part 4 of Paul McCartney’s audiobiography The Life and Death of Paul McCartney entitled “Count Basie”.

4-CountBasie

Moments

But while I was sitting there in withdrawal from the blogstuff, I reached a moment of clarity. My brain was going through all sorts of crazy thoughts without any blog form or forum to fill the empty thought space in my head. It recalled things from my childhood and things I learned in high school about American history and puberty. Then, out of left field came the Hollow Earth Theory.

“Hollow Earth is a belief that the planet Earth has a hollow interior and, possibly, a habitable inner surface. The hypothesis of a Hollow Earth has long been contradicted by overwhelming evidence as well as by the modern understanding of planet formation, and the scientific community now dismisses the notion as pseudoscience…some have claimed that our universe itself lies in the interior of a hollow world, calling this a ‘concave’ hollow-Earth theory. The surface of the Earth, according to such a view, might resemble the interior shell of a Dyson sphere. Generally, scientists have not taken [this] speculation seriously…

“In a trivial sense, one can always define a coordinate transformation such that the interior of the Earth becomes ‘exterior’ and the exterior becomes ‘interior’. (For example, in spherical coordinates, let radius r go to R²/r where R is the Earth’s radius.) Such transformations would require corresponding changes to the forms of physical laws; the consensus suggests that such theories tend towards sophistry (Wikipedia, 2008).” So space, like the moon and the Milky Way and Beetleguese are in the middle and the Earth and it’s 1-7 layers of rock/magma/carbonite/mole-people are the outside (the little white stick figure is me, Mike, to make things clearer).

So, tending toward sophistry, my brain had the idea for a Hollow Human Theory. As far as I can tell, I can only see inside myself and not inside of other people, birds, or gems. Inside me, is my universe bordered by everything outside it. It looks like this:

Everything I know outside is the surface of the universe I inhabit and float around in, but inside are all the stars and and and quasars and everything (the little white stick figure is me, Mike, to make things clearer). If I sent a drill through the surface, I would hit all sorts of people and trees with it in the regular world. If I send in a space ship, I explore my consciousness. I hope I don’t run into any inner demons!

So that’s the Hollow Mike Theory. I’m so glad my parents took away my blog for two weeks and then let me blog again so that I could share with you all the Theory. Thank you and this has been Mike’s show and tell.

mike

Wanna make your own hollow you? Just take a picture of you, put space in it and the regular world outside of it. There’s your hollow you.

“Honey, have you met Chad? He’s a great guy. He likes the White Sox’s too.” Yes I have met Chad and the man does not like the White Sox’s. He likes the Cubs and the Sox. There’s a big difference. You can’t like both teams. You have to choose one and live and die with them. To say you like both is to say you aren’t a real baseball fan.

“Hey, my name’s Eric. I think we met a few months ago at some other get together like this.”

“Oh, right Eric; the man who chided me for liking baseball.”

“Right, that Eric” I wasn’t going to get into it again with this guy. I excused myself and went to the balcony and lit up a cigarette. There was another cigarette smoker outside too. She was holding her cigarette in front of her and hadn’t lit it yet.

“You need a light there?”

“I’m not sure. I quit smoking a year ago but I woke up this morning and as I was filling up my car I went in and got a pack. Didn’t even realize I had done it until after I was in the car and pulling away. It was just so natural.”

“So, you haven’t had any yet today.”
“I held one in my hand earlier. I had it in my mouth ready to light it. I really, really wanted it but right as I decided to go for it my boyfriend rang the buzzer and I gave up on it. He’d kill me if he saw me smoking.”

“Is he here at the party?”

“Yeah, but he has to talk to all his lawyer friends as if he never sees them at work all the time.”

“I can’t stand lawyers. Somehow I’m going out with one though.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t stand lawyers either but yeah; somehow I ended up with one.”

“How long have you guys been seeing each other?”

“Four months now.” This triggered something in her and she lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew out the smoke with a smile.

