Under the fuggy corn leaves of the tamales, my opossum showed its pink nose and underbite. It’s been cockier lately, wandering out of its shadows and sticking its tufts of fur into disarmed pockets of peace. Maybe it’s the growing contrast between the hot sun and the frigid ocean, how the overcast thickens above us and stews everyone into a giddy chowder. I wish I could fall in line and obey the weather’s subscription, but my opossum keeps feeling more outgoing.

I ordered two pollo tamales while Mace insisted on nopales, which required the tamale lady to abandon her post for a moment. As we waited, a plump woman beside us ate off her styrofoam plate. Between bites she asked if we’d found anything good at the flea market. Mace’s tale wagged as he happily announced that we actually operate booths in the markets. Mace told her the whole story of what he used to sell, what he sells now, and what he plans to sell. The plump lady ate that as well. As she opened up the corn leaves of her next tamale, she turned to me and asked what I sell at my booth. That’s when my opossum slowly climbed up my trunk and poked its ugly head out from my shirt. Grabbing its scruffy body, I pulled it out and handed it to her.

My opossum is evasive and unglamorous. Its claws make stick on pavement noises. It knows what it is. If people have problems with its ugliness, it’s only problems of their own. She didn’t know what to do when I handed it to her. She held still (smart, because any false or especially reaching move makes it play dead). Then, with the thud of a soaked sponge, my opossum plopped into her tamale plate.

I told her I sell shelves of acid and cadavers and sight, that I have crates of secret extractors, filled with things capable of quartering bodies as well as reforming them, that I have treasures cached away in chests, things never to be bartered for.

She still looked down, staring at my opossum in her plate. That is when Mace asked me why I’m such an asshole. And that is when I took my opossum off her plate and placed it back inside my shirt.

When we received our tamales, Mace and I walked back to my booth. We ate them on the back couch, letting the steam of the cooked masa and corn leaves fill up the spaces between the trinkets.

I wanted to tell the plump lady that I sell and present art, that I use my booth to promote and celebrate various forms of expression, but I could see how she would project my booth in her mind, and it disgraced my little fractal square. I had no choice but to fight ugly with ugly and unleash my opossum on her.

I took the wax paper wrappers and our paper bag and tossed it behind the couch. Mace doesn’t understand the use of my critters yet so he still sat silently. Somebody came in and picked out some math rock albums. I lit an incense. Manny poked his head in and gave us a quick hello.

After the market calmed, I eventually retrieved a weave basket from one of my chests. I cradled it in my arms as I carried it over to Mace. He waited a long time after I handed it to him. In the silence, I heard seagull’s wings splash through the thick overcast skies above. When he caved and asked me what it was, my opossum crawled back from underneath my shirt and slowly slinked out onto our laps and laid its ugly head over our knees.

I told Mace what this basket holds. I told him it contains sight, eyeballs, the ability to discern the complex world. Mace thumbed through the basket and the various songs and looked back at my opossum. Its tongue flicked between its small yellow teeth.

I told Mace it’s the type of sight that gets people killed or imprisoned. Stroking the straw fur of my opossum, I told him its music that refuses to hide truth for charm. And I feel compelled to protect it just in case the evil succeeds.

Mace kept thumbing through them. My opossum slinked down off the couch and crawled. He asked me if he could guard them for a little while, give the sight a listen. I nodded. He stood up, cradling the basket as he left.

A pink tail stuck from out behind the bookshelf. I watched as it flickered and slapped gently against the rug. It then curled and traced the bookshelf’s edge before slowly retreating into the darkness. As it disappeared, the red ring around the incense glowed.

Below are the contents of the basket.

Myanmar traditional folk music

This is an example from before the dictatorship. It is currently illegal in Myanmar to play or publish this type of music. The artist keep it alive by either performing in exile or by playing in secret.

Russian Anti-war music

Making this type of music in Russia today risks imprisonment or disappearance

example of another Russian artist, Naoko, singing anti-war songs and getting arrested:

A freedom/anti-government song from China by the artist lowsOn

Artists creating this type of music risk imprisonment and often disappear altogether.

Traditional folk music from Afghanistan

Music of any kind is no longer permitted in the Taliban led Afghanistan. Traditional folk music like this is under threat. Only artists in exile and in secret still perform.

Kevin told me I couldn’t fit a playground inside the back of my 1991 Ford Ranger. Doubt charms the dormant pettiness out of me. I had no choice but to kidnap him.

I did not use any rope or tape or ski masks or VHS tapes in the stealing of Kevin. I did not even employ my kiln chest or my oak thighs. I’m in a losing war against clichés. I have to avoid them at every straightaway. They use gorilla tactics, attacking me from hidden traps and often in disguise. But I still show up to fight, dammit, or else I’d be letting all previous efforts die in Maine (Maine is basically useless, right?).

Plus, comedy lasts.

This is how I kidnapped Kevin: I pickpocketed him and took his phone and locked myself into the bathroom. And in an extra loud voice, loud enough to drown out his droning protests, I called his work and told them that he had been hit by a car, by a car driven by me. And that he needed to be taken to a hospital. In a car. Driven by me.

Giggles endure.

We missed every green light on our way toward Bonsall. My words, just a pal’s knot, bound Kevin loosely. He took the sluggish drive as an opportunity to try to attack my claims.

It all started last week when we were trying to describe the playground at our Elementary school. We hadn’t seen it since we were ten, so our conviction was our only proof. We drew up the mulch and the exposed bald spot of granite dirt below the slide. We agreed on the placement of the perforated platform that led to the monkey bars and on the placement of the swaying bridge and c-shaped ladder. What we couldn’t agree on, though, was the location of our Excalibur, where Manny heroically drew out the lips, and eventually the tongue, from the regal and much older face of Heidi Stadelli.

I remember it happening underneath the platform that held up the slide. Kevin claims it was under the bridge and said he could remember Heidi having to duck underneath it.

I said to Kevin that seeing the playground in flesh could jog his memory. I told him that we could swing by Bonsall Elementary together to pick it up. If doubt is my petty charmer, zaniness is Kevin’s. It comes in the form of much blabbering. It was the same last week as it was in the truck. He gave me irrelevant accounts about the school’s massive reconstruction, describing blueprints and all, and kept hammering on about how our disputed playground no longer existed.

In my war against cliches, I have become a bit cryptic. But Kevin—even a spoon turns heavy after a hundred scoops.

Just as another yellow light almost intercepted us, I pulled out a puffy jacket from behind the seat and handed it to Kevin. It was 70 degrees out and sunny just like it always was. He rolled his eyes as he obligingly pulled the jacket over his shoulders while I rolled up my window. The hole in the muffler always seems to fix itself when the truck does its little magic thing. It gets quieter. Kevin grabs onto the handle. And, just as his buggy eyes had expected, the 1991 Ford Ranger lifted into the air. Above the sun-crusted North County hills, the truck flew, sputtering slowly and distantly into the clouds.

Kevin took the trip on the chin as we quietly let the magic of the 1991 Ford Ranger take us away. After an unimportant amount of time, we descended through a grey, enduring fog. We found ourselves landing somewhere in England, probably, where everything seemed made up, where every street sign, alley, and moss-covered roof acted as a caricature of a gnome-y fairytale.

Not long after landing, we drove into the driveway of a cottage. The smell of beans emanated out and we could hear a faint fluttering of lame R’s

I told Kevin to wait in the truck. I walked over to the side of the cottage. There was a single light on. I saw a hand drift and slide off of a desk. I continued making my way over to a narrow stoop, where on the top step a small publication called Writing for Joy sat in a basket. I took it, placed it under my arm and slowly walked back towards the truck.

As we sat in the driveway, I let Kevin read through two stories, “Defending the Arts” and “Sleepover.”

After Kevin finished reading them, he placed the publication on the bench seat and stared at the cottage for a substantial amount of time.

