The Light You Can’t Escape

robert langellier

Marc ordered one more drink. Saw the fluorescent light shower on the back of the server’s neck as she bent it to watch the glass fill. She was bone thin, with her skin stretched tight around her elbows, knees and hips and all the other corners of her body. Marc stared at the arching vertebrae bulging from the back of her neck, reptilian, rippling with each little movement of the nape.

            Above the server on the wall were the colored lights of beer companies, liquor companies, advertising themselves. Behind that, in the background, were the darkened windows of the brasserie looking out into the black city street, to which Marc’s eyes were drawn. He felt suddenly hot under so much light and in the face of the dark windows. The feeling made him hyperaware of his situation, of his location at the brasserie and the hour and his thoughts.

He decided to leave. Got up, left before the drink arrived. Swung his coat up from its spot on the shelf between two booths by the entrance and threw it on, swung his scarf over his neck on his way out and tried to loop it, but the loop stuck. He’d tied it wrong. Tried it again, slung the scarf, threw the end over and looped one side, and the second loop didn’t stick. This, all outside the brasserie on the sidewalk, snow falling from above. In a minute it would stop. Marc knew this — the snow never fell consistently here.

He started, and for some minutes he wandered down Boulevard Saint-Germain, looking for a local tabac. It was 9:30. The snow fell at dizzying speeds and degrees, sticking only to the tops of the cars and the heads of pedestrians. The Parisian streets at night were cold, and very dark and very bright at the same time. Lights from storefronts blazed, always in motion at the speed that Marc paced down the busy street, cut off for moments by the shadowed bodies of passers-by that moved alongside him. If one light were shut by a body to Marc’s right, 20 more from grocers and brasseries and cafés would still glare from every direction. It was a world of light, and not a damn tabac in view.

Marc took an alley to the left. Slipped along the pavement to the next street. Whatever street. Rue de neige. Rue de lumière. And there, finally, a tabac. Marc walked up to enter. Through the window he could see the young homme, bending down inches from him behind glass, stacking up chairs. Locked. Sunday, of course. The sound of the metal bolt pitching against its frame caused the young homme to look up, catch the eyes of the good-looking man on the outside. The young homme for a second was stricken by fear, which quickly melted into an apologetic shrug and a return to the chairs. They were to be stacked, and he was to go home. 9:30.

In a sudden burst of drunken rage, Marc slammed his open fist into the glass door. Immediately, with the force of impact, a rush of pain exploded along the length of his hand, and up the ulna to the elbow, where it stopped. Marc recognized that it stopped. The forearm, the hand, were not him, so he didn’t feel it. The young homme, and his father at the bar who owned the tabac, looked up again and did not move. Looked at the clean, good-looking creature at the window, could do nothing but look at his eyes. And with that, Marc struck again, breaking his wrist upon the thick glass of the door of the tabac. The resulting minute crack in the window was imperceptible to anyone but Marc. A couple pedestrians stopped hesitantly on the sidewalk at the noise of the rage, but continued on for fear of the rage. The two men in the tabac remained still, the young homme still holding onto a small chair. Marc held the eyes of the young homme, ready to kill the bastard. To the two men inside, the lights of the Monoprix and the streetlights behind Marc lit up his edges on all sides and made him a terrible beast. Still the young homme did not move — the passers-by straggled on.

Marc’s hand was shooting bolts of heat down his arm. But it did not go past his elbow. He lifted his hand again, clenching his fist, and something in his being slowed his movement at the last second, his third blow weakened by the overrides of his brain, and when his wrist did come in contact with the chipped glass, he broke. Roared with pain, turned around violently and threw his free left arm out at the people five feet from him on the sidewalk, who then began to walk faster than before. The injured man, he burst into the busy street, letting out a long and howling cry, and for a moment everyone paid attention. For ten seconds he was the fear of Saint-Germain. But the noise quickly dissipated and the lights glowed over it anyway, so Marc turned again to the young homme, who by now had escaped to the tabac’s back room with his father. He grinned at the empty room, tipped his hat in a polite and sinister way and continued down the rue for the next métro entrance.