“Beautiful.” She stayed in silence as she got reacquainted with her old friend.

”Well, I’m glad you’re smoking again. The world needs more smokers.”

“It sure does; we’re a dying breed.”

“So, what is it that you do for a living?”

“You mean, how do I get my money?”

“Right.”

“My sister and I own a flower shop. She’s into the flower side of it and I’m more into the actual running of the store.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“Yeah,” she said this with hesitation, “it’s just that I don’t see myself doing it for another year. I want something more. I want a job that takes me places … or maybe a job that helps people.”

“Flowers help people. They’ve smoothed over tons of fights for me.”

“I can always tell when guys are buying flowers when they’ve fucked up.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, they always come in and hastily choose one of the already sorted bouquets. They won’t get the cheapest one or the most expensive one. Always the middle grade one. One that won’t put a big dent into the twenty they hand me before the rush out to start the healing process.”

“I wonder if I’ve been to your store.”

“It’s a block away from here, that way, Fullerton Flower’s.”

“Nice location.”

“I know.” She finished her cigarette and looked over towards me and looked me up and down. “You’re a real estate agent.”

“Yes and how’d you know?”

“Real estate agents are usually easy to pick out. The phony ones are even easier.”

“Can you guess my other job?”

“Yeah” she stayed silent though.

“Well?”

“Teacher, probably younger kids, I’d guess fourth grade.”

“Almost, I teach fifth graders English.”

“Do you like it?”

“I love it actually.”

“That’s good. A teacher would be nice; summer’s off, working with kids.”

“Yeah, it is but I usually work during the summer. Teacher’s don’t always get the greatest pay so I need everything I can get.”

She pulled out another cigarette and lit it without hesitation.

“Would you like another drink?”

“I would love another drink.”

“What would you like?”

“Beer. Always beer.”

“I’ll be right back.” I walked back to the party I despised. Claire, my girlfriend, was laughing amongst all her lawyer friends. This was the first time I ever felt hate towards her. The thought scared me and I quickly grabbed four beers and headed back to the balcony.

“Yeah, I kind of want to avoid that scene as much as I can.”

“Understood.” We opened up our beers and drank. They tasted good. They tasted like summer.

“My name’s Eric by the way.”

“Oh shit, we never introduced. My name’s Evelyn.”

“Thank you. Unfortunately it isn’t my given name. My original name was Blanch Furgess. How could somebody ever name their kid Blanch? It’s just so ugly.”

“I had an aunt named Blanch.”

“I bet she was ugly. Oh shit, I’m an awful bitch. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to say that.”

“No, it’s fine. Her looks matched her name I guess you could say. I was never a fan of auntie Blanch.”

“Well, Eric, how long have you been seeing your friend in there?”

“Six months as of two days ago. Can you believe I forgot our six month anniversary?”

“Oh god no, how could you?” this was all said with heavy sarcasm.

“Yeah, I needed flowers to smooth that one over.”

“Middle grade bouquet?”

“I thought about it but I wasn’t in a rush. I like to pick the flowers out myself.”

“Oh wow, I thought only the gay guys that came in did that.”

“Well, my father’s gay.”

“Really?”

“No.” She laughed. It wasn’t even a good joke. It was hardly a joke. Her laughter was nice though. It seemed more genuine than the laughs that came through the screen door to the balcony. We had both managed to finish our first beers and we opened up the second round. Evelyn lit another cigarette and I followed suit.

“Where’d you grow up?” She asked but I wasn’t able to answer. A man came out and glanced over me and stared at Evelyn.

“What are you doing?”

“Hey Todd, this is Eric.” He ignored this introduction and continued starring at Evelyn.

“Why the hell are you smoking?”

“Oh, Toddy, I’m really sorry.” She obliviously wasn’t.

“Unbelievable.” He said this and took off.

“Well, that’s my Toddy. Isn’t he a charmer?” More sarcasm.

“Yeah, he seems like a great guy.”

