A.

01—Even the notion of narcissism is ultimately a shallow one, I said to John K as we both sat idly on a mid-morning Amtrak headed to Midtown, this idea that you are intrinsically yourself, that I am intrinsically myself, so that an examination of said self is ipso facto inherently self-serving—this notion that a severe internal examination of yourself, your so-called consciousness, which you have greater access to than anything else around you, that this is unwarranted, that somehow this search won’t inevitably lead you to see a doubling or tripling or quadrupling when looking inward? 

I guess what I’m saying, I said, sitting in the aisle seat, because I felt a little claustrophobic, is that the entire understanding of narcissism is based on a totally false premise, to which John K nodded his head, sitting next to an overweight young man sleeping in the window seat. 

I said, Examining an obscure tribe on an underdeveloped continent is considered the height of science while an extended foray into the nature of your own caprice is considered trivial, to which John K said, In the bloom of my youth and the prime of my life, from the time I reached puberty, before I reached twenty until now, when I am over fifty, I have constantly been diving daringly into the depth of this profound sea and wading into its deep water like a bold man, not like a cautious coward. I would penetrate far into every murky mystery, pounce upon every problem, and dash into every mazy difficulty. 

I said, To become a student of your own self is to wade into the murkiest of conundrums, I think we would both agree that it’s necessary to understand the universe as such, that, as it’s been previously said, He who knows himself knows his Lord, that all of the Prophets have basically hinted at such, the so-called exterior as metaphor for the so-called interior, the interior as little more than an inside-out exterior? 

John K somewhat nervously handed both our tickets to the attendant, and I said, It’s only the rationalists that take this concept of individuation as axiom and then proceed exclusively outward. 

 

02—I said, It was actually only a few short months ago that I was driving down Reservoir Avenue, on my way to my first visit to a Masonic lodge, which meant absolutely nothing to me, when a peculiar thought occurred to me, yes, it became apparent to me in a ubiquitous way that my consciousness was in no sense my actual self, but it’s difficult to verbalize this. I was still pitifully clinging to my alleged consciousness—I was hoping that this consciousness would somehow continue without ceasing, despite the fact that this consciousness clearly only existed in fits and spurts, that there was nothing known of the origin of this consciousness, that it wasn’t even a sure thing that what seems apparent as this consciousness is actually this apparency. 

Even its apparency is dubious in its apparency, I said to John K as the Amtrak sped into Connecticut. All rational knowledge stems from this consciousness, I said, yet it's entirely opaque in origin. Every aspect of my existence is a mirage, I thought to myself while driving down Reservoir Avenue, while simultaneously noting a new Indian takeout spot to my right, briefly and baselessly speculating upon the quality of their hypothetical Lamb Biryani. 

Yet despite the fact that I’d occasionally tacitly acknowledged that existence is itself a red herring—these thoughts weren’t entirely foreign to me by any means—but that acknowledgement had always been a tacit acknowledgement as opposed to a true revelation. 

On Reservoir Avenue, I said, for reasons I couldn’t grasp at the time and honestly still can’t, this notion suddenly transformed from a tacit acknowledgement into a true revelation, and as I approached the lodge I felt my interiority begin to evaporate in a way that was oddly matter-of-fact. I felt the essence of myself disappearing somehow, yet it’s actually difficult to verbalize this. 

It became an indubitable truth that, sans some immediate anchor, I would perhaps simply disappear into a mist, and it was only the notion of creating aesthetic portals—dedicating myself, continuing to dedicate myself, to these aesthetic portals that allowed me to escape this fate of disappearing into a mist, that permitted me to exist in a social setting among persons that I perhaps only partially believed to be there. 

 

03—John K pulled a circular-shaped breakfast sandwich out from his backpack, unwrapping it slowly and taking what looked to be a quite satisfying first bite, and I said, Then it was the next week across the street in a jewelry shop in Garden City when my friend Anthony said, I was in the Taco Bell parking lot on Mineral Spring the other Thursday, and I thought about shouting up to you, see if you were up! To which I said, You should have—I probably would have come down and ordered a Bean Burrito, both of us laughing as I sipped an ice cold Peroni at the counter. 

You ever go to the bar next door, he said, to which I said, I think I’ve been there like once, quite a while ago, to which he said, There was a dude there the other night, we went out for a drink after work, and I could have swore he was you. I think you have a doppelganger out there, to which I said, I love the fact you guys serve alcohol here—then I went ahead and crossed the drizzling Garden City plaza to an Italian restaurant called Avvio, where I took a seat at the sole open spot at the bar counter. 

I figured I’d drink probably just one more Peroni before returning to my apartment, I said. But prior to sitting down I briefly asked the person sitting next to the open seat if the spot was occupied, yet I also recognized that this person sitting down was my waitress from a month or so prior at Maria Cucina—where I bumped into a certain second cousin who’d been estranged from her immediate family for upward of a decade, where she said hello to me, where I said hello to her, where the conversation concluded after a formal hello. 

I was almost positive this waitress probably remembered me, just as I remembered her, but we both wisely chose to forgo any subsequent small talk. Sipping just one more Peroni, I said, I quickly took note of a potent aquatic odor penetrating my nostrils from a shrimp salad an older lady sitting on my other side was just served. To my one side sat a waitress responsible for serving me a questionable scallop dish a month or so prior, while to my other side sat a near geriatric lady consuming an equally questionable shrimp salad, one that looked to consist of simply romaine lettuce, shredded cheese, and shrimp—something I’d never seen. 

On the Amtrak John K approached the conclusion of his breakfast sandwich as I said, Only moments later, as it so happened, as I continued to wince in moderate pain at the odor emanating from her meal, this older lady turned to me and said, Now I bet people tell you all the time you look like the FBI guy, to which I said, To be honest with you, I actually feel as though the majority of former US Presidents should be serving extended prison sentences, I said, Or is that a TV show?—to which she said, Oh, yes, he’s the main character, she said, I really enjoy him! 

I said, If you guys weren’t finishing up your meals, I’d buy you a round of drinks! and after they left, I searched the phrase FBI show, somewhat narcissistically I suppose, yet analytically so, and stumbled upon a Wikipedia entry for an actor named Zeeko Zaki who I concluded, at a distance, could strike a certain type of person as vaguely resembling me. 

 

04—You know, John K said, trailing off, this actually reminds me—Of the Malamatiyya? I said, and the so-called path to blame, I continued? I said, Because I actually had that in mind one of the last times I was on this shuttle. At the time I said, I feel like I haven’t been day-drunk in eons, as Dara, Jade, and I carried our bags right across the street from Madison Square Garden. Dara said, It’s only been like two months, to which I said, I don’t know, I’m just really excited to finally be in Koreatown, I said, I think not getting drunk for an extended period has really assisted my ability to contemplate the pros and cons of intoxicants. 

Jade said, I need some street gloves, to which Dara said, I love street gloves! I said, What if I bought a street hat, to which Dara said, You need a new hat, and then, turning to Jade she said, You should see his snow hat, it’s gross! I said, I realize my current snow hat is disgusting to you, but you know what?—do you realize that that hat keeps my head mind bogglingly warm when I go for winter runs? 

Dara said, No it’s gross, to which I said, I don’t know, I guess I’m just not in the business of trying to impress people on my winter runs, it’s tough to find just a plain snow hat at a reasonable price these days, no one sees me on my runs anyway, I’m freezing my nuts off on these runs, but it’s also true that I guess I could use a new hat, I said. 

Look, how about this one? I like this one quite a bit, I said, pointing out a bright red snow hat on a fold-out table selling for five dollars. Dara said, Sure, get that one in a tone that suggested she may have hated this hat. In the hotel room I said, I’ll probably head out and see if there’s some Soju we can buy around the hotel, to which Dara said, Why don’t you just wait, we’ll be ready soon, to which I said, Maybe, but, you know, I don’t want to rush you, you’ll probably be a bit. 

Back in the room I said, You could make the argument that this hotel is excessively upper class, and, I don’t know, I guess I do tend to feel more at ease in working class adjacent locales, although when you think about it, the proletariat has more or less completely disappeared in the median American city, the proletariat has been essentially eradicated in most urban areas, yet I actually like this hotel a lot. 

