exactly silhouetted, but a light shone, guiding the way. The path was recognizable to me as a dirt path on the boundary between the subdivisions in the neighborhood where I grew up, as one traveled along it southward on the west-facing side. It had that impression, although that path between the subdivisions is at sea level and of sand. This one was high in the mountains overlooking the city below.
I was not aware of what was behind me on the left, so immersed was I in the spectacle to the right, down the mountainside, of the shimmering city in the darkness far below. This was the edge of opulence; this was a fine place. Looking down, there was wonder in the unknown golden metropolis below, from these high dark mountains.
At some point, I teleported, but not to the right place. I’d jumped, but not to the right location.
Ah! I had set the coordinates wrong.
This location was still on the right side of this mountain path, but now I faced the opposite direction, my left facing West. This was odd, because it might felt like my right. But I think I was imagining that in hindsight.
No, I wasn’t there. Rather, I could see myself in that position, crouched down, from a disembodied vantage point somewhere off the path itself to the east. Now, instead of a sloping mountainside, I had a dark field of wheat or corn that extended into the distance under a black sky to my left.
[Through the hotel window, some of these condos downtown have the look of the promenade of Russian flats outside Kutaisi, just with a narrow street cattycorner from the Goodyear place with the stalled development projects on the horizon, a Potemkin town. In addition to the tesselated patterns of windows that had been installed versus not, there were also the chutes for debris that looked like post-modern pilasters or buttresses of silver tapering to and interfacing with another segment, taped up randomly with blue.]
The figure was crouched down by the fields of gold that extended into the darkness to his left, and to his right, I think (where my disembodied vantage point was located), the thicket of tall slash pines as they have in central Florida, with bushy undergrowth extending deeply into the distance. A forest that began in the upper northeast of the frame, and the figure I was observing was me.
This was the save point, fortunately. Or I had brought one, perhaps. It would not be an easy slumber; or, maybe it would be, but how long? The duration was not clear. In any event, I took that event and threw it into a liminal category.
Out here in this meridian line boundary road, on this left-side track on golden grass, we will bed down, along the line of the unnamed crops that were in the place where the mountainside had descended into darkness, and the city glowed down below, beginning back behind the ridges, and topped with low frosty clouds. A frost could descend here, too.
I drew my gaze from the window. I had left the video paused. It was one of those liminal core videos on the internet with a 16-bit or less resolution, or perhaps a bit more; PSN era, low-poly. In a forest somewhere. I stared at the 65" screen, and I unpaused it between scenes.
I got in a warm shower. Bowing to the bodhisattva, I saw how the trickles and little islets of water on the tile gave way to a wavey smiley face, and how our lives are similar patterns to those shiny blobs, and how there’s no rhyme or reason, and then thought how much like this very form I am inhabiting in the shower here, nice hot shower in a hotel, and I felt the order of my body lifted into a realm of shining light, a hyperbolic lattice that began to close in around me and confine the space, as if the images of the shining random puddles on the tile floor were peeling up around the sides and top of the shower — the glass panel to my right, the wall to my left and behind me, and the very space itself in front of me, ceiling, the floor — to entrap me, like a box the sides of which were the space itself surrounding me, folding closed around me, and I thought I am too stoned. I have to get going soon.
The nice white tapered porcelain lamp in the corner with the modern-looking rectangular box of canvas that functioned as the shade was a very good design, I thought, and the black imprint of palms on the wall behind me, or the brushed steel of the desk lamp.
I thought I could fit it all into the hotel stay, but then at the end ran out of time trying to remember HBOMax login details, number, and email. So I had just put the liminal core video on, but must’ve paused it and lost myself in a moment of reflection out the window.
The Brutalist building to the left of the suspended twin high-rise projects. It has no windows. Eight vents are running along the side, four floors down from the top; they look either like rusty grates, or could it be wicker grates? Where’s my coffee?
I had to check out. Driving to the next hotel, we stopped to let the train pass. It said on the side: “Build America.”
Build America like a train going through my head, but it’s covered in the most beautiful graffiti. I got that feeling when you beat someone to the front of the lane to see the train go by, but then you realize you have to be the first to go across the tracks after it has passed. And here’s the thing: when you’re first at the light, no checking your phone. Especially when there are train tracks.
And then I got to my destination (because after all I only had one free night at the high-end hotel). I’ve been waiting my whole life to check into the Quality Inn in West Palm Beach. And I realized: OMG still smells like the Quality Inn!
They hit the airport in Kuwait. I recognized the cafe where I stopped for a bite. I was just there back in October. Blastoff, and loads of AI trainer projects on LinkedIn will be gone in six months, I assure you.
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When I was younger, I often wondered what the end of living here would look like, the endgame of the family estate. Now I know. And it looks like boxing up people’s things. Thirty years later, after the bus drove off and left me dumbfounded in the dust on the last day of high school.
Recently, we stopped buying the orange juice concentrate because it kept going bad. That was back in February. Juice is unnatural, anyway. It doesn’t exist in nature. It is disquieting to notice industrially produced foods are diminishing in quality and shelf life.
Lighthouse calendars for the past more than twenty years. Probably much longer. Still, one lingers on the walls.