“I should actually apologize but I’ll finish this beer first.”

“My ex-girlfriend used to always yell at me for smoking. I ended up having to be a sneak about it and not do it in front of her.”

“Why’d you guys break up?”

“She decided she wanted to live in India.”

“Oh, makes sense.” We sat there talking for a while more. Nothing important, our life stories, abridged of course. We finished our beers and she excused herself to go say sorry to Todd. I stayed out and finished my cigarette and then had another one. got up and went and stood next to Claire. Claire O’Donovan; valedictorian of her high school, national merit scholar, proud graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, annoying laughter, a success and a half.

“Oh hey Eric, you having fun?”

”I’m having a blast.” 1 walked away from her and grabbed the bottle of whiskey we had brought to the party. I went back to Claire and told her I needed to make a phone call and that I’d be right back. I went out the door and found the elevator and hit thirty five, the top floor. I got out and searched for a door that would lead to the roof. I wasn’t sure if this apartment had a roof top but most of these places had fancy roof decks put in around 93′ when it became the cool thing to have. I found the door and went up. Fancy it was. It was surrounded by thick glass and had big circular lights lining the whole thing. There was wooden lawn furniture spread about and a girl in the corner smoking cigarettes. She was sitting down and it was dark but I knew it was Evelyn by the way she was smoking. I walked over and sat down next to her.

“I thought you were going to go apologize to your Todd.”

“I was going to but he was laughing with his lawyer friends so I just decided to leave and try and found a roof to sit on.”

“This is a nice roof.”

“Yeah it is. Chicago is beautiful.” While we sat there smoking and drinking we started to see firework shows off in the distance. Not just a few, there seemed to be at least forty different shows going on. It was July 5th and I guess some towns have their big shows on the 5th, instead. The rooftop next to ours was having a party and the music was loud and clearly audible.

“I’m going to break up with Claire. Claire, that’s my girlfriend. ”

“When did you decide this?”

“Today.”

“Why today?”

“Well, I was going to just act distant and cold for the next week until she called me out on it but I think I should just end it now and not waste my time.”

“I’m breaking up with Todd.”

“When did you decide this?”

“Just now.”

“Why?”

“No reason.” She said this and leaned over and kissed me. I put the whiskey out of harms way and let my back fall to the ground and my hands fall all over Evelyn’s backside. We had sex to the music of Bon Jovi’s ‘Living on a Prayer’ and relaxed afterwards to the sweet vocals of Otis Redding’s ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay’.

“Well, that was fun.” Evelyn said this as she grabbed two cigarettes out of my pant pocket. She lit them both and handed me one and came back down next to me. We stared out at the faded stars and blew smoke out to make them even less visible.

“So, when are you going to break up with Todd?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“I think we should go down there holding hands and let them know together.” We laughed at this but then it became clear that this was the way we would do it. We sat up and got our clothes back on.

“Let’s get drunk first.”

“Sounds like an awesome idea.” The whiskey bottle had been half full when I brought it up to the roof and we finished it off in about an hour. We were both drunk; Evelyn stumbled as we walked back to the party. We walked in with our hands held together. I suddenly was hit with a wave of panic, a panic which Evelyn noticed and she squeezed my hand tight. “May I have everyone’s attention?” Evelyn yelled out and scanned the room. The party had cleared out quite a bit and now the only people left were Todd, Claire, and three other couples and the ugly lawyer that always tries talking to me about his boat.

“Eric and I are now a couple and can no longer see our old mates.” Everyone just looked at us confused. “See ya,” Evelyn said and looked at me and we took off and to the elevator. While the door was opening we heard the party door open and Claire and Todd come charging out. They were far down the hall but closing in fast. Evelyn and I got in the door and hit the close door button. They were within steps as the elevator closed and they were probably able to get a glimpse of Evelyn and me locking our lips together.

