I Havn't Been Keeping Up On Posting My Little Bits From Mastodon, So For The Next Eleven Days I'll Post

Novice Wizard

Harry Potter’s a lie. Magic doesn’t require wands, and there aren’t different sorts of magic, and it doesn’t have any rules. Magic is simply commanding reality, saying the sky is red, and then it’s red, or that the river is ice, and then it’s ice, or that the young woman manning the tacky little hat shop is an old woman, and then she’s an old woman. It’s as simple as that, if you have magic, and impossible of you don’t.

Here we have a novice wizard. “Don’t lock the door”, his dad had said, because his dad didn’t have the key to get back in. But our novice wizard saw in this an opportunity to develop his magic, so he locked the door and shut it. If his magic was strong enough he would just tell the door to open, and the door would be open.

His magic wasn’t strong enough. Now his dad was angry with him. It was hot outside, and boring, and they were already late for lunch before they got locked out of the house. But these are small things. If our wizard is ever to develop his magic, then he has to lock doors that he has no key to, over and over again, until he finds his magic. And if he never does, then he’s found that he lacks magic, which is almost as good, for it’s a much better thing to find by trying that you have no magic than it is to never find—by never trying—that you do.

My Arm

I remember we were in the middle of a heatwave and I was headed for the bathroom to take a cold bath since we didn’t have air conditioning. As I approached the bathroom I caught my reflection in the mirror, and I noticed my arm— I don’t know why, I just remember noticing it. I looked away, probably into Sam’s room—it was kitty-corner to the bathroom in that house—but then I looked back into the mirror again and my arm was gone. I started to scream. Sam rushed in from the backyard, terrified, and she started screaming too. The neighbors ended up calling the police. That was a few months ago now. I’ve gotten a lot of help since then. The medication’s helped a lot, but I’ve also had to put in a lot of work— a lot of work. I have a ways to go still, but I’ve started to come to terms with the fact that I never had an arm. —And next week they say I can start having supervised visits with Sam.

Punk Spirit

Punk is an aesthetic, a form of music, a style of dress, but it’s also a spirit, a spirit in two parts. It isn’t concerned with how things are supposed to be done. It doesn’t ask for anything. It doesn’t owe anyone. It does things its own way. That’s the first thing. Consequences aren’t important. There’s nothing worth compromising yourself for. That’s the beginning of punk spirit.

Well the park bench, door, and sleeping in the rain / Little kids sitting in the shooting gallery / Set yourself up from innocence to misery / Well this is what you want, not the way of what they fucking say. —Tim Armstrong of Rancid in the song “1998”, from the album “Life Won’t Wait”

There are consequences. You’ll never be on anyone’s short list, or long list. You’ll never get a record contract. You’ll never have a big budget, or any budget. After you’re dead, no one will do a retrospective of your work, no one will make a documentary about your life, your name won’t be used as an adjective. You’ll always need a day job. You’ll die in obscurity, and you’ll stay there.

These things might not turn out to be true—nothing's certain about the future—but you have to believe they will. You can be happy about it, or unhappy about it, but you have to believe it, and you have to persist.

I had nothing, I had nothing to lose, and all that I was doing I was doing straight, always driven by the motto, “Either this way or no way.” —Blixa Bargeld in the 2008 TV show “Mein Leben”, viewable on youtube, translated by Google and corrected by me

Pig-headedness is only half of it. The other half is solidarity with the other punks, the other people taking their own way and taking it to the end.

Further, ever since ancient times, the skeptical Indra, Lord of Heaven, has come to test the intentions of practitioners, as has Mara the Tempter come to disturb and obstruct the practitioner’s training in the Way. All instances of this have occurred when someone has not let go of hopes for fame and gain. When great compassion is deep within you, and your wish to spiritually aid sentient beings everywhere is well seasoned, there are no such obstructions. —Eihei Dōgen in “Keisei Sanshoku” of his “Shōbōgenzō” as translated by Hubert Nearman

A Spell

All you have to do is lay out his clothes on a bed, a button up shirt, a pair of trousers with underwear inside them and socks slipped into their cuffs. Lay them out, then take them off, carefully, like you’re undressing a person. Unbutton the shirt, then pull first one sleeve over the hand and slip the arm out, then do the other. Unbutton the pants, and unzip them. Pull the cuffs of the socks over the heels, then pull by the toe, slipping them off the feet. Grip the waistband of the trousers and pull them down over the hips to the knees, then tug alternately at the left and right leg until they’re off. Last, pull off the underwear.

He wasn’t there until you undressed him, but at this final stroke, by magic, he’s there, back on your bed again like he’d never left. Don’t get excited though. Nothing important can be done by magic, and this spell has only brought back his body, cold like mud and as dead as a memory. But he will be there, which—maybe—is better than nothing.

The Good Samaritan

“What’s your birthday?”

“May 9th, 1969.”

