Flash Fiction (Series)

Poverty Chronicles Pt. 2

More points on the state of poverty:

Dreams and Nightmares of Money: it is not uncommon to have dreams related to money. It is just as common to have nightmares that one’s already horrid state becomes worse. Unrealistic dreams that one wakes to find a mysterious check of a great sum, that some break occurs and that money begins rolling in, that one’s debts are suddenly forgiven: these and more seem to occur more and more the deeper one’s life tumbles into the black hole of poverty. Nightmares of sudden expenses, unexpected health-related crises, the death of a family member and the inability to attend their funeral as one cannot afford the airfare or train ticket: these too are just as common.

Religion: long known to those who have taken the oath to spread their respective religion, those immersed in a state of poverty are particularly prone to the promises of religion. To escape, the promise of a better life beyond this one, the idea of forgiveness, care, and all-encompassing love: these become very difficult to not listen to when one sees no sense of relief ahead. Some of the greatest proponents and stalwart believers of their respective religions seem to be those immersed in the harshest states of poverty. This is completely understandable it seems.

Lottery: enter into any corner deli in New York City in a “less favorable” neighborhood and one will notice that those buying lottery tickets are doing so fervently. It is the promise of the big win, the chance of immediate relief from one’s monetary concerns, the dream-turned-reality. State lottery organizations are extremely aware of this and this can be seen in the ways in which they advertise within the subways and on television channels widely available to anyone with a television set. The lottery is the relief in the here-and-now, religion the relief in the promised afterlife. I see very little difference in the drive between these two things except for the times involved, the former based in the present, the latter based in the future.

Scams: promises again of immediate relief, scams of all sorts abound within areas afflicted by poverty. Preying upon the longings of those immersed in states of poverty, these scams offering the promise of relief can be found on the internet, in mass mailings, in posters littering the streetlight poles around poverty-stricken neighborhoods. Their continued existence and proliferation in times of economic depression only speaks to the fact that more than just a few people immersed in poverty have fallen for their promises. And again, who can blame them?

More to come.

Poverty Chronicles Pt. 1

Poverty, I believe, should not in any way be pitied for to pity is to rob something or someone of agency and cast-upon said object (for it does become an object, “it” then applying to people, dogs, or a broken down car) one’s own guilt or fear of the very thing one pities. Poverty is a state of being and not unlike any other state of being, carries within it and about it a series of very real consequences. From financial roots may grow trees of troubling psychological propensities, unbelievable resilience, downward spirals in spirit, feelings of being trapped.

And while some of the visible results of poverty bring even the hardest of individuals to shocking revelations about the state of the world, people immersed within poverty have not lost their agency by any means but, I would argue, are more agentical and creative in the ways in which they figure out how to survive. I say figure out because in most instances, it is a constant game, a constant hustle, a series of difficult decisions as to what one will eat, where one can move to, and for how long one can go without particular things which, to many, are considered necessities.

A few things become clear when immersed in a state of poverty which are worth noting:

• Time: has a tendency to constrict with poverty, constrict as in the sense of choking, cutting off a supply of air. It also refers to a condensation, a bringing closer, an intensification, a shortening of one’s view from years or months ahead to days, perhaps hours in severe cases of poverty-existence.
• Boredom: one becomes acutely aware of the freedom of movement and choice that money allows. Not having money or the means to entertain oneself, the state of poverty can be mind-numbingly boring. For those with over-active minds and fanciful imaginations, it can lead one to madness, deep-set or temporary, which can often be sensed through the eyes. It then becomes customary to look away, wear sunglasses, or keep oneself from public view altogether.
• Nutrition: if one has 10 dollars for the day (a king to some immersed in severe poverty), one is left with a select number of choices as to what one will eat on any given day. Particularly in America, nutritious foods (as one would find in abundance in a high-end retail store such as Whole Foods) are hard to come by at decent prices. Thankfully in New York City, there are bodegas on many street corners which allow for cheap meals to be had, a fairly hefty deli sandwich costing around $4.50 or less if one is lucky. For many though, this is still too much to pay for one meal, and one can survive for only so long on processed meats and cheeses, white breads, and iceberg lettuce.
• Pride: for anyone that has had money and then lost it, poverty is an immediate affront to one’s pride. It becomes customary then to prevent others from knowing of one’s hard-up state at all costs. One will notice that those immersed in a state of poverty will, on the whole, attempt to dress and present themselves in a clean, well-shaven manner while it is not uncommon to see those with money present themselves as slobs, veritable homeless caricatures dressed in rags which have cost them a pretty-penny (this changes when people with money are surrounded by other people with money, the game then becoming who can out-do one another in expenditure on dress or gaudy accessories). This can be seen in the case of any number of artists or public figures that used to exist within the societal limelight but is an affliction of many “haves” turned “have-nots”. This seems to be very prevalent in New York City but is perhaps common to most areas in America and across the world.
• Anger and Frustration: it seems that class warfare is born somewhere along the lines of poverty when one realizes time and again that all that which surrounds one does not belong to them and is a far distance from ever becoming a possible purchase or part of one’s life. The service worker or blue collar worker is forcibly confronted with these harsh realities nearly every single day of working or, in the case of a city such as New York, by simply riding the subway. Surrounded by people that visibly parade their excess wealth to build or maintain status consciously or unconsciously, it is not unfair to assume that some resentment will be born by those that have, through circumstance or personal doing, constricted choice through poverty. Why it is unreasonable then to feel anger towards those that parade their wealth is beyond my comprehension. Perhaps this results from a sense of jealousy, a wishing to have, a want to have few worries in the realm of the monetary.
• Alcohol and Cigarettes: escape, however momentary, seems to become more appealing when one’s day is marked by constant worries of money, constant worries of how one will make ends meet at the end of the day, week, month. The paradox is that while wanting to escape, one spends money in doing so, money which could arguably be spent better in digging oneself out of one’s current situation or at least saved to ease the challenges one faces on a daily basis while immersed in poverty. The escape, costing money, then compiles to make one feel a greater the need to escape. It should come to no surprise then that addictions are born through existing within a state of poverty as they feed upon one another, a symbiotic dance into oblivion.
• Stress: a constant companion of anyone immersed in a state of poverty. Food, shelter, clothing, rent, how and where one can literally move one’s body to (do I walk or can I afford to ride the subway?): all of these things are constant negotiations with the limitations of one’s wallet. To “go out” with friends then becomes a luxury. To order water instead of a drink becomes common. Questions of, “You’re not going to have a drink?” are often met with, “”Oh, I am not drinking anymore” or “I just got over a sickness” or “I have to work tomorrow” or any other creative manner of avoiding having to shell out money for something that will not offer any form of escape but simply add to the already mounting stress of not having any money. Tabs, as forms of credit, become temporary reliefs of this but bind one to a future filled with even more stress.
• Vulnerability: whether in the form of a natural disaster, a personal or familial sickness, or unpaid debts, to one immersed in the state of poverty, it remains clear on a moment-to-moment basis that one is completely vulnerable to any external changes requiring money that one is not in control of. A simply monetary bump of getting a simple check-up at the doctor for most becomes a luxurious expenditure. The goal is to exist, not to exist well. To exist well becomes a clear luxury. Health, in the simplest of terms (check-ups, teeth cleanings, headache medicine, etc), becomes of secondary importance to sustaining one’s life. How so many of us immersed in poverty in America today do not revolt against a health care system that is broken and useless is beyond me but can only be explained through keeping in mind all of the aforementioned points. To revolt is to be even more vulnerable than one already is but perhaps this will become a more viable option as things get worse and worse for the majority of Americans. This revolt can be seen sweeping the world currently and has arisen in pockets around the United States. It is when these pockets of unrest coalesce that the top 2% of Americans that own most of this country’s wealth may begin to honestly worry.
• Solidarity: to get one through one’s day, it helps to know that one is not alone. In fact, millions upon millions of people across the world live within state’s of absolute poverty. I believe the state of poverty to be universally recognizable. The particulars of people’s states are of course different. But to know that one is poor within a growing pool of Americans that are facing dire poverty is somehow soothing and gives shape and context to one’s worries, concerns and daily stresses. Poverty then becomes a story, a narrative, that can be shared with one’s fellow people immersed within the same state. This narrative is powerful, the resentment built up by years upon years of poverty a force to be reckoned with if well organized. The state (wherever it may be) recognizes this and works diligently to distract people immersed in a state of poverty or insidiously builds conflict between groups of people that, in moments of clarity, would realize their similarities greatly outweigh their differences and that the difference exists rather between those that have (often those weaving the very narratives of difference and divisiveness played out by media outlets) and those that have not. And one should never delude oneself into thinking that the haves ever outweigh the have-nots. Particularly in America, the have-nots have always been far greater in number and force.

