Anthology Complex, M.B. Julien [best e reader for academics TXT] 📗

want? Tao is now talking, telling me why he came here, and it appears as if he is saying that he knows how much of an annoyance he can be, and that he will stop coming to my place of residence unannounced. That he will be the polite neighbor that he should have always been.

 

"Yeah blah blah blah. Why don't you start by paying me back for all the food you've eaten here." Tao begins to laugh, "I'm serious, man." Now he's noticing that my right thumb is red, and he asks me if I cut myself. I look down at my thumb and realize it's beginning to bleed again. This damn superficial cut that won't heal.

 

"It somewhat healed a while back, but it never fully heals." Tao tells me that he bets the cut has turned into the shape of a circle. I look at it, and notice that he is right. "Circles are common throughout nature," he tells me. Tao begins to say "Did you know that" but I stop him mid-sentence because as interested as I may be, I know he will be here for thirty more minutes if I let him continue. Tao goes back to his apartment, but before he leaves he says "dictum meum pactum." He claims to me that his word is his bond.

 

About fifteen minutes later I leave my apartment, go down the first flight of stairs and then down the second flight that leads into the basement of the apartment building where my clothes are being washed. There I find Mary, who is also washing her clothes. She looks in my direction but doesn't entirely look directly at me. I go to the washer that houses my clothes, and there is nothing but silence from either of us.

 

I notice that she has gained even more weight than the last time Tao mentioned it. Maybe she just doesn't care anymore. Maybe she got fired and said "fuck it." She finishes putting all her clothes in her basket and begins to walk away, and while she's walking away I watch her, and I can't help but wonder how her brain works. How anyone's brain works.

 

The triune brain model consists of three parts, the neomammalian complex which deals with language and perception, the paleomammalian complex which deals with reproductive and parental behavior, and the reptilian complex which deals with aggression and dominance displays. Now what I'm wondering is if our brain is trained to use a specific part of its makeup more-so than others in accordance to a specific environment. Like social fragments, how we are different versions of ourselves around different people, I wonder if there are psychologically fragments, where a part of our brain dominates usage over all others depending on who or what the subject is.

 

Mary's social fragment towards me probably tends to stray towards the "you are just another useless person" personality, and her psychological fragment probably tends to stray towards the "full of contempt for you" complex. The funny thing is I know I feel the same way about her. Not in those words.

 

Chapter 44:

THE ROSE CITY

 

Several months ago, I had a dream. I'm in an office room watching a presentation on a big screen. Who exactly is giving the presentation I am not sure, it was simply a white shade in the shape of a human body. The white shade tells me that there was a man who once said that there is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on, and then he points to a photograph of a man covered in darkness.

 

"This man, like you, has realized that no one ever truly dies." That's what he says to me, and I try to ask him what he means but I can't talk because of the bandage over my mouth. Regardless, he tells me that what he means is that there is no such thing as birth and death here. That nothing here is real. Now he's taking the bandage off.

 

The white shade hands me a pistol and tells me to try and kill myself. In the back of my mind I have a severe desire to die, but as I press the pistol against my brain, I can't force myself to pull the trigger. "Remember, this is just a dream." That's what he says to me, but he's not the one with the gun pressed against his head.

 

"Kill yourself, and you will see that I am telling you the truth." I still can't pull the trigger. After the white shade realizes that I need a bigger push if I'm going to pull this trigger, he starts to talk about the beginning of the universe.

 

The white shade asks me if I believe it's possible to create something from nothing. I tell him that I do not believe that it's possible. Then he says, "So in order for something to exist, there must have been something before it." Then he goes on to say that I must be one of the people who believes that a higher being or beings created all that we see and know.

 

The white shade says if you cannot create something from nothing, and we consider this fact, then many will argue the impossible origin of the higher being or beings in the first place. When you think about it, these ideas in conjunction are in error.

 

"So now we consider that the existence of a higher being or beings is impossible. How can we be here? Did everything and anything we know and see come into place on its own? Maybe nothing is real. Or, maybe everything and anything that we know and see are as real or as fake to us as we think. Maybe if a person simply believes there is a God, then God will simply exist, and if a person doesn't believe there is a God, then God will simply not exist. Maybe it's that simple."