The métro at night is much lonelier than it should be. It’s by day a place of commute and connection, but at night it’s a place to hide from the colored lights. In the métro the lights are pure white, very artificial and bright, no jinks to them but very pure and serious luminescence. Not like the supermarkets and jewelers and pharmacies and cafés that wanted your eyes for specific greeds. Just light to show things and to drag them sullenly out of darkness. One can see how it can be a lonely experience.

Marc stood at the edge of the platform and looked left. No train. He looked right. No train. He looked at the other three people on the platform. Not one of them moved. Not one of them looked at him. The lights of the métro continued buzzing into everything in the underground room, blistering bright. Forced Marc into clarity. He didn’t want it — he was not drunk by accident — but it was métro light and the clean straight plainness of métro light is so oppressive and so chemically reactive to alcohol and quiet that Marc, in a way he had never known in the métro, was forced to see everything exactly as it was. Full of light.

At that moment, movement caught the periphery of his eye. A faint shift in matter to his left, to the stairwell. Marc turned his head, focused. Just in time to see a rat scurry along the bottom step and disappear into the recesses of the métro’s long reaching tunnels. It was no telling to Marc when the rat would ever be in light again. But it had been there in the light, and while none of the other three men on the platform had seen it, Marc had seen it, and he was relieved for having seen it. It was calming and relatable.

It was all Marc could see on the métro ride back home to Raspail. Saint-Sulpice. St.-Placide. Just the rat. Raspail. Denfert-Rochereau, Alésia.The rat. At the end of the line, Marc descended the métro and ran up into the clean night. It was 10:15 and now raining. Marc moved maybe a half a block before he came near upon an empty parking lot. There was a large ornate building for which the parking lot was built, but Marc didn’t know what it was. In the middle of the parking lot was a tall streetlight, which towered over the flat ground of the nearly empty lot. It was a vast empty square lit only by its surrounding light poles and the tall one at its center, causing the drizzling rain to glimmer in front of all of it. He moved toward it but stopped at the edge of the lot. His head was still dizzy, but he could easily see the reflection of the streetlight on the wet concrete between him and it — long, and white, and bright on the black surface. A clean little ovular line in the earth coming straight toward him. Slowly, but sans hesitation, Marc paced along the edge, to the other side of the lot. Wherever he went, the reflection of the beacon followed, always pointed, always facing him. It didn’t matter where he stood. The center was pointed and always moving with him and toward him. Marc blinked. Moved back the other direction to the other side of the lot, where the light followed him again. For a moment he stood silent, considering his next move. Listened to the rain pitter on the hard ground all around him. He blinked once more, so as to imprint the beacon of light on his mind as he turned away, and he walked in the other direction, thinking of the rat, the reflection stretching after him at the same speed that he walked. 

Hell, you were askin' for it

By now, he should have noticed what his watch was telling him: it was past the hour, he was late, and he was blowing it.

Samuel Price couldn't have been any more oblivious to what he was missing at the time, for the interview was the last thing on his mind. For Samuel, routine ruled all in the suburban nation of Ecklandburg, and waking up meant video games for as long as the sun poured through the panes of the basement windows, business when those warm rays turned to a more generic light, and pleasure -- drinks, friends, more video games -- when that light had succumb to nighttime. Stuck in a game of Wii bowling in the furnished basement of his old home, he was patting himself on the back for a finely bowled 216 before it occurred to him exactly where he was supposed to have been at 1:30.

A sick feeling tore through Samuel's abdomen and up into his chest before materializing in his brain: the interview was supposed to start 40 minutes ago, the job he wanted vanished into an ether of laziness and attention deficit. As the feeling made its way through his esophagus and out the back of Samuel's neck in the form of sweat, seepeing toward the sensory perceptors in his face where it became throbbing, red hot reality, Sam slinked back into his chair and stared in amazement, showing a shellshock that would have been more than enough to convince Mr. Essing of his wholehearted commitment. The rims of his eyes became hot and watery, but the pulsating light from the number 216 flashing on his television prevented him from resorting into a cliched despair. He simply sat, and began calculating his recourse, like a population after having suffered from a violent tornado.