There are many more points to note. These will come.

Moments with Orwell No. 2

As a rule of thumb, most people who continually repeat that they are strong individuals are most likely lacking in strength. It is akin to a person immersed in poverty saying that they are rich. For while they may well have been in the past, they are no longer and the remnants of wealth linger as an affliction really, the results of which is the incessant repetition of statements related to their personal wealth. Human nature is then very simple in this regard: anything often stated and said with fervent conviction should largely be suspect.

Moments with Orwell No.1

When I really think about it, money has been at the root of most of the problems in my life. Really the lack thereof to be specific. Money is time as any good businessman knows. Time for those of us without money is usually marked by the number of hours we must work until we do not have to work. The week becomes a Monday to Friday, 9-5, so that I can then live the weekends and early evenings free. Free without work but with enough money to enjoy life, as much life as one can enjoy with the limited amount of time allotted to being “off”. Money for employers is that which is used to buy the time of x number of workers for x number of hours. A small business owner may think to herself, “This month I can afford 3 workers to work varying shifts during my store’s business hours from 7-7:00. If x amount of dollars are made by x date I may be able to employ 2 more workers who will then help my business bring in x more amount of dollars.” This is basic business sense but it is clear that working then, and money, is a transaction of time. I often think were I not to be in constant need of money I would very easily find creative ways in which to spend my time, most likely devising my own manners of making money through a basic entrepreneurial spirit that seems to have been with me since birth. But as it is, often when I do have time off I am thinking of how little money I have, marking it out over a calendar and figuring out quite quickly that the little money that I have will only be good for one or two more weeks. This omnipresent anxiety is well-known to anyone who has, at some point, been “hard up” as it were and forgo listening to anyone who begins to romanticize the state of poverty for it is either the case that they have never truly been hard up or they are complete lunatics with no real grasp of the consequences of not eating for three days in a row. Perhaps then they are fed institutionally and you have just happened to meet them on their “day off” from Ward X.

The Passing Pt. 1

Unease. Tommy turns. His stomach has wrenched up in knots, he looks into the fibrous wall before him, he lays still. As still as he can. And yet the images return. For two weeks now he has struggled with the image of his dog crossing the road, the oncoming 4×4 truck, far too big to be necessary on a scenic highway. The screeching of brakes, the thud, the roll. He had seen it all. Cradled his dog in his arms as it passed away. He didn’t cry once.

Dogs to him were the go-to when the human race failed him. Perhaps it was the control he felt he had over the creature, maybe too it was the unconditional love. Whatever it was, he saw himself moving closer and closer to these animals and further and further away from those close to him. The doctors had called it parasthesia. He had called it a vacation.

Rolly had been the small puppy in his litter. German Shepard, tall, thin but graced with long hair and a needy personality that caused him to whimper at the slightest movement away from him. He was lovable and Tommy had fallen for him almost immediately. The adoption assistant, an aged, gray-haired old woman bent slightly at the lower back and with a wobble in her left leg, had looked up at Tommy cockeyed.

“That one? You want that one out of all the others? Look at this one. Don’t you like this one better?” she had reached over, lifted up another puppy from the litter, turned it around as if she were Bob Barker and the puppy was a new toaster oven.

Tommy had grimaced at the theatrics of the situation, stared at her, and coldly stated, “Yes, this one.” It was just yet another instance of the banality of the human race, more than enough reason to further push him away from what he took to be a failed species.

He had taken Rolly home wrapped in a blanket his mother had given him when he was six years old. For Tommy the blanket signified the last time that he remembered the warmth of an embrace, the last moment that he could recall where someone had felt it necessary to acknowledge his existence, care for him as a parent should. His mother was gone but seven months later, his father a non-entity that traveled via Amtrak train across the Western states of the US. He had never known his grandparents.

When he was transferred to the adoption home, his father seen as unfit to handle the needs of a six year-old boy, Tommy had befriended an old man by the name of Edward that swept and mopped the floors of juices, crumbs and other child-induced stains at the adoption home. The closeness of their relationship sparked the interest of the caretakers in the home, some spread rumors of foul-play, and Tommy’s meetings with Edward in the playroom were more and more the center of the attention of the adoption home’s staff. A few months later, Edward was “let go” and Tommy was once again as alone as he was upon entering the home.

Rolly had taken quickly to his new home and Tommy, for the first time in a very long while, felt at home, a part of a family, centered in what he took to be a tumultuous and hostile world. The nuzzle from Rolly in the middle of the night had signified a need now met, a longing for closeness satisfied. The dog’s deep sigh was of comfort, calm, safety. Tommy felt provider to a new entity other than himself, relied upon, as if he now was given the chance to prove against all evidence that not all human beings were selfish and short-sighted, vindictive and cruel. He had wrapped his arm around the sleeping dog, pulled him in tighter and let his mind wander into sleep as his life unfolded before him in waves.

The Hole Pt. 2

That night she had dreamt about Donnie. He had entered her dream in a phallic-shaped catamaran, the two penises slicing through the rough seas like butter. It had been lucid and to her surprise in the morning, wet. Where he was coming from she could only guess but with a rapidity unheard of in the real world, he approached Felicia who sat stark naked and spread eagle on a deserted island of gruyere cheese. It had smelled awful but she had suffered through it for her approaching knight. Defying physics, the penises penetrated simultaneously. Her dream burst to the sounds of her own sensuous screaming. For ten minutes, she sat awake in bed trying everything in her power to fall back asleep. Sheep wouldn’t do it this time.