I said, Anyone want to do a shot of Soju?—the bottles were surprisingly affordable across the street. Dara said, I’m down! I said, I knew you would be. I said, I know we want to traverse the streets of Koreatown, that we want to discover little trinkets in little overpriced thrift shops, and I’m perfectly fine with that plan, but with that said, on my way back from the liquor store I stumbled into a really nice little bar like three hundred feet, if that, from our room, the vibe inside is super cool, and they have a drink called a Soju Bomb, it’s a shot of Soju and a Sapporo beer mixed together in a colostomy bag, it’s great, and I think that needs to take precedence, I’m just going to say right now that this restaurant and its Soju Bomb should supersede any previous plans we may have had—at least to begin with. Dara said I’m down! 

Sitting at the restaurant-bar she said, Eh, I don’t think I’m going to get that Soju Bomb, it sounds kind of gross, to which Jade said, I think I’m getting a Sangria. I said, It looks like they have a Soju drink that’s just pure Soju, but also served in the colostomy bag? 

Meandering around Koreatown after a drink or two, it occurred to me that my recent sabbatical from alcohol had reduced my tolerance significantly, that I was actually surprisingly fucked up. Ah, this is actually a perfect day for this snow hat, I said to Dara, honestly I’m good with just walking around if you guys are, I said. Look, the sun’s already setting, right after our late lunch, I said, to which Dara said, You should have had something to eat at that restaurant, are you going to be too drunk, you think? 

My jubilation and inebriation molded into one entity, which was ideal for me at the time, I lifted a quick Empire State Building replica and gave it to my dad as a souvenir, and my new snow hat came in handy when I was briefly separated from Dara and Jade, when Jade spotted me in a crowd solely due to the hat. Let’s just grab dinner at that bistro across from the hotel, Dara said, to which I said, Really, that bistro across the street?—do you think the food is good there, to which Jade said, It’s probably basic, to which I said, That’s what I would assume, that it’s probably some of the shittier food in Midtown, to which Dara said, Well, I don’t know, we need to eat somewhere, and you’re drunk! to which I agreed in theory. I ordered a chicken dish that was dry even to my inebriated lips. 

 

05—You know, honestly, I’ve never had a great chicken dish, John K said—at all of the restaurants I’ve ever been to, I’ve never had a chicken dish that really blew my mind. I said, I never order chicken out—in fact, I think the last time I was with anyone that ordered chicken was this past Spring at Maria Cucina, when we went out to eat with our friends Rose and Carmine, and it was Dara who ordered it. She wasn’t impressed. 

In fact, I even said to her that night, as we drove on Broadway on our way to Maria Cucina, I said, You know, there’s no redemption in memory—no, only in music, I said, yes, only in the through-composed single note composition, only in the taqsimi, in the unceasing and non-repeating stream of notes performed with the utmost agility, to which she said, That’s cool, babe. 

Man, I haven’t been here in a dog’s age, Carmine said as we approached the front door, I don’t think I’ve been here since when it was an Italian only club—you know my dad and my grandad were both members here, they used to come here all the time! 

And I’d come with them every now and again, back in the day you had to be a full-blooded Italian to come here, to which I said, I love the Fernet pour here. What can you say about the Sun, I thought as I opened the door for Dara, Carmine, and Rose—there’s no point in even mentioning it. Prior to parking, a pale man with dark long hair was somewhat clumsily backing into a parking spot, and I made a moderately vulgar remark for no particular reason. 

Oh wow! Carmine said, look at those t-shirts! Maria Cucina’s official brand, too! I had no idea they made these—I’d actually want to buy one of those, those actually look like high quality shirts, Rose, look they have polos and t-shirts! I wonder if they have long-sleeve tees, too? These comments were left more or less unaddressed, and the four of us were sat at a table upstairs. 

After taking my Mezcal order just a minute or so prior, our waitress—the same waitress I would bump into in Garden City only a few weeks later—returned to say, Sorry, but we actually don’t carry Mezcal. I said, Oh, you don’t carry it at all? to which she said, No, I don’t think so, sorry! to which I said, Is that like a new thing or? to which she said, Honestly, I’m not sure, to which I said, Oh, ok. Hmm, I don’t know, I’ve really been drinking a lot of Mezcal of late, so let’s see here. I guess I could, yeah, I’ll just go with a Ketel One and water. As she walked away I said, You know what, now that I’m thinking about it—I actually have no idea why I ordered vodka? 

I never order vodka anymore, I said, and honestly it’s for good reason, because half the time I drink vodka I fucking black out! I could have ordered Fernet, I said, they have a great pour here, yet I have no idea why I didn’t, but, you know what? I guess I’m drinking vodka tonight, and I don’t feel all that great about it, but it’ll probably be fine—if anything Dara can drive home. Now, would it be possible, I said to the waitress as she returned with my Ketel One, to order the octopus appetizer, but as a full meal? She said, No, you can’t do that. I said, Oh ok, no worries, then I guess, hmm, I guess I’ll go with the scallops and risotto special? 

You know what, I said as the waitress walked away, I have no idea why I ordered scallops—why would I order scallops? And how could she be so sure that the octopus couldn’t be an entree? to which Dara said, I’m sure she, like, knows, to which I said, Is that a question they get often here, are that many people ordering the octopus in such large quantities, to which Dara said, Maybe that’s just how they do things here, to which I said, I don’t know, it seems like at the very least she could have asked the kitchen, at least from my vantage point. And that risotto is probably going to be loaded with garlic too, Carmine, they usually make risotto with garlic, is that correct? to which Carmine said, Honestly, I have no idea, to which I said, I don’t think I’ve ever even had a scallop, plus the pork chop is great here, Carmine, you’re going to love that pork chop, it’s fucking delicious here, to which Carmine said, I fucking love a good pork chop, to which I said, And I could have easily gone with that, now that I think about it, I said, there’s almost no chance I would be disappointed with the pork chop. 

I know I’m going to love the pork chop, Carmine said. I said, I’ve been delaying receiving a proper diagnosis for a digestive disease I may or may not have contracted, and honestly, I’ve begun to consider the possibility that I could be rapidly dying, that my life could be abruptly concluding sooner than later. 

Rose said, Honestly, I had something similar happen to me not too long ago, and it’s scary! I said, one of my second cousins, he was just three hundred and sixty four days older than I am, he dropped dead earlier this week. Is that sun going directly into your eyes, Carmine said. I said, Yeah, ever since we sat down it’s been more or less shining directly into each of my retinas. Between us and the window sat a table of six, where four of the patrons, about sixty six and two-thirds percent or so, I thought to myself, struck me as distinctly East Asian, while the remaining two members of the party, about thirty three and a third percent or so, struck me as of purely Nordic descent. 

Ugh, good thing I didn’t order the octopus, I said after the waitress laid the plate on the table and walked away, there’s barely any octopus here, even as an appetizer! Rose said, I know, it’s not even that good. It’s not terrible, but it’s not something I’d order again. I said, Are you kidding me, after the waitress laid our entrees on the table and walked away, four scallops?! 

As an entree?—shrimps and scallops are essentially equivalent, right, they’re one-to-one, Carmine? Carmine said, There was more octopus in the octopus appetizer than scallop in the scallop entree! to which I said, I think that’s about right—in your opinion, would you say, shrimps and scallops? Oh yeah! Carmine said, You could never get away with a four shrimp entree, and I think a four scallop entree is just totally unacceptable, to which I said, Purely from a portioning perspective, shrimp and scallops are absolutely one-to-one. Rose and Dara ordered the beef and chicken marsala, respectively—and neither found the dish poor in quality, but neither felt that the dish brought anything new to the marsala genre. 

Honestly, this pork is a little dry, Carmine said, and I ordered it medium, to which I said, Well, that makes me feel a little bit better about these scallops, because if nothing else they’re perfectly succulent, to which he said, But there are only four of them! 