Sam made his way upstairs, where his mother was preparing for her first errand of the day, the bank.
"Mom," he began, but was cut off.
"Sam, you're not... done with--" he retaliated her interruption, to admit his guilt before the accusation could beget his regret.
"I fucking missed the interview."
His mother took some time to assess the situation and calculate the next move, like Sam had. She had no answer.
"How did you forget the interview," she said softly.
"I don't know... it was totally just ... inexcusable."
"I didn't know you were still here, otherwise I would've gotten you out of here, I had thought you were gone already."
"Nope, I was playing Wii bowling."
Sam's mother said nothing, as Sam took solace in the fact that she was as hurt by this absurdity as he was. She wouldn't laugh, but be right there in his frame of mind, sharing in his disappointment taking in the gravity of the situation the same way he was.
The silence of Sam's statement lingered in the air, before he broke it as a mercy toward both himself and his mother.
"Should I call him?"
"Only if you have something to tell him other than you missed your appointment to play video games."
"Yeah." He pondered the notion. He couldn't just be "sick," like when he missed days in high school. He needed a reason, a profound and legitimate reason, and he could think of none right now. He set the issue aside.
"I hate being this bad at succeeding," he threw out.
"Well, it's something you'll have to avoid, letting things like this happen."
"Yeah."
"And it's just a summer job, at least it's not a permanent job."
"If it were permanent, I wouldn't have forgotten it."
"Well now you won't forget next time even if it isn't permanent."
"Small consolation. I feel like shit."
"Well you can't go back and fix it, so feeling sorry for yourself isn't gonna help."
"Yeah, well neither is pretending this is OK."
"Yeah, well..." she searched for proper words. "If you learn from it, you can make this a positive experience."
"Almost as positive as an internship with Claire's dad's firm."
"Almost," she said, growing tired of the conversation's hopelessness. She disclosed dinner plans as she grabbed her keys and left for the bank.

Sam, feeling slightly decompressed about the issue, went into his old room and sat on the guest bed that used to be his. A jealous montage of his friends working successful office jobs ran through his head, as he pictured himself literally lagging behind as they pacingly walked-n-talked about their bright futures. The future was only as bright as Sam could make it, and being absent from what was a make-or-break interview cast a rather dim light on everything Sam could find to think of.

Sam suddenly felt all of himself, of his weight pushing down on his thighs and buttocks, which were pressed against the crisp, cool cream-yellow sheets of the rigid spring mattress. It wasn't new-age comfortable, and that's what Sam liked about it. He tossed his head back over his shoulders and fell back onto the bed. He glanced at the plain white ceiling for a brief moment and allowed his eyes to crush closed and thought about the things he used to want.

For his eighth birthday, he had wanted his dad to build him a treehouse. In his conception of it, the smell of oak wood and patterns on the two-by-fours that topped the amateurly erected walls would help him to feel independent and removed from the boredom of life in Ecklandburg. His father had always wanted Sam to become a lawyer, but never took him up on building the treehouse in exchange for a pledge to live his life around going Pre-Law. Sam's proclivity for mathematics steered him toward being an accountant, a profession that his father was only distantly interested in and made no attempt to fully understand. By the time Sam's parents divorced during his first year of college, Sam had already defaulted to an allegiance with his mother.

From this daydream, Sam opened his eyes and re-encoutered the blank ceiling staring back at him, motionless and emotionless. He continued to gaze, determined to see his future emerge from the white canvas; to his mind came sheets of paper with printed type on them, though they faded away before he could read them and the ceiling became white once more.

Checking his phone again with contempt for the time, Sam sauntered back into his basement and turned off the Wii. He grabbed his down comforter off the couch, wrapped it around him like a cloak, and collapsed onto the couch devoid of thought, ready to sleep for awhile. He dreamt of living in a tree house, raising only pet animals and bowling scores above 300 on the Wii to pass the time.

--Eliot Sill

Nick - Mitch McConnell: 27 Years Of Not Having Lips

(Please Click To View Whole Image)

-Nick.