Without warning, he started telling me about a memory. He brought up how we all used to wait by the slide and form a human chain with arms and hands interlocked. Because we knew, if we touched somebody just as they exited the slide, we’d receive a strong shock. And, if we were interlocked, a shock would travel through our bodies and reach, depending on the length of our chain and the length of our friendships, an innocent playground goer, or if we were really lucky, Miss Turley, the noon duty teacher.

I asked him if he thought testosterone did us well, or if he found it corrosive to our wit (I thought to myself clichés probably deployed it as chemical warfare).

He ducked that question and instead, after a pause, said he thought Wright for Joy might do well displayed right next to the book nook in my booth.

I agreed. I told him how, when I read the stories, it reached into our coarse playground sand and poured it down my shirt. And the moss on the cottage roof grew. The hand lifted itself back onto the desk.

As I pressed in the clutch, I reached and opened the back-split window, and tossed the publication into the back of the 1991 Ford Ranger.

full story here

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the yellow jacket kept flying against its reflection in the glass until she walked in. it was the lady who left with the Guy Denning pieces last month.

things learned/observed:

name: Anne

stance: prefers to lean on left leg when standing

home: in Vista and it’s messy

breakfast: coffee. she doesn’t eat breakfast

taste: deceptively similar to mine

viscosity: lingering and restrictively sticky. frosted tree sap, thin tupperware in the sun. overall, she was far less frantic than before, clinging long enough for the sunlight to find its way through the hole in my tarp.

act ii

the next week she returned. she spent nearly the entire day in my booth. luckily the banter was there. or else I’d draw a line. pick her up and place her on the other side. give her three taps on the top of her head. and then have a sit. but she had wit and held her own stick.

a lot of the rambling circled around the grandeur of my booth objects. she flew around them, drawing my eyes into the paintings and the books and the poems and into the rugs I don’t really like. and then just as I was pulled in, she’d divert her path. I’d be had with a finger on my chest. not a pressed one but a caressing, inquisitive one. she burrowed into our shared hatred for realism in art and pierced to the other side. then she started asking about how the objects of my booth pertain to me. where I found them, why I chose them, why I placed them where they were.

I swatted her inquisition away. I gave her vague, satirical tracings of their origins. and of me. I expected that to occupy her time. but she was skilled. she grabbed the pen and filled in the rest.

act iii

we had sex. the waves were glassy and clean and plump for a week straight. so it was coming.

I tried to jam levity between us as we hung out more. I mainly kept her around while I was with the other guys. but any gaps she found, she would fill herself. made me into something she wanted. and I’m a nice guy. my limbs pick up to the tugs. I bee what they see. I am never one to kill a buzz.

missionary I know is her favorite even though she tells me she prefers to be on top.

I’m a hack. a wannabe curator of art. a blue collar philosoburrr. a thunker. I will not build walls in wide open spaces. I will not take the brush out of the artists hand. even if they’re bugged and drugged.

so I let her say she preferred to be on top. just like I let her tell me how much she appreciates how stable I am, how much I know what I want, how focused I am in my beliefs in passions.

act iv

she caught feelings. she tried to slow-play it, but I felt it ever since she said she likes the smell of my 1991 Ford Ranger. on the plush cloth seats inside, she smells the plaster of her cast drying. the sober odor in actuality is just a concoction of exhaust leak and mold—flatulence from frayed manifolds and leaky window linings.

the waves became small and windblown.

act v

she visited me at the booth the next sunday even though she said she wasn’t going to. I learned Louie had told her about the hidden mirror I kept in my shop. ravenous, she wanted, or in her words, “yearned” to see it. my silence scratched her this time. she kept pressing.

while she talked about our shared intimacy and what was owed and not owed I drifted off and noted down several ways to enact revenge on Louie:

-take him to Laguna Beach

-go see a Metallica tribute band

-take him to brunch and order papaya salad

-push a skateboard mongo past him

survival instincts brought me back to her when she asked me if I know what she means. I didn’t say anything.

I walked over to a picture frame. It was the same piece of glass that the yellow jacket flew into those some weeks ago. I took it from its leaning place and handed it to her. she grabbed it and looked at the empty frame with the blank black foam board. she didn’t see her reflection. after a sigh, she lowered the frame to her hip. she again pressed to see my hidden mirror.

my limbs move when they’re tugged. so I obliged. I bowed my head. I lifted my brows in defeat. and then I walked her to the back of the booth. putting my hands on her shoulders, I placed her in front of me. then I stepped back.

“okay Anne.”

she leaned to her left leg. her hand lifted to her hair. she pulled at it like she did when she looked at art.

“here it is.”

I opened up my arms and widened my stance. she stared. her hand dropped her hair.

“here’s your mirror.”

act the end

when she left, she didn’t take the picture frame with her. she placed it on the stand next to the tapestries. she never saw the poem I had written on the backboard.

it’s a shit poem. a trance-y gimmicky poem. a sad attempt at rhyme. poem. but I guess I wanted her to tell me that. or maybe see what a great artist she is. see if she can paint over my tongue.

she stopped coming. but the yellow jacket returned after a while. or its cousin. I don’t know how long yellow jackets live for. it flew against the frame glass. crackly sparks shot across as its diamond eyes tried to cut into the reflection.

the same time each weekend I take the reserved plaques off a particular set of paintings. they’re for Em, a regular who comes to my booth each week. I don’t know her real name but I call her that because of the humming noise she makes while she observes.

I know she’ll never buy them. but that’s why I make sure nobody else does.

she used to talk with me when she first came here, over four years ago. now she just smiles as she enters, takes the metal folding chair from behind the bookshelf, and sets it in her usual spot. she arranges the paintings so she can leaf through them one by one. and then she starts emming.

when the pollen of my little lot catches the curios, when expression stretches its petals, it too starts to hum. that’s when the raccoons and the fleas and the opossums begin to talk, when the albums pull out their own metal chair to dance and brood and bicker. it’s when the paintings Em studies start to refract and fold in the light—when she becomes the painted object observing the painter.

and in my portal booth, it’s where she can talk with Frank. where she becomes JYM, the model who sat cooking in frank’s observation for four decades. where the portrait becomes their aging interaction, where she turns into the streetlights, the staircases. where her poster skin curls and peels, cooking in the heat of his study.

when she eventually leaves, I walk back over to hang the reserved plaques back on. and I can always smell fresh paint.

“So where do you get all of this stuff?” he asked me as he kicked the tires on my booth.

“I have a 1991 Ford Ranger.”

He flicked a shooing look at me.

“Okayyy,” he said as he moved on to examine a napkin-drawn pigplanada pinned to a board. (half piglet, half empanada).

Goochie goochie goo so what I like to make his brain itch. Call me a friend. I didn’t explain how it’s a flying 1991 Ford Ranger and it can zip around and pluck out trinkets for my booth from any part of the world at the drop of the clutch.

The art and trinkets of my booth stared at him as he continued to browse. He wore motorcycle pants and carried a helmet in his hand and wore a black and red shirt that was a medium that probably should have been an XL. He returned polite flat smiles and small greeting bows to the art, doing his corporate best not to push their rude stares to the ground. I followed him and his cordial observation as he made his way towards the music section. After placing his helmet down, he reached into one of the boxes and picked out a song.

“But so, how do you decide what to choose, what to bring back here.”

He flipped the song over in his hand before he pushed his straight black hair back with his hand and looked at me.

“Like this song for example.”

He held out “Save My Soul” by Sabine McCalla

“Oh, that song? Don’t you see it, Shmeesh?” I took the song from his hand.

“This song has arms and legs.” I made it dance in front of his face. “It walked up right up to me. This is a Lima, Peru song.”

“It found me after I drove six hours in traffic. Hellish traffic. Six hours to go six miles. There were shrieks. My bumper started weeping. A fawn was born. I fought over every inch. And after I elbowed my way through and as I did a mental triage over a bucket of chaufa and a beer, this song waltzed right up to me. And I said to it how do you do. It jumped right into my pocket. We traveled the rest of Peru and most of Bolivia together. How else do you want me to explain it.”