 

06—Honestly, John K began, I’ve always found scallops to be an ambiguous seafood, at least as it relates to meal preparation—because they’re heartier than shrimp, but, for the price-point, I just don’t think they can provide enough girth to veer into entree territory. 

He said, Is it an entree fish or an appetizer fish? It seems like it has to be somewhere in between, that scallops just can’t compete with most fish or beef on an entree level. I said, One hundred percent I agree. scallops are completely ambiguous as an entree, I said, we don’t recognize scallops as so-called main event meats, and we bump into second cousins we haven’t seen in years, and they’re then equally ambiguous to us as blood relatives, I said, we no longer recognize them as actual relatives, despite the fact they sit on a plate before us as a blood relative—and we bump into the waitresses that served us these scallops in the same building as our estranged second cousins, I said, and we recognize them and they recognize us, yet we mutually choose to pretend that we don’t recognize one another, we manufacture an ambiguity, realizing we have nothing to say to one another. 

It was only a few brief months after this Maria Cucina dinner, I continued—I was actually standing matter-of-factly in the middle of a dive bar in Worcester for reasons I’ll refrain from going too deep into, because it’s really kind of irrelevant. 

A taller Cuban female briskly sauntered past myself and a group of co-workers who were also drinking beers in this dive bar, to which I said, I think a girl I went to college with just walked to the bathroom right past us, to which one of my co-workers, Cristina, replied, Oh, Julie Isaac?! Yeah I saw her too! 

I said Oh wow, yeah! and she said, I went to high school with her! Perhaps emboldened to an ill-advised degree after Cristina’s statement, I shouted out, Julie, over here! as she walked past us again—then I engaged in what, in retrospect, strikes me as perhaps a peculiar bodily thrust toward her general vicinity, I decided to go ahead and move my body toward this person I now believed to be Julie Isaac. Oh … hey, she said nervously, and referred to me by a name that wasn’t mine—as I continued to attempt to strike up a jovial conversation, it became clear that Julie retained almost no recollection of our acquaintanceship, she called me the incorrect name, which forced me to recite my actual name aloud to her. 

That was awkward, I said to Cristina as the conversation with Julie brusquely concluded, then again, I said, how could I possibly believe that trying to catch up with an acquaintance from college, who I haven’t seen in over fifteen years, was an appropriate idea? To what conclusion could this potential conversation possibly have arrived at? Oh, Julie!—great seeing you! Children who were literal sperm cells the last time we saw each other will be able to legally drive by the end of this calendar year—but please enjoy the rest of your life! 

Cristina didn’t disagree with my assessment as we reentered the larger group of coworkers in the dive bar. In general I attempt to avoid catching up with people whenever possible, I noted to another coworker, Allison, who was approaching blackout drunk, which made the entire exchange all the more puzzling to me, I said. And just to be clear, I said to Allison, there was no tangible physical attraction between the two of us, and honestly, I mean, let’s be honest, if there’s ever a reason to try and rekindle a long gone acquaintanceship it’s usually due to some latent, borderline inappropriate physical attraction, no? 

If you’re rekindling an acquaintanceship it’s almost always to attempt to stumble into some unexpected, regrettable sexual exploit—the entirety of the high school reunion industry is built upon this premise. Not that I would ever do that, I said to Allison, who seemed to be comprehending my statements. How was it possible that I’d miscalculated our proximity to one another to this degree, I said—you know, she actually called me by a different name when I first caught her attention, I was actually forced to recite my own name for her, aloud. 

In retrospect, I said, I suppose it was a little humiliating, having to recite my own name to a person who I approached with a nonsensical enthusiasm, as if we would embrace and instantly start recalling all of the great times we shared together, only to instead have to recite my own name in the face of a puzzled expression. 

The price of a Coronas here is actually pretty impressive, even for a dive bar, I said to Allison, who agreed, and told me she used to come to this dive bar all the time before they renovated the bathrooms, that one time someone accused her of snorting cocaine in the bathrooms, but that she actually just had a head cold. I feigned interest at the anecdote as I surreptitiously scanned the dive bar for this acquaintance, Julie Isaac, praying she’d already left the premises—never to be seen again. 

 

07—He will say, Each will have a double, but you do not know, John K said, smiling devilishly as the train made its stop at Bridgeport, the chubby young man beside him was now passed out and snoring just slightly. 

I said, Exactly correct—and it was only weeks later, I might as well just finish at this point, when we were landing in Baltimore, I said, a city with probably an equally dreary reputation as Worcester, that I stood up as soon as the plane landed, at two-ten pm, somewhat worried that our connecting flight boarded in about a half an hour. 

We only have, what, half an hour? I said to Dara, who said, Yes, half an hour, in an irritated tone, perhaps annoyed at having to repeat the brief time we had to connect flights, repeating the brief time only annoying her more than the brief time itself was already annoying her. You know what, I continued to Dara, these people love taking their sweet ass time, grabbing their bullshit bags, look at this, what’s this guy doing right there? What is he, stretching his triceps, now? 

These overhead compartments should be illegal, they should be outlawed, at least on connecting flights, I said, most of which she pretended to not hear, yet I couldn’t help but notice that there was an older African-American lady standing behind us, one who seemed equally anxious to leave the plane. I felt somewhat of an obligation to now continue to speak out about this issue, for her sake if not mine. I made brief eye contact with her, nonverbally communicating that we were on the same team. 

Oh look! Our flight is delayed, Gabe, Dara’s brother, who was flying with us to Chicago, said, displaying his phone in front of our faces, which clearly showed our departure pushed back by half an hour. Oh, great, yeah, that’s good news, I said, no big deal then, that’s a relief. I was standing in the middle of the aisle gripping my laptop bag like a teddy bear. 

Yet even with the good news from Gabe relayed to us, I was already in the mode of becoming agitated—my agitation had already reached a decent pace of forward motion, plus there was still the African-American lady behind us, so I gently allowed my agitation to progress somewhat unabated as we continued to wait, making a few snide remarks under my breath that I knew Dara would overhear and fail to ignore. 

We arrived at the Baltimore gate with plenty of time to spare, and I said Hey, there’s a sushi spot right there, to which Dara said, Oh, do they have drinks, to which I said, Oh yeah, I think they have saki and beer, pointing to the establishment’s sign, which was filled with pictures of saki and beer. Sitting at the sushi spot, a waiter told us to just take whatever we wanted from the fridge, where there were stacks of beer, wine, saki, and mixed drinks in cans. 

I’m ready to cash out too, I said, pulling out my credit card as we selected and opened our own drinks at the counter, and he presented a cash out screen to me, which prompted a selection of a gratuity of eighteen, twenty, or twenty five percent. 

As we sipped our drinks Gabe said, Was that for us? in reference to a gate change that had been broadcast two or three times since we entered the airport. Yeah, I think it is, Dara said. I guess we should probably chug these drinks, I said, you know, I said, I left a twenty percent tip on this round, but technically, I don’t know, did the waiter really serve us these drinks? to which Dara said, Yeah I think we need to go right now. We scurried across the Baltimore airport to our updated gate, which was in a similar state of inactivity as the previous gate. 

Oh wow, look at that, I said, Zona Cocina! Dara said, What’s Zona Cocina, to which I said, It’s right next to our gate—it looks like a Mexican restaurant? They probably have Mezcal, I said, to which Dara said, Should we get a drink, to which I said, No, no, that’s too much—I don’t know, should we have another drink before we even get to Chicago? 

As we made a decision to relax and wait for the connecting flight to board, I couldn’t help but take note of a light-skinned black-bearded, possibly Hispanic man wearing a maroon hat as he walked away from our new gate toward the center of the airport. Immediately, I said to John as we entered New York state, his face rekindled a distinct, yet fuzzy memory for me—I felt strongly I’d seen this man somewhere before, yet I wasn’t sure if it was a person I’d actually known in my day to day life, or if it was, like, a supporting character from a TV show. This uncertainty gnawed at me while we waited across from our new gate—I took a quick detour to the men’s room, and the name Larry Nance Junior came to me mystically. 

