Indian Man Comes to Canada

Experiences Winter for the First Time

He finishes typing out an email to his family back home, and hits send, sighing morosely. It is a cold and lonely world. An advertisement on the right margin in his webpage catches his eye. He picks up the phone, and dials.

Person (answering phone): Heylo! Thank you for calling On Point, how may I help you?

Man: Hello, ah, I would like one "On Point Blow".

Person: Sure! How soon ya need it?

Man: Is tonight OK?

Person: I think we have availability for one more delivery, let me check... hmm hmm, yeah you got it.

Man: Oh thanks.

Person: Now I just need to ask you a few questions

Man: Is this not confidential?

Person: Huh? Yeah, sure that's not the issue. What's the measurement?

Man: Measure...?
Person: We need to how long the drive is
Man: Oh. You call it drive. Never heard that one before. Sorry. 8 inches.

Person: Inches? You mean meters, right?

Man: Uh

Person: OK and what model would you like?

Man: I get to choose model?

Person: Yeah of course, all customers have their own preferences, you know, for speed, performance, lot of people just like how the models look, you know how it is. So which model would you like?

Man: Well, I like Kendall Jenner please

Person: .....

Man: But if she is not available that is also OK

Person: ......

Man: Sir?

Person: You do realize you are calling a snowblower rental shop right? Like, we rent out snow cleaning equipment? 

Interview with Jeodie

"Do you ever regret it?"

Jeodie: Regret?

Interviewer: Yeah, do you?

J:

I: You can be honest.

J: Why do you say that? Honest. Everything I say is already honest because I said it.

I: I'm sorry. I didn't mean...

J: Why did you not say what you mean, then?

I:

J:

I: I...dont know?

J: Who will know if not you?

I: Er, you, perhaps?

J: This is what I don't understand. You keep staring up at your sky. Or looking in many places, in the places you know you can never find what you are looking for because that which you are looking for does not in actuality exist because you do not in the first place know what it is that you search for but you look to it to cast your blame or to get an answer to a question that you do not even try answering because you are instead looking for answers in impossible places. Does this not render your question impossible?

I: ... <coughs uneasily> I...uh, <riffles through notes> Uh... My question was "do you regret it?"

J: No.

I: <smiles in relief> You mean to say that we aren't so bad afterall, huh?

J:

<very long pause>

I: <clears throat>

J: No. I do not associate with regret. Or honesty either.

I: You mean, you're lying?

J: No.

I: ...Uh. I'm confused, like, do I write that down as "yes?"

J: <sighs> My statement signifies that honesty is not a concept required by myself because
the inverse does not exist either, for me. Deceit, dishonesty--these are all your making.

I: But you made us!

J: Oh me. Are we really going to do this

I: But you did <tone becomes whiny>

J: Do you have to justify yourself to your omelette in the morning, or in the afternoon when you are digesting it for that matter--or in the night when you excrete it? Do you tell it your reasons?

I: What

J: We must be at the end of our interview by now

I: No! I have many more questions! Everyone has questions! You are so hard to contact, we all have questions

J: I will ask them

I: But you have to answer them not ask them

J: More important is why you need to ask. More important is why do you ask if I regret making you and your world, what does that imply about your self-conception. Do you not have accountability?

I: Yeah but, things sometimes don't make sense

J: Tell me about it <stares at Interviewer quite closely>

I: Are you....are you....looking at my soul?

J: No, you have ketchup on your right eyebrow

I: Oh, thanks.

J: Sometimes I come and take a look around. Things don't make sense. But I wasn't implicated in the causality of your choices, only in the causality of your inception, and that was whatever it was.

I: <nodding and scribbling notes furiously> Yes, so, so what are we doing wrong?

J: I don't know. I try to help, sometimes, but you are very strange.

I: Really, like how?

J: Well, sometimes my mother has to yell up the stairs because there are so many calls for me, but when I go downstairs it's just a transmission of your conjoined thoughts and when I try to extract meaning out of it, I find that it is all autocorrected because you don't really know what you want.