Ms. Kristin Reilly is a twenty-five year old, white waitress, part of the working class, and of Irish descent. Although she’s not one of those obvious Irish, you know with the wild red hair. She’s more the type of Irish with the cool, controlled, black hair. But you can tell she’s Irish because she’s got the connect-the-dot freckles on her cheeks, just under her eyes. Her eyes are a different story altogether.

I am a twenty-seven year old, white, male psychologist doing some kind of important research, testing some kind of hypothesis, part of some kind of ruling class. Part of the aristocracy, I guess. My parents have money. My colleagues have money. My friends’ parents have money. This allows us a sort of freedom of the imagination. I can imagine going to Europe and dicking around and I actually have the ability to do so. I can wish that I wouldn’t have to work and that I could just isolate myself from the world and relax, read books or whatever I want to do.

Kristin, on the other hand, wishes that maybe her landlord won’t be so angry when she can’t pay her rent or if that doesn’t work, that she has the courage to kill herself. One of the biggest reasons that she doesn’t have this courage is that she believes in a God and an afterlife. She doesn’t want to be punished for the cruel act of ending her own life, despite the fact that God can do it at will, whenever he wants. More importantly, she feels that, in the end, God will provide for her and nurture her and help her through all of this.
“How do you feel when we prick you with this?” we ask her.

This is exactly why Ms. Kristin Reilly is in this experiment. We chose two random samples of people from church groups in middle and lower socioeconomic neighborhoods and random samples of self proclaimed atheists. We intend to show that religiosity is a form of learned helplessness. I would put myself into the category of agnostic, making me unbiased or something like that. It is important to remain objective when doing this kind of work, so that you don’t let your feelings get in the way of what could be important scientific research.

We tested Ms. Reilly on a number of religiosity scales as well as intelligence tests. She went to high school for two years, but dropped out because her family needed her to work, as is the case with many people in the United States. But she’s smart as hell. She’s not some kind of intellectual who’s trying to prove anything, she’s just a sweet girl who understands life and social interactions and people and the only important things there are around here. Although I must remain objective, I feel jealous of her ability to relate to other people.

There’s a theory out there right now, that the eyes are the window to the soul, but there hasn’t been much testing and the variable is a difficult one to isolate. If the theory proves true, Kristin’s soul is a kaleidoscope of slate blues and grays shooting out of a black pupil. Her eyelids close gently and slowly, while her cheeks flush with pink blood, when I ask her a question that she is too embarrassed to answer. So as not to pressure the subject, we cannot force her to answer a question. At other times, she keeps eye contact so much so that I cannot preserve objectivity. But I don’t want to skew the data, so, you know, I must maintain eye contact no matter how much I feel. Also, I want to keep her blue soul in visibility at all times, so that I don’t lose track of it.

These are important things to consider while Kristin tells me about her God. You know how someone will constantly tell you stories about a particular best friend and you feel like you get to know him? This is how it goes with Kristin’s stories about God. She considers him to be a great guy, who’s really there for her, who treats her right, a guy she can fall back on, you know? Then, when you actually meet their friend, he turns out to be a real dick. And, as an observer, I can see that this guy seems to be kind of manipulative. He fucks up, then tries to do something to redeem himself, fucks her over, smites, etc. But I can’t tell her any of this because he’s her friend and that would hurt her feelings. Plus, I don’t want to skew the results.
So, we ask her questions like, “What happens when we reward you with this?” or, “What does it feel like when we punish you with this?”

Kristin Reilly is a smart girl though. In my unbiased opinion, she’s real sweet too. She seems like the type of girl to wear flowy sun dresses. Maybe red with flowers. And she wears sandals too. I don’t know that she does wear these things. See, she comes straight from work to the lab, so she’s in her waitress uniform. But, in my head, she wears these sun dresses and doesn’t work so much. In her head, she sees everyone in the world as on the same level. She told me, during one of our interviews, that every person is just as smart or stupid as everyone else. She also thinks that maybe she can learn from all of them and that maybe they can all learn from her and that maybe they’re all just not trying hard enough. This is her unbiased opinion. My opinion is that minimum wage isn’t high enough. And that, I guess, maybe the little bit of money we give her will help her out a bit.

