Microscenes 4: Journeys

The theme for this months issue is 'journeys'.

[microscenes4]

bob schofield makes comics and other things.

[microscenes4]

PARADIGMS OF THE MULTIVOID

I had seen this all before, the green trees and blue skies humble of existing in utopia of profound beauty. But this wasn’t a perceivable beauty for the human senses. This was beauty that must have been accepted into the souls of men by means of the celestial touch of The One—the Unfathomable One.

I could see the generations of the past, present, future, and they were One. I understood their meaning of existing in this reality, but how they were conceived was a question with an answer far more elaborate. And then… I was presented with a blank canvas—an endless white. And then I looked up and a dark sky had formed. The sky was outlined with a purple haze of fascinating flashing particles. This vision had input new knowledge deep within my consciousness. I now had esoteric understanding. I now knew that these purple particles were the Multiverse of Voids—The Multivoid. My eyes were paralyzed. It engulfed me whole. Then my mind came to an instant reaction. I fragmented myself into several, spectral color beams of light, projecting into The Multivoid. Inside these beams were the will and the power of rationality, forming together a resistance of uncanny power. One Fragment confronted a Void, initiating a war. The results of that war have not yet been resolved.

***

I had awakened to find myself in the sudden realization that it wasn’t the dream that was an imaginary, false conception; it was my life. My life imprisoned in one of the infinite Voids that aggregated The Multivoid.

After that dream, I developed a newfound “transgressive perception” against the reality I currently dwelled. But it wasn’t a dream. It was more so an invitation to where I should have been a long time ago.

I had to forget what I knew about this reality. Undo what had been done. And if those who deny what’s true and what’s real, if they would ever catch a glimpse or touch a sliver of my World, then they would perceive nothing but The Unfathomable.

I don’t live in my own World. My own World lives inside of me.

-

Heath Ison roams inside The GENESIS of USELESSNESS and has a twitter @h33thison.

[microscenes4]

Krabi City Hotel

I am standing alone in a pair of orange nylon swimming shorts, digging my toes into the warm sand. I'm looking at my surroundings in anticipation, searching everything for a feeling, hoping for a natural reaction: a spike on a graph in an imaginary scenario that involves me lying on a table with wires and sensors stuck to my head while half a dozen seemingly important people stand around in lab coats waiting to see how my brain activity looks on a screen. Really, I'm not sure why I'm here. This was meant to be ‘travel’, it was meant to be fun. I'm looking at the sea and feeling absent. I suppose I'm not really ‘seeing’ the sea, that or I'm just too indifferent. The world is powerful, yes, but it doesn't make its impression on me like it used to, or like it seems to on others. I move out of discomfort, and before I have time to think of anything too substantial I am looking at myself in a Krabi city hotel mirror and feeling a single dominant emotion, one to which I can’t quite attribute a name or even a clue. Maybe I’m just too timid to call it emptiness, I can’t tell for sure. Soon enough the feeling, along with it’s heavy band of thoughts, will pass. I'm wise enough, now, to know I’ll be fine.

I wonder for a second how much tickets home will cost for flights departing tomorrow but am quickly distracted.

-

Lee Costello is the editor of Microscenes and he blogs at Home+.

[microscenes4]

Tonight; a journey into the room

I cannot leave this room. I am trapped and yet freed from anything. I have just finished making myself come. There is orange juice apparent. There is music.

I hold myself and watch it empty. Watch the bottles around me turn into vials and into smiles and into evenings and into a better life and yet I’ve said this before.

A friend once told me in earnest how badly he wanted to write a manifesto. I’d like to read that manifesto tonight. I’d like to curl up in a hole and die.

I’d like to die and smile at my corpse when I see it down below there. Down below there where there is nothing and everything and my hands are sticky.

  I’m quite disgusting. I welcome my own degradation and realize I’ll never understand a thing. I can read freud and not understand a thing.

  I can read derrida and not understand a thing. I can listen to drab pulsating music and understand everything. This is what I want. This is what I’ve made for me.

