Early Onset of Night

Moved

Michael Kindt — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 18:25:23 +0000

This blog will no longer be updated. WordPress simply lacks the community and interactivity I want–at least in my experience. Additionally, I fucking HATE HATE HATE internet block paragraphing and the WordPress posting interface practically forces you to use it.

See? Anyway, my blogging activity will be at the Early Onset of Night tumblelog, which is updated several times a day (and is fucking hilarious, by the way).

I still do have a WordPress blog, one that I set up with the publication of my book. It’s right here and will be updated every Sunday.

Asta La Bye-Bye to my first blog.

Michael Kindt

Other places I virtually am: Facebook, Twitter

First Interstate Bank on North Avenue Between Walgreens And Dana Dental Arts

Michael Kindt — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 12:02:41 +0000

So I was in line, slowly dying because everything was taking forever. I hate lines. I looked around for something to focus on, but it was a bank and that meant blank. It was boring solidified, boring made three dimensional. They say Jesus was the incarnation of god. I have serious doubts about that, but I know for a fact that banks are the incarnation of boring.
…………Over to the left was the little bank waiting area. There was an older guy sitting there alone amid the financial publications and Wall Street Journals. He was staring at the floor, which seemed like a good idea. I began staring at the floor, too, feeling my life slipping away one second at a time.
…………I began to hear a ringing, like an old phone. When I was a little kid, phones rang, like, with real bells and shit. That was what this sound was, only not quite. It was a digital representation of an old phone ringing, so it was just a bit off. In the 21st century, digital representations are commonplace. Hell, most of the people I know are digital representations.
…………By the way: Hello out there! Hello?
…………The ringing was coming from the waiting area and was the old guy’s phone. He pulled it out of his pocket, not taking his eyes off the floor, and said, “Yello!”
…………That’s not a typo. He actually said, “Yello!” I surmised it to be a combination of “Yes?” and “Hello.” How a question mark plus a period equaled an exclamation point, however, was beyond me.
…………Now, here was something, something to at least listen to, instead of the lulling, muted tones of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. The guy was talking loud, too.
…………“No. No. No,” he was saying. “No, I already explained it to him.”
…………Explained what? I wondered.
…………“Twice,” the guy said. His voiced hovered between firmness and anger like a hummingbird. This was a serious call, perhaps even a business call, which made sense. After all, he was in a bank and wore the uniform of the modern American capitalist conformist: tie, button down shirt, slacks, hard, shiny shoes. It was the middle of August, so I gave him a pass on the missing blazer. If this had been October, however, I would have been forced to stab him in the liver with the nearest Quarterly Report.
…………“Maybe even three times,” the guy said. “He said he understood perfectly.”
…………Who understood what? I wondered. And why so perfectly? And how can any understanding be ‘perfect’? Now I was fascinated by the call. I liked how it was one-sided. I liked how it contained tension. I liked how it lacked all meaning entirely.
…………The line moved up a notch and I felt disappointment. I wanted the line to go slow now.
…………“Look,” said the guy, “like I explained to him, I’m not going to be a part of it unless the sizes are consistent.”
…………A person came up behind me and I stepped aside and offered her my spot in line. “Go ahead,” I said gentlemanly.
…………“Oh, no, that’s ok,” she said, using her I-don’t-want-to-impose voice.
…………“No, it’s fine,” I insisted.
…………“Really. Thank you, but that’s ok. I’m in no hurry.”
…………“Me either. I’m actually Mike, by the way.”
…………She was surprised I had introduced myself and took a second to reply. “Hello,” she said and nodded.
…………“And you are?”
…………“Jill.”
…………“Jill. Nice to meet you.” I stuck out my hand. She hesitated, then touched it briefly with hers. “Would it be alright if I called you sometime? Perhaps for a beer or some tea? I’m a tea-freak, but I’d buy you coffee if you wanted me to.”
…………She smiled at me, a bit tightly, and raised her left hand, revealing a wedding ring.
…………“So that’s a no, I take it?”
…………“That’s a no.”
…………“Well, the least I could do is offer you my spot in line.”
…………“That’s also a no–but a no, thank you.” She smiled at me again, quickly and without meaning, then looked away.
…………“Fair enough,” I said, to no one now. I was only mildly disappointed that my subterfuge had failed.
…………I turned around and went back to listening to the guy, who was saying, “Size does matter.”
…………Suddenly, two new teller windows opened up and I was called forward to conduct my transaction. I felt drunk with power.

