Unfair Laziness

The coffee cups piled up like stagnant corpses. As if they were so many forgotten soldiers of the morning, forced to bear the boiling coffee in the wee hours then left beside their brothers to grow cold and die. Solemnly awaiting for a human to return was a waste of time for they found no solace in being pushed aside for smelly feet. Abandoned on the lonesome plain of unpolished oak the red and white polka-dotted cups sat with emotionless, pale, and placid souls beside the cool, tall glass of sweaty soda recently placed to seemingly stab at their self-worth. It even had ice in it… the bastard. It was a losing situation, coffee was no good cold. It smelled horrible, tasted putrid, and started forming disgusting rings around the inside when left for days on end.

"I am parched, and need sweet nutrients," I said aloud.

"Here I am, choose me!" One coffee cup shouted.

I laughed.

"Choose me! I was once suited to be drank! Choose me, it is not too late!"

I pondered this unexpected turn of events. Was I to drink day old coffee? Surely not. But as I laughed again and reached for the smug, chilled soda I saw through the bouncy carbonation an army of coffee cups all faltering together with belittled and broken spirits. A bead of sweat formed on my temple.

I eyed the soda from the corner of my eye and whispered, "what fate is mine to keep, I wonder."

The coffee mugs gathered together in a huddled, pathetic mass. Slowly marching at me with determined, angry looks of betrayal. Had they formed a rebel band of would-be martyrs? Surely they knew what would become of them if there was disorder in the cupboard.

I heard the slow beating of tribal drums and the polka-dotted ceramic marched perfectly in tune, almost with an essence of triumphance.

I asked in a commanding tone, "a mutiny?"

Not a word came from them. They continued marching in place to the beat of the ever intense drum. The sound grew louder with each passing moment and all other sounds faded from my ears as the coffee cups became the sole focus of my thoughts. I could feel them inside my head. The marching, the heavy, ghostly marching of The Abandoned rang incessantly and reverberated from the walls of my house.

"No," I spoke with a feeble whisper. Yet they persisted.

Drink! Drink! Drink! Drink! This was the tune of their song that cried in harmony with the thunderous beating of the drum. I looked for the soda, but it was nowhere to be found. What happened? What was going on? Someone tell me! I then saw the soda on the far end of the table being marched toward the edge. Calamity befell; as I reached for it with screams of terror the tasty, bubbly liquid toppled from the rim of the glass in slow motion. Time traveled slower than the orbit of the farthest planet as I watched the dark soda glisten in a moment of untasted glory as it, and the entire glass, fell to the absorbent carpet.

"No!" I roared at the very top of my lungs.

The marching, the drumming, the drinking, it became clear and loud as never before. My awestricken, watery eyes saw the murderous coffee mugs face me. They now all stomped toward me high above the terrible carnage their impatience had caused. They grasped brushes, nail clippers, permanent markers, post-it notes, anything that could barely be a weapon.

"Stop," I said, "stop!" But they did not, they marched ever forward. Those who were left behind for the rot of death had finally had enough, they were making their own rules, they were crying out in rebellion, they wanted recognition for their sad state.

"Stop! Please, stop it now!" They then paused, sensing the truthfulness in my voice. "Stop this madness! I will wash you! I will clean you! I will not leave a single flake of cooked pottery behind! I will do whatever it is you want me to do, please, just stop."

And so they did. And since that day I have held true to my promise in washing them, putting them in their proper places, and drinking all my coffee. Every now and then I will rinse immediately after use, as a favor or kind gesture. To this day I’ve left the stain from the soda as a constant reminder of the independence the coffee mugs risked martyrdom for. And, once in a while, I cautiously ponder the correctness of my actions for the clothes hamper, and the bathroom.

© Copyright 2005 - All Rights Reserved - Ryan Valich

As always I am looking for feedback on my words. I would love to make new friends who share the same passion for writing and abstract ideas and I invite anyone to make comments, either good or bad, and to contact me.

Boundaries

© Copyright 2005 - All Rights Reserved - Ryan Valich
As always I am looking for feedback on my words. I would love to make new friends who share the same passion for writing and abstract ideas and I invite anyone to make comments, either good or bad, and to contact me.

Theory

I don’t believe when people try and simplify things, and explain things in theories and mathematics, such as the universe and chemistry, that they are “simplifying” anything. All they accomplish is finding a consistent, a common element shared within those systems being observed. By being able to explain the universe in one theory, even if it were a thousand page book, does not simplify the universe itself. It does not take away, or even dumb down blackholes, supernovas, energy and gravity. All it does is create a personification that we know and understand the vastly complex workings of our reality. And that knowledge, to say we understand, is what humans strive for in their lives. To say, “yes, I understand why, how, and what.” But these all encompassing theories that are supposed to explain everything just don’t do their jobs. You can’t explain everything. You can’t explain or theorize the barrier between mechanical processes like chemicals and electricity in your brain, and the spark of elusive substance that makes your life and who you are. Because, in reality, all you are is a lump of tissue, muscle, electricity and chemicals… a machine. Even your mind is nothing more than a heap of lifeless computer. But somewhere inside that inanimate robot is life. When you look at it, what is life? Is it chemicals and atoms moving and interacting? That isn’t life. That is chemicals and atoms moving and interacting.