He gave me his game show host laugh. He was laughing at me not with me. After shaking his head, he continued picking through more of the songs.

“Any of them you would recommend to me?”

I didn’t tell him it doesn’t work like that because I didn’t tell him that my 1991 Ford Ranger flies.

“Well do any of them have a mustache or a smell or do anything to you.”

“Um, sure. I like this one.”

It was “There’s No Answer Without You” by Love Apple and Lou Ragland, a song I was sure he would hate.

“Take it.”

His face folded together in a quiet concentration. He held out another towards me. It was the “If You Know Me” demo by Hudson Freeman, a deeply cherished song that crawled up through my shower drain not too long ago. I did not want to part with it.

“It’s yours.”

I eventually put him out of his misery and moved him from the box to pick out some songs for him. As I flipped through them I said, “Now these songs might not come to life for you. It’s personal. So no biggie if not. Or maybe they will. Maybe they’ll shuffle your hair and tell you they’re proud of you or put a jansport backpack on your shoulders. Just don’t stare at them too hard or they get shy and won’t dance for you.”

“Alright.”

“And if they don’t, feel free to bring them back.”

I handed him two more songs (“Babyyy” by Grace Ives and “pale horse” by Truman Sinclair)

He said thank you four-times-too-many. So I pushed him out of the booth and sent him on his way—the way friends do. As I watched him walk away, I hoped the songs would turn his motorcycle into a horse and he’d ride it somewhere with dust and peace and where the cacti make nice small talk.

***thank youuuuu for your visit ily hags byyeeeeeee***

bought: various portraits by (from the breathing box)

interaction:

my trinkets received no free attention from the blond lady. she was a hornet moving through my booth, hovering with her head above her determined steps. she drew straight lines between the objects, moving from item to item with indifferent speed. she gave no obligatory long nods or soft blinks of consideration to what was displayed. nothing slowed her until she reached a particular box of art, of portraits mostly.

dropping down, she started shuffling through them. she held out pieces she liked with outstretched arms. and the ones she really liked made her head vibrate. after placing one to her side, she broke into an impenetrable rant.

she told me how much she can’t stand realistic or realism art, telling me that people should go buy a camera. there were lots of mutters and grunts any time she said the word “real” so it was hard to understand for sure. but I did catch that she thought realistic type of art was more of a vocational craft, like plumbing or hedge trimming, than art. that gave me a nose chuckle. she did not notice. at one point the rant turned to mirrors and she started talking faster and faster, and as she placed another art piece at her side, she said mirrors are liars, that they reflect no part of her. she looked down at the painting to her side and gave a couple of taps to the frame. she was levitating at this point. and then she told me that these art pieces were her mirror.

eventually she stood up and picked up her stack. they were an assortment of work by Guy Denning. after thanking me, she turned and walked out of my booth. I stuck her rant in my pocket as I continued to watch her walk, head in front of her feet, in a determined line past all the other booths.

her rant had walls and teeth so I never got the chance to tell her about how I found those paintings in the Finistère or about the mirrors I have in the back, or how the box she dug through was one of the very few labeled things in my booth, and how there’s duct tape on the bottom that reads “the breathing box.” those thoughts too, were for the pocket.

below is the art the lady left with. for more by Guy Denning

thankk youuu for stopping by. love ya!

A man I am not allowed to like walked into my booth. He had the top half of an intake manifold in his hand. He doesn’t know who I am or why I am not allowed to like him. I forget what he sells in his booth, but what’s important is that it doesn’t operate here at our Sunday flea market, but at the cursed Saturday swapmeets.

I sat on the couch in the back. He gave me a squinted, short smile when he entered. He didn’t notice my keen observation of him—not then, or when the boys and I had spied on him and the other Swappers the weeks before.

He was an old goat moving through the booth. Peppered grey hair stuck out from his head in tufts. He clanked around, bouncing and twitching off the boxes and crates and stands. When certain things caught his attention, he gave them a slower, longer sniff (one of the cassettes, a clay bunny sculpture made by Joëlle Gervais).

He spent a considerable amount of time at the bookshelves, craning his long neck into the case and running his finger along the shelf’s edge. I could hear his breath do short little ticks as he read the different titles.

Working his way deeper into the booth, he stopped at a box of short prose just to my right. Placing the intake manifold down at his feet, he started picking through the loose papers. I watched him rifling through them and saw hands guilty of many dinner table spills. When he reached a particular set of pages, his fingers calmed. His eyes blinked long as he read carefully. Then his lips cracked open, forming a mail slot hole. His top lip quivered slightly as the words worked through him. I stopped watching him.

“I’ll take these,” he said while holding the papers up to me after another minute or so had gone by.

I stood up and took them from his hand. A couple of poems by Brandon Shimoda looked back at me.

I pointed down to his feet. ”What’s the intake for?”

”Ah, it’s for my 2003 Toyota Avalon. I’m trying to convince myself mine is warped and that the headgasket isn’t blown.”

I didn’t know where they sold intake manifolds within the flea market. But I did know the evasive blown-headgasket-dance.

After I handed the papers back, he bent down and picked up the intake. He held it against his hip, letting the weight of it crumple the poems still in his hand. He gave a quick lift of the hand before turning and leaving.

The Selected Poems:

Hinotama

by Brandon Shimoda

There is a simpler, more pristine life

inside the ball of light

bouncing above the barbed wire fence

A small incision made

in space

through which an entirely new fashion

of human being

is spying

on the people incarcerees,

we are supposed to call them,

that is the signal

of their expendability

motivating the whirling blades the wave-like crests

as the striving of a human

to separate

the calcified tumor

that makes the ball

a planet fallen

to ice

a simpler, more pristine life

pressing against the startled faces

rooting, together,

to describe the ephemeral achievement

of collective entrapment

the loss that is constant, rapid

The Pond Museum

by Brandon Shimoda

The fenestrate surface of the pond

surfaces in old companions snag ripples

namely, Saburo

I recommend his face for the pond museum

above the fox’s skulking face

the hare’s face, death’s polished stone

the crane’s larval pearl

eyes transmitting the code for a sodden voice

in the splintering reeds

And when I say I recommend

I mean the menagerie in the utmost dark

saviors hung from supping trees

gone the way of idiot flesh—where you

were endowed with a chance, and fucked up

Evening, I went down

on the pantry, pried open

a basket of rice cakes, grew

partial to eating in the dark

if only to concentrate the sound

of walking through the wilderness

at night, enlarged

without people

as wax I sleep in nectar

When was the flora brass

A woman kneeling among cranes

Willows waiting

for sticks to arrive

to burn cranes from her body

genital

wind through which

No, it has always been this way

blooms erupting

suspicion, husband

making sure each dawn

the sticks stay lashed to his back, the wood

she waits for

thin as blades, and cut as close

To fallow soil

sea dragon in hand

proper, yes, though petrified

crimson, pink, indigo, green

purple and yellow lotus

cradle in the hedgerow

I feel

faint exceptionally

hot here on the ground

Should I be sweating this much?

Should the sea dragon weigh so heavily?

Bronze skin festooning the trees

cutting a spirit loose?

Carrion flowers

slip

from my hand

I never know where to place these art pieces in my booth. Sometimes I place them near the front entrance, while other days I hide them behind the couch, facing away from the crowd, cached away like the artists who created them.

This particular collection of art was never meant to be seen, much less scrutinized. And some days I want to protect their innocence. While on other days, like today, I want to impose their authenticity and glue them onto windshields and drape them over stoplights and insert them underneath every phone glass. Either way, their location in my booth is a symptom of my mercurial moods.

