The Epicenter of What We Didn't Know

Piecing things together slowly but surely

On the Heels of Complicating a Simple Phrase

When Loïc Goretzka says not to worry about the out-of-tune symphony of bullets piercing through our jeep, I worry. Much less on the gunfire’s poor rendition of Julius Fucik’s, Entry of the Gladiators, and much more on the possibility that my business associate misunderstands the role I’ve been given. I know they’re only warning shots, I tell him, but please keep in mind I’ve been hired to worry. A noodle-like fellow wearing copper glasses that cover half his face appears on the cobblestone road and speaks into a blue megaphone - “Welcome to Austria, where actively participating in one’s own life is a little less exhausting! Leave all belongings and yesterday’s baggage inside what remains of your transport vehicle and [pause, look at watch casually] follow me to the Laboratory! [Laugh twice and mention your name] Call me Scarfface!”

The Austrian’s offbeat singing leads us into an underground sewer system complete with gambling dentists and hybrid bear-frogs suffering from jaundice. Unable to extract meaning or importance from the surroundings, he changes his mind and we ascend back to the smell of gun smoke and italicized words. Though wild geese aren’t in visual range, I still worry he doesn’t know the Laboratory’s location. When Loïc Goretzka yells at two split-faced coyotes gnawing on our jeep’s damaged tires, the carnivores disappear like spaghetti under Alfredo sauce. Scarfface cracks open our rusty passenger door and speaks into a red megaphone - “How do you change a tire? Indeed [pause] [pause again]. I forgot that you guys brought the Laboratory! [Laugh twice!]”

A decadent fountain, an exquisite lawn pattern, and a gated entrance for a gold-plated palace warps dimensional boundaries inside our jeep. The Austrian punches in the gate code, HOW_DO_YOU_CHOOSE_BETWEEN_VERY_SIMILAR_UNDERSTANDINGS_62017, then bids us good luck. We walk through perfectly cut hedge toward the palace’s front steps with varied degrees of motor coordination. Smiling bushes designed to portray animals mumble what sounds like scripture but isn’t. However, I wouldn’t bet on seeing them in my neighborhood zoo unless I consumed hallucinogens beforehand. Their green skin looks like half-mixed food coloring and Loïc Goretzka pets the matte-finished grass. I worry the metaphorical sea water is getting to our chemical botanist.

Airport Security Finding the Nazca Lines Inside Yesterday’s Baggage

1950’s Alligator Suitcase: Just admit it was naïve to think they covered your eyes with a blood-soaked blindfold so you could get a few swings at their piñata. Because only honest prisoners of war acclimatize to new surroundings within days but that’s either a made-up statement or my mind is craving birthday cake. I’ll admit that.

Tan Leather Trolley Case: He tells me that maybe the problem isn’t actually money and paints a time before I was born, before money was born too. A time where humans farmed, shared, and cooperated. Where one human made baskets and another spun wool. How these humans traded and only took what they needed. Until somebody realized their baskets were more valuable to others than they originally thought and the idea of leverage grew like a flower with toxic petals.

Sydney 20” Expandable Carry-On Spinner: “It’s pretty clear you’re on the counter-culture side. That’s okay too, I suppose. But yeah, I definitely see myself on the culture side. I want that nice house with the white-picket fence and a husband, kids, maybe a few dogs too. I want to be that soccer mom who goes to PTA meetings and sends Christmas cards to my friends. I want comfort, security, and a career I love. It’s what I really want.”

Supply and Demand

The Laboratory is colder than a pretend I love you and expresses itself somewhere inside a maze of blossoming peach trees. My eyes itch just looking at the green scarves wrapped around their branches that pretend to dominate nature. Eight shadowed figures wearing eagle-feathered war bonnets water the photos, I mean trees, as acid jazz plays from the breathing soil. Chrome tables cluttered with beakers, test tubes, ceramic pottery shards, and cinema film give me the feeling that these guys are trying to keep others out of the sandbox. A heavy-set fellow with hair the color of a bloody scalp victim sits crisscrossed amidst smaller plants eating applesauce and meditating.

“Ooouuhhhmm, chachacha. Ooouuhhhmm, chachacha. Ooouuhhhmm, cha, cha, cha, chagga, chagga, chagga, choo, choo. Chagga choochoo!”

When Loïc Goretzka coughs, the human slicks his squeaky hair back with some applesauce and rolls towards us as if aware of a fire I can’t perceive. After falling down three times on purpose, he mumbles something about a swarm of undead bees and laughs like an upset cat into the collar of his bowling shirt. We exchange horizontal handshakes and he reveals that his name is Asado Kazán.

“If a tree decides to grow in the maze and nobody watches it, will it still grow? Does it matter to me if I’m not there or if you’re not here? Listen closely, cavaliers. These plants, all of them, understand what happens when they’re the only ones thinking about certain things. Let me say that again but in a pretend Russian accent now. These plants, all of them, understand what happens when they’re the only ones thinking about certain things. Here, try a peach or three.”

In which the Consumption of Organic Material sort of Falls into this World

Peach ¹- Somewhere on the Iditarod Trail, a team of fifteen injured sled dogs and their musher huddle around the lifeless body of the youngest pup. Through grueling blizzard conditions, the throbbing pain of broken ribs, and the idiosyncratic whimpers of every sled dog, the musher holds back tears and says: I know this hurts, gentlemen, believe me. It can be a very painful thing, life. Sometimes, the moments we experience, are just horrendous, unimaginable. Moments that we go through and can’t explain to others. Stay strong, gentlemen. He would’ve wanted us to finish this race.

Peach ²- Had the police arrived fifteen minutes earlier, they would’ve found Cillian skinny-dipping in the river and waving at passing trains on the bridge above him. Instead, he was sitting in a lawn chair with a book pressed to his nose, perched in the bridge’s framework like an individual seeking high-risk situations. After a minute of dangerous footwork to reach the two cops, they asked him to read a NO TRESPASSING sign out loud which he did. Cillian said sorry even though everyone knew he didn’t mean it. They lectured him about other humans falling off the bridge or getting sliced in half by the train, and their desire to not see any more dead bodies. Did Cillian agree with anything they were telling him? Probably not. Was he going to let them know that? Probably not yet. The cops commented on the grudging admiration they had for what he did and left him with a verbal warning. The next day, Cillian returned to the bridge and wondered how to change a moment as he finished his book.

Peach ³- The process of defining your age involves a lot of science but also a lot of guesswork. You are 22 but dead in dog years and if you forget to laugh then you’re already partially mummified so it’s been suggested to amuse yourself with distractions to never remember that time ages differently for dogs unless you’ve learned to tie the earth down with rope so it doesn’t wander but if you make a mistake, you lose. What are you really losing though? Something you never had? Yet moments change and human learning occurs gradually with retreats to former ways of thinking as well as advances to new ones.

What Drives the Needle also Questions the Ink

My thoughts fog up from the radio’s obnoxious yelling as we enter Graz, Austria. I never learned how to interpret radio static but I’m convinced I hear it say - “Wanna know how to change a tire? Simply, put a scarf around it.” When Loïc Goretzka says not to worry about the out-of-tune symphony of bullets piercing through our jeep, I don’t worry.