Slum Enterprise - Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

Lee decompresses on his way home. He sits back on his worn fabric truck seat and drives while his head rests on the seat neck extensions that's supposed to limit whiplash. 

The drive home is almost automatic, his brain shuts down, the day's events condense and explode like a black hole blowing one last spectacle of energy out into the entropy void. All atoms, protons, neutrons, electrons rest on a single datum plane. Only small ripples like wind blowing on the top of the body of lake water in the morning, perfectly still. 

It ripples through the stillness and rests on the shores of a wall of unmovable rock and organic matter. The ripples will erode away the wall over time pushing the wall back only until the water dries out from the ever growing red giant sun emitting massive amounts of thermal radiation. Its chaos vs harmony, the waves against the still wall in the collective entrophied void.

While the corporate buildings and billboards blur in Lee’s peripheral vision, his eyes become out of focus, not a good thing while going 65mph with only a few feet of play of lane space where cars are hanging right next to you. Lee sees static, just like static from a cathode tubed wide body televisions with no signal input from the cable wall outlet. 

Then, on pure automatic programming, Lee continues to drive with a blinding static filling his vision. The static is overpowering any external data from the outside world that can not be processed. Suddenly in the static, Lee sees two triangles, they are perfect equilaterals dancing around. They meet vertex to vertex in a vertical stationary position in the center of his vision. It forms the symbol for “infinity”. The static begins to fade as Lee is autonomously turning down the neighborhood side streets. By the time he pulls up to curb outside his house, the static and infinity triangles have dissipated. Although, when Lee closed his eyes he could still see the shape like it was burned into his retinas. “Weird,” Lee said. He was extremely perplexed and scared because he had no idea how he didn't crash and why he didn't think to pull over and let the psyche episode pass.

Annie isn't home from work yet. It's late afternoon, Lee remembers she was coming home late due to school conferences. Lee unlocks the front door in a manic way by stumbling with the keys, dropping them on the steps a few times. The strangeness of the vision had settled in and he was very afraid  that he was going insane. “Maybe this is the start of my mental breakdown,” he thought.

Penny rises from her slumber on the couch. She lifts her head and upper body with her front paws to bend her head and view who is walking through the door. Lee could hear thumps from her long black tail smacking against the couch cushion. Lee breaks away from the terrorizing thought and locks eyes with Penny's deep brown soul piercing gaze. Lee is happy to see her and she is happy to see him.

“Oh look, it's the dog, good girl, watchu been up to today, hows the ol hip treating ya.” Lee said. 

Penny responded by thumping the couch cushion with tail whacking force. Lee drops his bags and approaches with both hands extended and reaching over the back of the couch rubs penny all over her short black fur. The sun is low and shining through the rain stained living room windows. Lee can see floating hairs and dust coming off of a Penny in the beams.

“Outside, Outside,” Lee whistled and said in a higher pitch tone. The dog widened her eyes, used all the strength she had to lift her back legs and hop off the couch. Once Penny started moving the hips didn't really bother her. She shakes the sleep violently off of her and runs to the back door. Lee follows, unlocks the door and opens it allowing Penny to bolt down the back steps out to the lawn which is slightly covered in brown grass patches and acorn husks from the 4 white oaks scattered in the backyard corners. 

Penny spots a rabbit hanging by the back fence, chewing on wild clover. It freezes once it sees a black beast at high velocities heading towards it. The rabbit scatters and out paces Penny. Lee can see Penny’s age as she tries to contort and control her hips to cut off the rabbit. Penny drags behind and misses, the rabbit flies under the south neighborhood chainlinked fence. 

The squirrels chatter from above, mocking the dog. Penny looks back at Lee with a smile on her face. “Good try, you'll get 'em next time.” Lee responded. 

Penny changes focus and completes her “business” and runs back to Lee waiting at the door. She runs up the steps back into the house.

Then, Lee does his daily chores. Cleaning the kitchen of dishes and food residue from the cooking the night before, he vacuums the living room and puts away dirty laundry that is still laying about near his upstairs closet. If he feels exceptionally helpful he even cleans the bathroom if it needs it. 

An hour passes, Annie rolls into the driveway cracking acorn husks as the tires screech to a halt at the garage. Lee is just getting ready to go on a run. He has his smelly sports running gear on for a late autumn voyage. As Annie walks in the door to meet the dog, he remembers the infinity symbol. “I should really get this down on paper,” he thinks. 

Something deep within him is telling that it could be important. Lee runs back downstairs and meets Annie, he gives her a kiss and says, “Right back honey, I need to do something downstairs.” Annie doesn't question it because Lee is always doing some project in the basement shop.

