In this Issue:
The cows found Guernsey County an easy mark. With the county already named after them, it seemed like a sign. A welcome sign. A Please Start Here sign. The revolution will begin here, something like poetic justice that the cows began their takeover in the rolling hills of their namesake. The cows found the humans pliable, gullible even. Not anywhere near as smart as the humans thought themselves. The cows planned their launch event for the County Fair out in Old Washington. The cows, as should be explained, did not appreciate the sanctity of the human universe. Nothing against you, homo sapiens, other than you eat my cousins and brothers and sisters, and besides you've had your time on this planet. Read more...
When I got up this morning, I had the blankets in my mouth, and someone had mailed me a device having to do with jars. The device is for removing jars from the high shelves on which you have placed the jars. "Ah that a man's reach should exceed his grasp," the poet Browning told us, "or what's a Heaven for?" What is a Heaven for? Toads cough in the bracken but I'll never understand.
A small amount of water is in the bottom of the bathtub. This causes me to think about the radiation belts around our planet, and I feel compelled to walk out by the rhododendron and step on as many boxcar bugs as I can find. Read more...
The word came to me on June 13th. It didn't seem especially remarkable at the time, though it did have a kind of ...magnetic quality. Something about the series of syllables that seemed particularly pleasing – made me want to keep repeating them in a loop, over and over.
Course, it wasn't inescapable. Not yet. Other tasks of the day soon took over. My line manager on my arse about getting the quarterly progress graphs done for tomorrow’s board meeting. Shirley in the next cubicle coming to "borrow a stapler" – Read more...
Directions to the Opera House
His head turned so slowly the movement was almost imperceptible. Had I not been watching his left ear closely, I would not have noticed. But I stared and stared at his left ear until my eyes started watering, and then I realized it was moving slowly, slowly toward me. That meant the rest of his face was coming directly into view. I wasn't going to repeat the request for directions to the opera house. The guy had on a black turtleneck which should have put me on guard from the outset. Who wears black turtlenecks? My friend Paula and I were lost and running late. After what felt like a minute, the man faced me and began to part his lips. Read more...
A city that boasts that it contains the best of every country while belonging to none, such is Pangaya. Observe, you nomadic types, how it rises mid desert, riding the sands like a ship rides the swell. Now you see it, now you don't; and now, see, you find yourself standing, one early morning, before one of its numerous gates. Enter via the South East Gate and you'll find yourself in Japan with its avenues of cherry trees and its Bullet Train; through the North West lies solid, stolid Germany; through the South South East, mustachioed and rich in murals, Mexico; and so on and so forth. No need to produce a passport—the gates lie open to expectant arrivals—but you carry one in your pocket just the same. Read more...
ALL THAT IS REQUIRED
They told us to go to a certain town and watch the jugglers. Splendid, they said: four balls in the air, standing on one foot. Rings spinning about arms. Those who disparage jugglers have a change of heart. We went. A low town with long flat streets, and corners invented even where there are no intersections. And, at every corner, a juggler, sometimes two. Outside storefronts, at the base of the plank to the public restrooms. The park and cemetery so thick with them as to be twins. And, however briefly, we had been tricked into being an unfettered audience. Read more...
Mausoleum
After mum died, dad bought us a sheep which we called Mum in her memory. We had a sizeable lawn and Mum saved dad from having to mow the grass. The sheep was supposed to comfort us children but it was dad who spent hours talking to her. She was three years old when we got her, now she's eight, nearly nine, which is old for a sheep. She's become vicious with age and you have to watch out for her head butts. Sheep only live ten to twelve years, so she's not likely to be around for much longer. We're worried about how dad's going to cope. Read more...
Hasu finds the Way
Once I asked Hasu, the most peaceable and kindly man you could hope to meet, how he came to be the man he was. A lofty question whose answer must be pressingly inexact, yielding just the one, arbitrary account in place of a hundred others, reducing us to a single vision of ourselves. A question no one can rightly answer, though we like to think it can be answered, out of fear of the inexorable – that we conduct our lives on wires, animated by the rhythms of a music we cannot hear, those wires held taut by stubby fingers which may break at any moment for lunch. Or, worse, there is no method, and everything significant takes place by happenstance.
'Regret, ambition and malice,' he said at last. Read more...
The Yellow House
Go ahead. Have a large bowl of mascarpone, add your one grain of salt. The smell of wet grass has gotten in here. We have a big day in front of us. I drive my father down to the yellow house, one of six houses he lived in as a child, due to money reasons. There are lots of cars on both sides of the street, many have out of state plates. The house is crammed full of loud talk. Robert Goulet's Christmas album is nowhere to be found but I smell my Nana's roasting chicken. Henry my cousin's husband is there and he's still alive. We're an hour early. I'll just drop you off I say. Alrighty my father chirps. That's how he talks. Read more...
I happened to be in Prague during the lead up to, and occasion of, the hundredth anniversary of Franz Kafka's death (June 3, 2024). The fact that Kafka as an image and as a topic seemed to pop up almost every time I turned a street corner in Prague's city center, opened a newspaper, or looked at a list of art exhibitions could hardly help but be gratifying given that Kafka is at the center of my literary universe. But still, amongst all the hoopla, I began to ask myself: how much was the substance of Franz Kafka the writer being transmitted in all this?
Of course, Kafka has long been used as a tourist icon in the city, but this is the first time that it became difficult to avoid his image. Read more...
About Our Coffee and Other Fare
Please Note: All of the coffee served at The Irreal Cafe is fair trade, organic, shade-grown and not real. All of the food served at The Irreal Cafe is organic, vegan, locally sourced and not real. See "At Our Cafe" for more about what we would serve at The Irreal Cafe and how we would serve it if there were an Irreal Cafe.