In “The Paper,” we meet Hlau and the piece of paper. While his memory is rapidly deteriorating, he writes down this list on a piece of paper. However, with his memory gone and very little context afterwards, Hlau is faced with the mystery of the list.
I HAVE BEEN VIRUSED. I MUST REMEMBER.
That piece of paper that Hlau held in his hand…
He wrote things down so he could remember, a rough analog backup for the things that were being wiped from his memory. Hlau tried to remember names, places, people he knew at the Agency of Investigation, cases, but more information vanished quickly than he could conjure it and scribble the characters. At the moment, he wasn’t even sure if he knew how to write in Universal.
He looked at the paper and hardly recognized what he scrawled. He was sure there was more he needed to put down, but he also knew he had to get out. He folded the paper, put it inside the inner breast pocket of his jacket, and ran out to the Agency’s lobby. Someone would be after him soon. That was not memory, but instinct cultivated by decades of practice as an agent. He wasn’t even sure someone would come after him, but he had to get to somewhere safe. He stopped, quickly wrote down SEEK SANCTUARY, SCHOOL OF WISDOM, and ran out to downtown street to catch a taxi. If he had arrived at the Agency’s parking structure in a car, he now couldn’t remember what color, shape, and manufacturer. A taxi moved past the Tchon embassy across the street. Hlau frantically waved it down, ran across the street, and was nearly ran over before he crossed the street. He opened the back door on the driver’s side, got in, and pulled the paper from his pocket. “The National House of Wisdom,” he shouted at the driver before he would forget.
This is a rough draft of a poem created from some scribbling into my compact Moleskine during one of my walkabouts. It is based on a job I had a couple of years ago.
On my lunch hour, I read Frank O’Hara and Allen Ginsberg.
I’m not writing at all.
I send a thousand photocopied letters by machine,
but I long to write a personal one by hand.
Everyday, I bought a Philly Cheesesteak Sandwich from the Marketplace.
Now, I take hour-long walks into Balboa Park.
I take Lunch Poems with me to read under a liquid amber,
but sometimes I listen to Antidepressant on my iPod.
One day, at the end of the Prado Bridge,
I find a man playing with the Tarot deck.
All I have to give him was $2.
He tells me I’d advance on the job.
Yeah, with a boss who was seething silently in rage,
I’d advance right out the door.
On the first day of September last year, I began to serialize Resplendence, that mix of art and fiction, on ShindoTV. Overall, the images and the writing form a narrative of a mentally ill young man who’s found salvation in the Gold Lady. If someone’s going to have an imaginary friend, they have got to fabulous, which the Gold Lady is. As for Benny, who has placed his faith and hope in the Gold Lady, he’s on a journey to discover his fabulosity as tries to become sane on his terms:
My online version of my MFA creative writing afterlife. So much for the afterglow.
