Jake's Muffins

I have a friend named Jim. He's the truest kind of friend. Jim is a tiny green bug that sits by my bed every evening as I think myself to sleep. He'll often frolic in the air, his wings conducting the music of my mind. When I am feeling affectionate I will call him "Jim-Jam-Alabamastan". If my patience is fading our relationship becomes more professional, and he becomes simply "Mr. Jim". When it's cold out we cuddle close, and he recites sweet poetry into my ear:

I knew a fat lass named Nicole
When she ran it would jiggle her rolls
Now barrin' the worst case
She'll be takin' the first place
And swallowin' my sweet children whole

On those hot summer nights we lay sprawled together in a sweaty heap. The twinkle in his eye is a beautiful sunrise. His smile is a warm feeling. It's deep satisfaction.

Jim likes to talk to my sock, the dirty one in the corner. You know, the sock that hasn't made it to the laundry basket. It sits there, filthy and crumpled, the progeny of laziness. Jim will often argue with the sock all day. I call his insults "Little Boy". I call the sock "Hiroshima". Every once in a while the sock will argue back, but you have to pay attention to catch it. It's troubling to watch someone you deeply care about slip farther and farther away from reality. I often plead with Jim, but it has no use. I tell him to come back to me, to embrace rationality, but he'll just mutter that it's "patty time" and that "those hamburger bastards better watch out".

Jim died yesterday. It was a freak accident. My shoe slowly lowered itself onto his fragile body and began to turn him into a fine paste. Jim tasted like a mixture between a  peanut and an oyster. Sometimes you hurt the ones you love, sometimes you eat them.

Things have only gotten worse. That sock is a mouthy son-of-a-bitch. I am starting to understand why Jim had such problems with it. I tell it that we can get along, that things don't have to be this way, but it is a cold-hearted sock. I fear that  it has some sinister plan, some great evil planned for me. I often wake in the night to find it silently contemplating me, a dark lust in it's fibres. My fear is palpable. I live in dread, and from my dread comes a single question. The question is desperation. The question--my question-- is this: What does cotton taste like?

I dreamt of my shoes. Last summer I was destitute. I was a sad pauper. With my last ten dollars I purchased a value-pack of 60 hot dogs, and a box of 24 packages of instant noodles. I have never loved noodles so much. When they're the only thing to soothe the pangs of hunger in your belly, noodles become a special friend. Every time you drop them into that bubbly, boiling water, you wave good-bye to a comrade. They bravely give their lives in the war against emaciation. You always try and play a bit of pretend. You'll add as many spices as you can. Some cayenne here, some sea-salt there. You're a great chef, creating an even greater feast. Mmm-mm, if you close your eyes it's even easier. Once it's mush in your mouth it could have been anything. After a while I really was enjoying a grand feast. Hot summer days, nothing but noodles, dementia is the best spice.

The hot-dogs were more difficult. Chewing those I began to picture ever runny pig snout I'd ever seen. Pig lips, pig intestines, pig ears. Oh well, meat is meat when you're hungry. No lovely facade to cover it up. I made do. I even had enough change from my ten dollars to buy a package of hot-dog buns. Six buns, sixty hot-dogs. I could have rationed them, given myself a treat every ten hot-dogs, but I was greedy.

So, about the shoes. Back in those days I had a lot of bad habbits. If I required a new pair of shoes I would simply make my way to the local Zellers, try on a pair that suited my fancy, rip the tags off, and quickly leave. It seemed amusingly easy. Why pay for shoes? Why pay for anything? All it takes is a hero. One minimum-wage, pimpled hero, and maybe a huge black taxi-driver, to end the fantasy. It wasn't even shoes that time, but some tender steaks. So, the gig was up, I'd been caught red-handed. That's a different story, but the point is that once you've been caught, even if you've done it a million times, you start to get paranoid. You're weary, and it's harder to convince yourself that you can pull it off. So, as a result, my shoes suffered. The backs became worn and frayed. Soon that plastic piece at the back began to dig into me with every step. Oh woe.

