kaolin fire presents :: writing :: fiction

"APOCALYPSE"

words

Actually it did stand for something, but he'd never tell anyone. It was silly. Staying up late one night, sitting in a laundromat meditating on the spinning of washers and dryers, he'd come up with it. All points on circles are lamentable yearnings parenting self-enumeration. An argument against sanity. An exercise. The obvious lack of meaning making more poignant the meaning that coalesced within him under its pressure.

What can you do with ten letters? Ask not but for what ten letters can do to you. Those ten letters had swirled ruthlessly in his head, forcing him to leave the laundromat in a cold sweat, and stumble home.

He quit his job. He moved in with a few friends. Temporarily, of course. They believed him. All points on circles are lamentable yearnings parenting self-enumeration. It began to make more sense. Progress. Personal progress vs. societal progress. The more you live for your country the less you can live for yourself. He'd never considered himself an anarchist, but he couldn't shake the gut feeling. Those ten letters rumbled around in his belly, driving him crazy, driving him to the bathroom at inopportune times.

He started an e-zine. On geocities. The advertising amused him. He made a game of integrating it into the magazine. The pulpless magazine was dark and brooding dashed with fluorescent bunnies, straight dark satire out of the beginning of the seventies. Dread of the world animated into acidic retort and twisted realities. Within two months it had made a fair name in the counter-culture of America, the enclave of erudition known as Berkeley, California. All points on circles are lamentable yearnings parenting self-enumeration. Creation. Creation creating creation. Creation creating creation creating creations. It all had to do with circles. His life was two-dimensional. He was trapped in the circle. Everything leads to despair through halted progress. The magazine was a stagnant cess-pool of reused ideas. It was a joke on the people who submitted the stories they'd read thirty years ago and reworded as their own original ideas. They didn't understand that it was repetition. They didn't understand that they weren't being original by imitating people long dead.

Stuck in the circle.

He broadened the e-zine. It was no longer the private opium den of a few crazy beatnik-wannabes idolicizing the freedom of LSD. LSD. Limited spherical dynamics. He was stuck in the circle, stuck in two dimensions, but fear told him that even finding the third dimension would lead nowhere. The old tried and false method. The zine made local news for its collection of viewpoints. How different differences could be and still be the same. One philosophy graduate earned his Ph.D. rambling about APOCALYPSE. None of them knew the secret. Everything they said and thought were lies because the truth was within him, within the title. The title that they didn't understand, because it stood for something. It stood for something even though it stood for nothing. Circular logic. Oh yes. APOCALYPSE was beyond a doubt circular logic.

The death that was APOCALYPSE had taken on a life of its own. All of a sudden, his ezine had an editor. Eager beaver gnawing on rotting wood dreaming of log cabins. The zine had to end. The more he pushed against the circle the tighter it became. Knowing the boundaries of your cage too intimately can be a depressing thing. The APOCALYPSE ended with a silence that was painful to perceive. It took three weeks of unresponsiveness for someone else to take the reins. Of course it was the editor. The zine was different though. Less manic. It didn't have the unifying blade of APOCALYPSE driving it. All points on circles are lamentable yearnings parenting self-enumeration. All is dead alike under the sword of APOCALYPSE.

Reaching out for guidance, he started attending college. He'd never been and didn't know what to expect. It was strange. He tried auditing a few philosophy classes but they drove him crazy. Psychology made him barf. Neither could help him. MCB. Madly contaminated brainwaves. It struck him like an acronym in the dark -- he was whistling and it slugged itself into the back of his throat, choking him with its brilliance. Molecular and cellular biology was the perfect lair for APOCALYPSE. His first class made him a believer. It wasn't what was said, so much. He didn't understand ninety percent of it. Chemistry. Hah. What was important was how it was said. Intonation and elocution with just a dash of Mrs. Dash. Authority stood on the edge of the circle and told you to beg. He often fell asleep in class, in the back. He dreamt wonderfully brillig snarks. Splendiferous noggin-chompers blossomed lepidoptically within his cerebellum, reactions he could not sense but in the most abstract and subconscious manner. He felt good.

He didn't realize what had happened until the semester ended. He'd become addicted. He'd been following the carrot round and round the circle, thanking his masters for the slight attention and exercise they deigned to give him. College was not his place. He would not go back to that circle. Another point on the sphere.

Rocking back and forth, curled in the fetal position, he chanted. His friends could not budge him from their doorstep; eventually they stopped trying. They'd step over him, or even sometimes step on him if they were in a particularly vicious mood. He didn't notice. He spent a week there. All points of circles are lamentable yearnings parenting self-enumeration. He'd been enumerating versions of his selfhood. Why? What had led him to that? APOCALYPSE. APOCALYPSE. APOCALYPSE had given him the need to find new selves, to expand the circle. How had he not read the signs correctly? Where was his fault? All points of circles are lamentable yearnings parenting self-enumeration. Circles. Circles were driving him crazy. Spheres weren't much better. They were worse, in fact. One hundred and eighty full degrees of circles, give or take a delta/epsilon. Conniving against him. It was all so contrived.