A dental assistant is going through the usual routine with a new patient, a forty-eight year old man, clean shaven with a buzz cut, red hair flecked with white, a bald spot on the crown of his head, and dressed nicely with a pastel blue button up shirt, black slacks, a leather belt and shiny black leather dress shoes. He’s sitting in the dentist’s chair, reclined— the cuffs of his pants are hiked up, and the dental assistant can see even his socks are nice dress socks, dark blue argyle. But the man isn’t nice, she can see that clearly enough. Not to say that he’s mean, but he isn’t nice as in nicely dressed. This dentist’s office mostly gets poor people, people on state insurance. The man may be nicely dressed but he’s actually a bum, one that’s been taken in by some religious do-gooder who’s gotten him cleaned up, dressed up, and on state insurance, amongst other things. Their hope for him is that, if they can get him on his feet, he’ll be able to walk, so to speak, but unfortunately they’re wrong, in this case. The man may be kind, and gentle, and clean, as in not a drug addict, but he’s been on his feet before and each time winded up indigent. He’s dressed nicely but his face is weathered and he has the mannerisms of a prey animal, so nobody would be fooled.

“Are you taking any prescription medications?”

The man shakes his head no.

“Are you currently experiencing any tooth pain?”

The man again shakes his head no.

She fastens a cuff around his left wrist to measure his blood pressure. She instructs him to uncross his ankles, which he does, then she places his hand over his right shoulder and starts the machine. His blood pressure is on the high end of the normal range. She raises his chair, and he jumps. She apologizes for startling him, and explains she’s going to take some x-rays. She leaves the room for a moment and returns with a lead vest that she drapes over his torso and shoulders. She prepares a film for the first x-ray, wrapping it in plastic.

“Open”, she says, and the man does. He has no teeth. In place of teeth he has bits of gravel, shards of glass, screws and springs embedded in his gums, which are oozing bright red, fresh blood.

Blackness Or My Reflection, However You Want to See It

One moment I was watching the countryside go by from the train. My mouth was full of gauze and the novocaine had worn off, but gazing out the window helped, and luckily I had a percocet in me. The percocet must’ve kicked in quick because next moment there was only blackness out the window. I looked around; there were jackets on the seats, but no passengers. I staggered through each car, but found no one. I stepped off the train into mud up to my ankles. No one, and black as far as I could see.

My Shoes

My shoes have holes in them, one in each, where the calluses on the balls of my feet wear on my soles. They still look pretty nice though, and they’re comfortable, as long as it isn’t wet outside. I plan on keeping them. I hate shopping for shoes. I hate that someone can pry money out of me just because I have feet. It’s like my feet don’t belong to me, like I’m just renting them from Vans. And it takes forever to pick a pair, and they never feel as good as my old pair, and they always look too crisp—not till after a few weeks do new shoes start to look normal—and the whole time I’m picking them, I’m thinking, “What’s wrong with the ones I’ve got on now?”, and it’s a good question.

So I’ve decided not to buy shoes anymore. I’m going to wear these ones out. I’m going to beat the ever-loving shit out of them. I’ll patch the holes in their soles, and the next ones, and the ones after those. If they rip, or if they pop a seam, I’ll mend them. By the time I’m through with my shoes, there won’t be a single original stitch of canvas or scrap of rubber left in them, all that’ll have been turned over forty, fifty times. I’m going to put a half billion steps on these shoes. They’ll be nothing when I’m done with them, unrecognizable. I’m going to exhaust my shoes completely. I have to. They’re the only shoes I’m ever going to have.

this is important.

Daily Mirror, London, March 9, 1939

Mastodon Droppings

I post very very short stories to Mastadon— my handle is @david_pasquinelli. Below are five of them. Enjoy.

Garbage Disposal

I pulled out a handful of noodles and egg shells from my garbage disposal. The water drained, but there was more. Fishing around, I pulled out: several chicken livers, which I couldn’t account for; a clump of moss the size of my fist; a dozen rotten plums that smelled awful; and, most disturbingly, clumps of red hair and teeth. I shined a light down the drain and saw a glint of gold, but when I reached in to grab it I cut myself. After bandaging my hand I looked again, but it was gone.

The Majors

I dreamt of playing Major League Baseball as far back as I can remember. I loved the game, but I loved the dream more. It was my treasure, my dream of making it to the majors. Through Little League, Babe Ruth League, high-school ball, and the minors, that dream was my best loved, most precious possession. I leaned on it when times were hard. I thought I had gone to heaven when I finally got called up. But now the dream is gone. Now it’s a job, and what do I have to lean on?

Poorly Done

He brought the muzzle of the revolver to his eye and, like the others, fired it. Just like that, there was a hole where his eye had been. But he’d done a bad job and made a mess of it. He writhed and screamed on the floor before—pop—he put out the other eye. Then he lay silent and still. The others approached the body, and stood there and starred at it through the holes in their own faces where they had once had eyes.

A Brief Interview with a Homeless Man

“If you were king of the world, what would you do to help the homeless?”

“Nothin’.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Why not?”

“Cuz they’re assholes.”

“Homeless people are assholes?”

“Yup.”

“But you’re homeless….”

“Right, so I know. I know a lot of homeless people; they’re assholes. What do you know?”

A Spider in her Web

I was always a good and diligent wife and mother, wholesome and modest, selfless, kind, tending to her family with the attentiveness of a gardener to his garden, a businessman to his business, a spider to her web. Even after the diagnosis, my first priority was to help my family cope with a future that wouldn’t include me. At first. But now I find all I want to do is fuck strangers and kill people.

The It

If you see it, you’ll always see it. You’ll try to ignore it, knowing as you do how much easier it is to get along if you don’t see it, but ignoring is seeing, and it will be so much harder to get along.