Most days I'd walk across town, peppering the local businesses with resumes. I pictured myself as a gangster in the 1920's. I had a tommy-gun and a slick hat. My name is Jacob Moffatt and I worked in tech support, rata-tat-tat. It would usually take me about two and a half hours to walk to one side of town, and the same amount of time back. My feet began to rebel. It was a mutiny aboard the S.S. Jakester. The demands were simple, some comfy kicks, and a brothel of busty women. I pleaded with my feet. and we eventually agreed that if I could produce the shoes the situation would be settled.

I was living at my friend Lee's house that summer. It'd seen a lot of tenants come and go, and I knew there was bound to be some stray shoes hanging around. I found some very fashionable black heels that I pranced in briefly, but decided they weren't the best bet. After more searching I found a lovely pair of Nike Airs. They'd belonged to my friend Lee's brother, and were two sizes too large, but they were awfully comfortable. I haggled with Lee for a bit, and out of friendship, or perhaps pity,  he allowed me to claim the shoes. From then on I would flop around town in my large shoes, walking on a cloud.

My dream last night was trivial, and the only reason I told the story was because I wanted to relate, to you, this freshened memory. That summer was amazingly fun. I fell farther than I ever have, literally and metaphorically. Damn roofs; soft and wonderful grass. There is no damn point to this. To be honest, those shoes stunk so terribly I can understand why they were left behind the couch. It took a Navajo spirit man and the sacrifice of a baby squirrel to cleanse the smell, well, almost. That reminds me of this transvestite I used to work with, haha, oh well. Adieu.

“I wish I had been born a bird instead,” he said. “I wish we had all been born birds instead.”
-Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

My dread always grows with the darkness of night. Sometimes I stare at my hands. The absence of light makes them terrible somehow. The terror is fascinating, though. I can never look away. I gaze at them minute after minute. When light returns, I search my hands, trying to find a glimmer of the fascination that I find every night, but I never can. My sanity is a poor joke, you need only laugh out of sympathy.

The other morning I woke up and there was a tiny dancing man near my desk. I stared for a few moments, blinking the sleep from my eyes. For thirty seconds he continued to jig, every movement was a silent mockery of rationality. He faded, and the phone rang.

I think the idea of time-travel is nonsense. Time is truly beyond our comprehension. Every moment is right now. This is eternity. Every moment that has ever happened and will ever happen is right now. Time is simply our perception that reality is moving forward. Or, maybe not. There is no way to perceive time objectively, only subjectively. Our minds and our senses are part of the experience, and are therefore subjective. Perhaps my keyboard doesn't exist, and I am sitting somewhere, comfortably insane. Perhaps this is all some beings fantastic dream. It's impossible to know, but it isn't practical to believe in such things. Perceived reality should be our foremost concern. Realizing that certain things are currently, and probably always will be, beyond our comprehension is important.

Sometimes life becomes depressing. I realize that even my deepest passion is simply my brain reacting to some chemicals. Is there something else happening? I've always completely seperated myself from any kind of mysticism, but hope urges me to consider other possibilities. Perhaps in love there is something beyond simple chemical reactions. I want to believe it. It feels odd for me to try and accept this aspect of being human. I love life so much, this is my best option.

Fear is useless; fear of failure, fear of judgement, fear of anything. The joy of life is in the living. Being afraid to try new things and take risks limits us from living life to it's full potential. People are afraid to ask questions. If someone makes a statement and you don't completely understand it, there is no shame in asking what they mean, or asking them define something that you don't know. Lack of understanding is not a confession of inferiority. Nobody know's everything. We learn through experience.

I don't mean that we shouldn't be weary of dangerous things, but that doesn't mean we have to be afraid of them.


"The preceding merely defines a way of thinking. But the point is to live."
-Albert Camus

Evanescent euphoria my mind can see
It's an old man's blinking before death,
His sallow eyelids creating a slow fade

I can perceive his ephemeral smile
I understand the celebration: his birth, his death
Betwixt is a tragedy, a woe; the epitome of anguish

But within, still, a hope
Eternal endurance for the illusory
Man's forever struggle

His breathing rasps, then ebbs
A pale hand reaches for the sky, and then falls
His final dream is a tear sliding down his cheek, reflecting the stars

The stars weep, splashing tears across the sky
Millennia of joy, sorrow; a modicum of infinity
Now is forever: an ageless euphoria
Time's façade--laid bare to eternity
All are one. I am, only I.