The End

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Michael Kindt — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 09:19:47 +0000

Are you afraid to look squarely at the Abyss with an unflinching eye and a big set of balls? Or do you invent a ghost in the sky and name him god and a ghost in yourself and name him soul? Admit your true spirit in, allow it to breathe. It is expression and dwells in what you say, in what you do, in what you create. It lives in what you love and lives in what you hate. It is not a ghost haunting your body. It is your blood, the fluid of life. Let it flow out from you into the world. There it becomes real and lives forever.

The End
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Michael Kindt — Sun, 30 May 2010 21:13:33 +0000

You apply a fresh coat of drama to my face with every word you say breaking up my smile into pieces readily absorbed into your swirling bullshit a mucky brown color not unlike sewage I can’t help but listen because I’m weak folded in on myself collapsible like cheap Wal*Mart furniture abandoned with every move.

The End
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Four Twenty

Michael Kindt — Wed, 19 May 2010 18:34:12 +0000

…………“$1.64,” I said. I spoke robotically. My eyes were glazed over. I had been selling junk food and lottery tickets to the peasants for nine straight hours and couldn’t wait to get out of there and drink a bottle of wine.
…………“Oh no, you don’t,” the woman said. Her tone was accusatory and a touch triumphant. “It said 99 cents on the cooler.” Her blunt face wore a sly, knowing smile. Apparently, I was intentionally trying to screw her out of 65 cents and she busted me: Not so fast, Evil Convenience Store Guy.
…………I sighed. “That’s for the Aquapure.” I indicated the plastic bottle of water that sat on the counter between us. “This is Dasani.”
…………The woman looked at me flatly. She snatched the water away and waddled back to the cooler in a huff, clearly angry and very fat. Maybe she was pissed about it being her mistake and not mine. Maybe it was because Dasani was her favorite brand of water and now here it was beyond her financial reach.
…………Even after two years, it still amazes me how people come in and actually buy water. I mean, they actually stop whatever it is they’re doing, get in their car and drive, sometimes blocks and blocks, to the convenience store where I work. They park, come inside, and search through the coolers until they find the water. Then, using their hands, they take some up to the counter and actually give me money for it.
…………They do this without thinking.
…………Sometimes, though, they rise up out of the fog and realize what they’re doing. When this happens, they usually get pissed. That’s what was going on with this woman. $1.64 is too much for her? She’s actually looking for a deal on water. What, is she “special” or something? Did momma drop her on her head when she was a baby?
…………The woman returned to the counter with Aquapure, which she banged down angrily. “I don’t understand why the prices are so different,” she said, rummaging through her enormous, middle-age-lady purse. She was obviously one of those weird people who get off on paying in exact change. They always slow the line down digging for those three elusive pennies.
…………I sighed loudly as her stupid quest went on and on. Finally she handed over two quarters, three dimes, two nickels, and nine pennies. If she would have said something about “lightening the load” I would have burst into tears. The whole time she was searching she had been holding a single dollar bill in her left hand.
…………“Why are the prices so different?” she demanded. “It’s just water.”
…………“The containers are different,” I explained.
…………“I don’t see how that’s worth 60 cents.”
…………“65 cents, actually.”
…………“What?”
…………“65 cents difference.”
…………“Whatever. The bottles aren’t different. They’re both clear and the same size. Even the labels are both blue.”
.………..I tapped on the lid of her water. “This one says ‘Aquapure’, whereas the bottle you had up here before said ‘Dasani’”.
…………Behind her stood a cowboy wanting to buy lottery tickets. He had the whole costume on, beginning with the hat. His shirt pockets had faux pearl buttons and ornately tapered flaps. He wore a large shiny belt buckle with a steer bursting through a gate on it. His boots were pointy and he shifted on them impatiently. He really needed to buy his lottery tickets bad. The poor bastard looked like he was about to piss in his too-tight Wranglers.
…………“It’s just water!” The woman was really upset now. Apparently, being a smart-ass to her was the wrong approach, so I tried something different.
…………“Ma’am,” I said firmly. “Water is free. Please don’t bitch to me about the price of something that’s free. We have a sink in our deli area, plus a drinking fountain, and there’s always the toilet.” I pointed at the restroom sign, which, hilariously, she turned and looked at. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have lottery tickets to sell.”
…………“What’s it up to?” she asked suddenly.
…………I was surprised and took a second to answer. “390 million,” I said.
…………“Better give me one.” She put down the dollar bill she had been clutching. I looked up at the clock and saw that I still had another 23 minutes of this. I sighed and printed out her lottery ticket. Finally, she was gone.
…………The cowboy came up and gave me a smile. “One of those days?” he asked. It took everything I had to not dive over the counter and stab him repeatedly in the throat with the blue Bic pen I kept behind my ear…….

