l'etat des choses vs. l'etat des ames

The state of things vs. the state of souls

What about the soul behind the thing?

What about the people behind the postcard?

Alicia and I are at Cinema Plus, working again. It's slow again, because it's Thursday again and we're drinking White Zinfandel (on the house) again. Everything as usual. The wine is so terrible and cheap that we feel like we do the place a service by drinking it since no one else will.

Alicia scrunched up her face after a giant gulp: I'd rather drink the dishwater than more of this. You know, I tried to dare the Nacho Guy and his wife (regulars) to drink it and they wouldn't even consider it.

Well, it is free. The fact that we're showing Spring Breakers is annoying and sort of meta, which is probably why it's annoying. If you want to have "Spring Break in Florida" then walk outside, that's where we are. It's like when people go to the beach and take a ninety degree turn straight into a hotel's swimming pool. 

Chill out, the theater isn't that beachy. It's just a coincidence. The movie is pretty popular right now. 

Yeah I guess. Ever hear the term I need a vacation from this vacation? That's how I feel. I feel like I'm supposed to be living in a vacation but I just want a break from it. What even is a vacation at this point? People who vacation here would rather watch a movie about a vacation here than have their own.  

I think you're over-thinking it. 
She turned back to her wine as if that was less offensive than my company.

Closing always meant hearing the loose threads of belligerent bar band funk music lazily floating on the salt in the air, disconnected by the darkness, tangled in the drunkeness. I curse Jimmy Buffet, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the whole reggae genre individually each night for what they have done to my hometown. The image of old people dancing with their shoes off and generally trying to get their swerve on with one another has been a trauma for more people than just me, I'm sure.
I turn all these things over in my head on my walk home.
I wonder about how many souvenirs the tourists bought here that they didn't need, what it's like to unpack a suitcase full of plastic "good times" that someone made just for you to buy. Reducing a place to its attractions, building an economy off of impulse buys, booking bands that sound like worse versions of already shitty bands, bands that don't even pretend to be anything else, validating an existence by how many pictures you have of it in different lights and at different angles.
A lot goes into that fetish. A lot of lives, tons of alcohol, and too many beach-related puns.

The state of things vs. the state of souls

Fast, moonlit bike rides along the sandy road next to the beach. The water is visible in pieces, a massive geographical feature that plays peek-a-boo with anyone sober enough to notice or care.
The measure of an entire ocean offered to you in the holes between each resort.

If I wanted to get my gears sandy tonight (and I don't) it would be a romantic moment. The moon casts several different spells on the sea, and I'm not a sea creature so I don't know the extent of most of them, but what I do know is that it changes all the water into silver on the right kind of evenings. 

One giant mirror poised to swallow its reflection. 

I used to get pretty spiritual about that.

How could anyone hate the ocean?

I used to ride here at night, float on my back in the dark water, and pretend I was in space.

Water so dark it was opaque.

 I would swim at dawn; watch one old couple walking along the shore holding hands in soft January rain.

Now I get about as spiritual as I've got time for at a stop light. 

Riding home along the beach part is the nice part. Strange things come into my head, and although Deleuze and Guattari weren't writing about the ocean, the quote always comes back to me: "attributing to itself subjects that it leaves with nothing more than a name as the trace of an intensity." You could throw all these buildings, all these people, all these subjects with all these names, into its gaping mouth and that would be what's left: the trace of an intensity.

But you know, that's a stop-light's worth. 

In down-town, beach art and bad murals pass as about the only meditation on the issue, and riding through down-town is inevitable at this point in my life.

Ride past the graffiti, bottles scattered in areas below neon paint, and there's definitely more to it than the beach art, and there's probably a little more to it than the anagram I left on the theater board last night.

To each his own, to each his own. 

Outside tropical Mellow Mushroom...

I hate the fact that I feel like Jay and Silent Bob when we smoke outside of your work. 

We could go to the parking garage if you want, princess. If we stay out here though, your exboyfriend can see us through the window while he tosses dough. 

Dough slinger hahahahahaaaaaa 

Cute. 

This is how our conversations always go.

I would like to say that I come here to bullshit with Alicia on her breaks
But

She's probably right.

He's probably got something to do with it.

You know, he's going to get fired soon.