© Copyright 2005 - All Rights Reserved - Ryan Valich
As always I am looking for feedback on my words. I would love to make new friends who share the same passion for writing and abstract ideas and I invite anyone to make comments, either good or bad, and to contact me.

Red Meat and Trucks

I grab my crotch and spit, because I am a man. I have a foul mouth and use every unintelligent word in the French and English language at least twice in any given sentence, because I am a man. I play sports and believe in it religiously. The important things in my life are, in this order, as follows: The Size of My Genitals, Sports, God, and Trucks. Women and Booze run side by side.

I am insensitive and uncaring about the feminine creatures or sides of reality or anything even remotely related to them. Yet, I try and sleep with as many women as I can and take as much as I can get from them in bed without trying to return the favor. If I can not get my way I will become childish, and violent. I have more love for my arms and chest than a mother does for her children. I am shallow and incoherent in my reasoning and have little tolerance for annoyance. If something does not work, hit it. I know in my heart it is cool to tell disgusting jokes and look at pornography on a regular basis with my other drunken friends.

Working on cars makes me awesome. Being dirty and sweaty makes me release an aura of animal-like sexuality and the women can sense this. The most logical step would be to remain filthy, unshaven, and stinking for as long as I can. I never clean under my fingernails.

Competition is what drives me. It doesn’t matter what it’s over, as long as there is something to compete over, I will try my damnedest to be the winner. I would even compete over a hypothetical situation or nonexistent prize. I am still the winner even when I loose, because I don’t loose. And even if I did loose I’ve had more babes than him, plus my rod is bigger and I can drink him under the table any day. So it really doesn’t matter, these things are obvious to anybody how much of a man I really am.

I only eat red meat.
I only drive trucks.
I am a sore looser.
I am selfish.
I am rude.
I am cold.
I am distant.
I am unfaithful.
I am arrogant.
I am childish.
I am hurtful.
I am a mold.
I am a cookie-cut.
I am one more disease in the mind of man.

© Copyright 2005 - All Rights Reserved - Ryan Valich

As always I am looking for feedback on my words. I would love to make new friends who share the same passion for writing and abstract ideas and I invite anyone to make comments, either good or bad, and to contact me.

My Own Brand Of Karma

I woke in a feverish frenzy. Slinging the covers off my bed I muttered some incomprehensible words. The room was lit by the pale streaming fingers of the moon that shone through the windows. The light was too bright, and it made me realize that something was wrong inside my stomach, inside my mind. Shooting pains seized me in a death grip as I writhed like a hooked worm on my rumpled bed. Tears and prayers to God were the only thing that could come out of me. I grabbed my hair and pulled as hard as I could several times to avoid the pain. I started hitting my leg with all the strength I had, I pounded all over my body and the momentary but acute pain was relief for an instant. Was this my punishment? Incoherency began. I could hear the cold sweat swelling inside my pores and scraping down my temples. My heart was about to stop, I could feel it. Somehow I managed to stand on wobbly legs and stumble into the bathroom, my dogs started barking at me furiously, as if I were an intruder. I reached to brush them out of the bathroom but they growled at me and backed away with the fur on their neck raised.

The pain started worsening and I collapsed on the floor of the bathroom. The room started looking more like hues of red and blue as I stared at the door lying on my side with my ear pressed on the hard tile. The whole room turned red, gradually, then to blue. I started throwing up, my body didn’t heave, and there wasn’t much discomfort as it formed a puddle not far from my face. The little bits of undigested food began to quiver. My brow furrowed involuntarily. Then, somehow, from the pool of stomach fluid this fish came, as if he were rising from a deep ocean. My vision began to get choppy; my brain could no longer keep up with my eyes. I only saw blurred snapshots of the room as the fish flopped around on the ground.

The next morning I awoke on the floor. After collecting my thoughts I realized the prudent thing to do would be to clean up the mess. So I grabbed some paper towels and some disinfectant and cleaned the bathroom floor more than once where the fish had died. I put its carcass in a glass jar full of chemical preservatives and slapped a white label on it. With a permanent marker I wrote: JOE. Then I opened the closet at the far end of the room and placed it on the third shelf down, sixth spot over, right next to DAVID.

When the phone rang a feeling of euphoria came over me. I hesitated to pick it up because I knew what this was. It was Paige, she told me that Joe head eaten some bad fish last night and he was really sick… he had to be checked into the hospital for food poisoning. She said she needed me to come into work to cover for him because now they were short-handed. Even though it was my off day, I was glad to do it. Besides, last week I covered for David.

I never liked Joe. Maybe I’ll save the next label for him also.

© Copyright 2005 - All Rights Reserved - Ryan Valich

As always I am looking for feedback on my words. I would love to make new friends who share the same passion for writing and abstract ideas and I invite anyone to make comments, either good or bad, and to contact me.