CRESSET: ACCESS TO QUIET

 

i'm trying one more time here. i'm trying to see if they'll let me into the monastery somehow.

the first monk i encounter on the stone spiral staircase is Jean-Luc Picard!!!

me: wait, you're a monk now?!!!

Jean-Luc Picard: i already have the hair for it. this monk robe is itchy, i have to scratch my bald balls constantly. listen carefully, knave, free advice comes about once. cold tea is tricky.

me: i don't follow.

Jean-Luc Picard: of course you don't, you're not made of sterner stuff. it's not steeping the teabag in cold water, your body is not meant to drink such a ghastly concoction, you'll go crazy. you have to make tea as normal, hot tea. 4 minutes. then let it COOL for like an hour. THAT's cold tea that won't explode your stomach. it's cold hot tea. 

Abbot Butt: we don't let in 18-year-olds anymore. those fresh out of college, in their 20s after having watched Ellen, even if they want it bad. none of them persevere.

Bede: can you blame them? it's perverse. how can they endure ego death in here? that's all the young got. i was the only Brother who was cool. because i read up on it. ironically, the Bede bed is empty... 

Abbott Butt: you can't change the people around  you.........but you can change the people around you.........but not if you're a monk...

Yusuke Urameshi: the only people who become monks are those who can't talk to girls.

Abbott Butt: Brother John Luke, will you do the honors?

Jean-Luc Picard takes me roughly by the shoulders and drop-kicks me out the monastic window, that little slit in the turret tower. 

Jean-Luc Picard: i played football at Oxford.........the American kind........properly...

as i flit in and out of consciousness, one foot here and one foot in the nether region, i keep telling myself i have to get out of here...

me: i gotta get outta here.

this is my stock answer to anything when the going gets tough in my life. i am crushingly realizing that now i have nowhere to go to!!!...

when i come to i'm on the first corner of Downtown Carmel.

me: i've never been here.........ever. i know, LUSH Cosmetics is a few blocks down.

i wait three hours for the next bus to come. the driver is a cute spirited spunky tiny girl named Mary Tyler Less. so that distracts me with cheer a bit. she's adorable with that BIG bus-driver's cap that's WAY too big for her tiny head.

Mary Tyler Less: city bus. muni bus. blue bus.

me: Carmel is not a city.

as always, i have no friends, so i spend the rest of the trip at the WAY front talking to the driver to kill time.

me: what do i do now? i can't get in even if i wanted to. i'm a half-century. i've reached the age where soap doesn't soothe me like it used to.

Mary Tyler Less: you can still be softened. the monastery is like an Ivy League college, forget about it. you've got to live life by the minute, in batches of minutes. not by the hour.

me: i think i understand. i've never been able to live in the present. i always use the current moment to think about the '80s.

she drives the bus around the tricky corner, that steering wheel is 10 sizes her body weight.

me: there's so much noise pollution, you know? so much noise pollution all the time all around  me, how do i make it STOP?!!!

Mary Tyler Less: go to the Forest Library from 3PM-4PM.

me: gotcha. wait, isn't that when the kids get let out of school?

Mary Tyler Less: yes, that's just another kind of noise. those afterschool reading programs are no joke. i was in one, Hamlet can only be truly understood in French. trust me, the answer is in the library...

  

Boc: in order to walk effectively, walk your bike, don't RIDE your bike...

Ms. Krause: weren't you the fat lunch lady in the hairnet and gloves and industrial-size apron at St. Cyril's in the '80s? 

Leslie Sbrocco: yep. i was the first person to wear open-toed sandals. i loved food then and i love food now.

Ms. Krause: wow girl, you really did a glow-up on yourself.

Leslie: thanks. i learned how to move all my weight to my tits. now i can eat anything i want...

The Lathe of Heaven on PBS, 1980.

Freud: FINALLY. they show a man lying down on a psychiatrist's couch. that was the first time seeing my representation on TV.

me: i wish my therapy included that, i want to lie down on an ornate Austrian chaise longue, that would have helped me open up. my chakras AND problems. 

Krillin: when i'm in therapy i lie on an ottoman...