Larry Nance Junior, a role player in the NBA. I thought about it, I said, yes, Larry Nance’s face resembled the face I’d just seen walk away from our gate like a ghost. Ah, Larry Nance Junior, I thought at the gate, that’s who it is, or that’s who this person reminds me of. A calm came over me. 

On the plane I sat diagonally behind a middle-aged woman who boldly made no attempt to put her phone into airplane mode, instead checking her Instagram notifications repeatedly as our captain prepared to take off, a middle-aged lady who took out a MacBook and, once in the air, proceeded to open her Instagram yet again, now on her personal computer, and crafted a caption for a selfie she was apparently preparing to post, perusing a plethora of emojis in the process—but she didn’t realize she was still in the emoji search field, and she typed a portion of the caption into the emoji search box, which caused the page to search for an emoji that clearly didn’t exist, which caused the entire page to freeze. 

She exited the page and nonchalantly logged into a Yahoo mail account that, to my eye, consisted of hundreds of unread messages. In flight, the face of this doppelganger with the black beard yet again flashed before my eyes, and I realized that while this person, sure, may have displayed a passing resemblance to Larry Nance Junior, that passing resemblance was just that. 

No, this doppelganger wasn’t the doppelganger of any NBA role player—no, it was a doppelganger of either an acquaintance I used to know personally or a doppelganger of a fictional character from a film or TV series. Yet even as I speak to you now, John, weeks afterward, long gone from Baltimore, now almost to Midtown yet again, I can honestly say that I’ve obtained no further clarity as it relates to the identity of this doppelganger. 

 

B.

—01 Abu-Hamid and I had acquired a habit of conversing over an espresso together every other Thursday in my favorite coffee shop on Broad Street, and while waiting in line at our last meeting, while still standing in line waiting for the barista’s attention, he turned and said to me bluntly: All Western science is sprung from this singular notion, that perspective and observation should be for lack of a better term deified. It’s for this reason the mentally different have no true category in our society—we’ve achieved a state of existence where perspective and observation have become unquestionable facts, where any questioning of perspective and examination must now lie outside of existence itself, as we understand it at least. 

The mentally different, recognizing the flaw in this fundamental axiom, that there is no perspective and there is no observation, at least in the sense we mean it, for this reason can have no place in our social milieu. They’re accounted for in no minor or major identitarian box. They’re shunned from society and essentially have no choice but to spiral into insanity, but not in our sense of the word, no, for the mentally different it’s an entirely separate form of insanity that’s endured. 

It’s impossible for us to identify this insanity, it always escapes our categories. Those who question this notion that observation leads in a linear fashion to truths which lead in a linear fashion to the refinement of perspective which leads in a linear fashion to progress—by definition these people must be excluded. 

To this I replied, yet while to progress may be wholly ill-advised, I should also note that to return is perhaps even more so, that a return can occur across time, in the form of memory, and in space, in the form of the doppelganger. To begin with, yes, I continued while still waiting in line for the barista to clock out of her shift and allow the subsequent barista, who, as it so happened, was basically monolingual in Spanish, to begin her shift, I suppose it was with a muted jubilation, following a serious romantic falling out, in the midst of a for lack of a better term total reset of my life, I said, that I told myself I was returning to music. 

I actually phrased it in exactly this way, a return to music, which to be clear was actually embarrassing, and I approached the task with a rapacity of someone with no intent of failing, who outright refused failure, who would prefer a slow death to even a minor setback, I continued to Abu Hamid as he struggled to place his espresso order with the monolingual barista, yet I also understood intrinsically, at the same time, that there was no realistic path to success available to me. 

The entire idea was nothing beyond a pure fool’s errand, to be honest, and I knew it, despite the fact I was fully committed to transforming it into anything but a fool’s errand. But to quote-unquote return to music after a person’s thirty third birthday by definition can’t be identified as anything other than a completely idiotic idea—unless of course you intend on truly dedicating yourself to solely composing. 

But of course, Abu Hamid, I had no ability to solely compose—no, to abandon performance entirely is and was something totally beyond my capability, I should admit that much upfront, because where there’s a venue, even a microscopic avenue to a venue to perform, I’ll inevitably choose to meander down that path at some point, even if I abstain from said path for a moderately impressive period of time, there are only momentary breaks from it. In short, it wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate to suggest that I’m essentially a performance artist by nature. 

 

—02 And even leaving that aside, which by itself set my project up for failure, I still had no practical means whatsoever, even if I had the intent, which I did not and never would, of my compositions being performed by anyone else. 

I barely understood Western notation, and even if I’d taught myself Byzantine notation and the Maqam modal systems, which I did, and even if I generated a half-decent sui generis systems of notation that deviated from traditional common practice notation, which I did—because ultimately no serious composer still composes in common practice notation, no, it’s all graphical notation, or half-notation, or back-engineered improvisation—even if I had a decent understanding of theory, I’d positioned myself in the proximity of absolutely no one who could perform said theory. 

And, leaving aside the total lack of capable performers in my immediate vicinity, even if I had had the interest in fully automating these compositions, which of course I had no actual interest in, I possessed neither the technical know-how nor the required patience to execute said compositions in any fully automated form either. 

In any case, in my mind, and you know this Abu Hamid, screamo is perhaps the only truly classical American music, and to front a thirty-something screamo band, to be even tangentially involved in screamo past the age of, say, eighteen, is probably the most gargantuan of absurdities, even in America, where absurdities grow to sky high heights every day, yet a thirty something screamo band is still too absurd, even for America! 

Yet this was more or less in line with my historical character, as achieving something obviously impossible has always irrationally intrigued me, because even as it’s being torn apart piece by piece by blithering idiots on both sides, America still remains impressively dedicated to extreme levels of absurdity. 

 

—03 To this Abu Hamid said, I don’t disagree with a thing you said, your return to music was clearly ill-advised to an extreme degree, but allow me to just say this, because we live in an era where we want to trace our bloodlines, this fascinates us, we’re constantly gazing into the past for verification of our presents—yet America, we know this, brutalizes identity to its lowest common denominator at all times. 

But history can only be fabricated to a limited extent, we can’t fabricate history in an infinite fashion, if a population integrates itself into another we can certainly brutally rename them, but we can’t necessarily change their essence—sure, a name is profound, naming is perhaps profundity par excellence, yet I think we’d both agree that there must be more to things than simply a name, that things exist in attribute form prior to a formal naming. 

For example, if you don’t mind, I’d like to indulge in a quick aside to examine the lives and namings of two historical figures: Sheikh Bedreddin and Gregory Nazianzus, both revolutionary figures of the Eastern Mediterranean in their own rights—Bedreddin was born in Thirteen Fifty Nine, Nazianzus in Three Twenty Nine, their lives separated by almost exactly a millennium. Bedreddin was born in Serres, in modern day Eastern Greece, to a father of Turkish descent and a mother of Greek (Christian) descent, while Nazianzus was born in Cappadocia, in modern day Eastern Turkey, to a mother of Christian  origin and a father of Greek (pagan) descent. 

In the era of Three Twenty Nine the term ‘Greek’ was synonymous with paganism while, by contrast, in the era of Thirteen Fifty Nine the term ‘Greek’ was synonymous with Christianity, in the era of Three Twenty Nine Gregory’s mother was considered Christian yet implicit in that identity is that her not so distant ancestors were probably Greek (as in pagan), yet in the era of Thirteen Fifty Nine Sheikh’s father was considered Turkish yet implicit in that identity is that his not so distant ancestors were most likely Greek (as in Christian). 

Is this understood today? In America, absolutely not! Not even close! In America our understanding of lineage is so consistently blockheaded that we’re always bound to fall back onto a false notion of pure duality—so it’s not at all surprising that we would consider Gregory a literal Greek father, in the Christian sense, while his father was a literal Greek in the pagan sense, while at the same time we would consider Bedreddin a figure entirely removed from the Greek tradition, despite the fact he was born in Greece and was at least half Greek, in the Christian sense of the word, despite the fact his Islamic pantheism offended Mehmed One so much he had him executed in public. 

