NADA

the dada m

agazine about noth

ing

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The park is quiet at this time. Quaint. 11:42. Before noon.Babys in strollers, kids on swings, the old and decrepitstanding in circles monitoring their surroundings. Perhapsthey are reflecting on the errors of their lives. The errorsof youth. The park is quiet at this time 11:43. Before noon.Not early at all I might add but the hippies don't come outuntil after 3 and I have already had my coffee and my grape-fruit. No they will not be here until sometime after 3 todrink whiskey and smoke weed, stroke banjos in groups ofCarhartts and dogs, cracking whips for show, shirtless andglistening, enjoying the well earned sun for even they workharder than I.

(There are two types of people in this world: those who questfor cunt and those who hide from it those who hang in barsand those who live vicariously through books. A caffeine pro-pelled nervous system. A sobriety induced nervous break down.)The back breaking back broken manual labor men converse onbenches. I wonder what they speak of. I will never know. Mymind wanders from them to the grass and then to the bloodstained sheets that veil the day, innocence streaked a pinkishshade of brown. I watch couples walk hand in hand over ciga-rette laden fields and the pot marked drunks who are just wak-ing up crawling out of corners and gutters beds made of coldand concrete who do their little trashcan dance a prayer forthe flat fetid liquid at the bottom of an aluminum can. Dirtymouths that drain and swallow. The day has just begun...

I walk past the grass stained hopeless who hang to bencheslike leeches to skin who now no longer ask for your cigarettesjust gesture widely with their arms outstretched because theworld owes them something. It probably does. Though I knowthat I alone am not the world. I walk on. I make my way to myhouse and back into my room. A modest room. Dead poets amongthe dead soldiers scattered across the floor. Whitman’s corpselaying atop of Mr.Cummings. Bolaño lies peacefully in my bed.Is he dead or is he sleeping? (We all know he never slept).An empty bottle of brandy towers monstrously over the melan-choly tomb that houses Poe. Am I dead or am I dreaming?Time’s hand now hovers threateningly over 2 pm. The day isstill young but I feel like crawling back into bed and mas-turbating the filth from my veins.

I spent the last of my money on a return trip to Berkleydeciding (as the sun, glowing fierce blue, danced overthe bay among the cranes of the port, its trash tracinga canvas among the edge) that going anywhere else wasbetter than sleeping in a rusted tube next to a juice-head philosopher named Easy.

Later

Escaped Nazis crowding the big screen, who contorted theirbodies to the form of chipmunks and spider monkeys, shriekingwhile doing crude renditions of the rain dance. Ever aloofShia Labeouf, baring his dumbstruck rabid rat smile, smokedcigarettes in the corner making eyes at Argentine Aryans,playing with his switch blade.

It wasn’t much better than a prison, still, the uni-verse doesn’t give and take at will as if it were dealingdeath and chloroform to the flowers, we can’t subvert ourdreams with the fun driven chaos of exiles. Denial wasn’tblended or born into our cells. Rather, I smile while whis-pering (like a prayer): I don’t know if I’ll live to see theend of these guerilla decades. Before closing my eyes Ithought about rendering time, waking in the morning I washomeless but, weirdly, not jobless (!?) (laughing in the emptyblue streets of Oakland as the city stretched arm’s wide open,gasping for air). I knew almost no one in the bay and, ofcourse, I had just arrived living under steel tubes and tombsthat stretched into the scablands which lay like a carpet be-fore the Sierra Nevadas, covered in burns, the backs ofchurches and a few shelters (when I could muster paying $5 inexchange for a shower and being treated like shit). But itwasn’t bad, and I don’t want to give that impression. It wassunny and I floated place to place like an idiot prince or aderanged drifter (who’s to say?). I tended to meet people whosmiled like ghosts. Those that hollowed out spots inside ofmirrors possessed by death banging against their skin. A wholeplay unfolded before me hidden in the blind marble of statuesmarking the past. The future.

