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PAUL WESSELS
collapsing new master

(Review-fiction of: Einsturzende Neugedigten by Aryan Kaganof. Pine Slopes Publications, 2004)

My name is Aryan Kaganof but you can call me master. Chicks dig it. I want to narrate my story, I want the resilience of my mind to prove that art is fashioned from the unending tragedy of existence so as to banish self-pity for ever.

Some people believe we're poised between a past and a future. I know otherwise. I like to think I can prove this is not the case. I'm post-sober myth in the making and I fuck teenage girls for as long as the KY holds out.

There came a day the KY ran out. I said roll over chick there's no time to wash my stinky old pole and I'm going in you again (I was trying to sound like Allen Ginsberg and Frank Zappa rolled into one). But the KY was dry, the tube flat and the collapsing narrative of my life said "hello, friend".

Hello like being smacked by your future marching backwards straight into you. Hello like crack burns and collapsing new poetry. I reached for the Tullamore Dew and rested my collapsed head between her legs on her tight little hole. She lay there wetting the pillows. The night never ends. There is no beginning and there is no end. Whatever happens in the space between the past and the future is entirely of your making - depression is an extreme form of self-obsession.

This is not art, this is a narrative of healing based on the resilience of mind over tragedy so as to forever keep self-pity at bay.

There came a day the KY ran out, so I said roll over chick and there's no time to wash my smelly old pole and I'm going in you again. Don't blame yourself now, KY's a product not a life-form. There, let go. No one's to blame. And you're rising now, floating into space, like the Husker Du song "she lifted her arms and she floated away". So spread your arms little girl, they're your wings, the KY's over, float, go. And the song plays on: "a man has two reasons for the things that he does / the first one is pride and the second one is love / all understanding must come by this way / she lifted her arms and she floated away."

I'm fighting against time, knowing that I cannot win. I killed my mother, but not in the way I desired. My highest purpose is to have no purpose other than to live in accord with nature. The great David Hume wrote that relations are exterior to their terms. But I ran out of KY and stood dry and alone. Was I crying or drinking or thinking or sinking as I collapsed into a Greyhound GCPD 1845 seat 15A?

You know what they say, crying doesn't pay. Doesn't help nobody nothing when you've got 27 hours of sadness heading your way. And here it goes: Java take aways, Pitstop, Baltic, Madeira, Battery Centre. City/Stad Paarden Island, N1. International Party DV8. For sale by tender Contact Chris Wolf. Goodwood, Malmsbury. Steal her heart, buy her jewellery from American Swiss.
SOS 500m.
Belville 10
Paarl 43
Thinking so fuck it, just cry. But crime doesn't pay baby crying doesn't pay. Sore eyes and headaches, so drinking, thinking, crying - what the fuck. Star Mart, Bennies Glas, 7 Eleven, Welcome to Boland. Stellenbosch University. BP super wash - get every 5th car wash for free. But I'm not in the business right now baby and I'm not going to sleep until I can be with you again. Somerset West. 20:13 and fuck, I suck on some tranquillisers, put my bag on the seat, my head on the bag, my legs up against the window and have this dream about you: I send you an sms from the side of the road. I'm standing at an SOS box that hasn't been vandalized. Somehow, the bus is the vandal and its rolling up the hill towards me. I tell you in my sms to meet me at a bar called Bar, but you keep wanting to know the question, what is the question Master, what is the question?

The night collapses forward and I realize sitting here alone in this bar with a full tube of KY and a Tullamore Dew that the shimmering haze in the distance was you coming (for me) like a bus on full throttle and screaming my name as I raised the Glock and steadied my hand.