 

I think about what he says, then I ask the white shade,"Doesn't this mean that there is no fact or fiction? If I believe there is no gravity, will there or will there not be gravity?"

 

"In this place, there is gravity and there is no gravity. Depending on what you believe, you will witness one or the other."

 

At this point, in my mind I'm debating and comparing the real world to the dream world and trying to understand what this person is saying. The white shade tells me that I'm on the right track but going in the wrong direction, that I should be thinking about how similar these two worlds truly are.

 

"Now you need to pick up the gun, and then ask yourself where you will go when you are done with this life, and then you will or will not be able to pull the trigger."

 

I think about the question before I pick up the gun. I always believed that our bodies and our minds were separate, and that when our bodies died, our minds would live on. That we created our own afterlives. That what we truly believed in the unconscious brain is what would happen after we have passed. Those who believed in Heaven and Hell would go to Heaven or Hell. Those who believed in reincarnation would be reincarnated. Those who believed in a place where there is unlimited candy would go to a place where there was unlimited candy.

 

So I picked up the gun, and I tried again. This time I pulled the trigger, and I could almost feel the metal in my brain. After it was done, I was still there, in the same office with the same white shade and the same man who was covered in darkness on a big screen. "Don't be afraid." That's what the white shade says to me.

 

A few seconds later, the white shade begins to explain to me that this man who is covered in darkness in this photograph is a bad person, but that the real problem is that he can't die because of what he knows. He murders, he steals, he rapes. "All that bad guy stuff."

 

So I ask it what this has to do with me. The white shade says that I have to stop him. "But you just told me that he can't be stopped." The white shade then tells me that I have to convince him that what he is doing is wrong. That he cannot take advantage of a life with no consequences. That I need to show him that "every action has an equal and opposite reaction."

 

I ask the white shade why it can't try to convince him itself, and it says that it's for a personal reason. The white shade then says that it's not forcing me to do anything, that I have to want to do the right thing of my own free will. I look down and begin to think about what the white shade is saying and realize that there is a piece of paper before me. On it there is a small stamp that says "Welcome to the rose city." Portland.

 

Right now it's two a.m. and I can't sleep. This happens every once in a while. So instead of sleeping I find myself staring outside my window into a vision wrapped in street lights. A part of me ponders the vast amount of dreams going on right now in the world, or at least on this side of the world. Not three seconds later after the thought is born someone pulls into the parking lot.

 

After they park, and after one of the street lights cast a white light on the car, I can see the color of the car and I realize that the owner of the car is Lynne. Where do people go at two a.m.? What do they do?

 

I'd have to say about ten minutes have passed by and I'm still looking at this car and Lynne still has not gotten out of it. Did I miss that part. I'm tired, but I don't think I did. Ten more minutes go by and nothing has changed. Lynne is sitting in her car but I have no idea why. Is she asleep? Maybe she's too tired to get out. Maybe she is thinking. Or, maybe it's not her.

 

Five minutes, and now I'm falling in and out of a daydream. In the daydream Lynne walks pass me and she smiles along the way. I'm getting tired of seeing that damn smile. For a second I want to punch her in the face in hopes of never having to see it again. When I realize I'm daydreaming, after I find myself staring at the same car I've been watching for the past thirty minutes, I ask myself if I'm bitter towards Lynne because I'm jealous of Silvio, or if it's because I'm angry at her for being so stupid. For falling into a trap that is clearly labeled "Trap."

 

Now the car door finally opens, it's Lynne. She walks towards the building. That slight limp due to a foot that has said goodbye. Before she enters the building, she admires her flowers. For the rest of the night, I'm left thinking about why she could have possibly spent that much time in her car.

 

After the darkness of the night begins to lift, I hear arguing from my window in another apartment building. It's a little after six a.m. and I can't tell if I had slept or not, the only thing I knew was that I was awake now.

 

The arguing continues until one of them leaves and then there is finally silence. This is not the first time and I'm certain it will not be the last.

 

The frustration of not being able to sleep properly, it prompts me to go outside for a walk in an effort to tire myself. It has worked before. As soon as I hit the first sidewalk, that's when I hear it. Real silence. No cars, no birds, no Sun. No people,