If you like my writing, please consider sharing it with others. Thank you.

This, along with 20 other stories, is included in Early Onset of Night, Volume One now available on Amazon.

My Answer

Michael Kindt — Sun, 16 May 2010 09:59:44 +0000

I have all the lights off in the house and am sitting at the table in the near dark. There is a kerosene lantern burning next to me. It provides enough light for me to write by, enough light for my house to look completely dark on the outside.
…………I’m hiding.
…………I try to write a poem but don’t like it. I can’t capture a flow, a movement, a thrust. I am emotional but without direction.
…………I like this lantern. It’s metal and red and my favorite color. It’s not decorative, but is a real lantern designed for use. It looks like a machine. It smells like a machine, petroleum chemical musk. I like its smell and its light seems real, flickering and weak though it is. Right now, it seems more real than electric light.
…………At 3:20 pm mountain time, a little more than three hours ago, the police were here looking for me. I could tell by the knock who it was and what it was and did not answer.
…………When I put a person in my phone I assign them a ring tone. It’s the same ring tone I assign everyone else I put in my phone, so when I receive a call my phone makes either a Person I Know sound or a Person I Don’t Know sound. I do not answer calls from people I don’t know. If they leave a message, perhaps we can go from there. If not, and I am bored and near a computer, I may google the number, discovering in almost every case that I was correct in not answering.
…………My door is similar to my phone. Although I cannot adjust its settings, I can always tell by the way the knock sounds if I know the person on the other side. I do not answer the door if I don’t know the person knocking on it, but I do peek through the blinds, discovering in almost every case that I was correct in not answering.
…………I do not need more strangers in my life. I am strange enough.
…………This knock was not the knock of someone I know or even of someone I don’t know. It was a cop’s knock. Insistent, expectant, a knock used to being answered. A bratty, spoiled knock implying no choice in being answered.
…………The very instant I heard it I knew what it was and what I needed to do: retreat to the back of the house and wait for them to go away. They did, eventually, but not before calling me. If they managed to find my address, it was no surprise that they managed to find my number as well. Through my bedroom blinds I could see one of the pigs with a phone to his ear and just then the Person I Don’t Know sound came from my pocket. I quickly silenced it.
…………I stood there waiting for them to leave, my phone in my hand, and a thought occurred to me: I need an Authority Figure ring tone. It should be something creepy and ominous, a funeral march perhaps. I connected with my service provider and began searching for Berlioz, happy that darkness would soon descend.

