People Say What, Eat Sandwiches, Watch Television

When people say what’s the story or what’s happening you should say what’s the difference in return. Do not worry what time of day it is or if you’re tired. Be like Sister, who doesn’t even have a clock on the wall. What does Sister do all day but sleep and do dishes with cold water. You don’t need a clock for those activities. While you are sleeping people will eat sandwiches and watch television. Sometimes they go to the doctor or for a drive in the country. They go to the doctor because they think they might have cancer and they go for a drive in the country because they have nothing better to do. This is why time doesn’t matter and as a case in point you can mention daylight savings time and how it’s a sham. How is time real when it keeps changing twice a year, one hour up or back depending on the season. They want to know what is happening, what is doing, what you have been up to. Tell them what do you know. Tell them you have been eating sandwiches and watching television like everyone else. Tell them you like being naked and walk around naked all day long and if they have an issue with that then you don’t know what. They’ll ask what’s the problem and what’s the matter. Tell them you dream lives though not your own. Tell them you’re not sure who the people are in your dreams. They always try to kill you but sometimes you outsmart them and wake up before anything bad happens. Then you go to the bathroom and empty your bladder. Tell them that it’s all because of your bladder, tell them that’s the main problem. Tell them it might be cancer, but you don’t know. The doctor won’t tell you without a biopsy and you do not want a biopsy for the pain, but you know that it runs in your family so you’re pretty sure you’re doomed. Then tell them you can’t drink milk or eat ice cream anymore because you’ve grown to be lactose intolerant. They’ll ask if that’s the god’s honest truth and tell them how should you know, you’re not religious. The people who say what to you like this, most speak their own languages. A lot of them come from where the water is bad and the people want out. Places like Poland and Guatemala and Michigan. The people from these places are troubled, their languages incomprehensible. Even still, try to make sense of them. Listen for familiar words, sounds. Always look people in the face when they talk in their languages. Say what to them and they’ll say what back. Maintain eye contact. Affect a facial gesture that resembles concern or empathy. Remember what that old dead actor once said about acting, that it’s all about honesty and if you can fake that you’ve got it made. Soon after it will be time to go and everyone knows it. They’ll thank you for your patience and then ask what you will do with the rest of the day. Tell them that you should clean your house because it is filthy and you will take off all your clothes so that you’re naked and you should go to the doctor because of your bladder but you are tired and want to go to bed so this is what you tell them. Tell them you will dream them later but promise not to kill me. Tell them it’s because of my bladder that people want to kill me. Look at them and they are baffled and it’s almost like they are naked too. They ask what do you mean by all of this and so tell them what you suspect is true.

 

What There is to Understand about Drowning

Because what we are talking about is a structure, an object made of earthly matter, be it wood or steel or aluminum, although there might be some question as to what constitutes earthly matter and if steel or aluminum qualifies. The indisputable truth is that boats don’t drown regardless of composition. People are the ones who drown and this is the difference between boats and people, how you can tell them apart. Something happens to the boat, then the boat takes on water, then it sinks right to the bottom of the ocean where it will remain until the sun finally explodes into a million pieces. One might wonder what happens to the boat, what makes it sink. Let me understand to you that it doesn’t matter what happens to the boat or what makes it sink once the boat is already sinking. Say it has been torpedoed by an enemy vessel, then where the hell are you. Say it has run aground, collided with another boat, been toppled by a rogue wave, struck an iceberg, so what then. None of it matters. If there are people on the boat, they can try to keep the boat from sinking, although their efforts will be futile more often than otherwise. Say one of them is named Manny and the other Esperanza because why shouldn’t their names be Manny and Esperanza. Understand that Manny and Esperanza can take measures. They can use words like bow, stern, starboard and port, which means front, rear, right, and left. They might even bail water before they realize their efforts are futile and they put on lifejackets. This is when Manny and Esperanza float around until someone comes by to pick them up. We don’t know what Manny and Esperanza might discuss while they are floating on top of the ocean because it doesn’t matter. The ones who come by to help are called rescuers and they know to come by because they have been signaled. Let me understand something to you about how they are signaled, which is through direct radio contact or by Morse code. Morse code, in telegraphy, is a series of dots and dashes that indicate different letters of the alphabet. S.O.S is the most famous code sent, which means Save our Ship, although people say it doesn’t actually mean Save our Ship but what do they know. The people who say that S.O.S doesn’t actually mean Save our Ship are named Manny and Esperanza and this tells you everything you need to know about them. The rescuers who have never met Manny nor Esperanza and wouldn’t like them if they had are given positions of longitude and latitude and this is how they know where to go to save Manny and Esperanza, who are still out there floating on the water in their lifejackets and talking about god knows what. They say that rats are the first ones off a sinking ship, but unless they are extraordinary swimmers it does them little good so we will not discuss or try to understand the rats. The people rescued, in this particular case Manny and Esperanza, are called survivors. They are called the lucky ones because they have survived and the unlucky ones are called victims and these include Sofia and Benjamin and the famous blues musician Blind Manny Martinez, who is no relation to Manny. These are the people who are subject to float around with no one coming by to pick them up. We don’t know what happened to them out there on the water because we can’t know everything but we can assume that sharks attacked them or the sun beat down on them or it was freezing cold and they caught what is called hypothermia. Hypothermia is a state of reduced body temperature wherein all bodily functions are slowed to the point where they eventually freeze to death. Those that freeze to death in the water are later recovered and what we’re talking about now is their bodies. People can either be rescued or recovered, survivors or victims. However, there are victims who are never recovered. These are the people lost at sea. There are songs written about them and the songs are almost always sad and sometimes called dirges. Boats are also lost at sea and they are mentioned in the same songs or dirges. Let me understand that while dirge sounds like a nautical term you’d be completely wrong to believe this. But drowning is always different. Drowning is for people who can’t swim or who can no longer swim due to injury or exhaustion, or people who choose not to swim. I’m not saying that this is what happened to Manny and Esperanza but I wouldn’t be surprised if it did. Something happens and it doesn’t matter what, then they take on water, then they drown. They sink right to the bottom where their bodies will remain until the sun explodes into a million pieces or the ocean dries up and turns into a dessert like the Sahara did. In this case their remains will be buried under sediment and sand until the sun explodes into a million pieces but the end result is still the same. The water can be deep or shallow, rough or calm. There is little difference. Water fills the lungs making life at first difficult, then impossible to sustain.