In this Issue:
The man who could not leave the Philippines discovered his condition on a Thursday, which is the least dramatic day of the week, and so the discovery felt administrative rather than catastrophic — a clerical error in the ledger of his life that would surely be corrected once he spoke to the right department.
He had his visa, stamped and valid. He had two pieces of checked baggage at twenty-three kilos each, weighed three times on the bathroom scale with elaborate care. He had his carry-on containing instant pancit canton and a small Tupperware container of his mother's dinuguan, sealed with three layers of plastic wrap against the cold logic of international customs. Read more...
Empires Rise and Fall
The tiny couple by the brandy cask at the end of the bar dance like there is no tomorrow. A neck-bearded fiddler on a low stool and a man banging a veneered wooden box with his palms perform an old ditty. I remove my cap and scratch my head. It has been a long day. I ask the burly barkeep for two fingers of spirits.
"Preference?" he says, studying me with the tops of his eyes.
"Surprise me."
He glances at me and nods.
It goes like that sometimes. You let the universe or one of its capable agents handle the decisions, at least the ones that don't matter. Read more...
Giant chess could be played in this room. Tongues from the television step across the black-and-white keys. And in the corner of the eye, a void for the deaf and mute—someone has been shot through it.
***
We were lying on the riverbank when we noticed round objects floating on the surface. At first we thought they were tennis balls from the nearby courts, but they weren't. They were apples with inflatable rings. A little farther away stood their mother, the apple tree. She had let the children go to the water—it's holiday time, after all.Read more...
On the country bus, I got talking to a young couple. Did they know about the castle with its historical re-enactments? That was worth seeing. In fact, this bus should arrive near the castle soon. I asked the conductor how many stops, but he knew nothing about the castle. Perhaps in about thirty stops, another passenger, a man in a flat-top cap suggested. That seemed a bit far to me. Better we get off sooner and try and walk there, I suggested. But it was already growing dark, the young woman said. For some reason, she was almost in tears. Are you all right? I asked. The young man told me her father had been murdered in that very castle some years ago in front of her eyes when she was a child. Read more...
Last November, at a friend's housewarming party, a guest asked where I got my ideas.
"I have a man in a box," I said.
"Good one," he replied and scanned the gathering for someone else to talk to.
I wish it were a joke, I thought. But seeing as where my life was at, and seeing as the source of my ideas was no longer a secret, I went to fetch the man.
The archive box he lived in was in my friend's spare room. Here she kept her books, a taxidermized heron and a sepia globe of the world so outdated that Australia bled into Antarctica. The room was home until I got my life back on track. Read more...
Gustav fell asleep at the swimming pool. When he woke up, the time written on his ticket had long since passed. It was dark, and the water had been drained from the pool. He got up and hurried toward the corridor leading to the changing rooms. However, he didn't get very far—after just a few steps he realized that the glass doors between the pool and the showers were already locked. The lifeguard's cabin, where the phone was kept, was locked as well. The double doors leading to the winter garden were chained shut. Gustav was completely alone in the huge glass hall. It was so quiet that even a word spoken in his mind seemed to echo like a storm. Gustav was afraid to shout anything, afraid even to think anything, afraid that the echo would sweep him away before anyone came. Instead of shouting, he climbed down to the bottom of the empty pool. Read more...
I had to climb above the clouds that day.
Dodging death somewhere around Rome in a Spitfire. I wouldn't have believed you had you told me two years ago that we'd come this far. Flight by flight, we pushed back at the bastards, and they were finally beginning to crack.
It was a bright and windswept day, the sort where the blue sky surrounds you and even the passage of time feels like an impossibility. The mountains below are the only fixed point you can hold onto, and they approach you at such a low speed that it feels like you will fly on forever. Read more...
After the war, our bellies growled like small bears as we trudged many miles down the busy dirt road, passing ducks, geese, one-legged one-eyed men, bald women, and a monkey with a tambourine. A fireball blew through, blackening the field on our right. A tap-dancing horse trotted towards us carrying a bucket in its mouth, collecting shillings for rides and soft shoe routines. We quickly debated—transportation, entertainment, or food? Clop clop camaraderie or horse meat? But the road was long, our lives were short, our stomachs, empty. So we threw our skeletal bodies upon the nag, unable to wait for a knife or a fire, munching and moaning. Chewing through her hide, leaving her four hooves like speed bumps behind us. 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.