Often reality is not true, it just doesn’t know it yet.
To the right of his notebook is a beer. The condensation from the humidity leaves small puddles of water everywhere. It gets on the notebook. The pages crumble and some tear off silently. William, the writer, notices and gets a napkin to wipe it dry. As he grabs the napkin he doesn’t know there is a knife and fork in it, all wrapped up tight and cosy like two virgins on their wedding night. Rattles the most harsh noise as it hits the tiles of the open planned living bar.
“Fuck, sorry,” he says to the whole world, bending down, picking up the carnage.
The whole thing snapped him back to reality. Where the scooters drive by. Plenty of people going to plenty of places he will never see. A lady in a small pink silk dress and black heels walks past.
“What the fuck is she up to?” William says to himself, then falls back into a thought that takes him far away.
‘Truth has more freedom in fiction.’
he writes on his notepad, that had a look that reminds you of a taste. William wrote that after thinking that there is no reality. There is no difference between fiction and nonfiction because it is just your perspective, and you can perceive things that don’t happen, but did it? Often reality is not true, it just doesn’t know it yet. Anyway, the point is that truth is an essence that can expand further speaking to the soul, rather the logical mind. Before finishing half a schooner with intent, he wrote,
“She always said, “you lose your soul when you lose your temper”
she never realised there was soul in my anger. Ah, it’s all done now, no point worrying about it. They say alcohol makes you angry, well fuck those cunts!”
Then he drank the rest of his schooner like the perfect scene in a movie, a rebellion to change.
and he drank the drink a few seconds after the character he made up, inspired by him. That will go in one of his books, he thinks to himself. There is a writer named Henry in his next novel, and he is fishing for lines in the unmanifest to find the balance between real but still broken, wrong but knows there's no difference, stuck but enlightened, riddled with the booze, night and day separated like duality. William gets the attention of the bar staff.
“One more please,” he lies, there will be another, but one more for now, he means.
Before writing,
It starts with them thinking your perfect and they want all the good things in the world for you, then they realise youre not, and slowly, whilst not admitting it, they hope for a bit of pain, a bit of punishment, that false forgiveness manifests in hope you will be humbled, that they will forgive you, but the world won’t, rightly or wrongly.
He does not remember where it came from, or where it is going. Once written, he does not really think about it again, some things he wrote down were like that. The present moment struggles to see things sometimes. It can make him feel like a genius when writing shit and shit when it turns out to be okay. So he does not judge, if a wave wants to wave and he has a hand, then it can wave. He wrote,
Sober people lack the humility of a hangover and the sense of humour of being drunk
And he thought it was very funny. He was getting annoyed with those who parade sobriety. Celebrities shame his beloved alcohol whilst really, it is the pills and cocaine they are quitting. ‘I fell better after not drinking for six months’ says the now dead comedian. Yeah, its because you aren’t doing drugs that keep you up for three days. William wondered to himself; he has not been sleeping very well lately. Ah well, he thinks, its just a funny line.
Without anything really happening he looked to see he had written some more lines, he wrote,
Foresight is drinking small bottles of beer instead of pints so you don’t get too drunk.
I don’t eat meat the same reason I don’t fuck prostitutes, if I’m not man enough to hunt it, I don’t deserve to eat it.
Gods gift to man was women, the devils too.
As he read, he thought to himself, I do eat chicken sometimes though, and prawns, but I could kill them. He thought on with an opposing and likewise voice, could you though? kill a Chicken? probably not… A shrimp? surely. could you though? I don’t think so. Then he felt a little sad but at least honest. He thought and drank and the world seemed like you can pinch its fabric. I guess you literally can. But, as if the other side of his eyes, the side where he looks into the streets, is nothing but a shiny, funny wallpaper. Two girls with tattoos walk past together, he wrote,
Two lesbians walk past, “want a bit of meat between the bread?” I ask them.
They didn’t reply.
Then laughs, imagining saying it. With the essence of funny in his veins, he writes,
Sometimes you have to catch the porky pine, who is walking towards the highway, even though he is prickly.
And for some reason it is funny. Silly. He likes to feel silly, sometimes! The silliness allowed some sadness to creep in. He thought of love, he wrote,
I want her love so I can wear it like a badge, so this world will praise me, or at least just leave me alone.
William, the writer, was trying to figure out how to love, and found that his ego is a bit like Jesus and is constantly crucified for divinity. The noble Jesus is dragged through the mud and he is not THE holy spirit but becomes it. So I am Jesus and God because they are the same thing, yet the reality, you suffer on that cross my friend. He wondered if he had worked out Christianity now too, and its just the same as Buddhism. Then he thought to himself, wow, I am only thirty years old and I'm writing the bible without reading it. Then he thought, maybe I should read it, then he thought, maybe one day, then finished his beer. Walking back from the toilet he heard a conversation, some guy saying that if its love then genders don’t matter. William smiled and as he sat, he wrote,
I walked past a guy speaking with a girl and overheard him say, “when you’re in love with someone, then you’re in love with someone. It doesn’t matter the gender”.
A word jumped from my rib cage like a dog that noticed the door was open, “Faggot.”
William imagined him saying it and felt very naughty, mischievous and a bit of a cheeky bugger. He watched a good-looking girl with an okay looking boy together at a table, listening to music, holding each other in various places. He wrote,
And when you start to see the love of other travellers, you see how artificial it is, but rejoice in how they must feel, better than reality.
He felt a bit pessimistic. William was always worried about that, being a pessimist, he thinks it is the worst thing someone can be. Then he thought, maybe a rapist is worse, so once again he had no firm grip on what is real. He writes,
Do not mistake my vision for desire.
Then forgets. He writes,
The boy to girl ratio on this place was nothing but a waiting game.
So he ordered another drink, thinking to himself, what would have to happen for me to talk to someone? Shakes his head in acceptance and doesn’t worry about it. A group of three stand close to him, as if he wasn’t there, accepting his presence. They left, a bewildered William wrote,
For some reason they let me in on what I could only observe as a very private and intimate moment, as if I was a puppy, in the family photo.
He had written,
If I can make deat
He is not sure what it means. A guess would be something about death that was coming across as arrogant and antagonistic, something begging for humbling. Jesus on the cross. So he didn’t finish it. A man stood on the foot of a dog and his yelp went off like a sad and frightened smoke alarm. He wrote,
If evil had a sound, it would be the noise a dog makes when you step on its foot.
A girl with blonde hair and glasses walked by, nonchalantly William asked where she was from, she replied, “Belgium.”
“Nice,” William said and she kept walking.
“That’s funny,” William said to himself before writing,
I asked her where she was from and she replied and I said nice and she walked off.
“That’s funny” I said to myself.
He sat there, William the writer, wondering where he fits into it all knowing long ago, he doesn’t. But he likes the music, the anticipation, the feeling off getting home having left it, so he called himself a writer, and goes there for work. The writer is a lazy workaholic. Functioning at a high rate to no where. With faith. Before leaving he writes.
The sad reality is we are all here after the same thing, something.