  For myself. It’s not for you. there is nothing worth doing anymore. There is nothing alive and dead. I like to watch the basement fall apart. The walls around me.

  They start melting. I watch them melt and become relics. I watch the walls melt and behind them are walls of digital clocks and I explore only to find rivers of come. 

-

Grant Maierhofer 

[microscenes4]

Wednesday

Darcy and Wednesday walked down the aisle of the passenger train to their seats. Darcy had headphones around the back of his neck and wore a backpack. Wednesday had brought a small suitcase and carried a bag under her arm.

They found their seats and sat down.

“You alright?” asked Darcy as Wednesday sat in the aisle seat beside him.

“Yeah,” said Wednesday. Her eyes were empty, as if her focus had been interrupted. She turned and looked straight ahead.

Darcy looked out of the window. Still trees were dusted with snow from the night before. He checked the time on his phone. They were on schedule. The sun was shining.

“Hurry up and wait now, I guess,” said Darcy, with a half smile.

Wednesday looked down at her fingernails.

Darcy looked out of the window again as the train left the station. It was warm on the train. He put in his headphones and turned on some music.

Wednesday took out her phone and opened the messages app.

Wednesday: train just left

Chad: see you at 8, excited :)

Darcy paused his music and took out one of his headphones.

“You’re sure you don’t mind if I go out with my dad tonight? I can cancel. I’d rather hang out with you,” he said to Wednesday.

She quickly locked her phone and turned to look at him.

“No no, it’s fine, really, you should go.” Empty.

Wednesday put her phone back in her bag and pretended to take a nap.

-

Taylor Everett is currently a musician/poet/writer living in London, Ontario, Canada. He tweets here and blogs here.

[microscenes4]

hero party

eventually, aladdin forgets the lamp in the bottom of the cave. he stumbles out to get his lighter and light his cigarette, and as he wafts the smoke around and takes quick note of a lingering headache which he fears is the onset of a migraine, the cave door closes behind him. He turns around and pulls his fists tight and tries to open the door of the cave. He bangs on the cave door until his fists hurt. He begins to panic, gets frustrated, slumps down against the cave door and wishes this was just a dream. Somewhere at the bottom of the cave a pink gas diffuses from the lamp and a smell like perfume, jasmine, orchid, and semen spreads out and stains the cave walls. At the end of his journey from the underworld, Orpheus turns his own weeping head into a bowling ball and throws it perpetually into the gutter in order to make Eurydice laugh. Eurydice watches from her home laptop in her pajamas but does not laugh. She clicks over to pornography in another tab.  Spiderman is not really spiderman; he is a Doctor, he lives with his elderly aunt who has dementia. He takes the train to work every day and listens to comedy podcasts on his ipod and he watches a documentary about highwire artist Phillpe Petit. ‘Ah,’ says Spiderman, ‘it must be amazing to feel so brave and alive’. But it does not feel so great; it still feels awful, says Phillipe, for pleasure merely fills the vacuum of itself. Years later, President Obama dies masturbating alone.

-

Roshan Abraham

[microscenes4]

Invisible Crowns

i told you run i took you the moment i decided it was okay to want you to think that maybe i didn't have to fear you to think that maybe i wasn't stupid or reckless or that if i was maybe it didn't matter that it would be worth it because i could feel the glow of the full moon as if it was coming from me and going to you i didn't think about being wrong or right i just wanted to be the whole sky to swallow you in it to love you i wanted to run to be feral and shivering i felt the force of nature when we went into the trees i felt that they would watch over me watch over us and we gripped each other cold and fearless and writhing the bleeding of past into future i mewled into the night giddy and changed and I could cry now a whole pool a whole sky it was as if a planet fell on top of me thinking back now to the sky and the trees and the rain and the dark and the stars i remember spheres all around me i remember smiling as we were asked for directions grinning holding your hand listening to you speak the jolly quality of your voice you’ve always been so cute with strangers after the woods we waited for buses and stood beaming bundles of pink joy wearing invisible crowns encrusted with jewel after jewel

-

by Lil Ashton.