Felicia was bothered by the rabbit testicles that now adorned her car hood; bothered not so much by the testicles for she thought them rather cute but instead by the careless manner with which they had been sliced off and discarded. It was a flippant act of vandalism, careless and petty. She thought about the rabbits, los castratos, and felt pity. “All these unborn rabbit babies,” she would think to herself.

With her little pinky, she had removed them, one by one. They had made a slapping sound against her driveway pavement and she had written them off as her neighbor’s dog’s newest treats. She backed up, stepped on one with a ‘squish’ and with a rapid scraping movement she entered her car, sat down and started her car. She was headed to town, headed to her uncle, the unsavory bastard who had impregnated his daughter and later, committed her to the asylum when she had lost it following weeks of verbal abuse by the sordid brother of her mother. A diagnosis of hysteria. It seemed most of the town’s women had strangely been coming down with it as of late.

She arrived at her uncle’s house just as late as she had intended. He sat cross-legged on the porch, a worn, beat-down old man, his eyebrows bushy and gray, his eyes cold and distant. Felicia stared at the petrified lizard, watched his eyes pan slowly across her car, to her face and then down to his folded hands. He was ashamed before she had even exited the car.

From the “belligerent baby-breeder” as the townsfolk called him, Felicia had come to collect her cousin’s shawl, the one her mother had made for her on her 12th birthday. It was a horrendous piece of fabric riddled with worn bits where the moths had gotten to it but it had great sentimental value for her cousin, a reminder of a time in her life when things weren’t as fucked up as they currently were, a beam of hope in the white-stained halls of the asylum.

Felicia had received her request via a hand-written letter. With tender care, Felicia had loosened the top flap with her index finger, rolled her pinky underneath and gently ripped through the top. The letter had been written on soiled and very thin cardboard in pitch black ink. Felicia had held the letter up to her nose, let the smells of stale urine and washed linens roll over her. They were appropriate smells to accompany the letter which outlined her cousin’s extreme isolation and loneliness, her stigmata growing deep inside her belly, her crying sessions at night and sordid memories of her father. The white walls cried out to her of emptiness, she had said, and she had wanted on more than one occasion to cut her finger and paint them red. “Just for a bit of life,” she would say. Her letter ended with sentiments about her mother, fond memories of being pushed on the swing, fleeting moments on Sundays watching her mother walk in the garden, a type of moment we often walk past so quickly but sometimes remain the longest. These “traces” as she called them riddled her mind, bore holes into her soul, colored fancy a longing to be free of all that was past, make new memories while all the while being stuck in a place unforgiving to change or mental wellness. Felicia had finished the letter with a feeling of foreboding. She knew she could not ignore her cousin’s request and had to go see the man she so greatly despised. She had set the letter down quietly on her bedside, rolled over, and cried.

Her uncle hadn’t moved an inch, his face still turned downwards towards his hands. Years stacked upon his neck, he cringed, shoulders bunching as the car door opened and Felicia stepped out.

“Hello Robert,” she said, lightly but laced with a poisonous undertone.

Robert looked up, dark lines under his eyes, folds of skin gathering at the edges of his face. He was the embodiment of sadness and regret, a severity self-imposed, a mechanized body gone without oil. With a nod symbolizing decision, Robert stood and stared at Felicia with an utter repose of indifference, with the look of the walking dead. He could stand only for one minute until the weight of his carrion memories pushed him downwards to the seat once again. He grunted as he landed and Felicia approached.

“I came to get something for my cousin,” she said, walking taught and erect, up each step of the weathered porch prepared for violence. But Robert just sat, said nothing, could stare at her with those wicked eyes only as long as his neck permitted before it dropped once again to his hands.

“I’m gonna go in there and you are going to move, you hear?” She stood, hand on hip, eyebrows raised. With a creaking scream, she pulled the screen door open, pushed the inner door in, and walked inside.

There was a smell that she couldn’t quite place.

The Hole Pt. 1

Felicia knew of only one man capable of adorning her car hood ornament with strings of rabbit testicles. They had met a few months prior in the back of a dingy, dusty bar in El Paso, that kind of place families drive by and roll up their windows, the father stepping on the gas just a little bit more. The name of the place was The Hole and a flickering, dust-covered, neon cowboy lit up the entrance, his index finger and thumb tightly formed into a big “O”.

People of a particular type entered into the Hole. Mostly the destitute and weary, the alcoholics and more-than-occasional drug users. Felicia was none of these things. Rather, she was a “good” girl, a woman whose pride arose from her inability and unwillingness to lie or sleep around as her two sisters, dubbed “The Banger Sisters”, had. It was that “good girl” attitude that had piqued the interest of Donny, a 6’3” brown man, rolled from the soils of Texas, hardened by that noon-day sun. He had waltzed in one early evening to find Felicia sitting at the bar, lime and soda water in hand, stirring the lime around the bottom of the pint glass with a long red straw. He had smiled, she had taken notice but had quickly lost interest, and Donny situated himself far enough away to not bring attention to himself while still being able to maintain sight on his new-found love affair.

Felicia had perhaps noticed first Donny’s boots. Strong, weathered leather. Dark brown. Crusted over on the sole with what looked to be caked mud. Creases and cracks along the side of the boots. Her eyes had followed the creases of his tight blue jeans up his leg to his thighs, timbered and taught. To his outstretched chest, his veined neck. To his over-sized chin, grizzled face and the beginnings of a beard.

Donny had simply noticed her eyes. Leopard ovals pinched tight near the bridge of her nose. Seductive with care. Classy but sexy. Long, feathered eyelashes coupled with the odd piece of auburn hair swept to the side, framing her face. He watched her stir the drink. Precision as the lime swept in a perfect circle around and through the odd ice cube, her long slender wrist rotating just enough to guide the straw without moving her arm.

Donny wore trouble on the tips of his sleeves. Felicia could sense it from how he walked, that stout swagger coupled with the mischievous grin. She listened to him talk, heard the deep baritone voice, calm and collected, assured without being arrogant. Leaning over, Donny had whispered something to the bartender. Laughing out loud, the bartender had made his way past his bottles of drowned memories to her, set down a drink: a gin and tonic, extra limes lined up on the side of the glass. She had smiled and Donny had taken that as his cue to approach.

The introduction had lasted as long as it had taken her to down her gin and tonic. For Felicia, it was a mixture of bad teeth and horrible posturing. Pulling up a stool not one foot from her left hip, Donny had straddled her, leaned his left elbow on the bar, his right dangling dangerously close to her lower back. His invasion of her personal space had set off alarms, had caused her to drink faster, speak less, and begin to perspire which she would later blame on the gin when Donny took notice. In a matter of minutes she was standing.

Donny watched as she left without a word, already fixated on what he would refer to as the “woman of his dream within a dream”.

Felicia left, unaware that her future was now being written by the whims of an obsessed psychopath.

New York: Exit 3

“But he has nothing to say Debra,” Tom would repeat, each time higher than the next. “You keep asking him his opinion on this and there just isn’t one. He’s said it straight: he doesn’t know. What else could you possibly want from the boy?” Debra, the calloused lush that she was, simply scoffed.