Both were revolutionary figures, and both sprung from one parent that was authentically ‘Greek’—with the obligatory caveat that ‘Greek’ came to mean diametrically opposed things in the interim of a millennium, and continues to somehow transform into diametrically opposed things even to this day. Gregory was a revolutionary thinker in the era of Christianity with a Greco-Pagan underpinning who was purely ‘half and half’ in terms of his so-called ethnicity, while Bedreddin was a revolutionary thinker in the era of Islam with a Greco-Christian underpinning who was purely ‘half and half’ in terms of his so-called ethnicity. 

We traverse periods of time where pagans disappear to be replaced by Christians and Christians disappear to be replaced by Muslims, with few to no actual people being physically replaced—yet we view these two historical figures essentially antithetical to one another, yet while historical erasure is, as we said, to be expected and, to some extent, even necessary, there’s a limit to said erasure—history can’t be fabricated in an infinite fashion—and it would be entirely nonsensical to view Nazianzus and Bedreddin as anything other than two sides of the exact same coin. 

 

—04 To this I said, Abu Hamid, your notion of false dichotomy is well-noted, but the best examples of false dichotomies, I think we’d both agree, are without a doubt ones encountered directly through lived experience. 

I continued on and said, It’s just like, when you really think about it—there are almost without a doubt specific instances of our own lives that we encounter, instances that crystallize instantly, to the extent that said specific moment in time transforms into something akin to a snowglobe, to be sold at convenience stores on the side of interstate highways—where an intangible distortion overtakes our immediate surroundings, where questions like where do the Masonic secrets lie come to our forefront, whether consciously or otherwise. With this in mind, a somewhat tumultuous memory was jostled within me as we passed by the Bankers Trust on Mendon. 

A vague memory of smashing one of my car tires against this very Bankers Trust suddenly returned to me, despite previously having no clear recollection of it, and it transported me instantly to a different period of my life. Driving by this Bankers Trust I now sat in a dive bar next to Chiara Naccarato, an African-American acquaintance of mine who was reluctantly informing me of her most recent attempt to take her own life, and I couldn’t help but note that a certain intensity emerges between two persons who have no regard for their own lives. 

Yes, while the utter disregard for distant lives occasionally makes me livid, this American indifference to the countless lives compromised by our barbaric foreign policies, which no one even follows closely enough to critique anymore, a similar disregard for my own life and people in my immediate orbit is actually a point of intense bonding. We sat in a cramped booth in a dive bar, Chiara arriving after she’d finished her shift, after I’d already been out for a moderate amount of time, so she ordered her first drink as I placed my fifth and then went on to say something to the effect of, Honestly, you should probably see a therapist, and I didn’t disagree in the least! 

 

—05 Because there was absolutely a time in my life where I wanted nothing more than to kill myself, where almost every waking moment of my life was consumed with this fantasy of throwing myself out of a window—with the hope of achieving an instant death in the process. 

Of course, it’s rarely noted that the people with the most intense urges to kill themselves are in fact totally incapable of slitting their own throats, of jumping off tall buildings, of pulling the trigger of a firearm into their mouths—no, there’s a distinct difference between wanting to kill yourself and actually committing suicide. 

As it’s been said elsewhere, He will guzzle it but he will not swallow it. Death will come at him from every direction, but he will not die. And beyond this is relentless suffering. Obviously, having never committed suicide myself, it’s difficult for me to say for certain, but I would imagine those that do manage to successfully complete the task of killing themselves perform the act immediately, without pause, in an almost automatic fashion, a particularly strong urge perhaps never even overcomes them, that killing yourself and wanting to kill yourself are almost two entirely distinct states. 

Suicide is perhaps always an act of caprice? And perhaps the people that miss this window are the same people, such as myself, who fall prey to this infinite loop of desiring to kill themselves with an inability to actually complete the deed. For my part, it was only when I began to tackle this notion that every problem of freedom begins with an assumption of individuation—it was only when I became cognizant of this issue, when I began to approach this problem from both a philosophical and practical vantage point that I managed to wiggle free from this loop. 

It was only when I became cognizant that the organism is the first fallacy that I escaped from this infinite loop of self-terrorism. Unfortunately, by the time Chiara arrived I was a tad too inebriated to truly expound upon this point with any sort of precision. The moment, I had to bluntly admit to myself at this dive bar, had officially passed us by—the moment where I was capable of expounding upon these types of ideas in any sort of mellifluous fashion. 

We were approximately half an hour to maybe forty five minutes past this stage. Prior to Chiara arriving I’d been sitting at the bar meekly, somewhat involuntarily making the acquaintance of its patrons—I watched an episode of Jeopardy sitting next to a regular patron who exhibited an impressive array of general knowledge. At the same time, I remained aware on some level I would in all likelihood never set foot in this dive bar again, that I’d have no regrets about never entering this establishment again, that I’d experience no regrets about accidentally under-tipping the incongruently jovial bartender on my second tab, and that the notion of joining this community, or perhaps any community, was totally far-fetched, nothing less an absurd notion! 

 

—06 And then, of course, Abu Hamid, I can and probably should talk about the avant-garde jazz show I attended the other week—because, well, the truth is that I’d already felt a little self-conscious even as I took brief note of the scene outside of the venue, which on this night was a local bookstore. 

I was playing Supreme Clientele at an extremely loud decibel out of all of my open windows on the temperate summer evening, on the fairly residential street where the bookstore was located, and I wasn’t entirely certain if the venue’s clientele would resonate with RZA’s proclamation of fornicating with knock-knee hoes, of passing crack to young African-American females, of reminiscing on copulating in the midst of menstrual cycles. 

I subsequently approached the bookstore door gingerly, as many patrons seemed to be congregating outside, for reasons that would soon become apparent to me, including the saxophonist, Dave Filipino, visiting from New York City, who I’d come to see, who I recognized from his bandcamp photo. I paid ten dollars for a ticket to enter the venue, genuinely excited to see Dave Filipino play his alto saxophone in person, reaching into my pocket and pulling out ten one dollar bills that I’d stuffed into my small wallet the last time I’d attended a gentleman’s club—the thought occurring to me that I may have, in fact, been better served spending those ten dollars at a strip club as opposed to Dave Filipino’s avant-garde jazz show. 

I’d assumed in a buffoonish fashion that the bookstore would have assembled some sort of makeshift alcohol repository for the purpose of this avant-garde jazz show, yet no bar was to be found—instead the inside consisted mostly of a two seat couch with an adult male doodling into a notebook with a self-aware body language that seemed to suggest to me that he was in the midst of something quite important, as if—instead of being a grown person doodling onto pieces of scrap paper in a bookstore that lacked any sort of air conditioning whatsoever—this man was instead in the midst of something culturally critical. 

 

—07 A younger Caucasian male sat down next to the visual artist and began to assist in said doodle. I was scrolling through my phone in a manner that, if it were to be described as idiotic, wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate. 

The Caucasian looked at me curiously—the doodle had become a collaboration of sorts. Scrolling perhaps idiotically, the Caucasian struck me as someone I knew as he shot me a puzzled look. Eventually, taking into account the douchebag-adjacent eyeglasses he balanced on the bridge of his nose, recalling the venue I found myself in, overhearing a person in the room call him by name, I recalled that we’d exchanged emails about a year prior, that I’d actually reached out to him with regard to a project that, in retrospect, was totally ill-advised—a record I was working on under the influence of Ottoman classical music. 

The younger Caucasian man had posted a few instrumentals on the internet that at the time piqued my interest—we exchanged messages regarding a possible collaboration, if he required a fee to use said instrumentals, and so on, he asked for, yet never replied to, my description of the project. 

With that said, it was difficult for me to hold any ill-will toward the situation, as I’d ultimately arrive at the exact same conclusion as he did, that the project belonged in a dustpan, that it was completely ill-advised. Clearly, if anything, the younger man in the glasses was totally ahead of the curve—I more or less owed him an apology for even emailing him in the first place. 

I found myself actually enjoying his doodles. I felt at the time that his particular doodles were making the overall doodle slightly less moronic in my mind. Standing awkwardly against a bookshelf in the poorly ventilated bookstore, absurdly sober, I realized that the four to five people I’d invited to the show would have even less interest than the already minimal interest they’d expressed when I mentioned the show earlier that evening. 