I don’t know if I can generalize Ms. Reilly’s results to the population as a whole. I don’t know that I can say that the whole population feels that our current state of affairs is an okay one, like Kristin does. Of course, she’s not happy, but she believes that what happens happens for a reason and everything will work itself out in the end. I don’t know if her beliefs have any validations. It is not my job to determine this. But, let’s say that I am biased for a second. I still wouldn’t know what to say. I hope, for her sake, that she’s right. Aside from all of this, I don’t think Ms. Reilly’s slender fingers that trace the coffee ring on the table can be generalized to the population. To my knowledge, she is the only one with eyes like hers and a softness like hers.

This raises another interesting point: there are a few renegade strands of Kristin’s hair that hang in front of her eyes. Just a few of them. Not so many hairs that she can’t see, but enough that she looks tired and beautiful. I would like to postulate that these renegade hairs are as soft as everything else about her. I’ve defined “softness” as being “any aspect of a person that readily yields to pressure based on data that is not readily quantifiable or amenable to experimental verification or refutation”. Quite the definition, but by these standards, she has soft hands, or at least a soft right hand, which I first noticed when I shook it. Her heart also appears to be soft as a result of tenderization. See, she wears her heart on her sleeve much of the time, leaving it exposed to the elements. This has left her heart spongy and fragile. I propose that she is an altogether soft being with soft features, including her renegade hairs and even the area behind her ear.

From an objective point of view, she has little ears that hear the sounds of the street from her apartment. Also, they hear her crying at night sometimes. Or they hear her speak to her friend God. Sometimes he’s not home. That’s when his answering machine tells her to call back another time. Every yuppie has a goddamn cell phone, why doesn’t God? This is what I wonder, without feeling a thing. Also, I think that I— or one of my colleagues— could take better care of her ears than her best pal God does. I’m a scientist after all. If I did feel, I would feel the area behind her ears with the back of my index finger.

“How does it feel when I reassure you with that?” I might ask. Then one thing might lead to another, meaning that my warmth might lead to her happiness. This might then lead to me expressing my opinion about her God. You know, I might tell her that the guy she refers to as God and the guy she says is the Devil is really the same guy. Or maybe I’d tell her that this guy is an asshole to her and that she deserves better. She should find another god like Shiva or somebody. Just something else. Or maybe I’d say he just isn’t as all powerful as she insists; he might just not have the ability to help her. Or maybe he just isn’t there. She’s been dialing a wrong number every time she calls him. Then I could tell her that I don’t have all of the answers, but that, either way, she can’t just accept this life of hers. She shouldn’t accept the lives that were dealt for any of us. Finally, I’d tell her not to assume that I’m necessarily right. I don’t even know what I’m talking about half the time. Finally, maybe I’m all wrong and maybe she’s got this God guy to back her up in the end. Finally, I might hold her hand as I tell her this. Finally, I could hold her tightly and a few feelings could drip out of my eyes and a few feelings could drip out of her eyes. Finally.

“What happens when I do this?”

Of course, I have to remain objective, which is why I have come up with a treatment for Ms. Reilly. It hasn’t yet been approved by my colleagues, but I think that it might help her overcome her religiosity, which has not yet been proven to be a bad thing. I propose that I take Ms. Reilly to a small, isolated town with green hills. She could wear her sun dresses and sandals and wouldn’t have to lift a slender finger ever again. I could do everything for her and maybe read some books too while I was there. If I could choose any life in particular, I might still choose to help Ms. Reilly. I might still value contact with her, or anyone, over a lonely life of self gratification. Also, she wouldn’t live on tips. Also, we could be unbiased together. Also, she would finally be able to find something softer than her there, which might be the warm wind that keeps her flowy sundress flowing.