“If the boy ain’t got nothing to say, he might as well die. This world ain’t for living with a sealed mouth, I can tell you that much.” She swayed back and forth on her heels, her cheap boxed Cabernet sloshing against the sides of her over-sized glass.

Yano, it was true, was a quiet boy who, more often than not, felt not the need to speak or give an opinion on the matter. It was often the case that in a matter of seconds he could see both sides of the argument or given situation and this understanding led quickly to a cancellation of not one in favor of the other, but rather a cancellation of the argument altogether. On matters of low importance such as the color of a shirt to wear to school, or a particular food to like or dislike, Yano excelled. These were definitive moments, decisions easily encased in the consumption or retrieval of a physical object. On matters such as lying as in, “Yano, you said you loved me but then you lied to me about doing the dishes,” the grays overcame the particulars and the absurdity of the claim deadened his lips.

“When a boy don’t talk, it don’t mean nothin’. He’s just tired Debra, that’s all. No need to go on about dying and all that. Leave the boy alone.” Tom would often defend Yano. It was Yano’s belief that this had nothing to do with him at all and in fact, it was the case that Tom was defending not Yano, but the childhood version of himself against an overbearing mother who, like Debra, was tanked nearly 23 of the 24 hours in a day.

Debra glanced at Tom flippantly, bringing the glass firmly to her lips with both hands. Smacking her teeth, she retorted, “The boy has the skin of a pussy Tom. If I can puncture him that easily, what do you think those moronic masses out there on the streets are going to do to him?” Debra would often speak in generalizations about “masses” as if she were their muse and knew their every move, let alone their names. Masses, according to Debra’s logic, were responsible for the large majority of the world’s problems including, but not limited to: global warming, obesity, speeding, water contamination, rug burns and that, “little pain just in the back of the head, sort of like a needle banging my brain” as Debra would put it or, as the rest of us would call it, a common headache. Yano, after hearing his mother’s rants about the woes connected to the “masses” and Tom’s sub-par retorts, quickly came to the conclusion at the age of eight that both of his parents were write-offs in his larger pursuit of a life not devoid of meaning and would wall up in a shroud of silence and contemplate things complicated, of which Yano found many.

Yano supposed that, at the end of the day, not much needed to be said. It was often the case that everything had already been said before or there were few, if any, to listen. To find someone willing to spend time to have a meaningful conversation, one in which both parties were forced to confront uncomfortable realities in their own lives in the pursuit of some understanding of a larger reality, was uncommon to say the least. To many, Yano found, he was much too young to take seriously or people quickly became uncomfortable with the idea that once one truth was reached, it would be refuted and the search would continue, undoubtably unabated. Perhaps too it was the manner in which Yano began such conversations: “I’d like to talk to you. But not just about anything. I want to talk to you about something really important, something that makes you uncomfortable. I want to talk in a manner befitting what the tool of talking was made for in the first place: to communicate. To pass on information but to grow with each other, move with each other, challenge each other, to create and destroy simultaneously, to…” He would continue in such a manner for minutes on end and, for a child that was known to speak so little, Yano on these occasions was quite literally unstoppable. He found very few to live up to his standards and as a result, lived the large majority of his formative years completely devoid of conversation or communication for that matter.

Debra hated the child, swore against the very day he had emerged from her womb. One could blame it on the drink but the distinction between the woman and the bottle was nearly impossible by now. Tom dealt with it through long business trips and sour whiskeys taken steadily throughout the day. Yano coped by conversing with himself in fanciful inner dialogue and walking nearly everywhere he needed to go. He was a prime suspect to be one of those children on the back of milk cartons and, in a matter of days, he would be.

New York: Exit 2

The subways seemed like a distant memory to him now. The oranges, yellows, reds on the cracked plastic seats, the greasy poles with layers of human grime upon them, the scuffed and speckled linoleum floors. He would later remember only the sensations of urine and feces, frozen moving airs of each subway car, the occasional homeless man or woman slouched in the corner, every other passenger a safe distance away. Safe enough to avoid the stench, safe enough to forget their resemblance to the blanketed mass.

His memories would soon become impressions really, existent nodes of operation implanted in the dark recesses of his mind. The synaptic flows associated with navigating a largely mechanized metropolis would slow, his life would become more countenanced, he would remember the follies of his high-speed lifestyle, laugh…sometimes cry. Chapters in his life would feel foreign, as if noir episodes, dream-like and of an ulterior being’s life. Such was the city he would come to find: as distance traveled, the grit and grime remained, the city engrained within his very being. Within his brow, the gum-laden sidewalks of Union Square. Within his neck, the towering skyscrapers of the financial district. In his toes, the stony sway of the Brooklyn Bridge. A place as large and divergent as New York congealed into a recognizable being and the memoried sensations arrived in pregnant waves. The hot dog vendor on 14th and 4th Ave, the schwarma truck on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, the guards standing glassy-eyed on the stoops of rich residences on Madison Avenue: the recognizable New York arose again and again, only to recede into white noise washing the walls of his quiet, new life.

New York: Exit 1

He looks out the window, hears the garbage men rolling past, their tired bodies lumbering out of the dirtied vehicles, veiny arms straining to lift each bag and throw them into the compressor. The pigeons have gathered early this morning, congregating in front of his Haitian neighbor who sits, bent back and bag of bread crumbs in hand, tossing wistful handfuls of crumbs to the ground below. The pigeons proceed with regularity, as if composed of a daily musical movement, their contribution to the overture of the grand metropolis written in fluid steps, bobbing heads, the occasional flutter of grayed wings as a boy rides his bicycle down the tree-lined promenade. The air is thick, womb-like, hot and sticky and he wipes his forehead with the back of his sleeve, looks at it in his left hand, checking for dirt left behind. There is none and this comforts him. He feels himself a beacon of cleanliness in a city dampened by the downtrodden, the filthy rich, the grit and grime of a never-ending pursuit.

The trees droop in the increasing heat. Yesterday his downstairs neighbor, a jazz singer and makeup artist, had come up to ask for sugar. It was cliche yet it was only the second time he had ever seen her so he engaged her in conversation, lent her the sugar and they exchanged smiles, forced into a joint suffering by the stifling heat and the longing for sweetness in their lives. She had smiled at him only once but it was a deep smile, a carving into the loamy soils of his persona that had rarely been touched. It was to be the highlight of his week and he treasured the exchange, rolled it around in his brain for hours on end, creating alternate scenarios whereby the request for sugar turned into hikes through unchartered forests, swims in the purple oceans in the Eastern coastal waters of the Atlantic, jovial dinners and lusty moments in public places. In the end he would return to himself as a dying star which collapses in on itself. He was left alone, an observer of the chaotic movements of the world of New York City which he knew only through the picture frames of his window panes, mere snippets of a city too large for any one person to ever truly understand.

The garbage men had now moved on, replaced by the criss-crossing movements of the sidewalk gentry. Older men, now retired, carved out the sidewalk spaces with their presence. As if surrounded by orbed forcefields, space was allocated to these men through furtive glances, downcast eyes, outspread arms and crossed legs. Their casualness was an enactment of force, a silent attack on the territories of the Parkway promenade. Their victories were pronounced through relaxed non-chalance, the fact that they did not move was a statement that they did not need to move. And so it goes.

