Reading: "Dead Cities of the Stars" from RITUALS of the ANTITHETICAL (A.Glass 2023) *I will be doing a reading every 3 weeks from my current book 'Rituals of the Antithetical'. My new book is due April 2025, cover artwork and Title soon*

 

2022

“What do you have today?” The elderly man asks, wearing his slouch hat, neatly dressed smiling as he sits down next to Dalens.
Lifting up his hip flask, Dalens unscrew the cap.
“Japanese Vodka, distilled rice. Very nice, try some” Pouring a portion of the clear alcoholic fluid into the small hip flask cap. He hands it to the man, who eagerly takes it and gulps it back, holding up the empty lid.
“Not bad.”
Dalens fills the small metallic cup again. As the elderly man watches his actions.
“Still hungry?” He says, this time, sipping from the same cup.
Dalens has another sip, as he looks at the city in front of him.
“Yeah…” He then turns to the man sitting beside him.
“...Can you blame me?”
“Whose to blame, my friend…” Removing his slouch hat, revealing a sparse head of gray hair. “...for anything in this world. They’re the hungry ones and never satisfied. Perpetually in turmoil…” Sipping from the flask, he smiles at Dalens. “...That is humanity. Of all the flawed animals, nothing compares to the human being.”
“No existential reasoning hey?
“Correct…” The older man looks up at the fading sunset. “...Just write it all off. They wrote you off.”
Dalens doesn't say anything, rather he looks ahead at the fading light.
“It was a bad set.”
“Ah, but it wasn’t the worst…” The elderly man replies, whilst holding the hip flask cup, pointing with the same index finger at the city. “...There were others that had a good set of cards and still fucked everything up. All ending up in that Boulevard…” He has a sip, holding out the empty cup once more, to which Dalens fills. The old man smiles. “...of Broken Dreams. Have no qualms my friend. The difference is, you got cast out. With nothing, they, their rigid systems of compliance which is eroding itself very nicely, sets the precedence, their template. You go this way, you’re ok, you turn that way and you be the criminal, drug addict or idiot. We lost the counterculture of the Nineteen Sixties, problem was they we’re all looking for that savior. Same old story when it doesn’t work out, it goes sour. The Seventies, where you were born into, was not so bad. A society living on the edge of nuclear annihilation, cities, particularly this one, falling apart. Yet, the hedonism was rife…” He turns and looks at Dalens with a smile. “...Everyone was fucking away their problems like no tomorrow, the era of sexual liberation right into to the Nineteen Eighties, till a virus hit, which, unfortunately was spread through sex. But, mainly the gays. Poor guys. They took the majority of the hit. And it killed a lot of them. Point is, there ain't no benchmarks out there. Ebbs and flows. Look what they got now, fifteen minutes of fame on cyberspace…” He looks at Dalens with a cynical expression. “...And everybody’s a celebrity.”
“Or a crusader...” Dalens interjects. “...That I sure ain’t, but…” Dalens has a sip from the flask. “...I gotta abide by time. That’s the fucking burden.”
“It shouldn’t be, time is not an illusion at all. It’s the erosion of reality. Consuming itself and everything else…” The elderly man closes his eyes briefly and nods. “...You gotta master it, in one day. Cultivation of time is the discernment of time…” He opens his eyes. “...They, their world are the greatest time wasters in history. It’s almost uncanny how they take it for granted.”
“It’s not looking good,” Dalens replies, as twilight descends.
“No, its not. A saturation of information. Mostly garbage. The ultimate malfunction of the human computer and a nuclear error...” the older man says smiling, whilst holding up his small metallic cup, to which Dalens fills.
Both men laugh.
“...You do what you do, just don’t waste time. You won’t miss anything. They’re the weak, obliterated by chaos. Arvie, you’re the diamond within the chaos. Unaffected. Not angry or bitter.” The elderly man smiles, staring into the twilight.
Dalens just nods listening to the man sitting beside him as the evening begins to fade. 
___

Reading: "Dead Cities of the Stars" from RITUALS OF THE ANTITHETICAL (A.Glass 2023)