Akrasia Read online

  Cash in da bag he-ah! Put da cash in dah bag!

  Okay—move it! Show ’em to da vault!’

  EXT. Bank

  Ski-mask guarding the door, looking at his watch.

  ‘C’mooooon…’

  INT. Bank

  ‘Whadda ya mean dere’s no money in da bank!

  Whadda ya mean dere’s no money in da vault!

  Hey! HEY EVERYBODY!

  Dere’s no money in da goddamn bank no more!

  Whatta youse fucktards tryin’ ta pull here?

  I wanna talk to da manajah!’

  All goonsquad throw down their toy guns and rip

  off masks in frustration. Bank patrons begin rioting. Cowardly Curly steps out from the back:

  ‘Uh… boss? Boss, we did find one t’ing in the vault, but, uh… you’re not gonna liiike it…’

  ‘WHAT is it?!’

  EXT. Bank

  Massive explosion destroying whole building instantly. Green confetti falls from the sky.

  Tiny green squares falling down. Everything else

  fades to black but some of the tiny squares remain,

  pixelating, writhing, glowing, resembling a sort of rudimentary or digital life.

  *

  It’s what we call going beyond the infinite,

  moving beyond the gleeful disorientation

  of the hall of mirrors.

  Trudging down the corridor,

  walking in Jupiter and Saturn’s footsteps

  (timesteps),

  an infinitude of your reflections on either side,

  suggesting inevitability and multiple timelines,

  and if you turn to the left or right

  you freefall into vertigo nothingness forever.

  ‘Even the greatest stars

  lose themselves in the looking-glass.’

  But there is a way out, a way through.

  There has to be.

  Just keep going,

  one foot ahead of the other.

  And you will find what looks like a lake,

  asterisk-shaped, turned vertical, facing you,

  its shore an elaborate gold frame on the wall.

  The water is a black mirror,

  the one mirror Narcissus couldn’t stand.

  It is dark and stormy but you must look into it

  until the shadow face emerges from the depths.

  ‘We are ruled by whoever we cannot bring

  ourselves to criticize.’

  Do you criticize yourself?

  Not formless masochism but targeted

  self-improvement.

  Unless you concentrate and will the inverse face to appear,

  unless you recognize your own face in the mirror,

  and unless you then offer the appropriate reproof—

  then the shadow will continue to rule over you,

  without your even realizing that this is so.

  Ruled by the negative,

  no matter how positive you act,

  until you seek, confront, and conquer the face in the depths.

  *

  Coming to the conclusion that you don’t know what’s best for everyone on planet earth

  and that there shouldn’t be one right way

  for everyone to live.

  When all celebrities are in concentration camps,

  then we will finally be free.

  The merciful failure of managers

  to guide humanity

  into a routine practice of artificial insemination,

  in order to make scientific society sustainable.

  The runner gets weaker with every step

  closer to the finish line.

  An asymptote straining toward zero,

  trying to get out of the red.

  All media used as pornography.

  Oh good guys, what’ve you done to yourselves?

  The sound of a fetus being expelled violently and prematurely from an artificial womb,

  autotuned and filtered

  into the ringtone of a cash register.

  Canned laughter.

  Then groans.

  Dude, do you ever think, like,

  —Religion’s just here to control people,

  maaan.

  Dude! Like,

  religion’s just there to control people…!

  That’s like all it is.

  They say it built civilization.

  Well that’s pretty fucking stupid.

  I think it was always pretty fucking stupid.

  Dude…did you ever think about how like

  We don’t matter.

  Like none of this is anything special.

  We’re like on this rock that’s just floating in space.

  We’re like a insignificant speck man.

  The important thing to remember is that we’re

  insignificant.

  That’s like profound dude.

  Coming to the conclusion that you don’t know

  what’s best, etc.

  And I think floating rocks are pretty cool.

  And maybe in the end you’ll beg to be controlled.

  You’ll beg to be given some sort of stability,

  at any—and I mean any—cost,

  if only something could hold it together,

  cuz you can’t hold yourselves together anymore.

  (All celebrities – concentration camps – NOW.)

  And as it is you’re controlled by your own desires and helplessness.

  And despite all your wisdom & all your knowledge

  I think I liked your criticisms better when we were

  fifteen.

  I think you phrased them better then,

  and they didn’t just seem more original

  but they were more original.

  And you and I knew how to live better then too. Didn’t need silly phrases to remind us how good

  life was,

  didn’t need to see pictures of it,

  we just knew it.

  And then there was a joy even in the sulking,

  a happiness even in the frustration.

  Because it was simple & based on something real.

  And that’s not nostalgia, because you can’t buy it;

  it’s memory—

  (Because it’s only nostalgia that’s packaged, sold and resold. ‘No one ever caught a disease from a

  video screen’? Wrong!)

  —and you’re in my memory and there I can still

  love you,

  because what we had mattered.

  Even though we met when we were too old

  to have kids.

  You have to have them on accident before you’re 20 or it doesn’t happen at all anymore.

  Not for stupid smart people like us.

  Not in any normal way.

  But all the other stuff,

  all the meaningless stuff

  all the stuff we talked about so much—

  If it mattered once upon a time & I don’t hate you

  for it, for causing me to feel life and love,

  then it still mattered, and now it still matters.

  And neither one of us is so bad.

  And I forgive you whether or not you forgive me.

  Once I forgive you for wasting my time,

  suddenly my time wasn’t wasted.

  The moment when you know it’s a sure thing

  at least for a little while.

  Versus the anxiety, paranoia and worry

  over things you cannot and should not

  be allowed to change.

  Sometimes we have emotions that we can’t

  do anything about.

  This is as cruel as it is necessary.

  Life unfolding has tested the truth of our thoughts,

  the integrity of our actions, the likelihood of our dreams and theories, and some or most or all have been found wanting.

  So time for new thoughts, new hopes, dreams and theories (and I won’t let any force con
taminate those terms). So time for new life unfolding

  from the composition & recomposition of the past,

  with the new growing off that which has been accepted as sufficiently rotten

  (because our confidence games are backwards compatible),

  with the musk of the past,

  the smell of brimstone,

  pubic hair,

  burning wires,

  all derailing our trains of thought,

  and after the wreckage and smoke and laughter

  and mourning:

  a blank slate,

  a field of snow,

  and pine trees show me where to go.

  •

  Acknowledgements

  This text was partially inspired by—and would have been impossible to produce without—the following mix of good fellows and influences:

  ‘ttamaarack’, ‘thecelticrebel’, ‘maggotaur’, L.P., Curtis Kelley, Whilce Portacio, Snowpiercer, Hannibal (TV), Mr. Arkadin, and In Search of… ‘Michael Rockefeller’.

  •

  •

  About the Author

  Don Lashomb was born in upstate New York on December 26, 1981. He holds a PhD in English & Related Literatures from the University of York (UK) and is the author of several other works, including Analog Austerity, the Complete Stories poetry cycle, Kafka the Joker, and James Joyce Reincarnated: The WordGuru Glen Kealey.

  donalashomb.wordpress.com (now)

  www.donalashomb.com (soon)