[microscenes4]

The 25 Year Old Me

the 25 year-old me

is scratched by the unwelcoming claws of

paper cuts

however,

she has travelled too far

to let a few scratches push her away from

finding out what those paper cuts

are actually protecting

so,

she provokes them by

forcing the legend of how she transformed

from a mermaid to a purple dragon

down their ears repeatedly

the paper cuts fight back with blow torches

burning not just her, but also

the delicate fingertips of her readers

25 years is a long time

long enough

to turn split blood into tattoos

the moment it touches  paper

the 25 year old me has

readers who will blindly

tattoo her words into their arms

as armours to deter pesky paper cuts

the 25 year old me was

smart enough to look for the metal pen containing

the secrets of moving on from

the 24 year old me

now,

the 26 year old me

might be turning back into the mermaid

she once was

however,

she sees the metal pen shinning behind her

the light calms her purples scales that

were threatening to disintegrate

as it gets brighter and nearer,

she knows that

she can get strength from

the 25 year old me

to continue producing tattoos

for the coming year and

the years after that

even if the paper cuts become an army

-

Nilofer Neubert

[microscenes4]

From Captain Camelot vs. the Red Mantis (#76, 1962)

I have not been here long – I tracked my brother to this coastal city three days ago. He has not left yet. I feel him here. I know he will take a boat to a place far away so I stay around these docks. I am always armed and no man will question me, for when I find my brother, I will redistribute his bones across this dying galaxy.

-

Shaun Gannon

[microscenes4]

Juniper Green

One year. She told them she could only stay one year and then she would have to go. A year came and went. She quit her job, sold her belongings, said her goodbyes. She lost every friend she had. Her parents said nothing. The church leadership wanted her to stay another five years, and then they'd reconsider. Reconsider what, she asked? They didn't have an answer. They said she wasn't enough, she hadn't done enough, they said there was no one to take her place. She trained someone to take her place. She spent a year rehearsing a play. She showed up the first day and no one came, but she prayed. The group grew and she taught them to dance and perform. And a week after she left they performed at the front and her week-old replacement took all the glory.

But even before that she was broke and had no idea how. She reserved a ticket and she prayed and she got the other things ready. My Sunday school teacher offered to pay her tuition. She found a school to study at and a place to stay. But she still had no idea how. She reserved a ticket and did as she was told. On the Friday before her mother sat her down. "I've never seen faith like yours", she said. "I'll ask your father for the money", she said.

We arrived in the middle of winter. We escaped an increasingly slavery-like situation in the spring.

-

Guilherme Joshua Fantini Blake

[microscenes4]

up the road

Jon wouldn't fucking stop talking - we all knew it was basically his fault his girlfriend broke up with him and he was drunk and half-bitching about her new boyfriend of a week while almost crying so Dan was trying to drunk-reason with him because he was sitting next to him - I went outside to bum a cigarette off of Isaiah and get some air - I asked him why Kirsten was still sitting in her car she didn't look like she was on her phone he said search me and I didn't say anything because I've never heard anyone actually say that in real life and also it didn't make sense to me on several different levels - Jon’s mom came outside to yell at us for being too loud and waking her up - Jon stumbled out to argue with her I cut him off apologized reasoned with his mom until she left and led Jon back into the garage - he started talking to me about rose and I diverted the conversation to video games and told him I’d go get him another drink - I went back outside and couldn’t find anybody I guessed they went in the house to get some food - went back outside stared at the cloudy night sky for not very long decided to take a walk up the road - none of us had seen rose in months - there were no cars and hardly any streetlights - 

-

Nonetube

[microscenes4]

Journey to Speed of Light/Dances with Wolves Theme

I found this

randomly

start playing this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43wWPnwiSO8

listen to it

while watching this other one on mute:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpKdzeux33c

-

Robby Day's writing can be found at postcrit.tumblr.com