The End
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Screaming at a Wall

Michael Kindt — Thu, 06 May 2010 13:18:02 +0000

Ahhhh, this is SO nice. Just standing on a beach thinking about toilets, a wet piece of underwear clenched between my thumb and index finger. It’s one of those days you only read about in the recipe section of the newspaper: muffins galore or a tart holiday treat.
…………Hello, person, I think, as a person strolls by. Hello, seagull. Hello, sideways-walking crab. How’s everyone today? My thought-voice rattles around in my skull like a rusty screw. Hello, hello.
…………Back in the car, there’s a cold taco with my name on it. I walk leisurely up the road, whistling what I think is a bouncy show tune but in reality is merely chipper Beethoven. My butt squeaks down into the vinyl seat and I begin to eat. A tinny voice in the radio tells me about the weather. Something about low-pressure and high-pressure fronts. Something about them converging. And clouds. Always the clouds.
…………What? I think. No rain?
…………My dog’s name is Hooter and his tail curls up real nice so as to provide all lookers with an unobstructed view of his asshole, a grayish-blackish puckered kiss of excrement. He greets me with dog-hysterics as I come through the door. I crumple the now empty taco bag into a tight little ball and induce him to eat it.
…………“Howdy, Hooter,” I say when he gets done gagging and choking. “How was your day?”
…………I take a shower and watch a rerun of a tv show that was on previously, then drink a case of beer and pass out in a pool of my own urine.
…………In the morning, like every morning, I fill out Mother’s name and address on a big yellow manila envelope, stick a bunch of stamps on it, and mail it empty. She used to call me asking what happened to the contents. Did I forget? she wondered. “Yep,” I’d say. “Sorry. Forgot. Next time, Ma.” For some reason, she’s stopped calling.
…………I collect a dollar seventeen from my safe and drive over to Taco John’s and buy a single taco, which I allow to cool as I drive to the beach. I wave to every cop I see, smiling, hoping they don’t pull me over and look in my trunk and hoping they do. The smell is gone now, but she’s still back there, curled up around the spare, my long hard manly tire iron up her ass.
…………Leaving the taco in the car to further cool, I go out onto the beach and dip my piece of underwear in the ocean. Will today be any different? I wonder.

The End
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The World to Which The White Man Came

Michael Kindt — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:13:32 +0000

Nature had been at work for centuries. Centuries more
men ranged from wandered over sailed the seas that washed
each year new wonders of the so-called new world.

Men’s lives are lived somewhere & often. The tale unfolds
unduly unless he wishes to render back with margin
a fact which cannot be overlooked.

Land is just the line that cuts through runs the length
along volcanic towering broken western reaches
of western wall.

Thrown across the divide it will be overcome.
Majestic forbidding carved
of little more than untold riches.

The End
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The Newtonian Reformation

Michael Kindt — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:51:55 +0000

His predecessors had placed in his hands
the material for a new system of the world.

His own achievement had been assembled,
resulting in the rounded-off closed chapter.

Far beyond the facts, only in the form,
opening rather than closing
varied fields of more widely still.

Solidity and cohesion as much a problem as ever.

A single system: the theory of moment,
the time enough later.

Words of brilliant exposition
assuming substances and more.

Fresh and promising,
this novel scheme provided evidence
of closed containers,
of binding particles,
of deliquescence and a tighter resulting bond.

A dozen comparable processes,
many of them quite authentic,
converged neatly upon the absolute intrinsic,
the actual hypothetical plausible.