I was surprised, to say the least, when the heroin did-n’t burn my nostrils. Coming up the flesh tube with a sensa-tion akin to snorting odorless cheese, damp and clumpy. I fellinto the Italian leather of an Audi and watched (I imagined Iwas dreaming) the cranes rise and fall, upending themselvesand clawing the air like dinosaurs adjusting to an aftershock.Azim’s croak tempered by heaves directed my attention (Ithought he was being choked!), water rushing down the wronghole in his throat. Still, he looked nervous sitting next toShane who was playing with a switchblade (wheel in the righthand, knife in the left) holding forth on the religion ofJainism and his divine importance to its survival, which wasapparently on a precipice (he described something about swim-ming in nirvana, calling it ‘the quicksand’). Laughing, Ifailed to see him put away the knife and begin to play withthe yellow ribbon with plastic beads tied hastily to hiswrist. Only snapping back when I heard Shane bellowing, “See this? Around my wrist? Protects me G! Real OG nigga!”“What’s it significance?” Azim asked, “Nothing Dawg, I made it when I was eight at a summer camp”,laughed Shane (who now insisted that we call him Kudo, whichhe told us was Japanese for demon). After rather politely ask-ing Azim to hold the wheel, Kudo (Shane) began thumping hischest chanting, “I’m a real Blood nigga” (over and overagain). When he began flashing the gang sign to passersby,Azim (who had grown up in West Oakland) intervened pushingShane’s (Kudo’s) arms down. Meanwhile, the night-blue blood-red lights of the CaliforniaState patrol glistened in the sun, riding on our tail.

Perhaps owing to politeness or even, possibly, in somecold stark cave among the frayed nerves and wires of Shane’sbrain, sanity held out against impossible odds. He was quickto inform us that ‘Yes! In fact, the car was dirty’ and ‘Yes!Kudo (Shane) had a pending litigation proceeding over heroinpossession in LA County’.

It remains up in the air as to whether I would haverather gone to jail than see Shane (and he was definitelyShane at this point) cry in front of the befuddled officer.

“The Universe is mine G! I’m a real OG nigger, themCrip Bloods”. Kudo, ever exuberant, with the bay bridgebreathing like a monolith behind us. I began to wonder whatthe fuck I was doing here (closing my eyes I dreamed ofcrooked white teeth, a skyline drenched in gold; the dark wa-ters of the California Baja).

The streets are abuzz with nothing in particular.The droning, indiscernible background noise whichcan unwittingly drive a man mad. So be it. A fewhorns and a distant car alarm rise above the sub-dued commotion. My thin jacket barely withstandsthe reverberation and gusts of wind. Pleasantly, autumn crunches at my feet like a coldsweat. If these streets led anywhere worth going they wouldn'tbe here. But I would. This is my outpost at the coldedge of bureaucracy. The pavement would slip out fromunder me. But I'd still be here, like Santa Claus. Thisis my North Pole. My mind's feet wander to the parking lot where Lorraineand I had our first date. She'd followed me out of thebar, persistently trying to bum a smoke. I'd alreadytold her like 15 fuckin' times that I don't smoke. Therewere a handful of patrons standing next to the door aswe exited. One overheard the pleadings and offered herthe cigarette. She turned to the guy and politely toldhim she didn't smoke, but thanks. That made me chuckle,like really fucking chuckle. It occurred to me then thatshe had just wanted me to deny her, to give her some-thing to brood about.The walk from the bar to my car was all 1960's NewDelhi. Dilapidated lepers with festering sores limpingthrough alleys to bum change from tourists. These samepeople, receiving a negative reply, would proceed tofollow the tourists for miles. It's a little known factthat New Delhi lepers beg strictly for entertainmentvalue. In all actuality lepers have no use for money.They occupy an underground kingdom filled with virgins,gold, candy, hand guns and cute tasty animals. Our date began as we reach the far end of the parkinglot. I stop walking and turn around to face her. Lor-raine doesn't look at me, she just stands there waiting. 'Lay down and take your pants off.' My voice sounds calmand authoritative. She gives me a questioning look,then obeys.

Opening the trunk, I examine the chain saw my cousinMerl had given me for my birthday. I'm pleased now thatI never got around to pawning it. A grin of miraculousvitality appears across her face when she sees the tool.After oiling and tightening the chain I set it down nextto her face and attend to other preparations. Nitrilegloves, Combat Action Tourniquet, gauze, sterile water,alcohol, blanket, sewing needle, scissors and medicalthread.'I wish I could offer you a drink first but it wouldn'tbe safe.''That's alright, I don't drink anyway.' She looks me inthe eye for the first time, the grin has yet to leaveher face. I sense eager trepidation, but no fear. Placing three fingers above her knee I visualize a per-fect arc. The cut must be a clean incision, otherwisesevering the femoral artery would invariably provefatal. Roughly, I shove a reel of gauze into her mouthand tape over it. Her eyes never leave mine. She shedsless tears than men I've treated overseas. When it'sall over she's covered in sweat. I sense that she wantsthe gag removed but that's impractical for various rea-sons.My gloved hands are covered in blood, as is the rest ofmy attire. The wound bleeds profusely and time is ofthe utmost importance. With the CAT I am able to stopthe bleeding in 48 seconds. God created the U.S. Armyso people like me could train for a higher purpose. Thenew leg suits her better. Somehow the stump looks morenatural on her otherwise mundane body. After applyingsufficient alcohol to the wound I dress it in gauze andlift her into the back seat. Wrapping her up tightly ina few blankets, I finally remove the gag.She looks at me with the glazed innocence of anapple fritter. 'Could I have some tea?' Thegnarled buck teeth protruding from her mouth seemto quiver slightly.

