#and every time I was like haha ok Mackenzie

[lilnasxvevo]

Okay this is a really specific social situation and I’m just wondering if anyone has any insight on whether this is autistic vs allistic stuff or if it’s just plain rude so:

A couple times in my life, when I’ve, like, given people a piece of gum or paid for something small, I’ve gotten the response “OMG I’ll pay you back,” and even if I say “No, you don’t have to, it’s just a stick of gum/it’s literally 2 dollars/etc” they’ll say “No no no, I’ll pay you back” but then they…don’t?

And my thing is, if I give you a piece of gum or if I pay for something small that’s just because I like you, and I don’t expect anything in return, and I’ll probably forget about it just as soon as I do it.

But if you insist TWICE or more that you’ll pay me back, to me that’s a PROMISE you made, and I’ll remember that. It’s important to me now. So then if you DON’T ever pay me back, well, now I’m disappointed in you and I trust you a little less than I did before, because either you were consciously lying when you said you’d pay me back, or you’re flaky as hell.

Am I being…weird about this? I do get the feeling that people are just trying to be polite when they say they’ll pay me back, but in my book there’s nothing less polite than blatant dishonesty. Like, just say “Thanks,” you know? It doesn’t have to be A Thing. You don’t have to make it A Thing.

[ski-jumper-stan]

sadly i missed the competition today - what happened?<3

I really tried making this kurz und schmerzlos but it got away from me. Again. Sorry <3

Wellll, I can't talk about this without explaining way too much...the special thing about the Vierschanzentournee is that there are ✨duels✨. But what does that mean?

Who is going to jump against whom is decided in the qualification that you watched yesterday. The best in quali jumps against the last that still qualified, the second best is on against the second to last and so on. In the end the number of ppl that qualify for the competition today is 50

(Funfact: In women's ski jumping only 40 jumpers qualify for comps because they wanted to make the competitions shorter so the comps would be more marketable and get actually televised but nooo, ofc that didn't work since to this year a lot of competitions were either not on TV or only summaries are showed. That ~has~ bettered a bit in recent years but if you wanted to watch women's qualification? Haha no... )

Of these 50 ppl there are 25 duels. Whoever of the two duelists jumps farther/better immediately goes to the 2. round/Durchgang. But wait, there are always 30 ppl in the 2. round, so there are still 5 ppl missing. 5 ppl that lost their duels can still go to the 2. round when they were the "Lucky Losers" which means that they were the 5 losers who jumped farthest/best. In the 2. round of the Vierschanzentournee comps it proceeds as in every other competition: The person who jumped farthest/best in both rounds wins, wohoo.

Ok so finally about today's comp in Oberstdorf: It is always exciting with the duels, since jumpers one might like jump against jumpers one may also like and you just know one of them won't make it. The ppl in the sj family here on tumblr have ofc their own faves and when liveblogging it's funny when three other ppl have roughly the same reaction as yourself to a duel, jump or hilarious moment. Ehhh anyways I wanted to summarize: One of my fav jumpers, the Canadian Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes, managed to go to the 2. round as a lucky loser. Two of the guys who were really successful in past seasons have lost their duels: the Austrian Stefan Kraft and the Pole Kamil Stoch who both have won the tournament before. Fir example Kamil last winter and Stefan won the overall world cup last winter. Apart from that, the comp was nicely exciting and fair. I love the tournament a lot and the duels are my favourite part of it.

My personal highlight of today's comp was that Severin Freund, my personal fave, won his duel and jumped pretty well! it's great because he only returned last winter from injury and before that he was fairly successful actually :')

Oh and there is added pressure on the German jumpers because it is a tournament that has two comps in Germany and the last time a German won was 20 years ago and can someone do that again yada yada yada (The one who won back then is your legend with meme energy btw 😉)

[winbutlerscowbell]

Terminator Dark Fate Analysis Mexico Edition

Welcome to the Terminator Dark Fate Analysis Mexico Edition, where I’m going to dissect, comment and give my constructive criticism at every reference, landscapes, locations and well, everything that goes Mexican in this movie of ours.

  First things first: I just realized the version delivered to the mexican theaters is DIFFERENT to the rest of the world, why? Because the characters who originally speak Spanish are DUBBED AGAIN, like double dubbed. So ironically, in Mexico we couldn’t get to hear precious things like “no mames”, WE WERE DAMN ROBBED.

OK HERE WE GO:

That bridge is sending me, it really looks like a bridge from here or vial distributor like they call it in a more elegant way.

No, forget it. That kind of bridge doesn’t exist here but nice try, I appreciate that.

Here’s where something really funny starts because what they say doesn’t match with the subtitles at all hahaha 

The girl says “no mames” and it’s subtitled to “Oh my God” AND it was dubbed as “No inventes” hahaha this can’t be...

And here, the guy says “yo siento lo mismo”, it’s subtitled as “I feel it too” which is accurate but when they dubbed it they went with “¿y esos ojos?” lmao

Can’t forget to mention this ICONIC scene, of course.