He wondered if ever there would come a time when he would leave this place. He had never grown up Catholic but believed that flagellation was as common as breathing in New York. Perhaps it was through drugs or alcohol, stress or the continual pursuit of money, cloistering oneself in one’s home or flitting about as a manic social butterfly, but everyone seemed to have a guilt of sorts to expunge, a need to punish oneself, a need to deny life and wallow in the shallows or darkened depths of the dead. The metropolis was a place to lose oneself, to in a way give in to the notion that we are all born guilty or sinful, to accept this and in a way, give in. New York City was the whip near everyone’s back, the dirtied sore which everyone navigated on their way to work, to meet friends for drinks, to pick the kids up at the private schools, or have meetings at an upscale Manhattan restaurant. He had known other places, knew that the quality of life in New York City was poor as compared to other places he had been, and yet the allure was still there, that guilt-ridden pleasure of enjoying something that is so very bad for you, that thing which you say to yourself, “I’ll quit this just as soon as…” but never do.

He was quitting the city, taking a break and the scenes from his window became those of sepia moments of grainy film in a picture show. With a steadied right hand, he turned the handle of the antique camera, heard the whirring of the film through the feed, documented in memory that which he was so near to saying goodbye to.

House Mouse No. 1

It became difficult for the children to take him seriously anymore the day their father became a field mouse. Threats of groundings, corporal punishment, and the like just didn’t seem to hold when he said it from 2 inches off the ground while twitching his nose.

Samuel had awoken on a Sunday to the sound of his wife, Betunia, making waffles. While normally a soothing sound, that reminder of the slow paces in life and veritable pleasures that awaited a week worked hard, this morning every atom in his body longed to flee. Opening his eyes, he found the pillows as large as queen size beds, the bed a seemingly endless sea of wrinkled sheets and tossed duvet. He was, to say the least, confused and in nervousness, littered the bed with little pebbles of stool.

The first problem he faced was how to get down from the bed. This was easily accomplished he found by digging his claws into the loopholes of the duvet fabric and spelunking down the side of the bed, leaping off and landing squarely on his four paws. The carpet fibers were filthy and human hairs wedged into the Berber loops hung like nooses, awaiting his entrapment. Weaving through streaked underwear and rolled up socks, the smell of human filth was everywhere. He wondered how it was that they could become so accustomed to the pestilence of dirtied clothes, unwashed pits, sordid counter tops and stained toilet rims. The disarray of their existence seen from inches off the ground revealed a squalor he had never imagined existed: the nail clippings, droplets of lotion, lipstick caps and adventurous chap-stick, endless forests of orphaned hairs, the negative pregnancy tests lodged between the nightstand and the wall, their daughter’s picture, torn and worn at the edges. Memories sprung forth from the lower recesses of their home like nightshade and he imagined them floating upon past times every morning they had placed their feet upon the ground, crunching the hairs, displacing the chap-stick, massaging the lotion deeper and deeper into the carpet.

The door rises like a 40-story skyscraper and Samuel clamours to his back feet, front paws curled and held tightly against his chest and lifts up his neck staring at the door knob, symbolic of the impossible feat before him. He looks down to the base, sees the gap that he had never noticed before and suddenly, as if driven by the invisible force of habit, he is running towards the door, sliding sideways, and squeezing his body through the gap, driving his claws against the wooden floors again and again until he is through.

Bethunia is standing in the kitchen in front of him now, towering over him in his current form just as she had towered over him as a man, a boyfriend, a husband, and later, a father to her children. He wants to yell out to her, beg for her help, have her fix this mishap as she had fixed all the others: the wrecked car after a night of drinking, the money lost on pursuits of grandeur through craps and poker, the lost jobs and times he had forgotten to pick up the kids from school. Her posture is that of strength and confidence: chin held high, chest outright, head back, spine perfectly aligned. She whips the batter, spoons it out in perfect proportions with the large wooden spoons they had gotten from her mother for their wedding, and patiently waits for the light to turn green on the waffle maker. She is giant to him now and he wonders where this longing to have the situation fixed comes from, as if nostalgic for a time when things were pleasantly whole, a time that never was nor ever would be. She lifts her chin higher suddenly as if sensing his presence and turns her head, meeting the eyes of a disheveled, panting mouse near the bedroom doorway and slowly approaches, wielding the wooden spoon in her right hand.

Capsule Hotel: Kotoyo

**This should be read as a pairing with Capsule Hotel: Sumi and other Capsule Hotel entries

Kotoyo holds the mop firmly in her hand. “The animals,” she thinks to herself as she absorbs the semen-stained sheets, the used condoms, the empty poppers. With a gloved hand and a grimace, she removes the evidence, attempts to bring the capsule back to a sterile state which is what her job’s end-goal truly is: utter neutrality and sterility.

For years she had worked the cramped halls and washed out stalls of the Green Plaza Shinjuku, had watched as the elite businessmen and women that had missed their commuter trains out of the city were replaced by vacancies, then semi-vagrants, then the long-term residents who stayed for months on end because the rents were cheaper than regular apartments and occasionally the rich, white, teenage tourists that prowled the streets of Tokyo looking for an “authentic” Japanese experience. Kotoyo was the unknown constant in all of their lives, the woman that weaved in and out of their lived experiences, readying their living spaces for the next day. In essence, she was the keeper of time within the capsule hotel, making sure day in and day out that time, at least within the hotel, had not moved and that in a city besieged by entropy, the Green Plaza Shinjuku remained static.

She walks around the corner, sees a forlorn boy sitting on the edge of his cubicle. It is not the first time that she has seen someone with such a look nor will it be the last. Many young Japanese men and women have traveled from pristine and spacious landscapes beset by utter poverty in the hopes that here in Tokyo, life would be easier, that they could attain what they see on the television. Most found what this boy and others had found: a dirty, fast-paced metropolis that shoved its inhabitants into smaller and smaller spaces and charged them more and more money, a city that seemed utterly indifferent to the quality of life of its citizens. Kotoyo slaps the mop to the ground, begins to weave it though the crooks and crannies of the tiled floor below and watches the boy as he slumps to the ground and his knees nearly give way. He rolls off down the hallway, dirty towel in hand, to begin another day in the Tokyo grind.

Sounds erupt from inside the steely capsules. She had become accustomed to the coughs, the wheezing, the snorts and farts but hears a woman crying and this, she knows, she will never get used to. She mops harder, tries to drown the sound out with the scraping of the metal now worn through the dirtied fibers of the mop on the hallway tiles. She can hear it still, remembers when she was just a girl and had traveled up from Akitakata near Hiroshima after her mother had died of cancer and her father was in need of hospitalization. Her plan had been to come to Tokyo, find a job and send money back to her father’s brother who would give her father the necessary care to ease the pain of his prostate cancer. She had planned to do this within the month but things hadn’t gone according to plan. That month had turned into six and she barely had enough to buy food and shelter for herself, let alone send money back to her father. She had found the Green Plaza, had been able to rent one of the capsules for cheap if she worked there, and soon after quit her job selling clothing at a run-down department store to mop the halls clean of transient decay. It was a few months later that she received a letter informing her that her father had passed away. It was then that she had cried within the capsule, heard the reverberations of her pain along plastic corridors and cement partitions.

