Endgame is a kind of sandtrap.
I'm having my first cup of french-pressed coffee in almost a month...survey says, "better than Nescafe, but too ritualistic?"
I just sifted through ten minutes of Family Feud blooper reels for a good clip...and I just don't think bloopers are that funny, maybe...or youtube's standards are awful low.
Ok, that's all I've got for today...I'm already late...and I'm officially in charge of keeping up with another blog at Dear Navigator, my pseudo-job.
Here's an excerpt from the Variety of Literary Experience Series I'm messing around with:
Beckett
My friend insists Beckett’s a bad roommate.
“This is what he said,” my friend said, “‘There are four Pringles to be eaten.’ He announced, then he counted them. ‘One…two…three…four. Or this is three, and four is this one, then.’ Those are his actual words. Then, ‘if I start with one, it would make sense to follow to two, or even three, considering the size, if not four. Two would be more…natural. But what do I mean? Eating any one would leave me with three…a chiptic.’ Do you believe that? He makes jokes all the time, but he doesn’t laugh…he never ever laughs.
“I’ll take him,” I said.
“He’s up all night, doing whatever…I don’t even think he does anything. The guy just doesn’t sleep.”
On the other hand, Beckett didn’t ask for much. He’s never stolen anything from my friend, no food or paper or pens. Nothing. He’s never even asked to borrow something. He doesn’t make much noise, and he keeps to himself.
“’There are four Pringles to be eaten.’ That’s what he said. ‘Eating any one would leave me with three…’ And then he didn’t eat them. Not a single chip!”
“You told me.” This was one of those conversations where nobody’s looking for advice. My friend just needs to say all of this before he heads home. And if we’re lucky, that will be soon.
“’One…two…’”
“You told me.”
“God damn him.”
But he didn’t mean it. Or, I don’t think he meant it. Ever since Beckett moved in, my friend’s been different. For the better. He’s out of the house more. He seems happier, even when he’s complaining. There’s a reason to be out of the house now. There’s a reason to be talking more, or looking to talk. Beckett’s at home, not doing much, staying up late. Beckett doesn’t go outside often, and when he’s inside, he doesn’t move much. Not lazy exactly, just still.
I met my friend at their apartment once and a bee came in the open window. I swung at it with a curled up magazine, but struck a cup on a speaker propped up beside me instead. Beckett was there too. He was sitting on the floor, actually, pretty much right next to the spot where the cup wound up. It was porcelain. It broke beside him with a meaty kind of clattering and, after a beat, he looked at it.
“Nothing to be done,” he said.
“Fuck there is,” said my friend from the kitchen. “Here’s a fucking broom.” He held it out in front of us…in front of me, to take. I cleaned up the cup and then we left for work.
We work all the time, my friend and I, at a Starbucks. Six to eight hours a day.
“I can’t stand him,” said my friend. We were in the middle of “re-training”. When you’re too slow on the assembly line, they put you in a room with two tables and a Mr. Potato Head Doll, which you build and reubuild and build and rebuild for an hour or so before you get a break.
“You don’t mean that,” I said. I stuck in an ear.
“But God damn him anyway,” said my friend.
The eyes slid into place.
“God damn him and whatever anyway.”
The arm wouldn’t stick. I put it in. It fell. I put it in, it fell again.
“He’s just this lump of impulse. Like he’s always right there on the verge of…not moving.”
The nose pushed the eyes up and made the thing look sad there in my hands. The eyes were upside down, but it didn’t matter.
When one of us gets assigned to “re-train,” the other starts fucking up until they put us in a room together.
“He pays rent on time-…,” I say.
“But do you know that feeling,” says my friend, “that feeling of just a whole lot of nothing and you’re stuck with it? You’re just moving around it because you can’t move through it. Even though it’s nothing, you can’t move through it because…” He didn’t finish his thought, because we were done.
The figures were built enough, and I stood mine up. The arm fell out.
“Excellent,” said the assistant manager. “Let’s try it again.”
(end of story/excerpt)
Guest blogger tomorrow???
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