“Tyler and me at the edge of the roof, the gun in my mouth, I’m wondering how clean this gun is.” 

“Something which was a bomb, a big bomb, had blasted my clever Njurunda coffee tables in the shape of a lime green yin and an orange yang that fit together to make a circle. Well they were splinters, now.

My Haparanda sofa group with the orange slip covers, design by Erika Pekkari, it was trash, now.

And I wasn’t the only slave to my nesting instinct. The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA catalogue.

We all have the same Johanneshov armchair in the Strinne green stripe pattern. Mine fell fifteen stories, burning, into a fountain.

We all have the same Rislampa/Har paper lamps made from wire and environmentally friendly unbleached paper. Mine are confetti.

All that sitting in the bathroom.

The Alle cutlery service. Stainless steel. Dishwasher safe.

The Vild hall clock made of galvanized steel, oh, I had to have that.

The Klipsk shelving unit, oh, yeah.

Hemlig hat boxes. Yes.

The street outside my high-rise was sparkling and scattered with all this.

The Mommala quilt-cover set. Design by Tomas Harila and available in the following:

Orchid.

Fuschia.

Cobalt.

Ebony.

Jet.

Eggshell or heather.

It took my whole life to buy this stuff.

The easy-care textured lacquer of my Kalix occasional tablets.

My Steg nesting tables.

You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. buy the sofa, then for a couple years you’re satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you’ve got the sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug.

Then you’re trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.” 

 

“My father always said, ‘Get married before the sex gets boring, or you’ll never get married.’

My mother said, ‘Never buy anything with a nylon zipper.’

My parents never said anything you’d want to embroider on a cushion.” 

“My boss sends me home because of all the dried blood on my pants, and I am overjoyed.

The hole punched through my cheek doesn’t ever heal. I’m going back to work and my punched-out eyes sockets are two swollen up black bagels around the little piss holes I have left to see through. Until today, it really pissed me off that I’d become this totally centered Zen Master and nobody had noticed. Still, I’m doing the little FAX thing. I write little HAIKU things and FAX them around to everyone. When I pass people in the hall at work, I get totally ZEN right in everyone’s hostile little FACE. 

Worker bees can leave

Even drones can fly away

The queen is their slave 

…

Just by contrast, this makes me the calm little center of the world. Me, with my punched-out eyes and dried blood in big black crusty stains on my pants, I’m saying HELLO to everybody at work. HELLO! Look at me. HELLO! I am so ZEN. This is BLOOD. This is NOTHING. Hello. Everything is nothing, and it’s cool to be ENLIGHTENED. Like me.

Sigh.

Look. Outside the window. A bird.

My boss asked if the blood was my blood.

The bird flies downwind. I’m writing a little haiku in my head. 

Without just one nest

A bird can call the world home

Life is your career 

I’m counting on my fingers: five, seven, five.

The blood, is it mine?

Yeah, I say. Some of it.

This is a wrong answer.” 

“A car passes us on the right with a bumper sticker saying, ‘I Drive Better When I’m Drunk.” The newspaper says thousands of these bumper stickers just appeared on cars one morning. Other bumper stickers said things like ‘Make Mine Veal.’

‘Drunk Drivers Against Mothers.’

‘Recycle All the Animals.’” 

“The English got to name everything. Or almost everything.

Like, Ireland.

New London, Australia.

New London, India.

New London, Idaho.

New York, New York.

Fast-forward to the future.

This way, when deep-space exploitation ramps up, it will probably the megatonic corporations that discover all the new planets and map them.

The IBM Stellar Sphere.

The Philip Morris Galaxy.

Planet Denny’s.” 

“I’ve met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, ‘Why?’

Why did I cause so much pain?

Didn’t I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness?

Can’t I see how we’re all manifestations of love?

I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God’s got this all wrong.

We are not special.

We are not crap or trash either.

We just are.

We just are, and what happens just happens.

And God says, ‘No, that’s not right.’

Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can’t teach God anything.”