The flea market setting (amongst all the tents of barter and exchange) doesn’t help the indecision. There’s too much noise vying for influence. So sometimes, in an effort to see them with a sober mind, I throw them into the back of my flying 1991 Ford Ranger and take off to Cleveland, Ohio—a place where I trust dispositions.

***screeching tire noises***

Nobody projects onto Cleveland, Ohio. Nobody dreams about walking and getting lost in its streets, or imagines themselves blasting down the boulevard with their arms waving out of a sunroof. If I see something in Cleveland (a statue, a broad walkway, a seedy-looking bar), I know it exists not to appease or profit off of my grandeur ideas of Cleveland but because Cleveland necessitates it (through need or desire).

When there, I take the paintings and drawings out and I lay them against the brick. And there, in a setting void of performance, I absorb the collection of art with clarity. I see the brush strokes and slashes of ink and enjoy knowing that the force behind the movements is not for my judgement or jealousy or appreciation, but for that specific art piece’s craving for such movements.

This art, much like Cleveland, exists for itself.

In attics, in basements, under candlelight, and in secret, these various artists created these works without ever having the intent of sharing them. They were made solely for the need to create—free from the restrictions of art classes and critiques and far far from performace.

In the world they rejected, they are called outsider artists. In my giddy little world, I call them Cleveland Authentic. Here they are. I hope you enjoy their company and their art (they certainly don’t appreciate yours):

Séraphine Louis (1862-1942)

Louis, pictured above, was a house cleaner who painted in secret under candlelight beneath a France bustling with industry, fashion, and war. She was discovered when a German art collector visited his neighbor’s house and discovered a painting of apples and was shocked to learn the painter was his very own house cleaner, Louis.

Madge Gill (1882-1961)

Madge Gill’s parents isolated her from the rest of the world, so she created her own. In her attic, she scribbled thousands of drawings and sketches. She credits her inspiration to her spirit guide, Myrninerest. Even after her art was discovered, and people offered to show her work in renowned galleries, Gill refused, claiming the art belonged to Myrinerest.

Bill Traylor (1853-1949)

William (Bill) Traylor was a self-taught artist. Born a slave, Bill lived through the Civil War, Jim Crow laws, the Reconstruction, and later became a prominent figure of the budding urban African American culture in the South. While living on the streets of Montgomery, Alabama, he and his art were discovered at his ripe age of 75.

Martín Ramírez (1895-1963)

Martín came to the United States from Mexico to work on the railroad and to send money back to his wife and young children. After a handful of years of work, he ended up homeless, battling mental issues, including schizophrenia. He was later institutionalized, where he remained for his life and where he created his surreal drawings.

Voila. Four Cleveland Authentic artists. Four artists who probably never said thank you without meaning it. Four artists who combated the challenge of their lives with expression.

And as an extra little gift, here is this song by the Texan musician named Jandek, who ducked the spotlight that chased after him and only sent his albums by mail order.

Thanks Ily H.A.G.S.

Here is a collection of songs that I keep on the small metal stand next to the bookshelf. I place them there because I like to picture the songs mocking the books with all their carefully crafted articulation and prose.

All of these songs share a similar disposition: they see language and shrug. They’re uninterested in its precision and instead, in spots, use the art of emotionally backed and vocal-y delivered nonsensical noises to convey. And in certain ways, they express more profoundly than the books.

And so I—a serial personifier—like to sit on the couch and snack on the tension. The songs lounge playfully with tongue-in-cheek, while the books vibrate on their shelves with rage as rationale burns a hole through their neglected pages.

But, here, take the songs, hold them, feel them for what they are and not for what my lapses in sanity claim. You will find chants, scat singing, mumbling, shouts, and guttural extractions.

I’d recommend starting off with “Moon Over Montana” for some friendly scat singing (1:44-2:15) to introduce and warm up the tongue toward the idea of venturing outside of all its trained articulation.

And then next jump over to “Ce n’est que de l’eau.” (2:05-2:20 and 3:08-3:20) Because aren’t all songs in an unfamiliar language non-lexical? Maybe enough of a foreign language will also train the ears to stop straining for meaning and allow you to peacefully float away down the river of feeling.

Then maybe you’ll be ready for singing that is more trance than melody in the song “Women in Late” by Giovanni Venosta, whose album is aptly titled “Improbable Music For People Who Aren’t Very Disposed.” I find if I properly sink into this song, I also forget or no longer care about words and will spend part of my day letting people paint their own meanings over my silence.

Another one is “Alien Blues” by Vundabar, whose angst might be needed depending on what the silence is filled with.

And “Bizness” by Tune-yards, I think is a good song to circle back to as it stitches some sort of balance with its non-lexical background vocals woven into the lyrics. It kind of puts its arms around the bookshelf and the small metal stand and says stop foolin’.

Anyways, music rules and will still always be the favorite child of human expression. Hope you enjoyed the browse around, and hope you are inspired to incorporate some grunts and shrieks into your next interaction.

Here’s a bonus song with some semantic satiation where repeated words dissolve its integrity to the point where it becomes non-lexical (kind of like what happens when you say apple over and over again): “New in Town” Life Without Buildings (2:10 - 3:00). It’s also a bonus because the accent its sung with tickles both my juvenile and poetic brain.

***I put my links in spotify because I strongly believe in accessibility when it comes to art but please consider listening to them on Apple Music where they get more financial support. Or better yet, buy some merch or throw them some dough where available.

I ransacked some classics because I care about you market goers so much. Just promise you won’t tell. The authorities will never look in Oceanside so long as we keep it hush.

Christian Krohg (1852-1925)

Above is the original dap, one of my favorites from Krohg collection at Orsay. After learning a little about him, this painting felt like a peek show into who he was—a very organic, non-GMO man. I had to have it—look how he frames the dapper with his booty out of the picture. The critics said what a novice mistake and labeled him an amateur. And Krohg said don’t care. He knew it had some mystery and honesty and kept his hand up, waiting for somebody to understand and give him the first dap ever.

Here’s (below) another one of his elongated booty pics. He also messed with a bunch of other different art forms because he did not care about what flea market bin you tossed him in. Anyways, hope this is worth the short peruse. You can go for a further snoop, for a dap from beyond the grave.

Paul Gaugin (1848-1903)

I also stole this Paul Gauguin piece (below) for your lusty eyes. It’s called the white horse even though the horse is green and the other horse is red and the other horse is dark grey and I might be color blind. Gauguin, I think, is my favorite post-impressionist (at least when I am in the mood to heist).

It’s a great nice painted flat box that I think would look really tie your living room together. It will let your guests know that you travel, that you’re exotic (even though you know not so deep down the subtle secret that no matter how close you get, you will never understand a local (so might as well paint them however exotically you see them in your head).

Here is a nice video on Gauguin if you want to know more about him/if you want to fall asleep on a desk.

Anyway, let me know if you're interested in any of these. Hope to see you around the market soon. I also stole other pieces, like this quick grab-and-dash old advert that used to flap around in Paris around a century ago. Let me know if you want more heists. More to come soon, ily

I originally opened this up with two goals in mind: help share/promote art, and practice my literary chops. I will continue with the short stories always (they are fun) but doing them only is just too slow and it’s not allowing me to contribute to the creative world like I imagined.

If it gets too spammy just know you can adjust your subscription to where you only follow certain topics (only music for example).

Anyhooser, happy Friday and see you around the market!

Description: a because we can, a nana nana boo boo look what I can do. While being an impressive creation, this album completely disregards human capacity. Overfilled with aesthetics, it frays synapses, causing an itchy irritation to the eardrums (song for refrence). It often leaves listeners in a state of flippant stupor (song for reference), which has uses in specific cases (see below).

Uses: disarms moments of chaos, pandemonium, and stress, often adding a comedic tinge to the hoopla, by combating the over-stimulus with more stimulus (double negative = positive). Proven to be useful in events such as neurotic traffic jams, gnats swarming the face, short stories such as Silver Backs, etc.