The End
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Shunyata

Michael Kindt — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:17:53 +0000

There is no fundemental unit of matter, no “smallest” piece.
…………The Greeks invented the word ‘atom’ and their definition was that an atom was the smallest component piece of matter. Today, we know this to be false. We know that atoms are made up of electrons, neutrons, and protons. We know also that the component pieces of the atom are made up of still smaller pieces, like quarks.
…………That’s about as far as we’ve gotten.
…………But no matter how far down we go we will never reach a piece of matter that can’t be divided further. This is to say that everything in the universe is made up of components and the components are made up of components and those components are made up of still more components and on and on and on to infinity.
…………The reason there is no smallest piece is simple: space. To exist, matter has to occupy a space. More specifically, it has to occupy an AMOUNT of space. No matter how small the amount of space, it can be divided in two, along with the piece of stuff occupying it. And then it can be divided into four and then six and on and on and on.
…………There is no fundamental unit of matter.
…………There is no “one thing” in the universe, including you. Biologically, you can understand your component parts: arms, legs, organs, cells, mitochondria, the atoms that make you up and so on to infinity. But your mind is comprised of component parts as well: sensations, perceptions, thought, feelings, ideas, etc. Each one of these, too, can be further divided. For example the sensation of sight is made up of the infinite components within your eyes and optic nerve and brain and photons and the infinite components of the thing you are looking at, etc.
…………If everything in the universe is made up of components upon components upon components all the way to infinity, where are you?
…………There answer is there is no “you”. There is no fundamental, indivisible, individual “you”. In fact, there is nothing individual at all in reality. If everything is made up of component parts and every component part is made up of still more component parts, the word “individual” is ridiculous.
…………It is an illusion.
…………When you see a chair, you see one thing in your mind: a chair, but the word ‘chair’ is simply the name for the illusion of the chair being one thing—namely, and namely only—a “chair”. In reality, it is merely an accumulation of infinite components and is itself part of a larger accumulation: part of the stuff in your living room, part of your house, which is part of your neighborhood which is part of your town which is part of your country which is part of your planet which is part of your solar system, galaxy, galactic grouping and on and on up through infinite universes.
…………Infinity goes both ways, you see. It never gets small enough and it never gets big enough.
…………In the same way as the chair, so you are an illusion. Your “self”, your “soul” is an illusion. It is simply a name applied to a temporary accumulation of infinite components which is itself a component part of an infinite reality.
…………This is the Buddha’s teaching of shunyata.

The End
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Margaret, Mike, & The Mousetraps