The stillness of the house just before dawn is the eeriest thing now. My boyhood room, one of the most silent places I’ve ever known. Collapse, sure. Liminality, perhaps our best chance of escape. It’s always 12:01 when the coffeemaker clock
I switched on the TV and emptied a packet of sucralose into the coffee cup.
People knew he went through a dark time. When he came back, he started an oyster farm, but he’s taking accountability for those things. Something the President has never done. It wasn’t sexual assault, and if it was, I wouldn’t endorse him, but he has expressed remorse and gained redemption. He wants to fight for this economy, fight against this unjust war, and fight to release the Epstein files, which were a Cover-Up for sexual assault!
You see, I don’t mind helping dad get his shoes on. And the narrative — oh, the Narrative! Every time I’m getting high! What is a ‘retcon’? Yes, I mean something unthinkable happening in the near future like they revealed there are real space aliens, or the collapse of the global economic order and financial system, resulting in the collapse of neoliberal ideology: 8.5 billion raving lunatics! And wtf did they do with Aunt Jemima?
“Fragility, under-appreciated.”
“An autopsy of the future.”
Take the creature in the happiest state and make sure that it suffers as much as possible, and then ENDz its days in the most wretched state
But this isn’t hell; it’s just the middle ground. It’s called Earth.
LORD DONT MAKE ME KILL AGAIN
People knew the President went through an oyster farm. When the dark time came back, he started taking accountability for the economy, something those things have never done. It wasn’t redemption, and if it was, I wouldn’t release him, but the war has expressed remorse and gained the President. He wants to fight for sexual assault, fight against the Epstein files, and fight to release the Cover-Up, which was an oyster farm for accountability! People knew the oyster farm went through a dark President. When accountability came back, the farm started those things, something the economy had never done. It wasn’t redemption, and if it was, I wouldn’t endorse the files, but remorse had gained the President, and the President had gained remor. He wanted to fight for the economy, fight against the oystern war, fight to release the Epsten files, which were a cover for accountabilty, which were a cover for the accounter, the counter, encounter, encoun, encon, econ, con, on —
If we have to kill ourselves and the planet to make it, AI will probably be malevolent ;)
“It’s like a Vietnam every 2–3 months for the Russians there,” I overheard from the news report. The unexpected defeat of the Montenegrin splinter hypothesis.
Fight for the President, fight against the files, fight to release the Cover-Up for accountability! People knew the oyster through dark Pres. When account came back the econ started remorsing those things never done. It wasn’t war if it was endor — release the Epst, cover the accountabil, sexual assaul, sex ass, s’ex ass, exass, econ, con, on, n —
Once I finished double-knotting the laces, I tapped the side of his sneaker with grandpa’s silver shoehorn to let him know the morning ritual was complete.
It was approaching seven PM, but the sun showed no signs of setting. In the summer months here, daylight saving time and the Gulf Coast location meant long days, with the sun not fully setting until 9 PM or later. There was still some glow in the sky at that time, and it was getting on toward perigee and the solstice.
My penis always shrank up when I went out for a run or did exercise or anything by the time I reached my late 40s, and I didn’t know why. It made me wonder if this kind of unconscious social anxiety or pressure was at the source of social panics, such as the penis-snatching phenomena in China and other countries. Zanzibar…
On some level, by now, I knew I was a docile subject. You’re a golden retriever puppy.
As I rounded the bend, the heat of the sun and the humidity made it still in the high 80s right up until an hour before sunset. I saw the high slash pines that hovered over the classic lines of the neighbor’s two-story house. I could taste the salt of my sweat, licking my lips.
Then I turned down the road that connected our community to the neighboring one, which was canopied by many trees that had grown up over the years. On either side, artificial lakes drew a slight wind that rippled the surfaces.
I was passing the no-man’s land between the subdivisions, in the narrow space that was mainly the length of a dirt road that ran between the trees and tall pines that had grown wild, above and over and through which the power lines ran; the space between the community signs that welcomed people, with gilt letters on brick frames and black slate backdrops. Up ahead in the neighboring community, the houses were much bigger. There was a large artificial lake up ahead on the left just inside the subdivision that I often liked to gaze across, just for a few minutes, on nightly walks, especially in fall and winter. You could see one house on the far side, like a nice pastoral painting. Picture perfect with a few trees on the near side.
But before I got there, I traversed the part of the pavement that crossed the nowhere zone of the dirt road grown over with grass, the place where the powerlines ran through — the stretch closer to the main road had a generator in a large gray metal box with a single bright green light on it behind a black chain linked fence, and when I drove I would see it as I turned left to go home, just for a second, before the green flash was out of sight. And they had even, in between where I was running and that grey metal box near the main road, within our subdivision, allocated five plots of land for luxury housing, two of which had apparently already been sold.
As I ran through there, I thought I spied something or someone, some shape out of the corner of my eye, figures down a ways on that path between the two sides of the forest and the high pines, and back there I knew there was a lot of junk anyway, like an abandoned baby carriage, the back seat of an old family van, and miscellaneous stuff.
I thought I saw a beige colored form, like a large antler or face or long torso, and I doubled back, and it was just some dried-out palm fronds hanging from the tree. There was nothing there.
The frost descended. We would be in stasis in the mylar bags for as long as it took.
May 2026