Cost: free will

***fine print backslash symptoms***

Note: In some patients, a dull itch has persisted long after consumption. In newly appreciated silence and in noise alike, these patients are left with a longing, a desire to hear something with more depth. It has been reported that periodically reapplying this album has alleviated these symptoms.

***click here for backstory and character list, and here to start from Ep.1

Silverbacks—Ep.7

A floating orb caught Manny’s sight. He brushed his thick, dark strands of hair off his forehead and leaned into the window. The flying 1991 Ford Ranger had struggled to keep a regular flight pattern above the city. Each time the truck pitched and swerved, Manny braced himself against the door panel with his knee and with his elbow against the cloth center console. He had flexed into this position when he saw the orb, even though at that precise moment the flying 1991 Ford Ranger flew clean and true.

It was only when his muscles grew a little fatigued, and he relaxed, that the truck misfired and dropped several feet, leaving them momentarily weightless. After catching gravity again, Manny flashed a look at Jo. Jo’s left foot sat up on the vent that blew constant ambient air. He steered with a single finger on the wheel. Looking back at Manny, he gave two antagonizing raises of his eyebrows as he continued to nibble on the dead skin on one of his knuckles

Normally, Jo hid the abilities of his magic Ford Ranger, but it was not necessary above La Paz, Bolivia, a city with no boundaries for what’s acceptable. The city sat in a natural bowl scooped out of the high Andes plains. Sitting to the north, the ancient silverback mountain of Huayna Potosí looked indifferently upon the city’s fractal bustle.

Jo traced the Ford Ranger around the lip of the bowl before slowly starting a swirling descent. Manny saw another orb in the distance, then another directly below. Blue and shiny, they moved slowly. He found another climbing up to the top of the bowl at around eye level. With a closer look, he realized it, and the rest of the orbs were attached to cables, and that the orbs were, in fact, Gondolas. Dozens of them moved lazily above the hazy brick and cement buildings. As they swirled further down towards the heart of the city, Manny could see individuals inside.

“Told you it was bullshit,” said Jo.

Manny looked over to Jo. Jo dropped his foot off the vent and made a banking turn. He looked down into the city through the side window.

“It still flushes in the same direction down here.”

“You never told me shit,” said Manny.

“I didn’t have to…” Jo straightened the truck out. “It’s what everyone says.”

Manny looked back out the window. On a street in the distance below, he saw somebody in a full giraffe costume running through the traffic. Another person, dressed in a zebra outfit, chased after him.

“What is this place on?” said Manny.

“Welcome to the real país libre.”

A stack of cars waited for a red light. Jo landed his truck right behind them. None of the public seemed to notice or pay any attention to their mystic arrival.

Jo followed the flow of the cars. At the next light, he jumped out, leaving the car running, and walked to the Toyota Corolla wagon sitting in line in front of them. With no hesitation, he climbed into the backseat. Manny clicked his teeth and rolled down the window. The light turned green, and the Corolla pulled away. A car horn blared. Manny looked back to see a van full of people. The driver made a shooing gesture with his hand.

“For fucks sake,” Manny muttered to himself before climbing over the cloth center console and getting behind the wheel. The horn’s blare turned more aggressive as others further behind also chimed in.

It took Manny a moment before he found the Corolla. It had made a right turn down a small one-way street. As he pulled up behind, the Corolla’s brake lights came on, and before the car came to a stop, Jo hopped out with the car still rolling. He left from the opposite side of the car where he entered, and he had thin wire sunglasses that he wasn’t wearing before. Casually, he walked back over to the passenger side of his magical truck and hopped in.

“The fuck?” said Manny.

“Ah, they were nice,” replied Jo.

After they parked, Manny followed Jo into an unmarked building. Dried leaves, spices, and bagged food hung from the ceiling. Jo walked over to the counter and bought a sack of leaves and two large beers.

In the same building, they climbed some stairs to find a small terrace. With plastic chairs and tables, a few people slowly worked through bowls of food. In the corner of the terrace, a kitchenette and a bar stood with large glass jugs resting on top. An older toothless lady sat next to the bar and nodded at the pair walking in. She was chewing on a wad of something in her mouth and spat some of it into one of the large jugs at her feet. As they made their way to the corner table, she grabbed a pinch of yellowish mash from a plastic sack and placed it in her mouth.

“You drugged me again, huh?” asked Manny. Jo sipped on his beer as he scanned around at the sight of the surrounding city. After a couple of quick swigs, he motioned over to the server and ordered some food.

Pushing his lips to the side of his face, he said, “That’s the problem, actually.” He kicked his feet out and started reaching into his pants pocket. Manny brushed the hair back off his forehead. Dropping the bag of leaves on the table, Jo unwrapped the plastic and took some out, holding it toward Manny, “Take. Takeeee.”

Manny grabbed it hesitantly, pinching the dry broken leaves with his fingers. “Do I get to ask what it is?” asked Manny.

Jo picked out another large clump of the leaves and stuffed it into his cheek. He smiled broadly with an open mouth as he sat back. “Coca.” He closed his mouth and sucked and swirled some saliva around the leaves before he said, “Helps with the altitude.”

Manny nodded his head with softly closed eyes. He gave a shallow swallow before placing the leaves into his cheek.

The coca leaves and beer playfully wrestled and fought for superiority in their blood. They shared a silent observation of the unhinged streets below. A llama walked by alone, rope dragging on the floor behind. Another furry costumed person crossed the street and entered a phone store. Down one of the nearby small streets, a small crowd gathered around two foosball tables. At a traffic light, three kids climbed on top of each other while the one on top began to juggle.

Manny took a large swig of his beer. He leaned back and smiled. His eyelids sat low and relaxed. “This place is sick,” he said.

“Costco certified,” replied Jo.

The bowls of food came. Manny did not know what Jo had ordered. Meat on the bone sat in a green, clear broth with a yellowish oil slick sitting on top. Balls of potatoes sat at the bottom. Manny took a first sip with his spoon and started coughing and choking.

Jo followed with a small sip directly from the bowl and laughed with some slight coughs of his own. “Peanuts.”

Manny looked through his bowl as he swallowed coarsely. “What?”

“You’re choking on peanut powder. This is sopa de mani. Peanut soup.”

Manny took another careful spoonful.

“It’s good, no?” asked Jo

“Yeah, it’s good.”

“Personally, prefer it with a little more chalk, a little more choke,” said Jo.

They finished the sopa de mani. The old lady behind them kept chewing on the mash and spitting while watching them. Jo pointed up the hill over Manny’s shoulder. “You see that?”

Manny twisted around in his plastic chair. A mess of beige and brick stretched up the hill with the incessant flow of people spewing between them.

“See what?”

“Down that small alley,” Jo lifted out of his seat slightly as he leaned forward and pointed. “There.”

The alley Jo pointed to had a curtain of furs, dried vines, and other objects hanging from small canopies. A sea of swaying legs and arms swarmed throughout. Further in, a hazy smoke poured out of one of the doorways, veiling what lay behind.

“I see it.”

“That’s a witch market,” said Jo.

Manny glanced towards him with strained eyes.

“No more diluted panchos, my friend. Nobody in North County has what they have down there.”

Manny gave one more look towards the alley before sitting forward again. He let his fingers gently tilt and rotate his empty beer bottle on the table while he studied Jo.

“You want some chicha?” asked Jo.

“Yeah, let’s run it.”