What is more terrifying than an afternoon spent watching oldhome movies? The decades which pass by in a few grainy min-utes, your family aging before your eyes. The parties andgatherings which place before you how uncared for, how boring,how disappeared each person is in the present. The uncomfort-able interaction between the cinematic layman and the public.The long meaningless glances and unfavorable lighting. Thelack of makeup, scenery and direction. Each video a ten minutesnippet of time locked into magnetized film (or those evilpits of the DVD’s face). Those videos in which we are absentand, watching many years later, witness the candid opinionsof those around us.

This phenomena is so new! Home video, what? Fifty yearsold at this point. To think that there were literally thou-sands of human generations which lived their lives in onlyone direction, which were ignorant of these frozen moments,these embarrassing glances into our unrehearsed past. Perhaps worst of all are those we have loved and who havesince died. Bittersweet? Just Bitter I think. After death wehold them in such high light. We must after all. We idolizeand remember them only as fond or gracious or respected. Thenhere we watch the videos, maybe five or ten years after theyare gone. And we remember. Their mundanity, the same awkward-ness as all the others. The mystery of the dead evaporates ina few inches of black iron shavings adherent to a revolvingplastic sheet.

Then the ends; Mid-sentence or with that fade to white(spiritual almost) like the last vision of a suffocating vic-tim. They always ends so soon, leaving us feeling bereft andbereft time and again.

Seeing a video of my father, ten years ago, agile andlaughing. Joking with the others. Now he moves in ratchets,his moods unstable. It happened so slow that it seems like hehad always been this way, yet playing this particular videobrings the disease into high relief, makes it seem, for thefirst time, to be something great and imminent and powerful.The held past has given his disease power.

Skin degraded. Voices made haggard. Lean bodies fat-tened. Fat bodies rotted. For all the recorded birthday parties in which you know thetinsel and cakes are now sitting at the middle of a festeringlandfill, the cake long since digested and integrated intothe bodies then sloughed off as dead skin.

Faces and bodies popping into frame for a second, theembarrassed pleas for attention, others escaping in horrorknowing full well that they well be kept indefinitely in theirunflattering form. Everything takes on a forced, uncomfort-able, awkward odor.

Seeing the friends we haven’t talked to or heard fromin years. The friendships which have simply fallen way, thefamily members who have lost favor and pets who have died.

The home movie may be the most awful invention of ourspecies. We are, yes, always a little aware of our mortality.It is this though, the unrestrained use of the objective mem-ory, the thoughtless clasping of offhand moments, which takesthe steady decline of life and hands it to us in its mostpungent and acrid forms. Its most forceful, convincing andrelentless form.

When I was a kid, I knew a girl named Elizabeth.She was a year below me in school, but I still re-member having numerous interactions with her. Shewas weird. Her brown hair was long and always tan-gled, and she always wore dirty dresses that werea little too long and a little outdated. She livedin the part of Rancho Santa Fe, the suburb of SanDiego where I grew up, that was always sort ofspooky to me. It was overgrown with spindly euca-lyptus and other mostly-beige colored foliage com-mon in a chaparral region.

The roads were so windy, most of them appeared todisappear every hundred feet or so, giving a kid in aminivan the feeling that she was on a jungle safari,not a ride to her play date. All the massive, ranch-style houses were tucked away, really deep into thebushes and trees, behind single-home gates with codesand long dirt driveways. There were lots of horses. Iguess that’s why it was called “Rancho” Santa Fe. Elizabeth wouldn’t have been that weird if she had beennice. She was pretty rough around the edges in appear-ance but she didn’t have anything incredibly alienatingabout her. She had a retarded sister but if anythingthat was one of her redeeming qualities. Even as a lit-tle kid I felt some kind of not-quite-developed compas-sion for Elizabeth and her sister. Her sister’s namewas Jessica. She was older but her growth was stuntedso she was much shorter than Elizabeth. She looked dif-ferent but she didn’t have Down Syndrome. It was some-thing else. Her face looked old, much older thanthirteen or fourteen. Her pale features were small andpinched. Her light colored hair was thin, unlike Eliz-abeth’s thick brown tangles. She couldn’t speak, shemostly made gurgling grunt sounds, and she didn’t havevery good motor skills either. She kind of waddled, likea baby. She made me uncomfortable, but I also felt some-thing for her. She didn’t make me sad, but I realizedher situation was unfortunate, being so different.Still, I avoided eye contact so as not to engage her.She was very eager to interact with people but her wordswere indecipherable and her games didn’t make sense tome.