Michael Kindt — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:29:07 +0000

…………Several years ago, I was the assistant manager of a liquor store. It was called Queen City Liquors and it was a really nice place to work. The owner and manager was Margaret, a very cool older woman who had won the store in a divorce, like, 20 years previously.
…………Obviously, we sold alcohol of all kinds, but also alcohol paraphernalia, like shot glasses, wine glasses, styrofoam coolers, beer coozies, shakers, and so on. We also sold some snacks like chips and sunflower seeds and candy bars.
…………This is where the mice come in.
…………The store opened at 10 am and Margaret worked the first shift every day, seven days a week. She won the business in a divorce and it became her new husband, her new family, her whole life. It may sound sad, but she wasn’t a sad person. She loved her store and was very happy with her life. This was one of the reasons she was so cool. Miserable people annoy me and I generally avoid them. Happy people are where it’s at, socially.
…………Word to the wise.
…………Anyway, she got to the store about 9:30 and worked till 5 pm, which is when I came in. I closed the store down five days a week, getting out of there about 12:30 am. The other two days a week, we had a college student close down.
…………So I get to work about ten to five one day and Margaret is up in arms. Her store has mice! They gnawed through a Doritos bag! She found turds in her office!
…………I noticed a little stool behind the counter which wasn’t usually there. “In case I see one and have to get off the floor,” Margaret explained. She went on to tell me that she was “absolutely terrified” of mice.
…………This is called musophobia—the irrational fear of mice. I realized Margaret had a severe case.
…………“Oh, Mike, will you take care of it for me?” There was both fear and pleading in her eyes. “I don’t even know how to set a mousetrap and there’s no way I could ever touch a dead one. I don’t even want to look at one.”
…………I felt so sorry for her. “Sure, Margaret. No problem.”
…………Off she went to grab some bait and traps downtown.
…………But there was a problem—a big problem. You see, I don’t kill anything. Ever. I’m ‘dead’ serious—ha, ha. At my house, I even catch flies with a paper cup and release them outside—fucking FLIES. There’s no way I could kill a mouse if I can’t even hurt a fly.
…………So, yeah. At the time I didn’t think of humane traps. Margaret wouldn’t have been down with the idea anyway. First off all, she’s a hard-headed (and pretty successful, I might add) businesswoman. It would be illogical in her mind to spend more on humane traps when regular mousetraps are so cheap and work just as well. Second, though she feared mice, she also fucking hated them. Death was a reasonable penalty for invading her store. In fact, it was probably too good for them.
…………She was back inside a half an hour with two standard traps, some peanut butter, and a little wedge of brie.
…………Yes, I was thinking the same thing you are now: brie?
…………I told you she was a successful businesswoman.
…………So Margaret went home and I was left with a moral dilemma. I wanted to please my boss, whom I respected and cared about, but at the same time I didn’t want to cause the death of another living creature to do it.
…………I went ahead and baited the traps, but didn’t set them. I put one under the snack stand and one in the office next to the tell-tale turds. I didn’t know what else to do.
…………By the way, I didn’t use the brie. I ate that myself.
…………“We have smart mice,” Margaret told me when I came in the next day.
…………“Oh, yeah?” I said.
…………“Yep. They got the bait and got away. Both traps were sprung this morning.”
.………..“Probably defective traps,” I said. I picked the one up that was under the snack stand. The peanut butter I had applied the night before as bait was completely gone. I flipped the trap over and pretended to look at the bottom. “I knew it,” I said. “These are American made. They’re crap. You should have gotten Japanese traps.”
…………I looked at her and shook my head disapprovingly. My eyes said to her: You, Margaret, and you alone, are the reason we still have mice. Jesus.
…………“Japanese traps?” she asked.
…………“Yeah, the Masaharu Morimoto 5000 is the best mousetrap on the market. It would’ve been worth the extra expense.”
…………“Where do I get some? Wal*Mart?”
…………“You’re in luck. It just so happens that I have two in my car. I’ll run get them.”
…………She laughed as I was going out the door. “Really? Do you sell them on the side or something?”
…………“No, I just had a feeling the traps you got wouldn’t work so I picked some up before I came in.”
…………“Great,” said Margaret. “Bring the receipt and I’ll reimburse you from the till.”
…………Of course, they weren’t Masaharu Morimoto 5000 mousetraps. There’s no such thing, tragically. They were standard humane traps. The mouse goes in to get the bait, trips the door, and is trapped inside. He’s confused, he’s frightened, but he’s alive. Later on, you release him outside or in the government building of your choice.
…………They weren’t Japanese made either. Japan is too smart of a country to squander its production power on mousetrap manufacturing. They got important shit to build. No, they were made in China, like everything else in the U.S.
…………Well, it took two days but we finally caught one mouse—and one mouse only. Perhaps he was the vanguard, the scouting party of a much larger mouse invasion force that would’ve come had the political leadership of the liquor store not acted so quickly. Who knows?
…………After the little guy was incarcerated in the trap, I took him home and released him in my yard, since there was nothing but parking spaces and traffic around the store. The next day, my cat dropped his lifeless corpse at my feet.

If you like my writing, please consider sharing it with others. Thank you.

This, along with 20 other stories, is included in Early Onset of Night, Volume One now available on Amazon.

I Wanna Get Me One of Those Fancy Computers That You Fold in Half

Michael Kindt — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:55:11 +0000

I can’t remember what you call them but boy are they all awesome and shit
they’re like portable so you can haul them around with you looking at porn
all over the place which would be really cool for me since I have nothing to do
ever all I do is pretty much sit here
in front of this huge ass fucking computer that doesn’t fold in half hoping
my roommate doesn’t walk in and catch me shaking hands with Mr. Happy
like the last couple days he says he’s gonna up my rent if it happens again
because of pain and suffering and all the therapy he’s gonna need to get
his name is Toby and he reads the bible on purpose
he used to be a buddhist like me but a couple weeks ago
he turned into a presbyterian and now plays golf
and even shmoozes
he used to go to parties he used to be downtown
but now he just attends mixers and only wears a frown

The End
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