Kotoyo continues her daily routine, finishes mopping the corners of the hallways and pulls out the disinfectant spray. She walks calmly down the hallway, her rubber sneakers squeaking on the newly polished floors, reaches the communal sinks and with a sweeping left to right movement, coats the sinks with an even coat of cleanliness. She hears the bacteria whimpering, imagines them writhing with pain and she smiles faintly. This is the favorite moment of her job.

She thinks of the time that has passed, the different inhabitants that have marked the years. She has traversed the social standings of servant to caretaker, from the lowly worker under the careful watch of the wealthy business elite to the nice old lady that cleans people’s sheets to the tourists and long-term renters. She has become many things to many people and in so doing, has largely lost what it means to be anything to herself.

Toilet brush in hand now, she begins to scrub away the feces of yesterday hoping to attain once again that pristine, white ceramic bowl that brings her comfort, lathers her with ease. “One day soon,” she thinks to herself, “I will go home.”

Roving Hotel: Steven

**This should be read as a pairing with Roving Hotel: Alfonso

Steven’s body aches from sitting all day. He had told his team leader time and time again that his chair was not ergonomically-correct and was going to cause long-term damage to his spine if it wasn’t changed. She had listened and the chair had been ordered but it wasn’t fast enough for him for he could feel his spine beginning to pinch at the tailbone.

He enters the station at World Trade Center. It’s 9:00 PM and Steven sees that the E train has just arrived. He runs, his cashmere coattails trailing behind him and his wingtips click on the dirty cement platform. Once in, it is a race to get a good seat. He sees a woman searching as well and swoops in to grab the seat before she can get there. She is displeased and to avoid her darkened glances he opens up a newspaper and pretends to read. She is made invisible.

The train is moving now. Steven places the paper in his bag, reaches up his well-manicured, white hand and runs his slender, soft fingers through his well-combed, blond hair that he has swept back and to the side not unlike his father used to. A strand of hair falls on the right side of his face and he gently takes it and weaves it back into place. With his left hand he loosens his silk tie, flips open the top button of his shirt. He is loose now, letting go and relaxing. Steven pulls his right leg up, places it squarely across his left knee. His hands are now folded on top of the other on his lap. He averts any gazes from the other passengers for the moment, stares out the subway window into the black and white flicker of the subway reel. West 4th Street stop. Students from NYU get on, most likely headed into the depths of Queens where the rent is affordable.

Comfortable now, he looks around. There are not many people in the subway car. He looks to his left and at the far end of the car he sees a man, probably in his late 40′s, unkempt and dirty, most likely homeless. Steven thinks he is a Mexican or Puerto Rican, one of the two but doesn’t see the difference. He didn’t smell anything before but now he is sensing a disgusting array of soiled sheets and urine. He reaches into his coat pocket, feels the soft fibers brushing against the hairs on the back of his hand and grabs his glasses, places them neatly on his nose and around his ears. Through frame-less spectacles he watches as the man curls himself tighter into a ball in his dirtied sleeping bag and plastic bags. “Like an animal,” Steven thinks to himself and is revolted yet fascinated to observe his epitome of laziness. He thinks to himself how nice it would be to sleep all day, beg for money from complete strangers, treat the subway as your personal hotel and never have to deal with a boss or responsibility. He doesn’t think he could handle not being able to bathe regularly.

42nd Street stop. An older Puerto Rican woman gets on, looks over at the man and shakes her head, moving clear down to the other side of the car. Steven has four more stops before he gets off. A police officer crosses cars while it is moving, the doors slide gracefully open and slam shut. The homeless man jumps but falls back asleep. Like a breath of fresh air, Steven welcomes the cop’s presence and the justice he will reign down upon this man. He pays $90 a month to ride the subway and sees no reason why he should have to smell this man or all the others like him that just use the cars for a place to sleep. The cop grabs his baton and nudges the man with it in the ribs. He starts but then falls back asleep. Steven thinks he is most likely drunk and swears he can smell some type of booze coming from his direction. The cop nudges him again, this time continually. “You need to wake up,” he tells him. “You can’t sleep in here.” The man wakes up and with tired eyes he looks up at him and agrees. “Collect your stuff and exit the car please,” he says and he obeys, wrapping his things back up in the plastic bags from whence they came, tying his sleeping bag into a manageable ball. The constant movement releases all the odors which were once before contained and Steven scowls, tries to stop breathing through his nose. The cop sits to the side, watching. The 7th Avenue stop is next. Steven shifts in his seat, his suit pants sliding across the subway benches, ice skating on a field of plastic. The homeless man stands, looks over and for a moment, locks eyes with Steven. Steven sees his tired, brown eyes, his ragged, dark beard, his hands that are toughened over with calluses and scars. He sees his hair, tousled and worn, his pants ripped, his shirt torn. The train stops, the man leaves and Steven breathes deep as the cop exits and his comfort level is restored. “Glad for the NYPD,” he thinks to himself and looks up to the stop map. Two more. He’s almost home.

Photo Courtesy of Downtown Express

Capsule Hotel: Sumi

**This should be read as a pairing with Capsule Hotel: Ebisu

Sumi wakes to find that the screen on the edge of her capsule has been lifted and a small white boy named Mark is looking in curiously. It was becoming a daily ritual for the boy, an exercise in naturalist tendencies and Sumi felt like a rhino on the plains of Kenya, the ones she saw on the small television screen above her bed. She yells ‘Dette!’ and kicks at the boy with her sore feet and aching legs. The boy scatters, looks on from a distance and disappears down the yellowed hallway. There is no use in trying to go back to bed she knows and moves her body forward down the cylinder enclosure towards the entrance where she will sit and listen to the crowded capsules birth their occupants into the morning air.

She had come from poverty, a house with poorly maintained infrastructure that blurred the lines between nature and clean, demarcated living space. Her father, Akio, was a farmer who grew rice in the terraces left untouched by the major agricultural companies that had taken over Japan. He still worked by hand, refused to use mechanization to increase productivity and as a result, produced little more than what was needed for their subsistence. Her mother, Cho, was a weaver and made mats and Fedoras out of the dried rice stalks which rarely sold but kept her occupied throughout most of Sumi’s childhood. Sumi had come to Tokyo with only a few yen in her pockets and an idealistic dream of becoming the next big Japanese pop star. Years later, she found herself working at a department store selling shoes and suits to well-groomed men and expensively-clad women and was disappointed only temporarily that she had not achieved her dream of stardom. She was proud to have a steady job, enough money to pay for a place to live even if it was pretty small and enough to eat and send some home to her ailing parents. It wasn’t much but her life in Tokyo was far better than it ever had been back home.