I felt bad for Elizabeth, for having a sister likeJessica, but compared to Elizabeth, Jessica was apleasure to be around. Elizabeth was always angry, andloud. She had a big mouth that was in a kind of perma-snarl. I remember going to an audition for a children’scommunity theater production of Fiddler on the Roof,and hearing Elizabeth’s audition song from the lobby ofthe church, her voice clearly audible even behindclosed doors and over the piano. It was loud, almostaggressive. She was also extremely bossy, whichmight’ve been on account of being the youngest by manyyears to a teenage brother and retarded sister. I can’tremember if she had any friends. As children, we wereall forced to be together simply because of our standingin society. Popularity was truly based on how likableyou were, and so regardless of how active your sociallife might’ve been (which was largely based on parentalinvolvement anyway) you could be grossly unpopularamongst your peers. For this reason, I never knew whereI stood. As a loner, I was successful in not giving theother kids a reason to dislike me, but I also didn’tgive them much of a reason to think about me at all.Sometimes, on a Friday night like tonight, when I am athome writing a rambling autobiographical essay, I thinkabout my childhood social tendencies, and wonder ifthere was something I could’ve done to learn better howto interact with other people.

In 1997, the Hale-Bopp comet passed by Earth, and becameknown as the Great Comet. It was easily visible to thenaked eye, and as spring approached, people all overthe world could look up at the sky and see the GreatComet’s yellow glow and blue dust tail. On April 1st,when Hale-Bopp passed perihelion, I was nine years old.I only have one memory of watching the comet, though Iwas alive and fully conscious for the entire time itpassed by planet Earth. I remember looking through afamily friend’s telescope, as directed by my dad, toview the spectacular sight. I remember not being veryimpressed. It was the size of a bug in the sky, andeven though it glowed brighter than the surroundingstars and its tail signified its epic celestial trip,it looked static to me. I suppose my impression is stillsignificant, considering I’ll be almost 2500 years deadthe next time it comes around. I can’t remember if my comet viewing came before orafter the 39 bodies were found in that mansion tuckedaway in our bizarre sprawl of a suburb. The Heaven’sGate cult had apparently discovered that spooky jungleof Rancho Santa Fe and deemed it a great place to pre-pare for the hitchhiking adventure of eternity, throughthe Universe with their extraterrestrial brethren.

As a nine year old, I didn’t find it very weird thatthirty-nine adults would all take their lives by drink-ing a cyanide-pineapple juice cocktail. Adults didstrange things all the time, like die or sleep in bunkbeds in a big mansion together. Their Nikes, however,were weird to me. What did they think they were prepar-ing for when they chose that uniform? What had theyknown that I would never know now that they took theirknowledge to the great unknown? My mom told me in her serious hushed voice that the masssuicide occurred in the mansion next door to Eliza-beth’s house. I wondered if she had seen anything, likebodies being taken out of the house on gurneys, one byone, their features covered by a white sheet, with onlytheir pristine Nikes poking out. Maybe her parents hadtried to conceal what was going on to their children soas not to upset them, but while Jessica was happilyoblivious, Elizabeth was looking out the window at thegrim scene, bodies being taken away one after the otherby robotic paramedics. Maybe she saw the news anchorsand wanted to go outside to hear what they were saying.She probably would have wanted them to point the cameraon her so she could sing her Fiddler on the Roof audi-tion song in that loud, determined voice of hers. Inever spoke to her about the events and how she expe-rienced them. I didn’t go out of my way to speak withher ever, in fact, I generally avoided her and her sis-ter. But I’ll always link Elizabeth, that terrible au-dition song, and her small retarded sister with thatglowing static fly in the sky and those 39 corpsesdressed for the long journey ahead of them.