Nick - Additive and Multiplicative Forces

When I started playing Animal Crossing, I would fish vigorously until my inventory was full, run to the store, and repeat until I was able to pay off my first loan. Such is the way that Animal Crossing is played: make money, spend money, get things.

I got pretty good at catching fish. I figured out where I should go fish to make the most money in the least amount of time. I knew what fish were profitable, and sometimes even what time of day I should fish to earn the most money.

It got to the point where I knew a ballpark estimate of how long I would need to play in order to reach my next financial benchmark. And as you might guess, it gets pretty tiring to look and see that it will only take four more hours of catching fish until something happens.

So I started looking for other ways to make money, and I happened upon an old lady who sells turnips, which can be bought in bulk and then sold for a different price that fluctuates day-to-day. Pretty soon I was playing the game way less (because I didn't need to fish as much) and instead checking the prices every day on the turnips I had bought with my sizable fish-fortune. And I was making way more money than I made while fishing.


All this to say that I've been thinking about finances and investment recently, probably because I'm paying rent and using my bank account a lot more often nowadays. We see my Animal Crossing experience mirrored in the real world: people add to their money until they have enough to multiply it.

Retirement plans and whatnot work because money is put in over time, and then it accrues interest. With the magic of compound interest, money set aside for retirement grows pretty substantially.

We see the same principle happening with billionaire investors. They never start poor and make their fortune in investing; they start with money and then they multiply it, and their gains become more significant as they accrue more capital to invest.

I would love to see some research into how investment education and knowledge correlates with wealth.

-Nick.

Nick - It's Definitely Time For Conor To Shave

Listen, I know I'm probably wrong about a lot of things. And I'm okay with that! For example, I couldn't tell you much about the probability of a meteor hitting the earth within the next few hours. I'm sure there are experts who know all about that sort of thing, but I am not one of these experts.

In fact, there aren't a lot of things I consider myself an expert at. I read a lot of political science literature, but I wouldn't call myself a political scientist. There are plenty of people who know more than me. In fact, there are probably a lot of misconceptions I have that I don't even know I'm wrong about. There's just a whole lot of uncertainty.

There is one thing, however, that I am absolutely not uncertain about.

It's time for Conor O'Brien to shave.

But my stubble totally says 'party!'

I do consider myself an expert on Conor O'Brien's facial hair. I've seen it in various states of growth. I've seen it during the harrowing final weeks of no-shave november. I've seen it blossoming onto his face like a heinous insect shedding its larval skin. And if there's one thing I can tell you about Conor O'Brien's facial hair, it is this: avoid.

I'm not sure you're getting the full effect from that picture up there. Click on it and take a closer look. Go ahead, click.

Actually, don't worry, I've got you. Let's zoom in.

Don't you wonder what my whiskers would feel like against your soft lips?

Oh boy. Wow. I hope that isn't too much for you.

If I were to describe Conor O'Brien's facial hair, I would say it's kind of like a carpet made of pubic hair that is also balding. Sometimes you're talking to him and you catch a glimpse of it and you just lose your train of thought.

Conor O'Brien's head-hair is just looking better and better these days. He's playing a lot more Pokemon recently, which I think is cool. And, ladies and gentlemen, I want Conor O'Brien to be the best that he can be. If you're out there, Conor, I know this may seem harsh. But everything I do, I do out of love.

Yeesh.

-Nick.

Nick - Fuck You, I've Written 119 Classic Brians

And I went through and tagged all of them.

(Minus one about jellyfish that Blogger has, for some reason, decided shall never be updated, edited, deleted, or otherwise amended.)

Remember when Eliot posted this? Ohohohohoho! The foolishness! While Eliot was contemplating who had got to 100 first, I was sitting comfortably at 107.

"While it is unknown as to whether Nick or I have accumulated more blog posts over CB's existence (it's certainly turned into a two-man game of late), let's just pretend that I own the lion's share." - Eliot Sill

Ha! Man, I am so hard working.

You might think that just because I've missed a few posts, I'm out of the game. Don't count on it, bitches. Daddy's home.

-Nick.

Nick - And Look

I'm writing another one right here, JUST BECAUSE I CAN.