Sumi’s legs are dangling now over the edge and she looks to her left where the long-faced Ebisu is sitting, face ground into the tiled floor below. She never understood how he could be so depressed all the time. She knew his daily routine like the back of her hand. He would wake screaming often, sit dazed at the edge of his capsule, pouring over the dirty tiles on the floor and then would lean back temporarily watching some trashy television before he would get up and as if in a daze, walk down the hallways without looking anyone else in the eye. He was a strange character, one completely internal to himself and she often felt like reaching over to shake him from his waking reveries, letting him know that it wasn’t as bad as he made it out to be, that there were many positive aspects of their lives in Tokyo. Instead she watched him, day in and day out and was grateful that the vision of life that she had carved out for herself nourished her soul and allowed her to give freely to those around her. She watches as Ebisu jumps from the edge of the capsule, dirty towel in hand and slowly walks towards the communal baths. She feels sorry for him but has her own life to worry about.

Sumi slides her legs out completely, turns around and steps down to the floor below. It is cold against the soles of her feet and she arches them to keep them from touching as best she can. Others are waking now and she greets those that sit on the edges of their capsules with cheery and heartfelt sentiments. Like a ray of radiant sunshine she walks the hallways of clouded gazes and warped visions and bids sordid specters to return to their darkened recesses if only for her temporary presence. Sumi has begun another day and makes her way valiantly to the mossy communal baths of the capsule hotel.

Roving Hotel: Alfonso

It was 6:00 p.m. The night had turned to frost. Another day, another unsuccessful attempt at getting work. The E train pulls into Jamaica Center, slows to a halt, bumping gently into the black and yellow bumpers at the end of the platform. Alfonso grabs his army-green backpack, throws the right black handle over his left shoulder, collects his two plastic bags with The Strand written across them in red and white, one with his toiletries, another with his blankets.

Alfonso had come to America seeking work, promised the glory of a land where the rich or well-to-do were lazy and would pay someone such as himself a large sum of money to do odd jobs. What he found were decent jobs in construction with long hours but good pay, nice people, many of whom were from places near to his hometown of Linares, Mexico, and affordable housing near the construction sites. New York City, for its reputation for being cold and heartless, was far from it for Alfonso and he was able to not only make enough money to live comfortably but was sending a large sum of money back home to his wife, Yesenia, and two children,  Amada and Sol.

Deep in Queens, he and his fellow expats would build new condos and apartment complexes for the influx of white kids moving in from all across the country and Manhattan, where the prices that were traditionally astronomical had only gotten worse. They would spend days throwing up walls and stucco, nailing 2 x 4′s, running electrical wiring. It was meant to be fast, cheap and shoddy but Alfonso and the others would take their time to make sure that while they were fast, they were also thorough. He couldn’t imagine living in one of these places and wanted to make it at least livable if it couldn’t be hospitable due to mindless design and anti-human, pro-money sentiments.

The jobs had come one after the other and the boom of the 90′s and 00′s kept he and his compatriots in work from 8 in the morning till sometimes as late as 8 at night. But the idiots on Wall Street had thought it their right to play with the hearts, minds and money of those looking for a better life, a house, maybe a new car or small business. The loans had flowed freely to anyone, irrespective of their income or ability to pay them back. That bubble had burst and burst fast. From sometimes working 2-3 jobs a day, Alfonso and his friends soon found themselves working one job 5 days a week if they were lucky but more often 3-4 days a week. But the economic strains ran deep and the cranes stopped lifting, the buildings stopped growing, and Alfonso soon found himself competing with people he had at one time worked with for even the most menial of jobs. He had gone from building apartment complexes to washing dishes in the back of some Italian restaurant in the dregs of Queens and while it was still a job, here they didn’t provide affordable housing nor did they pay well enough for Alfonso to send money back home to his family. He spent the days which had now turned cold in the onset of winter working hard at the job he did have and trying to help his friends who had not been as lucky as he to find some type of work in the restaurant or somewhere else nearby. But his job was long and at the end of the day he was tired, his hands were worn and slowly, he began to sleep more and help others less not because he didn’t want to but simply because there were no jobs and he was tired. His savings rapidly dwindled.

The doors open and Alfonso steps in, moves to the far corner where there is a single seat near the end of the train. The cabin is warm and he pulls his jacket up tight against his neck, places his plastic bags underneath the seat and sets his backpack on his lap. “Please stand clear of the closing doors.” The intercom sounds. He pulls a scarf out of his bag, lays it across his forehead to block the dim yellow light of the subway car and settles down for a long sleep.

It had been December 1st that Alfonso had gone to his landlord to explain that he was unable to pay that month’s rent. He had talked to his boss, asked to be paid early for that month but his boss had declined, said the business was hurting too and didn’t have the extra cash to be paying people early. Alfonso’s landlord had said he needed the money, that if Alfonso couldn’t give it to him, he would get it from someone else. Thirty days later, Alfonso was homeless, tried going to friends but they too had been run out of their places and the few that hadn’t already had six or more people staying with them. The restaurant would fold one month later after being open for 25 years and Alfonso would be out of a job. The “hotel ambulante” or “roving hotel” of the E train was his only realistic hope, the shelters being filled with violence and drug-use, things Alfonso was not used to and had always warned his children about.

Jackson Heights/Roosevelt Ave. and the train comes to a halt. Alfonso removes the scarf. Some white kids in their teens get on, give him a look of disgust and move to the other end of the car. An older black woman gets on, sits near him but gives him sideways glances to make sure he knows he is being watched. He knows he must smell. It’s been over a week that he has gone without bathing and his clothes are soiled from the constant walking and accumulation of dirt that happens over time. A cop gets on, the NYPD, that blue force of steel that so often made his life more difficult than it already was. She’s a kid, no more than 25 and she walks over, cocky, one finger of her right hand tucked under her belt. She asks Alfonso where he is going, Alfonso says World Trade Center, the last stop on the E train. Next thing he knows, the cop is pulling him up and pushing him out of the subway car with her nightstick. “Find another place to sleep,” she says and the doors close. She is gone. Alfonso is used to this by now as are most that have chosen to make the subway their roving hotel and he waits on the platform for the next train.

He will find work soon he hopes but in the meantime will continue looking, continue visiting the soup kitchens, friends, the churches. Wall Street had its best year yet he had read in the discarded papers as they haggle over million dollar bonuses and bail-outs to the tune of billions of dollars.

The next train arrives, he enters and settles in for another fitful night of sleep.

Capsule Hotel: Ebisu

*Note: this should be read after reading “Askew,” the post from January 2nd, 2010.

Ebisu screams and rises up in bed, slamming his head against the cubicle ceiling and lies back down. Another nightmare where he is being pushed by an unseen force off of the Toshimbo Cliffs and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. He shakes his head, tries to forget and gently turns over to his right, looks at the beige plastic wall not inches from his face. His knee grazes the slippery confines of his sleeping cube, reminds him that he is no longer in Yamagata. He is in Tokyo and inhabits cube number 505 in one of Tokyo’s many capsule hotels in the dregs of the failing metropolis where the gap between rich and poor grows exponentially and people like Ebisu fall through the cracks.

The wall doesn’t comfort him. He lies on his back, reaches his right hand over a few inches and turns on the yellow light near his head, the switch covered in the oils from past inhabitant’s hands. He can adjust it only a few inches to the right or left and the light shines directly into his eyes either way so he closes his eyes. The light pushes through his eyelids, makes him see red, and he takes himself far away to the mountains near his home, the face of his wife expecting him to come back soon with riches from the big city as he had promised, his little boy, now 6, playing with his kite along the river who will run towards him upon his return. They will embrace and he will smile once again. Happiness. Somewhere but not here.