A solo saxophonist I was unfamiliar with, I assumed the opening act, sat in a desk chair and asked if it was possible that the hardly audible background music of the bookstore be muted, then proceeded to perform an unfettered style of free jazz on his saxophone while sitting with his legs crossed on the office chair. 

Beads of sweat began forming on a variety of sections of my epidermis. I realized there was no chance I’d get to see Dave Filipino this evening. Sure, I could have gone completely rogue on my previous plans and stayed alone at this bookstore, but unfortunately I had no interest in doing that. 

A guitarist named Ryan Grant from the relatively well-known local rock duo Thunder Butt walked in. He looked curiously like Dave Filipino. For a second I actually thought it was Dave Filipino. 

I’d been familiar with both Ryan Grant and Dave Filipino as instrumentalists for some time, yet I’d never considered their physical appearances to be similar to any noteworthy degree, yet at this bookstore it was difficult for me to tell one from the other as they stood maybe six feet at most from one another. Grant opened the bookstore door for a younger female with dyed hair and informed her she didn’t have to pay for a ticket. 

 

—08 But in any case, Abu Hamid, and by the way this espresso is terrible, just absolutely atrocious, I did want to run this one thing by you, something that’s somewhat haunted me to various degrees in the interim since it occurred, and I’d love your opinion on the matter. 

It was only a few weeks later that the thought occurred to me to just relax on a Friday evening in my favorite red leather chair, sinking into said red chair and allowing my mind to wander freely of its own volition, yet—just as it had about a year prior—a curious conversation somehow ensued, one that I’m to this day still hesitant to speculate on the nature of. 

Because it was a year prior that I had a curious conversation with an entity I believed to be Athena Dasalan, a person I’d never met but nevertheless knew quite a bit about—and as she continued her brutally unrelenting inquisition of me, albeit in my case telepathically, I finally retorted to her, at that point a bit fed up, that I was in fact a Sultan. 

Yes, I informed her, albeit telepathically, that she was speaking to a Sultan, yet perhaps the most confounding part of all of it was that Athena, who would obviously know better than any of us, accepted this assertion without question, the only assertion of mine that she would accept was this assertion that I was a Sultan. 

I suppose this was something that stuck with me in retrospect. In fact, it was the only damn thing that removed the lady from my case for just a second. Of the assertions I expounded upon, this was the only thing she accepted without question, that I was in fact a Sultan who would ultimately be making the final decisions here, everything else she’d pushed to the side in the service of continuing her diatribe. 

It was only later on that I’d discover the ten Sultans—Ahmed One, Ahmed Three, Suleyman Pasha, Bayezid One, Bayezid Two, Ibrahim One, Murad One, Murad Four, Mustafa Two, and Selim One—who were of confirmed fifty percent ethnic Greek ancestry, not to mention the Second Mehmed, who was rumored to be of the same, much like the man he replaced in Constantinople. 

 

—09 We spend large parts of our lives believing we’re an Eleventh Constantine when, in actuality, the people that can confirm these things only come to accept us as a Second Mehmed. We spend significant chunks of our lives blindly believing in distinctions that are disingenuous in character, insofar as these distinctions attempt to take what’s in essence one thing and inauthentically make it into two. 

Our first act after we overtook the City was to force the Rum to shave their faces. We took the city and our primary edict was to shave the Rum, we imparted upon them all just a little razor burn—but to distinguish them, we forced the Rum to shave their faces to distinguish them from us. 

To us, the Rum became a refraction of us, all of which is and was ill-advised—it reeks of a certain European informalism, if we’re being honest. Prior to discussing these matters with Athena, I’d taken note of the two ornamental hawk wings in my apartment, that they were now pointing in distinctly different directions—whereas previously we’d noted that a forking path was present, yet in the interim, since our last discussion, 

I’d rearranged our furniture and now one hawk wing was clipped by the corner wall, while the other pointed in a singular direction. Yes, the previous forking, for the previous year with Athena Dasalan, had concluded, albeit totally unintentionally. 

 

—10 In any case, the one hawk wing pointed in the direction of a thread-based painting of a tiger crouching into a grassy knoll, protecting itself and perhaps something behind it, for all I could tell, and from my perspective at the time, due to the particular threading, the knoll itself was encapsulating the tiger in a way that the tiger seemed to be, at first glance, being pulled into the knoll. 

Of course, an analysis of a painting is never complete at a first glance, but in my eyes at a first glance the knoll consisted of a certain darkness, a death-like lack of light. The mural of the tiger was a work I’d inherited from a certain Constantina Demas, and I held it in high regard, as it was allegedly the work of a well-known German artist, which I didn’t really care about one way or the other. 

Apparently it was left with a neighbor of Constantina, one who’d passed away and apparently gifted it to her posthumously. There was no doubt in my mind the tiger and Constantina Demas were, at this time, sitting in my apartment in this red chair, of the exact same essence. There was no doubt that this hawk wing was guiding me in the direction of Constantina, now also dead, and sitting in my red chair following this sole hawk wing, I recalled the days of Constantina annoying everyone at the table when she refused to admit defeat at Monopoly, mortgaging every property she owned just to spite the inevitable winners of the board game, considering that, in retrospect, this was an important element in Constantina reaching ninety eight years of age? In any case, now that she was deceased and buried, and now that I was sitting in my red chair insouciantly analyzing this threaded tiger, I felt a tinge of regret at my failure to attend her funeral, while at the same time acknowledging, on the other hand, that I despise funerals. 

Alone in my apartment, sitting in my favorite red chair, I felt as though I was with Constantina once again, that perhaps we were brought together, I thought, by this mystical hawk wing, I thought, in order for me to make amends for missing her funeral or something? 

As I continued to analyze the painting I began to consider that the enveloping nature of the black knoll was perhaps an optical illusion—I noticed this as I studied the painting from a separate angle, as I poured myself a drink at my counter, concluding that, no, the tiger was in fact frozen in this defensive position, that this tiger was in no way being subsumed by any darkness, that the passing of Constantina didn’t symbolize this at all. 

It became apparent that this tiger had been unwittingly juxtaposed against a painting of my own, which was hanging on the adjacent wall—just as I’d previously failed to notice the clipped hawk wing, I’d also failed to notice the position of this threaded tiger, that the tiger was placed in a defensive position against my very own painting, which hung on the wall adjacent, displaying my regrettable tendency toward European informalism. 

For decades we view ourselves as Constantine, only to discover the ones who would know more intimately than anyone only recognize us as Mehmed. 

The first thing we did when we took the City was to go ahead and shave the Rum to distinguish them—the Sultan and Rum of course just being refracted variations of the exact same thing. To this Abu Hamid replied, It’s possible that you should look into the incoherence of the philosophers. 

