Emergency Note from Kyiv Unedited Secret Editorial Board: Dear Readers, We are sounding the alarm and working strenuously to delete this account of David Lynch’s alleged rendezvous with representatives of our Commix Writing Enterprises, a venture of the holding Kyiv Unedited Unlimited, at this city’s top Chinese restaurant, as well as the alleged “shape” he’s in, as it is not only completely unsanctioned, and therefore unofficial, but also completely unaccountable as to how it got here
We reserve the right, however, to withhold judgment on whether it’s true or not, with the proviso that we’ll know for sure once someone who can certifiably prove they work for us writes the story up (instead of whoever (or whatever (evil force)) wrote it… instead)
Please hit the title link above this obese rambling chain of superfluous subheads to find out what we’re going on about – in an unseemly panic, some of our critics might very well say, as if we’re uncertain about what we’re doing and lack confidence and in our desperation feel the need to make excuses so that you’ll accept us and try to explain everything using futile efforts similar to this one
I pour Commix Girl some more tea as we sit in Chin & Chang’s East Eats waiting for our appetizers.
We wait and drink our tea, and I listen to her speak. I am hot and hungry. I strain to reach her.
As I watch her lips curve around each word she forms, the sequences she utters strike me as wondrous and unexpected, bizarre, tingling with strangeness, prophetic.
She is enigmatic.
Commix Girl.
This extraordinary creature baffles me.
Physically – well, there’s nothing baffling about that. She’s a shapely strapping outdoors type who should be out in the plains breaking wild horses. Her cheeks burn with a deep natural rouge, and the little makeup she uses – which she absolutely doesn’t need – to highlight her eyes, is heart-achingly moving.
It’s what’s on the inside I can’t get at… at all.
I’m telling Commix Girl – or was telling her just a minute ago – that while we are really big fans of Kyiv Commix – and she, far, far bigger than I, or anyone I know of, for that matter – nothing featured on that site, except for maybe the materials in Man on Earth, is real.
“Ergo,” I somehow try making my point emphatic, “the notion that David Lynch will show up at this restaurant, based on the preceding three or four fake letters you’ve just read on the Kyiv Unedited website, is a complete fiction. Commix Girl, listen to me! The chances of that happening are precisely zero, which is to say, such a chance doesn’t exist at all!”
She says:
“Around the time that Man exhausts this planet’s resources and kills most life on it and in the seas, largely through the wholesale destruction of vegetation due to global warming, He will have created new plant life by applying advanced technology to what by then will be rapidly changing strains of the little plant growth still remaining. This residual plant life is, of course, mutating rapidly both because of the irreversible environmental damage it has sustained and because it is looking for a way to survive under the ultimately hopeless conditions…”
“Sooo…,” I say, hesitant, uncertain, “… this residual plant life, as you call it, dies anyway, aaand…”
I look sidewise at Commix Girl for help. Of course, there is none. Is this all some kind of game with her? Is she just playing me – nothing better to do as we wait for a couple of Chin and Chang’s succulent starter platters to arrive? I drink two glasses of water.
“… but, ah, but Man will create new plant life, as you say, and that will eventually replace all the old plant life that died, and the planet will eventually be, aaahh… revived?”
I shut my mouth and feel embarrassed, myself going red. I’m unsure of what I’ve just said, or what I’m asking her. I pour more water and drink it, although I don’t want to. Like Commix Girl, I should be drinking my tea, which is going cold.
A waiter clanks down our first silverware and plates. This, however, doesn’t make things better, but worse.