Jo motioned over to the bar and ordered two chichas. The worker nodded and opened one of the jugs of fluid sitting on the bar. Manny watched as they lowered two small glasses to scoop the fluid inside. As they walked over to deliver the drinks, Manny found the eyes of the toothless old lady. She gave him a slight smile and nod before spitting into the jar at her feet. When the glasses clinked down onto the table, she reloaded her cheek with more mash.

and the label sweats when I’ve stared into the fog too long

I can almost see my dried spit walk away

arms linked with my explanation

delete-sun-words-excess

until the cold water condenses my want for what I perceive

and I envelop

contrary to what I feel tapping away on the inside of my chest plate

I am human,

says the fly in my nostril

two, fifteen, forty… six

with the sap from a popped bulb between my fingers

no matter how cursory or how puncturing

melted or frozen

with a rigid nail and a spotted tooth

when I look

I will always see

nothing

Featured art: British artist Alabaster DePlume and his Album, “To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol.1” (pictured album below)

Appearance also by Japanese Jazz Artist, Shintaro Quintet

Rules don’t apply inside the Oceanside Flea Market. People sell and eat trinkets and drugs and dance with critters and do things out of accordance of laws and physics. Some of the vendors are friends. One of them, Jo, drives a 1991 Ford Ranger that can fly and float and do Pirate-y things. With it, he collects different trinkets of art from the creative world and sells/shows them at the Oceanside Flea Market.

For back story and Character list, go here.

Ep—6 The Many Ways in Which Honey Drips

Their eyes had long, hairlike fingers reaching out of them. Translucent with a yellowish tar hue, the fingers could not be seen against the backdrop of the dry suburban coastline, but they were felt.

Louie’s 1992 Jeep Cherokee sat parked on the Pacific Coast Highway bridge. He was behind the wheel with Manny in the passenger seat and Kevin in the back. An Alabaster DePlume tape played through the speakers. The cassette player clicked every handful of seconds. A swap meet churned below them in the Oceanside Harbor overflow parking lot. A couple of perched up alley cats, they observed the swap meet with both hisses and licks of indifference.

Their touching sight scurried across the skin of the observed. The swap meet workers felt the faint feeling of spider legs running across their tatted arms and the back of their sun-baked, fruit leathered necks. The sensation of the distant sight on them was too soft for a scratch or a swat and instead brought on slow investigative glances over their skin. The fantom touch returned often, and they kept checking, but could never identify the source of observing eyes. It forced some exchanged looks amongst them, but nobody verbalized the shared feeling. To the new and trendy swap meet crew, appearances remained their ruler, and nobody wanted to stand up to crazy.

Manny had been fiddling with loose items in the car between his passing glances. He found a tub of creatine under his cloth seat and began pouring some out on the back of his hand as they continued to rifle through what their eyes found.

“Stick on callouses.”

“They eat parfaits out of cast iron pans.”

“Subarus with knobby tires.”

“They give themselves bed head after waking up with perfectly combed hair.”

“Cloth pants only.”

“They pat when they hug.”

“Septum rings.”

“Fucking septum rings.”

Manny snorted the line of creatine on the back of his fist. Louie looked at him and held in the laugh that Manny mined for.

“Suppository would have been more efficient,” said Louie.

Manny nodded and looked back down over the bridge. He threw his thumb in that direction and made a long falling cartoon whistle sound, finishing it with a splat.

“There’s your efficiency,” said Manny. He wiped off the back of his hand, then pinched his nose and sniffled. “Can’t take the fun out of it, though.” He grabbed the tub and twisted in his seat to face Kevin behind him. “You want some?”

“Why?” Kevin rolled up his sleeve and flexed his bicep in Manny’s face. “Does it look like I need it?”

“I said did you want some,” said Manny, placing the tub back down at his feet.

Kevin leaned back. He looked through the car seat headrest for a while before looking back down at the swap meet. He knocked his knuckle against the car glass. “Nobody likes to do tasks on a Saturday. Their cloth pants will lose their softness. Their blond streaks in their hair will fade. And the butterflies will get tired and all the shoppers will land back on us and our Sundays, where bargains belong.”

Louie looked at Kevin over his shoulder. His chin led with his crown tilted back. Air rushed in through his nostrils. “I’m not worried.”

The Whisky Story Time song came on. The speakers kept clicking. Attendance at their flea market had plummeted. Their overflow of stock leaked out of their homes and cars. As they sat from their perch above the swap meet, the whys this had happened, why the swap meet workers came, why the shoppers chose to go there, snorted and prowled around them in the jeep. More of an unfortunate condition, an instinct, than a choice, they colored the whys threatening. And when they looked down on the swap meet market workers, they drew horns where their septum rings were.

Jo had handed the Alabaster DePlum tape to Louie right before he left to hunt down some trinkets in Myanmar with Mason. After Louie took it, Jo clamped his hands around his cheeks and smooshed his face together before yelling, “Jazz is back, baby!”

And it was true. It was there, playing on the bridge. And it helped pour out the creatine, helped them turn their heads, and allowed for some licking peace between their biblical judgments. The jazz injected play. It placed a comedy, made some dropout nihilist for the zoomed-out perspectives, and brought them down into the moment, into the cuddle puddle of the jeep parked on the bridge with all of its improvisations.

Louie found a straw in the door pocket. He tapped it on the shifter to break the paper wrapper free. Reaching between Manny’s legs, he grabbed the tub of creatine. He dumped out a pile of the powder on top of the steering wheel, carelessly letting clumps of it fall on his knees and the floor. Sticking the straw in his nose, he snorted through the creatine. He accelerated away after several quick karate chops on the horn.

An ease blanketed over the swap meet. The booth workers smiled without knowing the source. Percolating sweat retreated on their fruit leathered necks. Their skin was touched by nothing other than the soft sting of the salty ocean air. In one of the booths or in one of the parked cars or in one of the nearby condos, a Shintaro Quintet song came on.

Later that afternoon, both groups unknowingly convened together and chose to surf the same sets of waves breaking off the same south harbor jetty. The swappers flipped their septum rings up when they surfed so the flea market crew did not recognize them.

Manny rode as if people watched him from a bridge. He did not share waves. He unknowingly and indifferently stole a wave from one of the swappers. The swapper took the slight on the chin and watched with a marked indignation as Manny sprayed water off the back of the peeling wave. It was out of character for Manny, a surfer always aware of his fingerprints, to miss seeing him despite their proximity.

The ocean did have a large amount of loose floating seaweed, enough to catch fins and leashes and hairlike fingers. So Manny’s stolen wave had rationale—as did the septums and the overflowing stock. The whole lot, North County, fat on rationale, had enough to lay their heads down into Sunday, enough for the car speaker’s next click.

The waves must be checked before surfed. There must be a walk across the cobbled stones. There must be banter and debate. The view from the parking lot does not suffice. The cliff dust, the thirty minutes, the tide changing, the setting, all need the brush of calloused feet that come to enjoy them. All steps are obligatory. The surf spot has a specific name, but amongst them, they call it Poopers.

The rocks rolled under the waves, and the deep, marbled sound pushed up the jagged bluffs. The air glistened in a static mist from the thrashing salt water. Across the cobbles, Louie and Jo picked their way through with a pirate’s meandering step.

“You’ve seen those stories written about us?” asked Louie.

A set of waves came in the distance. Jo studied them rolling in. The first smaller wave peeled to the left. The second and third had two peaks that pulled the center wave down in a single crash.

“Yeah, it’s kind of funky,” replied Jo.

“It’s you, right?” asked Louie.

Jo’s foot slid off of a matte purple cobble and he had to quick step to keep his balance. After he recovered, he stopped and looked over at Louie. He smiled and held in his bottom lip underneath his front teeth, “not me.”

Jo stopped there, not quite to where they usually paddled out and sat on top of the rocks. He kicked out his feet. Louie sighed and sat, crossing his legs next to him. He picked up some smaller stones, letting them slip through his fingers.

“Not you. Okay. Sure. I believe you. Not you. Not you at all,” said Louie.

“Just somebody who really knows us, I guess.”

“Not you.”

“Not me.” Jo picked up a pebble and lazily tossed it in front of them. “I told you. I’ve been working on my book and on my poems.”

“I gotta find one of those.” Louie tossed a pebble of his own that plopped and ricocheted back towards them before sitting back on his hands. Jo smiled and waited for Louie’s imminent jab. “I needa find me some ambiguous project, something that halts inquiry, something that camouflages all my bullshit.”