The old man from Tainai three cubes down is coughing again. Everyone says he has tuberculosis, the new kind that is resistant to the drugs doctors have and people shun him, tell him to leave in whispered tones and angry looks. But he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Like most of the people here, he had come to the big city looking for work, promised by the papers and friends in Tokyo that work was there awaiting his arrival. But things had changed and changed quickly. People were out of work, the once-rich were now poor and jobless and things were no better in the countryside. People still flocked to the city in search for a better life. Most ended up here, in the capsule hotels, where their living spaces were constrained to 30 square feet of a plastic cubicle, one of hundreds, all exactly the same.

Ebisu can’t get back to sleep. He edges his body down towards the entrance to his cube until his legs are sticking out and folds them over the edge where they dangle in the doorway to his downstairs neighbor’s home. He pulls his torso up and to the right at a diagonal so as not to hit his head again, lifts the cheesecloth at the entrance to his cube and leans forward, head and chest exposed to the chilly, thin corridor lined with cubes. There’s an art form to exiting these things that is learned only after time. He will sit here for a few minutes to wake up before chancing the communal bathrooms.

Aneko, an older, gray-haired woman who came from a fishing family in Imizu, is crying again. Her sobbing fills the plastic corridors, the corridors that smell like bleach and forced sterility. A new man at the end of the corridor leans out, lights a cigarette and looks over to Ebisu, nods his head. Ebisu nods back, knows the man is in the early stages of coming to accept his new living situation, knows that no matter how hard one tries, there are more bad days than good. After a while, one wears it in one’s forehead, across one’s eyes, in one’s slow-moving gait and countenanced forms of a hazy apparition. The smoke trails along the old man’s cheekbones and rises in a straight line to the ceiling above, now brown with tar stains and mold from the showers down the corridor.

Ebisu leans back, lets his legs dangle freely, reaches his hand over to the TV set and grabs his headphones. He used to care that they were covered in past inhabitant’s earwax, used to hold the headphones near his ears so that they wouldn’t touch. Now he pushes them into his ears tightly, has come to own the earwax of past and present, feels that if he can leave a bit of his own earwax on these things, he will in some way own at least these, that even if he leaves, some new inhabitant will be forced to reckon with the remnants of his existence in this cube, along this corridor, within this hungry city filled with wandering ghosts.

The TV buzzes in his ear, the picture is fuzzy and the sound is no better. These capsule hotels used to be the overnight hotels for the wealthy businessmen and women that missed their last trains home. They used to be well-maintained, the TVs used to be top-of-the-line, the headphones were replaced daily, the sheets were washed constantly. Now things went untouched, unimproved. Poverty, or the presence of the poor, has a way of breeding indifference in landlords.

Ebisu shuts it off, throws the headphones to the right and edges his way out, jumps to the cold tiles below. In a stooper, he walks past the sleeping inhabitants of dreams gone awry, listens to the constant buzzing of the florescent lighting overhead, passes the smoking old man, the crying old woman, the man with TB. Passes so many others, some long-time inhabitants, others merely transients working their way through the musty alleyways of Tokyo. He turns the corner, sees the communal bath, the other naked men wrinkled and worn soothing their pains in the warm waters, filmy with the oils of the cubicle colony. Ebisu takes his clothes off, joins the men as naked as the day he was born, lets the pungent steam enter his nose, roll across his mind. He is elsewhere now, in a big space filled with nature, his family, a semblance of happiness. A young man across the bath begins to cough, the woman’s sobs from the corridor intensify. He is nowhere but here.

Askew

Eddie opens the New York Times as per his daily routine, cup of coffee in hand, wipes his glasses off on his shirt. His eyes trail down to the story at the bottom of the page, “For Some of Japan’s Jobless, New Homes Just 5 Feet Wide,” accompanied by a sepia photo of a miserable-looking young Japanese man sitting on the edge of what looks to be a morgue cabin marked “505″.  Eddie begins to read and gets an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach as if he is reading the dystopia novel 1984 but knows that he is not, that this is real, that people really live like this. The article outlines the impoverished existence of the inhabitants of the “capsule hotels” of Tokyo, 6.5′ x 5′ spaces that resemble coffins far more than homes. Each space is furnished with a light, a small TV with earphones, coat hooks, a thin blanket and a hard pillow of rice husks. Noises reverberate along the corridors of cubicles stacked one on top of the other, fresh linen and access to the use of a communal bath and sauna are the only things which slightly resemble saving graces in this plastic hell. The spaces used to be used as overnight beds for salarymen who had missed the last train home. But that was decades ago and it had now turned into the last refuge for those looking to find work in a collapsing economy. For these cubes, each inhabitant pays roughly $640 per month. Eddie shakes his head, puts down his coffee. His stomach is now in knots, he imagines himself coming home to a plastic cube, barely big enough to move in, inserting himself into the capsule and pulling the ragged, widely-used blanket up to his chin. He imagines the fuzzy buzz of the small television in his ears in the overused headphones lined with the earwax of past inhabitants, the smells of sterility coming from the daily-bleached corridors, the lingering smell of cigarette smoke that one must wade through on the way to the communal bathrooms where mold grows in thin grooves along the white tiles of the shower stalls. Everything from the bathroom stalls to the lockers are slightly too small, his clothes are stuffed tightly into miniscule spaces and every time he wakes to go out into the streets of Tokyo, he imagines he must roll his shirts along the edges of the metal lockers to rid them of their creases. He imagines that the cubicle rests itself upon his brow eventually, seeps into his eyes, that his vision begins to fail and he begins to think of the world as limited as that of his living space. Eddie shutters and turns the page.

New York section and he reads of day laborers who have recently found themselves homeless as the US economy continues to collapse, reads about Carlos Ruano who was kicked out of his house for not being able to pay rent and spent the nights riding the E train. So many people have begun riding the E train overnight that it has been called the “hotel ambulante” or “roving hotel” by other day laborers. Eddie can’t believe it, can’t imagine what it must be like to ride those trains through the underground with the noise and the stench the constant movement all night long. Can’t imagine what it must be like to piece together a sordid mattress if one is so lucky, a few scraps of food, some clothing in the mean and freezing streets of New York City after coming to this country on a hope and a dream that somehow life would be better here, that this was the land of opportunity, that people could make it here if they just worked hard enough.

Eddie turns to the next section, sees the decadence on page after page of the Arts and Leisure section, reads about the opening of the Bizet’s “Carmen” at the Metropolitan Opera, the Travel section about the most posh places in Cairo and just heaves. He throws the paper to the side, is so sick of it all. “This is not right,” he tells himself. Over and over again he asks himself how things can be in the state that they are in, that in the same paper with not four pages separation one can read of homeless laborers riding the trains all night long because they are homeless or people across the world living in cubicles no bigger than coffins and then read about the inane trials and tribulations of the rich and famous who discuss the rawness and daring of Bizet’s opera,”Carmen”. Eddie was furious and it boiled up inside of him like raw steel. Everything was off, askew, twisted and fucked up and backwards. Things were not fucking right.