—Initially a thin hipster with a full red beard was in the bathroom at Nick-A-Nee’s, peeing at the tall urinal, but when I went in, after he walked out, I made a point to pee at the kiddie urinal, a trademark of mine, for whatever reason I find myself more at ease at the kiddie urinals, as I'm long-torsoed in addition to being of only average height; yes, the kiddie urinals are essentially made for me, and peeing at the kiddie urinal I took note of what looked like a piece of asscrack lint connected inextricably to a long piece of ass hair. This is what it struck me as at least. I thought back to parking on the street fifty feet from Nick-A-Nee’s, to my consternation with the driver wearing a snowcap in his maroon pickup truck cursing me through his windshield as I slowly scoped the one open spot on the street. At that time, with his perturbed expression and prehistoric facial features, he struck me as the worst person in the world and frankly still does. I wished nothing but the worst things on this person as I pulled over to let him pass, haranguing him through my windshield as he simultaneously screamed at me through his windshield, then calmly hit reverse to move back into the middle of the street, to parallel park in the only open spot, just momentarily lodging the right rear wheel ever so slightly onto the attenuated curb. In my mind this man in the pickup truck was a grotesque stain on the face of our  planet. His face, in both its structure and expression, sticking with me at the bar in Nick-A-Nee’s, more or less revolted  me in the most extreme of ways. The man to my left ordered an impressively grotesque smelling soup from the bar—it was all I could smell at the time, and the stench was such that it struck me as frankly a little unbelievable it wafted from a bowl a man was actually eating from, yet if anything this made me enjoy Nick-A-Nee’s even more. The band playing the bar employed a white saxophone player, and each respective instrumentalist was drinking a separate, distinct variety of alcohol—one whiskey, one craft beer, one some type of mixed drink, one nothing at all, all four frankly looking little like typical musicians, and I found it notable how easily the saxophone, I presumed tenor, sat in the mix with just a microphone next to it, given the accompaniment of electric guitar, electric bass, and acoustic drums that were played in a thoroughly rock, as opposed to jazz, style. I guess I never knew that about tenor saxophone. Rock drums have increasingly distressed me of late. When I think of a style of drumming that offends my taste, rock drumming immediately vaults to the top of the list—in my opinion Stratos most rock music would be immeasurably improved with the simple removal of percussion, or at least with a more muted substitute of percussion. Maybe a tongue drum? Amplified tongue drum? Distorted tambourine? But honestly that's just me, because I fully realize most people love percussion, that percussion is viewed as the so-called backbone of modern composition, that tons of listeners still venerate rock music. In any case I guess I should start to explain how I got here, shouldn't I?

—From your parallel universe you mean?

—Exactly Stratos. It now seems to me that I crossed over into this universe, or I should say I became aware that it had happened, precisely at the point where the bozo in the snowcap in his dark red pickup truck began yelling at me through his windshield, as I attempted to parallel park up the street from Nick-A-Nee's, where a man would then order one of the most disgusting smelling soups I’ve ever encountered from its bar. It was obvious as the man, who I despised, looked exactly like someone from Alabama—he was wearing a snowcap despite it being a moderately temperate day in early April, and given these facts it was obvious something had shifted significantly, but I couldn’t draw any conclusions quite at that point. But these are the types of cues you have to take into account with regard to things such as these Stratos, parallel universe conundrums so to speak. How exactly it happens I’m not at liberty to detail at this time, as it's possible I’m ignorant of the mechanics of the process, or I'm aware of the process in a way I can only communicate in indirect ways.

—This makes sense, Markos. There’s obviously only so much we can put into words when it comes to parallel universes.

—For example it was precisely at Nick-A-Nee's that I happened to log onto the basketball-reference dot com webpage Stratos, which only confirmed my suspicions, which had been steadily rising, which only acted as another clue as I delved deeper into the statlines I’ll detail right now. Specifically, as I recalled it, beyond a shadow of a doubt it sat in my memories, the Boston Celtic Jayson Tatum owned a statistical profile that exceeded that of Dallas Maverick Luka Doncic, whereas Luka Doncic had a statistical summation that lagged that of Jayson Tatum. And yet on basketball-reference dot com at Nick-A-Nee’s, only moments after said bozo in snowcap in the Alabama-esque maroon pickup truck berated me through his windshield, it occurred to me that Luka Doncic had by far the more complete statistical profile compared to Jayson Tatum, despite both Luka and Tatum averaging above thirty points per game this NBA season. Specifically, on this side Stratos, it seemed that Luka differentiated himself from Tatum by getting to the free throw stripe at a much greater clip, by making plays for others at a clip that more than doubled Tatum’s rate. Where Jayson Tatum assisted on just twenty percent of his possessions, while turning the ball over on ten percent, Luka Doncic assisted on forty three percent of his possessions while turning the ball over on only twelve percent, while both rebounded just about thirteen percent of their possible possessions and shot an aggregate percentage of sixty (true shooting percentage) on their thirty points per game. Yet I explicitly recalled Jayson Tatum being the far superior playmaker, by more than double, when compared to Luka Doncic, in those exact terms of assist percentage and free throw rate, yet when I logged onto basketball-reference at Nick-A-Nee's, to my great surprise, Luka Doncic separated himself from Jayson Tatum by his higher propensity of getting to the free throw stripe and by his stark contrast in setting his teammates up for made shots (especially when compared to his propensity to turn the ball over). It's only in the most minute of ways that we can detect these transitions Stratos, if that makes sense, that we can conclude we’ve traversed across potential dimensions, if that makes sense?

—Oh, absolutely!

—And to add to the confusion it was only a night later, in a vivid dream, that I found myself in a desolate house covered with orange wallpaper, curiously preoccupied with bathing myself, apparently getting ready for something I couldn’t quite put my finger on—it was in this home with the orange interior that I felt again this psychic energy with near strangers, near strangers who seem to pop into my mental space unannounced, that has increasingly struck me as an actual physical phenomenon. That I can actually think back toward these near strangers in a physical fashion. Yet this was before a particular shadow from my past appeared to me yet again in dream, in the most vivid of manners, and I began to run from something, something I couldn’t identify, while simultaneously reconnecting with this shadow without either of us saying a word to each other, until I stumbled upon what looked like a locker room in an open field. I entered the building, a so-called locker room in an open field, and realized all of its memorabilia was from nineteen ninety eight—and I realized I’d traveled back to nineteen ninety eight, that everything I touched was totally nineteen ninety eight, that my own so-called identity was just a clumsy block across something that could be traversed if approached properly, and then suddenly the thought occurred to me: Time starts in the middle and winds around, always in the middle, I thought, that this notion of time beginning at the beginning is entirely false, perhaps even nonsensical. When awake I frantically wrote a note that simply said: Time starts in the middle and winds around. And as I encountered this idea streams of green for lack of a better word time shot out, like Nickelodeon Gack or something, various streams of time overlapping each other in joyous bursts of green, like the word Go, and it was a sort of joyous event even in its ambiguity. I was a little disappointed to wake up.

—Did you do shrooms at all?

—No sadly Stratos I was completely free from hallucinogens when I went to sleep, when I went to Nick-A-Nee’s, when the red-bearded hipster peed at the adult urinal, when the man next to me ordered the disgusting soup, when the bozo with the snowcap screamed at me, when the saxophone was surprisingly high in the mix. No we don’t necessarily need to travel in the traditional sense in order to travel great distances, that much we can be sure of.

—That makes complete sense to me, Markos!

—So anyway we were at the Hot Club for the first time in ages, a bartender I hadn't seen in at least four to five years was still behind the bar, she recognized me immediately, with a new purple dyed haircut that, although probably a smidgeon young for her age, suited her nicely, I thought. She poured me a healthy amount of Mezcal into a short glass, and only minutes later I’d notice her carrying a bottle of Del Maguey Vida, my favorite brand of Mezcal, back to the bar, and right then I surmised that I was drinking my favorite type of Mezcal. Of course healthy pours are double edged swords when you have a tendency to chug whatever's in front of you, which for better or worse is a tendency I've never entirely managed to discard, especially when in social settings. Socially, historically, I’ve always found myself sprinting toward liquor, with reckless abandon almost I perform fifty yard dashes toward whatever my spirit of choice is that month, and even though on balance I've reduced these excessive tendencies with age, I'd be lying to both myself and you if I said I’d discarded them completely. And to be honest I’m unsure if I’d wish to discard them in totality, to extinguish my child-like idiocy once and for all, because sure from a certain vantage point I suppose I remain a man-child of sorts, but on the other hand man-children are necessary, no? It's man-children who make the greatest philosophical strides. To think like an adult is to take on the guise of utter rationalism, which hardly ever if not never innovates, which refuses to become idiotic enough to alter fundamental axioms, as axioms are inevitably created by the child-like thinkers, by idiots of the spirit. Even God Himself allegedly said Let there be light, which is a man-child like statement in my opinion. Personally I still refuse to sleep in the dark. 

—The dark is contemptible in my mind.

—There's something inherent in being itself that's synonymous with light in my opinion.

—But how was Hot Club?