Expansion. Creation. What was the antithesis of creation? Stagnation? Destruction? Both of those in some way created. Destruction of creation leading to stagnation? That sounded more complete. Was there a better completion? That was expansion. The mediocre as mediocrity. Nothing forced. Natural. A lack of natural greatness led to a nature all its own. All points on circles are lamentable yearnings parenting self-enumeration.

You can't grow to be outside the circle. Insight. The more he stretched the circle the more it tugged and pulled. One simply has to exist outside the circle. Boundary conditions. Definitions. What is your circle? What is your sign? The zodiac was a circle. Twelve signs. Some people say thirteen. Numerology was worthless. Anything was possible. Maybe that was the point. Define yourself outside the circle. Another flash of insight threw him through a window with horrific shock waves deafening his consciousness.

When he came to, he was running. Running away, he knew, the way you know things in dreams. He knew it as he knew things in dreams but he also knew that he wasn't dreaming. It was the opposite, where he had existed with conscious control without conscious existance. Existence. Circles. He knew he had to keep running. Someone was after him. Not after him. They would be after him. They might be after him. He was getting tired from running. He was tired because he was carrying a stereo and bleeding. Why was he bleeding? He'd probably stolen the stereo. A vague recollection of jumping through a window titillated his consciousness. Anything was possible within the circle. Defining oneself without the circle was necessary. Outside the circle. Anything was possible within the circle except existing without the circle. He needed money. He was running to a pawn shop. It was a good stereo, heavy, weighing him down but helping him to port outside the circle.

The shopkeeper didn't ask. He didn't say. They traded poison for poison in the silent ritual of dead people. His heart was loud. He didn't ask how much. He couldn't hear it. He couldn't hear his heart because its regular rhythm forced a silence inn his mind. The money was old and dirty in his pockets, sweating like the underside of soft flesh rubbing against itself.

The tattoo parlor was closed. He banged on its doors. There was no answer. He looked around. His blood was dry. His bones were dry. His mouth was dry. It was cold out. The day was dry and turning to dusk. He could wait.

He waited, eyes gauntly open, staring into his mind finding nothing of comfort. Signs of the zodiac danced around his body, tickling him with their dreams. He saw the tattoo guy coming half a block a way and ran to embrace him, shoving the money in his hands and begging to be freed. The tattoo guy didn't mind. Easy money. Simple poison. Simple job. Just another job. Just another quack. Twelve signs, twelve circles, one unified circle imprisoned on his body. The pain was intense but held him awake almost on the verge of orgasm. He felt the freedom being inked and probed onto his body, prick by prick. He swaggered when he left, as much from pride as from pain, his heart swelling while his body gave out.

The swagger soon became stagger, and he stopped in front of a cafe to sit and relax. To contemplate. Meditate. Circling within the meditation of where it began and beginning again. Circling within the meditation of where it began and beginning again without ending. He could feel that. He'd not found an answer. He could feel that in the policeman beating him up and awake and moving because people weren't allowed to sleep in public places. He was still stuck in the circle, stuck to the circle. Within or without the circle was stuck to him.

Definition was within the circle. Definition had failed him, for within definition were circles created, and beyond definition circles existed. All points on circles are lamentable yearnings for self-enumeration.

Insight was within the circle. Insight had failed him, for within insight lay solidity and definition. All points on circles are lamentable yearnings for self-enumeration.

Life was within the circle. Life had failed him, for all life offered was maddening circles. All points on circles are lamentable yearnings for self-enumeration.

Death was within the circle.

Death was within the circle, but at least with that he wouldn't need to know his failure.

The pain was negligible. The release was soothing. His manic energy cooled a little as he lay in the shade and escaped the circle.

Beyond death, he lay. Cold. Tired and cold, sweaty and hot. Shivering in his stillness. There was more. He'd not bargained for more. What more had he wanted? Less! Less was more and more less. Death had failed him, for all death offered was maddening circles. All points on circles are lamentable yearnings for self-enumeration. His position was quite lamentable.

God? He knew no god but APOCALPYSE. It was the omnipotent omnipresent force. He cried in his stillness. He wailed and railed and fought the world in his stillness. His blood coagulated. He was tired. He was dead, but he was tired in a weary way that he had not known in years. Lamentation was the disease not the cure.

All points on circles are lamentable yearnings for self-enumeration. He had spent a year succumbing to his fears by fighting to rid himself of all his fears. He had spent a year succumbing to his needs by fighting to rid himself of all his needs. Caring was the problem.

Nothing is permissible. Everything is necessary. Conscious paradox without within wherewithal. APOCALYPSE. APOCALYPSE unraveled and he lay in peace.