Jo laughed and leaned forward, pulling on his calves. They sat for a while. The sun baked their necks. Pelicans traced an unbroken wave. A squirrel ran down to give the cobbles a sniff before retreating to the foot of the cliffs. And it was a bad late morning to be a throwable pebble.

After a while, Jo reached out toward Louie, holding something in his hand. “Here. Proof. My bullshit has the camouflage of a peacock.”

Louie opened out his hand. It was a poem Jo had written titled young sand.

disclaimer: this is a DIY comfort manual which sometimes can cause symptoms such as the throwing of Molotov cocktails and the urge to kiss somebody you don’t know

scrape a handful of people off of some random sewer walls (must be random)

place their brown blonde and balding on a large granite boulder

now give it three pats on the top of its head and say nice sand

let the mixture sit

the randomness of their meeting will make them lighter

how they never should have shared a seat together

will take the weight off their bones

and make the large hard boulder two-ply comfy

wait longer and then much too long

until they soften into a puddle

until the young sand boulder ages

and through the lapidary of chance

it presses through their toes

The waves must be checked. There must be a walk across the cobbles. There must be banter and debate. The view from their parked cars does not suffice. All steps are obligatory. They call the surf spot Poopers.

Flea market morale held at the apex. A dull shock ran through the dissipated lot. Some vendors packed up and left. Others lingered and did triage on their fat stock. The afternoon weather was sunny and unnoticeable. Wrappers and flea market debris trembled on the pocked asphalt, begging for a gust from the ocean breeze.

“Dressed-up words don’t make the fleas go away,” said Manny. He and Mason sat on Jo’s booth couch, with Jo lying on the rug on the floor at their feet. They unwound from the day’s barter.

“Emm,” said Mason as he rocked forward, readjusting in his seat. “Yeah, this isn’t a tea party.” Mason blinked cheek to brow. “What even is a swap meet?”

Manny rolled his inner lip between his teeth and picked at one of the callouses on his hand. “Who knows. A guy walked by my booth with a brand-new poncho hoodie. Still creased. Not one of mine. He looked full of creatine and internet forums if that tells you anything.”

Mason moved to his elbows on his knees. He bounced his leg and folded his hands. He flicked glances between Manny and his bony fingers and to Jo. “Should we do anything? I mean, we were here first.”

“Mmm, do something. Sure, I might have to find new work. Maybe I’ll start collecting and training fleas. Sell it to salted-up people like you,” said Manny.

“Go where the market flows,” said Jo from the ground while he leafed through some papers.

Mason opened up his hands. They gesticulated and churned as he spoke. “Saturdays don’t even make sense. That’s the day to forget. The day to purge. And then Sunday is the day to prepare, to brace for what you tried to forget.” Mason sat back into the couch cushions and pulled his ankle over his knee. “Who wants to do tasks on a Saturday?”

Manny turned to Mason. “Amen! But why the fire, Mace? You’re not the one losing cash.”

Mason's shoulders rolled back. He looked around and pushed himself further up with the armrest. “Principal. Plus, I had some ideas to open up my own booth. But now, I’m not so sure with these swappers running at the harbor.”

“Yeah, now, your idea actually has to be good,” said Manny.

“Do you think it’s because they’re catching people just going to the beach? With us up here in the valley. People don’t come here unless to come here,” said Mason with a bobbing head and a finger pointed down. “I just don’t get them. I don’t understand.”

Manny reached over towards Mason. He placed his hand with his long fingers on his shoulder, “Where you going to put it?” He started pushing and pulling on Mason, making him rock. “Huh? It’s gotta go somewhere. Where're you going to put it?”

Mason swatted off Manny’s hand with a chuckle. “I dunno. Need to hit the waves,” he said with a flare of the nostrils.

“Constructive,” said Manny. “That will show the swappers what’s up,” He leaned to the edge of the couch onto his feet and cast his head directly over the top of Jo’s

After giving Manny a quick glance around the loose papers that Jo held, he started ruffling through them quickly. He stopped when he found the paper he searched for. It was a poem by Adrienne Rich. Crossing his ankles, exaggerated and unruly, he recited:

Stone by Stone I pile

this cairn of my intention

with the noon’s weight on my back

exposed and vulnerable

across the slanting fields

which I love but cannot save

from floods that are to come;

can only fasten down

with this work of my hands,

these painfully assembled

stones, in the shape of nothing

that has ever existed before.

A pile of stones: an assertion

that this piece of country matters

for large and simple reasons.

A mark of resistance, a sign.

Jo placed the stack of papers down by his hip and put his hands on his belly and let his eyes blur.

Manny bowed his head for a moment looking down at his feet before turning toward Mason, “Let’s surf?”

Looking out toward the distant dry hills, Mason’s lips peeled open. He touched the edge of his lips with his tongue. A cellophane wrapper shook against the awning post. He looked over to Manny and widened his eyes, sucking in air through his teeth before standing up.

Jo drove his 1991 Ford Ranger straight into the harbor. The whole flea market gang braced against door panels and B-pillars and grabbed at whatever their hands could find. They never really know where they're going when Jo picks them up, but none of them expected the Pacific Ocean.

"Ay, we giving this fruit to Poseidon?" said Manny as he looked through the salty foam dripping down the car window.

Jo shook the shifter to find neutral. Turning to the backseats, Jo looked at Mason. "Mace, can you reach through the window and grab the bag."

Mason obeyed with wide eyes and reached through the back window into the truck bed and pulled in a plastic bag of fruit. He'd never been in a floating 1991 Ford Ranger. They dropped off the blood oranges to the harbor bar that likes to put them in their bloody marys before continuing to bob along through Oceanside harbor. Kevin sat in the back with a jumpy chuckle as he watched the cars driving parallel to them on the dry road. In the other back corner, Manny mumbled a melodic set of curse words around his accepted fate. Sitting in the front, Louie looked out distantly and massaged the corners of his mouth to corral an unruly smile. As they passed the final jetties of the harbor and moved out to sea, Mason sat up in his middle seat for an obligatory check of the waves.

Jo sat with his bare left foot on the dash and with his wrist bone resting on the gently vibrating shifter knob. As North County continued to lose its definition behind them, their hands pulled and played with the cloth seat threads and picked up and put down the random loose items inside the cab.

"Ye Jo-ster, I can't help but notice, we're pointed toward the horizon," said Kevin.

"Is that what you see?" replied Jo.

Mason sat forward and poked his head between the two passenger seats to look further out. Jo looked over to Louie and then passed his eyes over the others in the back.

"France. We're going to France."

"Muuther fucker," said Manny as he gave a laughing shout.

Louie's shoulders bounced as he broke into a manic giggle. Mason turned to look through the back window toward the ever-thinning strip of land.

"Boyys time," said Kevin, who nodded while looking through Jo's backrest.

"Exactly, Kev," said Jo.

"But this thing does fly," said Kevin. "And we're going further west."

"First. Impressive map skills, Kev. Second. I just prefer to sail sometimes, ya know? There's something peaceful, something correct, something wholesome about moving by the power of the wind. So quiet. Makes you feel connected and remember how big the world is."

"Yeah, I can make the walk to my shitter feel big if I drag myself by my tongue," said Manny as he kicked his knee up against the front seat, slouching back.

Kevin looked in the bed of the truck to confirm what he already knew. "There's no sail you kook."