“This new plant life,” Commix Girl continues, “which Man creates, however, is just a cheap imitation of the wonders with which God had covered the planet till then. It grows like God’s plants, and reproduces like them, but it is nevertheless partly synthetic, that is, artificial, because as we know, nothing that Man creates is ever truly real – or ever really true. In this way, this plant life is like Man, and sick like Him, too. It suffers from delusions. And like Man’s, its life is also meaningless…”
Again, I think, ‘Is this a joke,’ everything that Commix Girl is saying? Nothing to do as we wait for our –
“Now, this plant life that Man creates is unable to live out in the destroyed world. It is incapable of covering the planet, thereby reviving it. It would not have been able to live out in it in competition with nature under the old circumstances either. However, in its limited, perhaps sick, manlike way, this manmade plant life is stronger that everything that has by now passed before it, because it is indeed alive, and even thrives… but only when it is next to Man… For at this point, it is no longer God’s world, but Man’s. He has recreated it from God’s original creation in His own image…”
“Sooo… Man lives in islands and pockets of hope with his plants, and –”
But this time Commix Girl cuts me off impatiently, as if I’ve rudely interrupted her, rather than allowing me to use her pause to make my own point or ask her a question (like she did a moment before). Say, is this some sort of game, or –
“THESE PLANTS!!!…” Commix Girl is making an angry face as she talks over me. She’s leaning in towards me and pointing a finger at my chest. I back my back into my chair’s back… “…ARE SENTIENT!!! And as these plants are sentient life forms, they have feelings and emotions, like Man, who’d created them, although He had not planned it that way; that’s just the way it happened, because, as we know, everything that Man tries to create under his absolute control has built into its manmade artificial nature that trait of eventually getting out of His control, as though it were self-aware, and therefore the eventual master of its own will, and therefore the potential agent of His destruction; much as Man will have destroyed God.”
Is she serious? Where is she getting this from? Either she is beyond anything that Harvard or MIT could ever teach her, and which venerable institutions she treats as some big joke, if only by virtue of her refusal to go there (or anywhere, for that matter), or she’s read too much Philip K. Dick?
“But the situation with these plants is far more benign – they never develop such bad intent toward their Maker; but no matter how you cut it, the result is nevertheless the same. For these plants, to survive, need to be near Man, they need to be close to him, and in their way, therefore, love Him. Thus, they thrive in Man-populated areas and urban settings, like this city of Kyiv, for example, but are incapable of living, so to speak, on the outside. The rest of the world is dead, and Man cannot go there for long, lest he die, but urban areas are covered in these plants. And so here, Man continues to live.”
The more I listen, the more she pulls me in, and yet the more I realize that this is nonsense, sheer madness. That this is indeed just a chick who’s read too much science fiction – and bad science fiction too! I think I’m about to teach Commix Girl a lesson or two in higher intellect.
“Bodies of water near such places feature large bloated weak fish you can scoop out of the water with your hands, but they are tasteless nigh disgusting and hardly worth eating unless you want to risk incurable sickness and eventual death. The same holds for fish in the salt sea that gather in the shallows near the shores where Man might still live with his plants. But ultimately… Litman, Litman! Are you listening?!”
Why is it suddenly so important to her if I’m listening? When I’d tried talking some sense into her, she hadn’t heard a word I said. Stubborn, damn it, stubborn…
“Yes, of course I’m listening.”
She seems relieved.
“But ultimately, Man exhales carbon, His plants exhale oxygen; Man breathes in oxygen, His plants breathe in carbon… And so –”
“They choke each other in a mutual death embrace!”
I finish for her.
It is precisely at this point that our clumsy and off-balance waiter finally pulls the fucking cart up and from it sets down on our table first one, then the other large starter platter we’d ordered. He removes the lid of one, but I’m so hungry and impatient, I snatch the lid off the other. It accidently slips from my fingers and crashes clattering loudly and disruptively on the floor. Heads turn. The way I tear into whatever’s on the platter and heap it on my plate, with no gentlemanly concern anymore for Commix Girl, anyone witnessing the moment could easily construe it as me being purposely confrontational, rambunctious, asking for trouble, and rude.
As I shove the food into my mouth, I close my eyes and sigh with heavenly relief. I’m oblivious to Commix Girl, the waiter – everybody! I simply don’t give a fuck.
I know Commix Girl is pissed, but I have no time now to waste on her feelings. I tried before, and it didn’t work. Now, I am hungry, and I want to eat. I continue to dive in.
Filed by Author No One, February 29, 2016