The Damned Lies Project

Wherein I have a strange conversation with a strange visitor and I hear the barking of a dog.

I’m not sure how I really knew.  The room was silent except for my breathing.  I woke up from sleep into near darkness, but somehow I still knew that someone was in the room with me.

I searched the room, my eyes finally resting on a shape I could make out by the light spilling under the door.  It wasn’t the old man; the silhouette was wrong.  The faint light gave the suggestion of blonde hair and a smaller build.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The figure immediately tensed.  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be here.”  A nervous female voice. Read the rest of this entry »

Useful information for deliberate time travelers and temporal vagabonds.

Wherein a strange man treats my wounds.

While I did not die out in the desert that night, I do not remember well the next few days.  I shifted in and out of consciousness.  I remember being dunked into icy cold water.  I remember my skin burning and something rubbed on my wounds.  I remember a sound like pots and pans being banged together, the tinkle of wind chimes, and the howl of the wind.

I remember a man sitting over me, singing something like a Native American song as the acrid scent of incense filled the room.  I remember the beat of drums and the somber sound of breath passing through a flute.  I remember snakes hissing and crawling up my legs.  I remember a pale, blonde woman looking down at me.  She reached to touch my face, and I remember the touch was so light that I didn’t even feel it.  I remember a laughing, howling man in a mask and a many colored jacket who held the world high up in one hand as he danced under a blanket of stars.

My first real memory was of waking up in bed.  I heard the sound of his mortar and pestle before I opened my eyes.  Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein we get back to the adventure and this goes on for a while.

Metaphorically, many have walked across a desert.  They talk of trudging through a wasteland, often before, after, or during a long dark night of the soul.  Along this journey, they question aspects of themselves.  Perhaps they find themselves broken.  Perhaps they are walking towards rebirth.  Other times, they are just letting go, leaving their internal possessions on the dry earth behind them as they move forward.

Very few people have actually walked across a desert.  It sucks.  Really, when you’re walking across it, the last thing you’re thinking about are your soul, the state of your life, or all the things you want to leave behind.  Well, possibly the state of your life, but in a very specific way.  As in, “What the fuck choices did I make that brought me here, walking across a fucking desert in the summer without water?”

I missed water most of all. Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein I admit a dark secret.

I have a problem.

It’s something that’s dogged me for a while,  a deep secret that I have wrestled with for many years.  I’ve tried to mitigate it, keeping friends and family from knowing the dark depths of my secret.  But I needed to indulge it.  I just had to.  And on this night I shared it with the world.  Or at least the other shoppers of Walgreens Store #1172.

It was one thirty in the morning.  I slid the basket across the counter.  The checkout girl glanced at the contents and then looked up at me.

“I think that I might have a candy problem,” I said sheepishly. Read the rest of this entry »

Wherein I question my senses.

I’ve been over this night countless times in my mind.  There’s so much I don’t understand, so much that seems to mutate in my memory the longer I think about it.  A shadow of darkness falls over the whole memory.  Ultimately I know I shouldn’t try to understand it, but recount it as best as I can remember.  Maybe you will understand better than me.

I stood in the middle of the hobo camp in what was their boxing ring.  Though I was surrounded by hundreds of homeless gentlemen, an eerie, oppressive silence had descended over the area.  I could hear the wind as it whipped over the top of the basin out onto the cracked desert.  All I could feel were my conflicted emotions swirling within me as I stood in front of my final opponent. Read the rest of this entry »