It was true there was no sail, but they went on at sailing pace. They headed south and fished when they found seaweed patties and surfed when they found waves. When they reached El Salvador, they drove back onto land and fattened up on pupusas before crossing into Honduras and heading back out to sea. They had moments of mania and moments of sanity. Jo brought only one album to play on cassette: "A Shaw Deal" by Geologist, D.S., which played on repeat and tested the spans of the ocean. They whiplashed through days of sobriety and days of rum benders. On the coast of Africa, Manny caught a Sarpa Salpa (“dream fish" in Arabic) that has psychedelic symptoms when consumed and is multiplied by twelve when mixed with rum and Salvadorian hash and too much sunshine. After they ate it, Kevin lay on his stomach on the truck hood. He pressed his chin into the metal and let his eyes get lost in the web of refracting ocean light. Manny went up on the roof with Mason and a guitar. Together, while Mason drummed on the steal and sang high-pitched and raspy, they wrote a nice, deranged little song. After Jo ate the fish, he slept for four days, so Louie had to drive. But Louie was also high, and when he drove, he thought he was back in California driving on the 395 on the way up to Mammoth Mountain. And so when sobriety finally seeped back in, they found themselves amongst ice caps, completely lost. Unsure of what pole they were at, they bobbed around for a few days before eventually meeting an outgoing Beluga whale who led them south along the coast of Norway and gave them further instructions on how to get to France. Ultimately, the trip took forty-seven days and an entire paragraph to happen. And not a single one of them got scurvy.

They landed at the coastal French city of Les Sables d'Olonnes. When they arrived, they kissed the ground and skipped along the boardwalk and dined on wine and oysters and the faces of strangers. They slept the night directly on the large sand beach. In the morning, they surfed and ate breakfast and bought cigarettes before hitting the road.

The clean-cut fields and lazy rolling hills and cicada songs stole their words for the beginning of the drive. They took in the sceneries and impressions and forgot how to say where are we going. After an hour or so, with a wand's wave of baguette through the cabin, Louie asked, "What's up with France?"

"I don't know, but they hate consonants," replied Jo.

Manny said, "Yeah, we've been coming here a lot lately."

Jo drummed on the steering wheel. "What's up with France. Well, can feral men be domesticated?" Nobody responded. "We’ll find out. Plus, I dig Paris. It reminds me of an expanded flea market. All of it is packed in tight, fractal. You can go from Beijing to Sri Lanka to Dakar to Paris all in a twenty-minute walk." Some of them nodded softly to themselves while they kept their eyes on the passing countryside. "But we're not going to Paris."

"Bombay, Bangkok, Medellin—those places are packed in tight," said Kevin after a while.

"Feral. And…” Jo let go of the wheel and twisted all the way around in his seat to face Kevin. Louie kept his legs crossed and casually reached over to steer from the passenger seat. "I'm here to buy something for my booth. It's called free dental insurance. Next trip, we can take your Tacoma though. You'll probably need to find new things to pawn."

They traversed the countryside and stopped in the Rosnay region in the small town of Le Bouchet. The area was in the middle of the "empty diagonal" (the flyover states version of France). To the boys coming from days at sea with nothing but their imaginations, the emptiness bustled. Everything, the cobbled roads jostling steps, the churches whispering out to the meadows where livestock nuzzled, the small lakes catching bird song, filled their starved sensations.

Jo drove them up to a park to stop for a picnic. Sprawling out of the truck, Manny and Kevin ran off to look at some curious mules standing in a corral. The others followed Jo up to a stone building. They entered a gift shop where they perused around, thumbing through books and trinkets, before going upstairs.

Jo had visited the small, rural gallery before. Dark ceramic sculptures sat around the open yellow room. A callow wonder stitched through each of the pieces. Created by Joëlle Gervais, the works ranging from pigs to bunnies to children, induced skips and twirling steps to its observers. Louie held his elbow behind him and spent meaningful time with each sculpture. Mason bounced around irregularly and dribbled out commentary. Jo walked straight up to the one he planned to bring back home with him.

Three ceramic girls sat on a bench with swinging legs and open stares. Normally, Jo stalked art, tiptoeing up to it with pacing steps. He remembered how he hopped right up to this piece when he first saw it. The girls' gaze reminded him of how he used to look through the car window in his youth, full of senseless questions and empty of knowing.

As he carefully plucked the piece off of its small yellow shelf, he looked out of the gallery window. Down in the corral, Manny hugged the neck of a mule as it ran with rabid kicks in an effort to buck him off. Kevin gave chase behind, bent and crippled with laughter.

When they all gathered back up for their picnic lunch, the sculpture of the girls sat in the middle of the park table. None of them objected as they tore baguettes in all the wrong ways and ate cheese crust and took apple bites out of sticks of saucisson and loaded up on their company in the unbounded air.

Way zoomed in on the dry Sunday back of North County, a kaleidoscope flea market folded and shifted in its haggling and exchanging of items. A flanneled and hatted man named Kevin pierced through the commotion with a determined click to his knees that comes from somebody who expects something for free.

Word on the street was Jo had a hot new song that makes people wiggle and bow their heads and cross their legs real tight. Kevin wanted to use the song as a part of a plan he’d been scheming about all week.

“Ahh, fuck. What the hell, man—you weird me out when you do this shit,” said Kevin as he entered Jo’s booth.

An opossum sat on the shelf of books and Jo was bending over, mumbling to it. The opossum looked at Kevin and gave it a smug look that said I bet you don’t know how to spell. After a lift of its pink nose, it turned and disappeared behind the books.

Jo stood up slowly and faced Kevin. He wore steampunk goggles and an open Hawaiian T-shirt over black running shorts.

“I was just asking if it liked the food scraps better when this lot used to be an old drive-in movie theater,” said Jo.

Kevin blinked softly a couple of times before a quick thrash of his head. His hand flopped in front of him at elbow height. “Do you have it for me?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Jo. He stood for a while there with no effect to his words and just looked out through his dark, smudged goggles to the surrounding flea market and to the distant hills cupping the valley.

Kevin raised his hand to dab the formed sweat on his hairline and broke the stress of the silence, “If you stopped talking to things like opossums, maybe a girl like her would be into you.” Kevin had a booth selling dental insurance and vague extravagant cruise vacation packages to different parts of Baja. At last week’s flea market, a girl opened up a booth next to him who makes her own hats and clothes and small pillows. She has high cut bangs and an array of tattoos and she makes people laugh uncertainly with her third eye banter and her stare that never budges. Kevin usually didn’t go for girls like her, but he lost power to the cut-off black shorts she liked to wear and the midriff she liked to show. He wanted to play the song on his speaker and use it as an icebreaker. “Jesus christ, you’re a tripper. Earth to Jo-ster. Can you get the song, please?”

“Yeee,” replied Jo. He tiptoed through his booth, holding the corner of his Hawaiian T-shirt balled up in his hand behind him. He bent down over his cassette-filled old wooden milk crate and started rummaging through. He put the songs in cassettes because it fit the flea market aesthetic better and made the songs more sharable and holdable when written in stories.

The song he’d been passing around was called “Better Weather” by the artist Danika. As he had explained, and as Kevin had ignored, the song must be listened to loudly without other ambient noise. Jo viewed the song as a wedge for opening the overlooked creases of life with its loping beat and swirling falling-snowflake melody. He did not know anything about Danika but could feel her visceral disappointment if her song were to be used to interrupt a witty girl from selling her crafts.

Jo knew exactly where the song was but rummaged for effect. Knowing Kevin would come for it, he had taken the sleeve off the song earlier that morning and placed it over “Play” by David Banner. It’s a song that Jo hoped Kevin would blast loudly and interrupt his entire triangle of the flea market.

“Oh, there she is,” said Jo, plucking out the cassette and dragging the moment on. Slowly working his way to the front of the booth, he held the cassette out, “There you go Kev. Lather up.”

Not even Jo’s drawn-out tone was enough of a hint to Kevin of the sleight of hand. Jo looked at him curiously as he took it with a quick wave and disappeared into the stream of passing shoulders. He found it difficult to believe Kevin’s faith in him, but as the flea market folded into its next scene, he let it be and supposed Kevin just couldn’t see clearly with the high-cut bangs in front of his face.

***For more about featured artist Danika, click here