—It was interesting, intriguing, better than I anticipated, given the last couple times I’d been I felt the atmosphere to be a bit too clubby for my tastes, a tad too adolescent for even my man-child palette. I saw the doorman from The Parlour there, because apparently he works security at Hot Club as well? In any case as the party increased in size Katreena and I ended up engaged in an extended conversation with a petite fair-skinned female who adamantly claimed to be of New York origin, yet when an appropriate opening emerged for me to ask her what part of New York she was from specifically she prevaricated, saying she was quote-unquote from all over, but then saying The Bronx. She was from The Bronx? She didn't strike me as someone from The Bronx, and for someone whose identity seemed to be so tied with being from New York, a New Yorker, which is the case with so many people from New York, it’s actually kind of sad to me, this violent melding that seems to occur with people who identify themselves with New York City, yet this female, who for the record I found pleasant, oddly enough refused to explicitly claim a borough, until she reluctantly said The Bronx, which I think struck everyone as totally misguided. She wasn't from The Bronx, that much was clear. She could be from anywhere in the world except The Bronx. This idea that this female’s origin story began in The Bronx was completely absurd. Which borough she was from, assuming she was from a particular borough, now that was still ambiguous, but it was clear she wasn't from the Bronx. Queens, that I could give some credence to I suppose. It might be a reasonable speculation to suggest she was from Queens. Perhaps from an opulent family in Upper Manhattan, now that was even more likely—because she certainly struck me as someone who came from money, there was no trace of a New York accent in her speech, or of any accent in her speech, and the geography of Upper Manhattan is close enough to The Bronx that she could, in her mind at least, perhaps justify claiming The Bronx as a borough, even though I find that to be a bit ridiculous, to conflate Upper Manhattan with The Bronx, to think any thinking person would buy the idea that Upper Manhattan is in any way synonymous with The Bronx. Staten Island and Brooklyn strike me as more remote possibilities of her origin, and then we could also speculate on outer-areas as well, because while Yonkers strikes me as a stretch, I think Westchester County or Long Island are both certainly in play.

—Do you think it possible that she could have been from, say, Westchester County, which would explain her moneyed demeanor, yet moved to The Bronx for work later in life, and now, and I agree that this is misguided, feels as though that working experience justifies her claim that The Bronx is a place she's actually from?

—Giorgios, that actually strikes me as perhaps the most sensible explanation of all. I also noticed, and I think it’s worth noting, that when she sat her posterior was a tad more ample than I’d imagined, that this posterior along with the ambiguity of her origin began to strike me as almost ominously out of place, as if another plane of existence was forming.

—That happens at times—posteriors and their relative amplitude can vary widely from expectations, the posterior is almost impossible to estimate based on face alone.

—I guess it’s reasonable to assert that we often look at a person's face and almost algorithmically create a simulation of their body from this face, that our mind works essentially algorithmically, we should admit that, that our minds are probably just composed of algorithms, and that we perform a similar process with voice, which actually happened to me just recently as well, where I spoke to a person on the phone and inevitably created an algorithmic simulation of her face in my mind. When I saw her face at last online I was struck by how much this picture differed from the simulation I’d made in my mind—who was it I believed I was speaking to? I look at someone's face and then I ruthlessly algorithmically simulate their body without consent, whereas I hear someone's voice and then I ruthlessly algorithmically simulate their face without consent, but in both cases my accuracy is totally stochastic, and by stochastic I mean terrible. 

—From voice to face and from face to body, we make ill-advised, ruthless speculations regarding everyone who enters our periphery!

—In this sense the simulation of the human begins with voice. From voice alone we algorithmically simulate both face and body, because from face we simulate body, as you said. In any case as the conversation progressed we—myself, Katreena, and this female—began to touch on the topic of what exactly this female had been doing since leaving New York, and in the midst of this it came up that it just so happened that her and I were actually the same age, that she'd been finding locales she liked at our age, although she noted how difficult it was, compared to New York, where she knew the ins and outs of where to patronize and when, what establishments she enjoyed and which ones she despised. I agreed immediately, noting that at my age, at our age, it was one of the main deterrents to moving to another city, particularly New York, which I’d strongly considered moving to more than once, but as I said explicitly to her to have to relearn every single place that I like to go, and how to get there, to relearn which places offend my palate, at my age, it just struck me as way too daunting of a task to take on. It struck me as a task that would consume so much of my energy that it would essentially mute all of my philosophical energies for at least five years. She mentioned a Lebanese bar where “you walk downstairs” that she liked a lot. I said the entire city of Providence has become essentially one extended hookah lounge, which I admitted to her, full disclosure, appeals to me deeply, which, full disclosure, seemed to genuinely surprise her, that the entire city of Providence was an extended hookah lounge. I said the city is littered with Greek and Lebanese places like that, which of course Giorgos we know isn't true in the least, that there are only a fraction of Greek locations compared to Lebanese locations, yet I stated it with so much aplomb she didn't question it at all, although she did immediately question whether Greeks smoked hookah, to which I simply said Ottoman Empire, to which she said of course, immediately connecting the dots.

—My goodness Markos, I have to say that’s fairly impressive, that a fair-skinned female from New York would connect those dots that quickly. The Ottoman Empire, I mean at this point it’s basically a piece of arcana. No one knows anything about the Ottoman Empire anymore.

—Oh I completely agree! I totally feel like there are just very few people in our general age range who know anything about the Ottoman Empire, and I’d one hundred percent wager that not one other person at Hot Club that night who knew anything about the Ottoman Empire, never mind its very specific ethnic components, who could put the pieces of Greeks ancestrally smoking hookah together by the utterance of two words: Ottoman Empire. In fact it seems to me that the Ottoman Empire is maybe the most neglected empire of the past  half millennium, that it inherited its Byzantine predecessor's characteristic of being completely discarded by modern scholarship. No one knows what you speak of when you so much as mention the Ottoman Empire, people are flummoxed, except apparently this female who may or may not be from New York, but certainly isn’t from The Bronx. In short I quickly found that the ambiguity of what New York City borough characteristic was inherent in this female became reflected right into the ambiguity of the ethnic blocks of the Ottoman Empire, in a post-Ottoman American diaspora, in an America that is itself multi-ethnic, and not entirely differently than the Ottomans, Ottomans who were only trumped in their importation of African slaves by America’s out of control love affair with the African slave. No one imported more African slaves than the Ottoman Empire, except of course the United States of America. The ambiguity of the traits displayed by a Greek versus a Turk versus a Lebanese versus a Kurd versus an Armenian in the seemingly limitless Providence Hookah Network was suddenly a direct analog to the ambiguity of the New York City borough characteristics inherent in a person who perhaps dubiously claims to be from New York City. In one instance we’re unsure if we’re witnessing a Greek, a Turk, a Lebanese, a Kurd, an Armenian; in the other instance we’re unsure if we’re witnessing a person from The Bronx, from Manhattan, from Staten Island, from Brooklyn, from Queens; in both cases the overlapping characteristics, outside of their original context (of the Ottoman Empire and New York City, respectively), become vague enough in their nuance that the identity of each bleeds into the other, until the individual identities are erased completely. The New York City diaspora in Providence can reflect characteristics associated with Staten Island, with Manhattan, with The Bronx, with Brooklyn, with Queens, while the median hookah smoker this New York City transplant may encounter in the extended Providence Hookah Network may display characteristics of the Greek, of the Turk, of the Lebanese, of the Kurd, of the Armenian. In both cases what’s Staten Island, what’s Queens, what’s Kurd, what’s Greek, what’s Brooklyn, what’s Manhattan, what’s Lebanese, what’s Turk, what’s The Bronx, what’s Armenian all bleed into one another until they’re essentially indistinguishable from each other, until they’re essentially extinguished, until we reach a fundamental oneness of an Ottoman New York City, a legitimate plane of existence that came into being only at the Hot Club via conversation this past Friday night.

—This is a physical plane of existence now, the Ottoman New York City of Oneness.

—It can no longer be denied, an Ottoman New York City where all identity has been extinguished into a monadic Oneness came into existence on a Friday night at the Hot Club.

—Yet that girl—could she have actually been from The Bronx?

—With one hundred percent certainty I will assure you Giorgos, that the girl I spoke with Friday night was absolutely not from The Bronx—