Lee unlocks the pad lock on the basement door and heads down. On one of the work benches lays a black notebook for his ideas and thoughts. He turns on the shop lights, takes a pen from the cupholder and opens to a fresh page. He drew what he saw.

Two perfect triangles forming a vertical infinity symbol. Lee then drew a big circle around them. It looked like a fish's eye, an orb floating deep in the ocean. Lee remembers one of his old textbooks from college. It was a slim book on Native cultures and symbolisms. He walked back up the stairs to grab it from his office bookshelf. Annie was starting to make dinner in the kitchen and asked “What the heck are you doing.”

“Just a couple things and then I'm going on a quick run.” Lee said as he passed her and went back downstairs. 

He laid the textbook out next to his work book and found the page he was subconsciously looking for. Something catches his eye as he fans the pages. It was the same symbol he drew minus the black circle around the triangle structure. Lee got very excited, “No way.” he said to himself. The water bugs scattered and the spiders ran back into their webs. 

The symbol in the book was labeled: “Kapemni.” The paragraph read, “The Dakotah meaning to spin. This symbol reflects the philosophy that what happens below is mirrored above. As seen on Dakota star knowledge and their beliefs about the Milky Way as the spirit road. This comes from traditional Lakota astronomy and the investigations of the stars in understanding life systems, death, and the spiritual world.”

“Did I just have a spiritual vision,” Lee asked the bugs in the basement. Recently he had begun a self inner reflection, an introspection block of time to truly understand himself. He was on to something with the iceberg theory, but he knew it was just a little off in terms of his correct inner self model. This symbol made more sense, it came naturally which fortified his belief that this was the right one. 

The journey first began when he mistakenly picked up a book by Jung, this led to Freud and other famous philosophers. After he got through a collection of philosophy texts, Lee started to read everything he could get his hands on. He even used his wife's library card to pick up books after work. 

Something clicked, Lee was sick and tired on endless pocket screens. He had become accustomed to coming home from work exhausted watching with the screen close to his face. It was easier to let something else do the “thinking” for him. But, the more he read, the more he started to reject all the pocket screens and the function it was supposed to serve. 

Lee was consuming manufactured ideas and suggestions, there was no true authentic creation anymore. If you were an artist, you had to be successful or what was the point, if you didn't make money in the modern life system from your creative hobby or passion that even pursued it all together. 

Lee rejected this entirely. He was musically talented and artistically inclined. If you wanted to create something for yourself just because you loved to do it and you only wanted to do it yourself, it was seen as taboo and mentally insane. The Life System told everyone to hustle and post to the pocket screen network. Validation from others was more important than internal peace with oneself. Self expression of pain, joy, depression, euphoria must be bought and sold, everything has been turned into a product for profit. Soon the human being will become the product itself. Authenticity was hard to come by.

Lee wrote in notebook feverishly, he loved these moments of flow… to allow the mind to shed the toxins and purge the soul through finely tuned motor skills in the fingers. Dextoxing this way has allowed him to feel again. It allowed him to accept the strange nature of his own consciousness.

He writes with uninterrupted thought as the water bugs find a damp place underneath boxes on the basement floor:

What do you like to create? Ask these questions to new people you meet. Do you take a rock and stick and make images in sand? Do you take a pen and paper and write down what you think? Do you take these thoughts and visualize them, live them through to the end? Do you hunt and gather meaning before taking on the unknown? Do you find sound and color descriptors of the world? Do you take oil, chalks, pigments and splatter your unconscious onto the white canvas. Do you bang pots and pans and find a beat? Do you pluck a string of the neglected instrument and allow the vibrations to flow through you? Do you build an eco system with random trinkets? Do you create stability or chaos? Do you find your myth and hold on tight? Do you equate meaning by quantifiable measurements? Do you dive into yourself or view it from a distance with protective climbing gear? Do you convert your cosmic rotational energy into existence? Do you question or do you answer? Do you follow or do you lead? Do you create or is it your purpose to consume? You can show the world your “Kapemni” or you can bury it away. What will bring you fulfillment, putting your life on easy mode and hiding and taking it head on. Good and bad equal in the vast emptiness of the day. Do you prescribe meaning to every small detail? Do you worry and push it down deep to let it fester and rot. Do you make yourself, do you let others?

Lee turns back to the page with the symbol and decides that more must be done with it. “Not now,” he thinks, “I want to let it develop naturally. I will take my notebook out and write something when it pops into my head, I'm not going to force it. Accept where my neuron mesh takes me.”

Lee packs it up and turns off the shop lights. He leaves the basement dark and smelling like 5 day old salty sweat. Lee emerges from the basement to the sounds and smells of Italian cooking. Annie was making a pasta dish. “Dinner will be ready after your run,” She said with a smile. Lee walks up to her and gives her a quick kiss from behind. “You smell horrible.”