I: I...think I see. Yes. So, what are we doing right then? What makes you proud?

J: I like your insistence for art.

I: Really? I am surprised. You don't feel it is superfluous? But why?

J: Because it reminds me of my own art.

I: Wow, that is definitely inspiring. Everyone will be pleased to read this from you. Even the atheists.

J: Yes. But I don't care for them.

I: Yeah, I wouldn't either, if it were me and there were people who didn't believe in me despite everything.

J: No, I don't care for any of you, is what I mean.

I:

J: Well. Art. This was my artphyscie project when I was in kindergarten.

I: What is artfizz....WHAT?<chokes> KINDERGARTEN?!

J: It is a form of art where we create a programmatic code for our basic material, what you call the canvas and through many visceral variables of corporeality incorporate many multidimensional pigments to create the ultimate art.

I: No, you said, kindergarten? YOU MADE THE UNIVERSE WHEN YOU WERE IN KINDERGARTEN?

J: Yes, it was my term project. Though we do not have grading criteria the way you judgmental fools do, my teacher did not like it. I did not like my teacher's face either. But this is not judgement, only a matter of objective preference. I tried to convey this to my principal as to why I caused my teacher's gravitational device, what I believe you might call a whitehole, to explode but I still had to repeat kindergarten. Several times. Yes.

I: <hyperventilating>

J: I think our interview is done, yes?

I: <splutters> NO! Can you at least tell me, Jeodie, and...thanks for clarifying your name, but why are there so many names for you all over our world? This seems to be a main point of contention for most of the conflicts.

J: You all are fools. That is why.

I: But your names? All these different versions of religion, for example?

J: I don't know.  Sometimes I like to come down when I am playing.

I: Playing.

J: I think for you, you might understand it like, you call it RPG characters.

I: You play video games.

J: In your terminology, maybe, yes. Our system differs substantially.

I: How...err. How old are you?

J:  Fifteen. In your terminology. Oh mother's calling.

I: My mother died when I was a kid and that is something I wanted to talk to you about! I want to understand why! I--YOU'RE A TEENAGER?!

J: Not yours, mine. I gotta go. Dinner is ready. <EXITS>

I:

Interviewer's phone rings, keeps ringing as Interviewer sits, stunned. Finally, Interviewer answers, "I....I think I just got trolled by God."

Review of the Day

Carson, through all of her work, writes about love as the atomic leveler of the self. Love is shit that smears us in its radiant nakedness; it can’t really be survived. Yet, humans love. How’s that for tragedy. I really get this about Carson. To emerge from love is to emerge stripped and trussed. That doesn’t mean you didn’t enjoy yourself. No. To enjoy yourself that much is to be displaced, to appallingly suffer in its aftermath, when it’s over."

— Margaret Christakos, "Slay It Again Anne" via lemonhound.com

Thought of the Day

Believing in yourself does not need to mean that you have to discover a cure for a chronic disease, or run a 50K marathon, or write the greatest memoir. Nor is it contingent on your achievements or aspirations. Instead of invigorating yourself with pep talks or consolation, sometimes all it really means is being able to have a simple, quiet, honest conversation with yourself—and when I say quiet I mean unplug yourself from the rest of the world, let everyone and everything else wait for a bit while you have yourself a real genuine chat, and I say honest because sometimes that is one of the hardest things to really be, especially to oneself. We always keep tiny secrets, hide away little things, for whatever reason. You don't need to punch down lumps that seem to define your imperfections, you don't need to slice off the flaws. You don't even need to make resolutions or promises or find a reason for being. Just be you--the real you, maybe even for once in your life. Believing in yourself doesn't mean that you can't count on anyone else, and it definitely doesn't mean that you can't cry or feel lost. All that is you. Talk to yourself—even if it makes you feel crazy—as if you are talking to the only person left in the world that you can unconditionally trust.  And listen, as if you are listening to that one person who makes your heart sing, as if the person talking is that one person you really would do anything for, for whom you would shrug off your pride, scruples and apathy just to make them believe that you care.