Anthology Complex

by M. B. Julien

  Now this guy who is with Mary, I think she called him Paul, starts to yell at Lynne again, saying Mary needs her space and asks her to stop being an idiot. So much yelling.

  While the yelling goes on, I'm staring at my empty parking spot. I don't have a car. I tell Lynne that her sister could park her car in my parking space, and the expression on all four of their faces become exactly the same, as if they are upset that they won't be able to argue anymore. Claire not as much, but she has a degree of it. So Claire gets in her car and parks in my spot, the tow truck driver leaves, and Mary parks her car in her own spot.

  I walk with Lynne and Claire into the building and I tell Claire that I don't have a car, so when she comes to visit she can just park in my spot. Claire, the quiet unspoken one, she thanks me in a low voice. Her sister thanks me as well.

  I have never seen Lynne like that, but then again I haven't known her for that long. It's like she became a different person altogether. Certain genes in our bodies can switch on and off. Some people are more prone to diabetes and other conditions or diseases than others because of a specific gene they may have. This gene may be in the off position, but certain circumstances can cause it to be turned on and your diabetes will be in full effect.

  Sometimes I wonder if there is a gene for murder. A gene for hatred or anger. A gene for happiness or contentment. Maybe a gene even for love. And when a person murders another person, it was because their murder gene was on. When a person is in love with another person, it's because their love gene is on. When Lynne became a completely different person, I wonder if it was because her anger gene was switched on and she was prone to anger.

  On a grander scale, I wonder if every person in the world works this way. Do we do these things to each other, good or bad, because we are genetically programmed to do so? We are designed to react to a certain action? Someone starts yelling at you, and maybe your anger gene will turn on, or maybe your fear gene will turn on. In some cases, because people are so ridiculous, maybe your murder gene will turn on, simply because this person yelled at you. Now you have this murder disease. This human species at work.

  When I was younger, I loved God, right now, I don't really care for God, and I'm sure when I am older, I will despise God.

  Composition 1, Part 2

  Chapter 11:

  REALITY FROM FICTION

  Years ago on a cold Saturday night, I had this dream. I was driving down this highway, no one else was on this long stretch of road. To the left and right of me were city buildings showing off their city's lights. For a while, I'm looking for something in the car while I'm driving. I check under the passenger's seat, I check the glove box, I check under the driver's seat and I check the seats behind me, but I can't find what I'm looking for.

  Eventually I stop looking and I keep my eyes on the long stretch of road. Every once in a while I look out my window to look at the buildings and their lights. Full city, empty road. After so long, it becomes day and I find myself now driving down a road in the countryside, still no cars around me.

  Soon after I feel the urge to use the bathroom, but there is nothing around. I pull over and I try to figure out what I'm going to do. There are no trees around, just fields of grass. What if someone drives by and sees me squatting down?

  I figure I haven't seen anyone on the road so what are the chances someone will actually drive by and see me. Then I figure even better, and decide to just use my car as a tree, if someone does drive by they'll just see a parked car. Hopefully a cop doesn't come by. Before I go to do the deed, I look at the book on my dashboard, it's titled "Psychosis." I debate whether I should take it with me to read. I decide instead of reading I should just go without it and take the time to think.

  Contrary to popular belief, most people don't take books or newspapers with them to the bathroom to read while they use the bathroom. People probably just sit there and think about things. Things they need to do, things they've done. The things that are going on in their life.

  Sometimes I like to think people are more aware than they get credit for. A lot of the people I've talked to, sometimes I think they are just completely ignorant of everything, completely unaware of things that are happening in the world, but I know that in my mind they are not as ignorant of anything as I think they are.

  People don't talk nearly as much as they think, and I believe spending time to think is the gateway to awareness. Because people think more than they talk, I have to believe that they are aware of what goes on, and at the end of it all, as stupid as I think this person may be, I know in my mind that this person isn't as ignorant as I may think they are. The people who you have deemed as unintelligent, maybe they aren't as unintelligent as you think.

  Time goes by and nothing comes out. Eventually I feel as if I don't really have to use the bathroom, so I get back in my car and I continue to drive down this stretch of road. After a while, I see traffic lights in the distance. At least I think I do. The closer I get, the more like traffic lights they look. And then I finally pass under it, and all of the lights are red. All three.

  I start to wonder where I am. Then I start to think about my mother and how she was able to tolerate my father for as long as she did, and my mind freezes. I've been through this before, except it wasn't a dream, it was in real life. I was on the way to my father's funeral. I remember I had to drive from one part of the state to the other, and the entire time I was looking for a photograph of my mother to place in his coffin. Three nights before, I found the photograph and I put it somewhere in my car, but I couldn't remember where. I never found it.

