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Excerpts from The Oakland Portal, Dictionary-Sketchbook

(created throughout Fall 2004)

My Balanced Neighbor

(written on Dec 6^th, 2004)

Blinding tunnel of the deaf, defying laws of physical momentum, decapitating hypothetical social environments. Its linear objectives present the user with only two choices. Here or there. This or that. An unknown mysterious realm to this humble verbalist, and a familiar home to the wretched and broken, living dead. Fifty percent each, like the coffee additive, the ultimate in rations of equality. Also acting as a pitch black shelter of refuge, chaotically silent, slowing time to the speed at which organic paint dries, resurrecting inspiration and healing those who need not be healed. A surplus, imaginative reality. The thrift store that has no walls or ceiling. Everything is free, and not because it's Tuesday afternoon. Discarded Yin Yang Emo-trans-tion-port TV actor. I said yes to Mr. Rogers. And online no less. Over time he had not aged, but instead youthed, adapting to the times with the addition of a neon orange mohawk. My hope is that translators will be unavailable during the showing. His tongue has given birth, and I want to piece this puzzle together without the aid of clues. So bust out your pocket scales, and weigh my neighbor. We have no doubts. We have each other for assuring reference.

Flashy Packaging Logo Slogan (wanna buy a portal?)

(written on Dec 8^th, 2004)

Going through a portal, I turn the color of Blade Runner Snow Crash, incorporating imaginative drool session. Almost one hundred tiny windows fly by horizontally. Pitfalls, each one could house an animated specimen, but most of the time act as view ports to a variety of still life imagery. Sand in eyes, stirring the vision. Blink, blink. Oppositely directed traveler, particularly vehicularly driven, hug railing, continue. Crackling waves from the sea of velocity leave one wondering what the 'paint room' is. Just past it though, three dimensional beams stacked in sequence diagonally provide a pre-Alameda escape, homeward, on some days. Not today, hold your breath. Are you good at swimming? Submerge. You now have a five second memory, things seem bigger. Bathroom floors on walls, fluorescent illusion bulbs. White noise. Surrounded, involuntary victim/participant of travel show filmed live in front of a studio audience. You. Things move by, peripheral vision skips comparable to an eight year old's compact disc collection. Milli-second faces, minimal eye contact. Suffocation probable, desire to exit soon surfaces the same way the world wakes. Clockwork. No phone conversings here sir. What? I can't hear you. Evaluate journey, rations seem low. Rain check.

Exterior prison, abandoned magical transport, still locked, with mirrored window doors. Looking in, you see where you are. Quiet, but not quite silence. White noise still, but relaxing, thoughtful. Additional scenery, less repetitive, yet somehow still familiar and reacurring in nature. Shopping cart. Canvas in bin, chair with a lever. Fridgerators, standing erect and in formation, conveniently appear regularly to defend cracked concrete squares from the likes of banana peels and cellophane. Doors swung open, plastic lips dripping freon saliva from their metallic teeth as they claim their turf. The inanimate objects control everything down here. I've been mugged by a shoe before. In daylight, roller wood drivers glide across such appliances' edges and curves relentlessly, until intolerable fatique or complete satisfaction is found. The streets are a game of Where's Waldo, only Waldo is anything. Where's anything. Turn the page. At the beach. There's the touch lamp. And the file cabinet. Large cylindrical tin can, dripping in Grease. 80's collector's crap, thrown out by futuristic schizophrenics.

Ask me how many coffee shops I can get to in forty six seconds. Produce markets in twelve. I have a portal, I step through it, I go places. Walk all over my mind and come out my ear, hearing myself leave my head. The neighbor waves a flag marking the significantly free and abundant object population that I live within. I'm not sure if this attracts the homeless, or if it is the other way around. I know I am not the only one with a shopping cart though, competition thrives similar to the back stabbings enacted by groups of clothing addicts in a thrift store. The climate of this physical layout is constantly changing like a flip book. Slowly mutating, creating a living animation that you can't watch because you're part of it. Only the freeway, the bricks, and the portal stand forever. A gaping face that never sleeps, organizing lives with strips of applied color. My hero.