Freud: yeah but that was only done in psychiatry in that ten-year period, that Seinfeld '90s futon decade...

DMV: we're another doctor's office...

George Orwell: DAMN, girl. i see you. i see you, Ursula K. Le Guin. fucking your hot aunt. going straight for the hot-aunt tit-fondle. going straight for the family kink like that.

Ursula K. Le Guin: the rest of the world still doesn't recognize, Canada is hardcore about things.

Freud: if dreams could kill, we'd be in trouble as a species. but where do dreams come from?

Ursula: where thoughts come from.

Tom Baker of PBS in 1980: the universe is a hologram...

Freud: the thing is it did really happen, because the dreamworld is the real world...

diopter: the Beatles yellow submarine...

Meta Quest: yeah they won't actually let you don the Meta Quest Mask at the DMV...

Mark Zuckerberg: think of it like an electronic sleep mask...

Cynthia Cranz: my Botan voice is BUTTER. 

Jules Smith: like British butter but not British. Mid-Atlantic butter...

Ear Horn: i like your Japanese witch broom, dearie.

Botan: it's not a broom, it's a pizza peel...

Vernon Chatman: do NO interviews, that's the only way to survive.

John Lee: Chatman has left the chat.

overcast skies: these are the Autumn walks, people...

lucky penny: it's not a coincidence, it's dad, how could that penny have appeared by your foot unless you went for a walk this morning?...

Garry Shandling: we make these grand plans, and then she disappears.

Stevie Nicks: doing SNL this week, babe...

Bette Midler: why does Mary Hart go to EVERY Dodger game? i'm doing Beaches at the Bowl tonight, comm with me, commiserate with me about the state of the world.

Abstract art: just do anything...

Maiara Walsh: this glaze donut is more like a glaze pancake...

soul group: the New Age thing, not Earth, Wind & Fire...

Andy Warhol: you should fear L484.........do not accept Vanquish knockoffs.

Edgar Allan Poe: Davante Adams was the first goth. 

Davante Adams: The Adams Family.

Lana Del Rey: i married Bayou Billy because he's been lonely since the '80s, nobody talks about him anymore. we made love in a swamp. my next song is called "Alligator Man."

the Atari Pitfall guy: what about me?...

Here (2024): sorry, Wes Anderson, THIS is how you do a film that's a play...

Capp: for you guys, Instagram is fun and games. for me, Instagram is vital to my survival. those comments are crucial to my existence.

Uzumaki Episode 2.

school janitor: your son is not a snail, he's Falkor.

teacher: the DNA double-helix is a pentagram...

Aeon Flux: her hair, The Head, anyone?...

Family Guy: we're celebrating the show's 25th Anniversary, not Columbus Day...

Don Francisco: El Gordo y La Flaca is small potatoes, papas pequenas.

Lili Estefan: hey, small father, we're all in this together.

Raul De Molina: keep your mouth occupied with Poppi non-soda, Don Muchacho.

Don Francisco: fruit soda? Slice? that stuff was fizzless.

Lili: i looked up to Sabado Gigante. i wanted to be you, puto. you were hombre when Gloria was gone making sounds in Miami. thank Hesus i was never one of your girls, blowing that trumpet. i could kick your scrawny ass, i'm tall as a giraffe.

Raul: jirafa vs. jefe, my money's on the neck.

Scrawny Puppy: Skinny Puppy when they were fat and angry...

Hurricane Milton: the Florida paradise lost...

Lindsay Lohan: this hurricane is so fetch.

at the library i notice a cresset in the corner. i pull down on it and it lights up in a blue Vaporwave flame like a torch. the fourth wall with the Christina's World Andrew Wyeth painting on the wood panel slides to the left to reveal a wood spiral staircase down to the library's basement.

librarian: where do ice cream cones come from?

me: i don't like tendies, i prefer the nugget shape, it's more natural, more familiar.

librarian: no time for chickens.

i get to the foot of the stairs and there's another cresset. i pull up on it and a purple Vaporwave flame lights it. the stone wall slides to the left. outside there's a field...