  So now I am aware I am dreaming because this has happened before. Lucid dreaming. I stop the car and get out of it. Before I can put two feet on the street it's night again and I'm in the city once more, standing in the middle of a highway. I look up and there is a billboard. On the billboard there is a photograph of a woman I used to know named Maria, and it says she is missing. The billboard asks me if I have seen her. Then I wake up.

  Maria is a woman who I was once in love with. Or I should say I thought I was in love with. It wasn't until she left that I realized that a person like me wasn't designed to love. I could be friendly, helpful, kind, but loving someone was just something my brain never fully developed.

  When it comes to love, there are some pieces of rock that are out there moving, searching for love, and then there are some rocks out there that are stationary, sitting there still just waiting for love to find them. Then there are rocks that stay stationary, but at the same time are in a way moving because they are rotating on their axis.

  These rocks are not searching for love and they are not waiting for it, they are propelling any form of love that comes its way in the other direction. Sending it back where it came from.

  For a while, Maria tolerated my insanity. Once upon a time I wasn't as organized as I was when it came to writing down my dreams. Sometimes I would just try to remember them in my head, or sometimes I would just write them on a random page in a random notebook.

  The problem was when I tried to put some dreams in a logically chronological order, I had nothing to reference to. I could never find the dream I was looking for. My room would become messy because I would turn the room upside down searching for that dream I wrote down so long ago.

  Or sometimes my head would hurt trying to remember every detail of that dream I had. It got really bad when I would mix up my dreams for real life memories or real life memories for dreams. I couldn't separate reality from fiction. The time came when Maria could no longer tolerate what I had become, and she left. I can't say she left for that particular reason, there were times when I knew in my heart that I didn't have any feelings for her, and I knew she could tell, and I think that is the real reason why she left.

  Regardless, I got my mind in order after she left and my strange obsession, my strange addiction, I was able to kick it. It was gone for a while, but like that dot on that circle, the further I got away from it the closer I was to reli
ving that obsession. A person can meet their destiny on the road they traveled to avoid it.

  So eventually the addiction came back, stronger. I started to maintain better organization techniques this time so that what happened last time didn't happen again. So I wouldn't lose my mind again. I started to write down every dream in composition notebooks, and I had a shelf for all of these notebooks.

  After a while I started to categorize and date the dreams. Soon after I started to title them as if they were short stories.

  Chapter 12:

  STRANGE DREAM, STRANGER LIFE

  About twenty years ago, I had this dream. I'm sitting in a subway car across from this man. Now I don't look directly at this man, but I'm looking in his general direction and I just know that he is looking straight at me. After a long time I finally muster up enough courage to look at his face, but he isn't looking at me. I was wrong. Soon after this man starts to talk to me, and he tells me that I don't have any shoes on. I look down. He was right.

  He takes off his shoes and he gives them to me, and I put them on. The subway train makes a stop, and I get off. As I step out of the subway car, I notice the entire platform is covered in green liquid, and the liquid is smoking. I see benches and other things being destroyed by this liquid, and I automatically assume it's some type of acid. In the distance I see another person step out of a subway car and they are barefoot.

  As soon as their foot touches the platform, it burns away. Eventually their entire body burns away, but they don't scream. They don't make a sound. Then I look down at the green liquid I'm standing in, with these shoes I'm wearing that the man gave me, and I'm safe. The subway train starts up again and drives away, and I'm standing there wondering who that man was. Both literally and philosophically.

  Last night I had a dream where I saw that same man again for the first time in about twenty years. His unforgettable face. In the dream I was walking through the city, this city that's full of walking pedestrians who are on their way to work, to school, to wherever. I'm walking and then suddenly I bump into this tall large man who is carrying food. I fall down, and the large man just walks away as if nothing happened.

  Now I'm being trampled by all these people, and then out of nowhere I see a hand extend towards me. The body that the hand belongs to reveals itself, and I immediately recognize it's the same man who was on that subway car twenty years ago. His unforgettable face. He helps me up, and when I am on my feet all of the pedestrians disappear. They are all gone, it's just me and this man standing on a sidewalk.

  I ask him who he is, and he tells me that he is the son of God. I pause, and I ask him if he means he is Jesus Christ, and he tells me that he will be Jesus Christ if that's what I decide to call him. He begins to walk, and I follow him, and I ask him questions. I ask him if he died thousands of years ago, and he says that death is a misunderstood phenomenon. He says that even if he did die, he has always been here. For the past twenty years and for the past thousands of years.

  I ask him if he means he has been here literally, like walking on Earth among us people, or philosophically, existing only in our hearts, minds and dreams. He says both, but also says that the importance of one over the other is subjective. And then he looks back at me and tells me to stand there, not to move a muscle.