What a saucy story, do tell. Hah. 

Hah. 

Not if you're going to keep being punny. 

I'm sorry but you know they'll just hire him back. 

They always do.

Silence sort of settles between us, then.

I feel like I can almost hear the not-too-distant waves crashing on the beach

But it's just the sound of traffic

Whooshing by.

Traffic mimics the ocean in a lot of ways, but its mostly the sound of evening traffic

Periodic whooshing. 

Regular though it should be random.

I look through the window and I do see him staring at us

Slinging dope I mean dough. 

I remember breakfasts in that pizza place

Eating blueberry pancakes from the cafe next door

Drinking whiskey and coke out of Mellow cups.

I certainly didn't get that look then.

When you didn't have stupid facial hair.

The hip I'm-always-going-to-work-at-a-pizza-shop goatee.

I decide to wave at him. 

Turning back to Alicia, I see a fine diner and tourist from the great state of Who Cares speaking to her. 

I tuned in just in time.

She was talking about paradise:

"You must be so happy to live here. I'd seen oceans before, sure. But this...

When I was on the beach, the entire experience felt like magic."

Alicia, trying to earn potential tips: Haha yes, it is beautiful here. Nothing else in the world like it.

"When I closed my eyes and breathed in the salty air of the shore I didn't smell fish, or garbage like the man-made beach back home. This place smelled like harmony. Bittersweet paradise. As Andre Breton said in Nadja: 'Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or will not be at all.'"

You probably should've inhaled a little deeper, ma'am. As Joseph Conrad said in Heart of Darkness "The horror! The horror!"

Before either of them responded, I got on my bike

and rode away.

No point sticking around for an awkward conversation.
(or an awkward pissing contest
about who could irrelevantly apply
the most famous lines from famous books)

You wake up and you smell bad

(that's a given).
I just want to know what time it is; I just want to know where my bike is; I just want a glass of water with ice in it and I really don't care that's it's from the tap; I just need to get to work and see how that goes.

I walk outside and it is

too

damn

bright.

It's the Heat and Houses.

The scorching heat. And here, it sticks around for most of the year.

The scorching heat that sticks to the sidewalk

and sticks to the blisters on your feet

and sticks to the houses

sticks to the light

And that's really going to suck TODAY on THIS bike ride.

I'm just going to bike in this heat and light until

I'm not left with anything, until I don't notice the landscape 

or remember my childhood anymore. 

I live on the beach, not on a postcard.

I live on the beach, not on a postcard. 

That was always the thing that got me: everyone telling me I lived in paradise: the vision of sugar sand and Curacao- blue oceans (that even taste like oranges, right? It is Florida). Bring your children here, they've outlawed curse-words forever. And every local is a lifeguard so you don't have to buy them
floaties if you don't want to (and if you don't want to, you clearly have something against adorable family photos).

I work at a fucking T.J. Maxx.

I remember when they ripped up all the native trees down town
and replaced them with palm trees.
They keep replacing them with palm trees
because the fucking things won't keep living.

I also work at a decrepit, locally owned Dollar Theater. Our best nights of the week are when we show children's movies. Parents love bringing children to the only movie theater in town that sells Drought Beer and bottom-shelf wine.

we find ourselves smoking...

again.
on the stoop outside work
watching traffic.
(It's mostly tourists).
We're getting through this

one

glass

of wine

at

a time.

(like usual)

putting out our cigarettes in empty beer bottles

 or flicking them at mini-vans that drive by.

Wayne's there with his motorcycle, like clockwork, for the free Amber Back we give him during our after-hours binge drinking session that costs the place I-don't-even-know-what. He's like... sixty million years old and has hand tattoos, but he's got a boyish face and charm about him. We're all so different in age because that's the kind of place this is.

i'm biking home now because i finally got my DUI

i'll see you all in Hell

(where we belong)

because i'm going to see you tomorrow

at T.J. Maxx

fuck you, i thought you were lonely, i thought you wanted to hang out.

you're right

i'm not drunk enough yet to sleep alone

you know i've got wine at my place
i know that of pretty much every place.

cool, we'll get out of here then whenever the traffic lets up. it's almost midnight, they'll probably all be settled in their bar stools soon. 

yeah okay
can i get another cigarette?

people shouldn't bring their children here.