I wonder if the Heaven’s Gate cult thought aboutwhat it would be like to return to Earth 2530 yearslater when their ride made its routine pass byEarth. Maybe it wasn’t part of the plan to ride onHale-Bopp for all eternity or maybe they just as-sumed the Earth would’ve been “recycled” by thatpoint and all that was left in its place would bea cold dead rock. Of all the billions of peoplealive in 1997 those 39 were the only ones smartenough to take the ride when they had a chance.

Captain Percival Atkinson’s breath slowly andsurreptitiously evacuated his lungs, as if he werestill hiding in the ventilation duct. He took afinal look at his makeshift barricade. Thank godfor replicator technology. He had been able toreplicate enough small blocks of steel to havesomething to weld the door to his quarters suffi-ciently. “Replicator: Glenmorangie, neat,” hemustered and then, taking his Glencairn glass inhand, dragged his exhausted body to the porthole.He peered out to see nothing, not a single star ornebula, but mere void. Paradoxically he was, infact, looking at something. A very large, massivesomething but all he could perceive was blackness.

He winced as a deafening blow sounded against thedoor. The crew had evidently assembled some sort of bat-tering ram and now here they were. There would be nonegotiating; there was nothing anyone could do to sal-vage the situation. They had come for his head. Thatwas all.

“How long before the door gives?” he asked him-self, and then, “Which is worse, the dying or the wait-ing to die?” He failed to suppress a shudder as thebattering ram sounded once more. The waiting obviously.How to end the waiting though. By dying obviously. Howto die, that was the question, since it’s the waitingthat’s the problem. Smashing the porthole into the voidbeyond would be one way. That would deplete the oxygenin the room fast enough. Death, or at least unconscious-ness, shouldn’t take more than a minute or two. Therewas the problem of the pain though. Atmospheric pres-sure suddenly dropping from 100 to zero KiloPascalswould cause quite an earache among other things. Notthat he could break the triple paned glass even if hewanted to. “Replicator: hemlock, hot.” What if hemlockactually hurt? The whole point of this is to die lesspainfully than at the hands of the mob. Yes! That’s it!A lethal dose of morphine! “Replicator: morphine, 200milligrams.”

“But now that I think about it, perhaps I can do evenbetter. Why not death by orgasm? Surely there must be achemical to replicate which causes…” Another blowstruck and the door now caved in slightly. “Dammit, notmuch time left.”

The captain gazed again out the porthole. Therewas a time when he would gaze out the porthole into in-finity and see just that: the absolute absence of bound-ary or limit. Now he looked out the same porthole butlimitlessness had collapsed into nothingness. Worsethan nothingness, for nothingness merely equals zero.The last ten years resulting in nothing isn’t zero, it’snegative ten. And that’s only counting the years. Andwhat of failing to find something immeasurable, a pur-pose for one’s existence? The loss of the immeasurablewould have to be immeasurably negative. Negative infin-ity. If only there were a mere 360 degrees of possiblemovement like in Euclidean geometry. Life on earth wasso puerile. In space there’s 360 degrees left and rightand 360 more up and down. 360 times 360, that makes,let’s see, 129,600 possible vectors. Percival shudderedagain and the door to his quarters was now bulging sig-nificantly. “No time to philosophise, Percival, youhave to die and you have to do it quick.”

He took a pen in his left hand and a sheet ofpaper in his right. “Andromeda Galactic Resource Ex-ploration: The Universe Shows the Way,” appeared at thetop of the letterhead. Another blow to the door andnow a soldered steel block detached itself. No timefor a suicide note. “Replicator: hypodermic.”

The door now tore partially open and screams ofbloodlust from outside bled through the maw and en-veloped the room in a deafening din. It was at thismoment that the ship’s auto-anti-mutiny system engaged,and a pre-programed muscle relaxant was released intothe air supply. As Percival collapsed to the floor andwet himself along with the rest of the crew his synapsesfired, “Replicator: Zyklon B, 100 cubic metres,” buthis lips and tongue would no longer obey.

The ship had been in the black hole’s orbit threeweeks now. As the vessel accelerated towards singular-ity, time had been gradually accelerating towards in-finity. In the time which elapsed between the urinesoaking through Percival’s uniform and the completebreaking up of the ship, every member of his family onearth lived out their lives and died, as did their prog-eny for the next ten generations. The Confederation ofPlanets fought and successfully won the War of AlphaCentauri Secession, then lost the War of the VenusianUsurpation. Percival’s sweat was still stinging in hiseyes when the sun reached the point in its nova phasewhere it would swell sufficiently to engulf the earth.

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The Universe shows the way