  People always say that, don't move a muscle. Even if I stand perfectly still, my heart which is made up of cardiac muscle is still beating. Still moving. Beat. Pump. Beat. And now it has stopped. Every cell in my body has stopped, as if time is frozen.

  In the distance, on the road, I see my younger brother. There are people around him, skinny men and women, even children, with dirty rags on for clothing. He is giving them all fruits. He looks in my direction for a second, but he doesn't see me; it is almost as if I weren't there.

  When my brother and I were younger, I would always tell him to share his food with those who asked. I used to tell him that when he got older, he would have to know when to share his fruit, even when they didn't ask, because sometimes those people would live overseas and they wouldn't be able to ask. These were the things my mother taught me as a child.

  Now my brother and all those people are gone, and the pedestrians are back. Jesus Christ has disappeared within the crowd. I can move again, and my heart is beating now. Beat. Pump. Beat. After a short while I see my younger brother again, walking among the crowd across the street. He looks in my direction again, and this time he sees me and walks towards me.

  We start to talk, and after a while I mention how when we were younger, how I would always tell him to share his food, and that I was proud he listened because getting people to listen is one task we can't complete alone in our lives.

  Now he has a look of confusion on his face, and he tells me he has no idea what I'm talking about. He says I never told him to share his food. Now the look of confusion has jumped off of his face and onto mine, and before I could realize it I am staring at his backside as he's walking away. I start to shout, telling him to remember to share his food with others, trying to remind him that kindness can go a long way. I go on until he's completely gone, and then I realize Jesus Christ is sitting in the corner.

  He looks at me and he says that it doesn't matter if we are alive or dead, it doesn't matter if we can physically walk on Earth or not. He says that the things we say to people, the things we do to people, they are sometimes remembered, regardless of how important or unimportant it may be. Regardless of if it was something good or something bad.

  He says that while we are alive, we shouldn't care about who we want to become, we should care about who we will have been when we die. What we did or said in our lifetime, that's what will stay in the hearts, minds and dreams of others even after we are gone.

  Now Jesus and I are walking again, and it feels like we have been walking for miles. I ask him how much further we have to go, and he asks me if I'm asking him how much further do we have to go, or if I'm asking him how far we have gone, and then I woke up. After I woke up I thought about the dream. I thought about when my brother was feeding the poor, how he looked in my direction and didn't see me. How I couldn't move at that moment.

  I wonder if I was only there philosophically, in his mind. I wonder if he was remembering the things I told him. And then I start to think about how he could see me through the crowd. I wonder if at that point he could see me, as if this time I were actually alive. Physically able to walk on Earth, and as he's walking away from me, I'm trying to tell him to share his food.

  It's as if I'm trying to tell him this so that when the time comes, he will feed those people, and he won't just leave them to die. It's as if I want him to remember these words I'm telling him even after I've died. It doesn't matter if someone is alive, existing physically, because we still may not listen to them or even bother to hear them out, and it doesn't matter if someone is dead, existing philosophically, because we will remember them. Remember the things they taught us, the things they said and the things they did for us.

  So I guess even if you're alive, you may not be able to change the world or even someone's life; you just might have to die first. I start to think about what Jesus said, "who we will have been when we die." If I died tomorrow, who will I have been?

  Chapter 13:

  LESS THAN MORE THAN EQUAL TO

  It seems as if no matter how far you travel, people are alike all over. The culture may change, the language may change, the things they do for recreation may change, but the basic human behaviors and instincts, they remain the same.

  In every corner of the world, there are those who take less than what they need, and then there are those who take more than what they need. People who believe in non-violence and those who believe in violence. Those who give and those who steal, and some who do both. I visited a few different countries two years ago and that was what I noticed. I realized that no matter how far you travel, people never change. No matter how far away you try to get from it, the damn thing is always there.

&nbs
p; Eleven months ago, I had a dream where I was living in this run-down apartment building in a city located in a desert. I was laying on my bed, and I looked to the right to see a glaring stream of light coming from the window. I got up from my bed and looked out of the window. I looked out and saw a world where people weren't alike all over. After such a long time of searching, I finally found the peaceful place I was looking for.

  This place where there were no negative genes. No anger gene, no murder gene. No competitive gene, no jealousy gene. People lived in harmony, and they all shared with each other. No one took more than they needed and no one had to take less than they needed. There were apples on both ends of the table, finally there was balance in this equation that I once thought could never make any sense. I was at peace with myself and the world, but the time came when I had to leave. I had to return to the world in which I came from because it was now someone else's time to find this peaceful place. Simple mathematics.

  In order for every one to be able to experience this utopia, this good place, when someone wants to come in someone else has to leave to keep the balance, otherwise this good place becomes the bad place. I turn around and look back at my bed for one last time, this place where I slept so peacefully. There is a woman lying in it.