He entered the am/pm superstore, walking past candyland,
chipsville, jerkytown. He approached
the register.
"15 on #3" he said. He put 15 cents down.
"you kidding" said the asian lady behind the
counter.
"i wish" he said and walked out, having purchased
1/13 of a gallon of gas.
"you know it, this not 1933" said the asian lady
as the sliding doors opened.
funny how biting the wit of register workers can be in short
stories.
---
There he was again talking on the telephone. That's the only memory he had. That's the only memory he'd need. Something in that conversation sparked
it. It made the right nerves in his
brain pulse, the right connection of neurons fire in perfect syncronization. "oooh" he said. He was in a dream. He had never known for sure.
But now he did know, somehow. He
put the phone down and jumped up in 25 quick, amazing and meaningless
sommersaults like the Ninja Turtles of the first Nintendo game did whenever
they jumped.
---
The 15 cents got him further down Mission St, which was all
he needed. It probably would have
gotten him back too.
---
"Watch this" he told Marv Albert. The boy grabbed the green LCD numbers off
his alarm clock and rearranged them into letters which spelled Paul. That was his name.
"I'm impressed" said Marv Albert.
---
It was all ok because he had read the Rza's book, "the
wu-tang manual." He didn't worry
about being broke. Rza, who dropped on
August 17, 1978, had written some nice quotes from artists as diverse as da
Vinci and Picasso as well as other prominent figures of riff-raff such as
Martin Scorcese, Samson and the prophet Mohammed.
"If there's something to steal, I steal it." -Pablo Picasso
---
Now Paul was in a movie to the soundtrack of Tom Waits' Rain
Dogs. There were Latin girls and
subways and guns everywhere. Someone
was walking spanish down the hall. He
looked out side and sure enough someone was driving a big old black
Mariah. The whole thing started to
confuse him so he reached under his seat and pulled out a big cone of
Strawberry Cheesecake and Butter Pecan Ice Cream.
---
Before he read the Wu-Tang Manual, he came across a quote by
Sufi poet Jelaluddin Rumi. It had a
profound effect on him in every domain of his life except this one: he could
not get a girl to come around, he was still too shy.
The quote was this:
"Let the body's doings speak openly now, Without your saying a
word, As a student walking behind the teacher, Says 'This one knows more
clearly than I the way."
---
One time while Paul was dreaming but didn't know it, he was
down near Fisherman's Wharf in a tourist store and he tried to steal a hat by
putting it on top of his own hat and walking out. But it fell off and he was caught by the asian lady who ran the
store. He had to sign a book of people
who stole. Had he known he was
dreaming, he would have signed himself as "Abigail and Albert Hockney,
Pennsicola, Florida."
---
If you're scared of girls, you get laid alot more in your
dreams than real life. Whether you
realize it or not. One time he had to
share a girl with the guitar player. He
played the bass. If they would have
practiced harder and perhaps did a few pushups everyday, there would have been
two groupies.
---
Here are some more good quotes, all found in a book titled
"A World Treasury of Folk Wisdom"
"To speak ill of anyone is to speak ill of
yourself." Afghan
"Worthless people blame their karma." Burmese
"Too much praise is really mockery." Ilocano (Filipino)
"A flatterer is a secret enemy." Hungarian
"A good cat deserves a good rat." French
---
When Paul was dreaming he liked to change his clothes very
often. He could do it in a snap,
however, they were not always the clothes he wanted them to be. One time he thought, it would be nice to
wear a suede blazer right now. Next
thing he knew he had changed into a blazer of Harris Tweed. "Close enough" remarked Paul. He then walked out of Arby's and into the
original cast production of Annie Get Your Gun.
---
The moral of this story is easy to see: the truth is anything you can't forget.
---
