your fate is my toilet

jk famous frites with cilantro chili lime aioli and maple citrus chipotle aioli by 'jamie kennedy kitchens' at '1000 tastes of toronto'

rating: water / 10.0

PICASSO EXHIBIT - I

I sat in the back of a car and my mom was driving the car in the front seat. We were driving downtown and I would have the whole day to myself in town. This was supposed to make me feel 'electric' inside because that is what the city did to people. I did not feel 'electric' today though. I felt like I was drowning. 

I used to feel like this when I was small and was sitting outside a building about to go into piano lesson or a karate class or a swimming class. Each time, I would go into swimming class and they would say, Kick, kick, kick kick, kick. Each time, I would kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, and I would learn how to swim better in water, but each time I would learn nothing about how to stop feeling like I was drowning inside. Then I would go to karate class and they would say, Kick, kick, kick, kick, kick. Each time, I would kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, and I would learn how to fight people's arms and people's legs better, but each time I would learn nothing about how to fight the feeling that I was drowning inside. In piano class, I learned how to play the third movement of Chopin's 'Piano Sonata No. 2.' They used to play this song at people's funerals a hundred years before I was alive and they would also play it at my funeral once I finished drowning. I sat in the back of my mom's car and felt like I was still drowning. Drowning and listening to Chopin's 'Piano Sonata No. 2' at the same time.

Oswald Chambers came into my head and said, You can't sit at home all day and pretend you are an intellectual recluse. You are a spiritually lazy saint! I should punch you in the face. I told Oswald Chambers, Please do not punch me in the face. He said okay. I told him I recently read an essay by F. Scott Fitzgerald called The Crack-Up. He said, That is why I should punch you in the face. You are Fitzgerald and I am Hemingway and I am telling you to be a man. This means I should punch you in the face. Then he punched me in the face, but it did not hurt because he was inside my head and could not reach my face to punch it. So he punched the inside of my face and this is what made my face look like it was drowning.

I thought to when I was twelve or thirteen. I was sitting down, but this time I was not in my mom's car. I was on a gymnasium floor in my church's 'youth group.' Sometimes at 'youth group' I would feel like I was in a shopping mall, but I was never the one shopping. I felt like I was one of the products sitting on some shelf or hanging on some rack. I would sit there and no one would talk to me, but people would stare at me and wonder if I was cool enough or Christian enough for them to look at. Today I was not sitting on a shelf or hanging on a rack though. I was playing a game. The game had rules and and one of the rules secretly hinted to one of the girls in the gymnasium that she was supposed to touch my shoulders. I turned and looked at her expecting someone to grab onto my shoulders so she wouldn't lose in the game. She looked at me and said, Ew, and turned around. No one said anything. Maybe no one saw. I turned back around and didn't say anything. Then, I began crying, but I wasn't sitting on the gymnasium floor anymore. I was sitting in the back of my mom's car crying on the way to town and I was twenty years old. I was crying so the feeling that I was drowning inside wouldn't feel so bad. I finished crying but I did not feel any better.

I am crossing a street now. My mom wants to take me to Starbucks before she goes up to her office to work. I hate Starbucks. I tell her, I don't want to go to Starbucks. She gets angry. This has happened many times before. We reach Starbucks and there is a long line, but it moves fast because Starbucks is really just a factory with well-oiled machines. My mom says hi to all the people that work there. She has a gold card and is some special member of Starbucks. She feels special. Her photo is pinned on some wall in Seattle under some gigantic title that says, Innocent People We Have Robbed Blind. She orders me a bagel and a macchiato. I sit down and feel like kicking Herman Melville in the face. My mom goes up to her office to work.

I sit in Starbucks and watch business executives buy coffee. I tell myself none of these business executives have watched Battlestar Galactica or read Moby-Dick. I tell myself I have not watched Battlestar Galactica or read Moby-Dick either. I am actually not sure if anyone here has watched Battlestar Galactica or read Moby-Dick. I tell myself I am the only one here that I am certain has not watched Battlestar Galactica or read Moby-Dick. I am angry at myself.

I pull out my computer and a poetry anthology. I read a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Then I read a poem by Percy Shelley. Then I read a poem by Thomas Gray. Then I read a poem by John Keats. These poems are required readings for a course. I like the poem by John Keats best. It is about death. Someone who works at Starbucks offers me a sample of 'Starbucks Refreshers.' I politely say no. I watch her walk away and imagine myself running over to her and grabbing all the small sample cups and pouring them into my mouth, and then spitting everything in my mouth at Herman Melville. Then I read a lecture by my professor on the four poems I just read. I leave Starbucks.