The moment when the cops arrive reminds me of the meme where there’s some thiefs robbing something and the cops are asleep but there’s someone naked or doing something else and a fucking troop arrives, here is one example of the meme I’m talking about:

kidnappers - cops asleep, thiefs - cops asleep,narcos - cops asleep,an old lady selling flowers - the fucking troops.

"¿Qué le pasó a tu amiga, wey?" the cop saying this hahahsha lmao like I said WE WERE FUCKING ROBBED.

The girl saying “qué pedo wey” when they’re arresting her hahah, I actually predicted at least one “que pedo” would be said in this movie and finally I can see my prediction turned out to be true #SamPatchVidente

The casa de papel guy aka the cop is going to be beaten the shit out for wanting to take Grace to the ministerio publico.

Cops getting beaten the shit out of them: oil on canvas 

And here’s the first mistake: the patrols have signs saying “policia municipal” and “cdmx” (Mexico City). In real life that’s impossible as “policia municipal” (municipal police) is one thing and “cdmx” is a totally different city, patrols can’t have both things but hey, the design is spot on.

"Eso estuvo padrísimo wey" hahsha lmao this time I prefer the dubbing where they go with “eso estuvo padrísimo, güera”, cause I like when they call Grace güera.

Never in my life I imagined I’d be alive to see this piece of art: Mackenzie with “Sí señor” playing in the background. The first time I saw this I was losing my shit even more cause Mackenzie was somewhere in the same room, probably watching the scene too. This is so powerful, wow.

This is sending me hashaha, in the dubbed versión the guy shouts at her “pinche gringa ratera” (fucking gringa thief or something) and it’s translated to “Go to hell lady” come on hahahaha so I prefer that over the original version, damn it I wish I could have a hybrid version of this cause is gold.

The heroic CDMX, fuck yessss! I would have loved to see the Popocatepetl. I’d like to think the suavicrema is in the background, so maybe is Chapultepec?. So what is a suavicrema? Could be like a brand of ice cream wafer and that tall building in the background looks like one, lol. Omg, ok I’ll stop.

Next: we can see doña pelos in here cooking her food. Doña pelos or doña lupe is how we call every lady who sells food in the street, so for practical effects this lady is doña pelos.

Here’s the proof we call them like that:

It translates: “So doña pelos is taking marketing courses” cause she’s using an Adobe logo to promote her food of the day, which is “adobo de cerdo” hahaha

Let’s move on.

No, it’s not “do you want your tamal”, it’s “tortita de tamal” aka the famous guajolota, that’s what she’s asking. A guajolota is “a sandwich composed of a tamal placed inside a bolillo or telera, which is a rounder version of a bolillo.” Yes, I got it from Wikipedia, don’t judge. 

Also, a lady selling garnachas (like quesadillas, etc.) AND tamales? That’s new.

She also sells mangos? Wowowowow that’s versatility. 

And “le robo un manguito” “can I steal a mango?” Dani, you have to pay for that, you can go to jail for like 30 years, I’m serious, remember the meme of the cops?

Someone said she may be a prostitute and I can’t even…so you can’t dress with whatever you want? But also I’m a little suspicious and she actually may be one depending on what zone is Dani supposed to live. 

A pink cab! I thought it was a Nissan Tsuru because they always are but this time it’s not. Missed opportunity, production design team. 

“Let’s put Frida Kahlo to emphasize this is Mexico, what a good idea , why not?” 

Multifamiliar o vecindad? we're about to find out.

Why does she have a bike hanging on the wall? Is that a thing? 

The fruit on the table, the vase, and the squared table cloth, that evoked things in me.

About the music: I mean, it’s okay they put latin music but I am fucking sick to death of this Bomba Estereo song, I fucking hate it. There, I said it.

147 likes, that’s how excited the guys who think they’re Dj’s or something are when they upload things to soundcloud. 

One thing I don’t understand is: if they live in Mexico City, why are they talking in english now? Did I miss something? 

Never seen anyone in my life name a dog “Taco”, only “Chilaquil” but that’s another story.

Arturitooo from la casa de papel! or how I like to call him: el cñor <3 (it means señor but with a c because it sounds the same).

Interestingly, now there are two actors from la casa de papel appearing here hahaha 

LMFAO that’s a flagrant fucking typo: “tomalito” hahshaha that’s an unforgivable mistake. It’s “tamalito” obviously. 

Now, what’s up with the serape blanket on the wall? Hahaha we call them sarapes but come on, we’re not like that…well yeah but no… It would have been funny if the serape had a drawing of the last dinner hahaha that would have triggered childhood memories.

The cñor from la casa de papel is going to the imss for his medical check up. Imss is a horrible public health institution but that’s what we have so…

Ok, this is GOLD: the serape blanket, a picture of la Virgen de Guadalupe, the couch covered with sheets and ANOTHER serape blanket, the sewing machine hahaha they missed the calendar from the fruit store or the butch shop, damn haha

Did taco survive? I guess not :(

Also when Diego sings: Y’all, you could have saved some good money by picking up another song, I mean, it’s a beautiful song by Juan Gabriel but I heard it was very expensive and now in retrospective you could have saved something in this little simple thing.

So it’s a vecindad I guess.

And how did they hang the clothes in the middle? :v Can these people fly? That would be a Mexican super power to take advantage of the maximum possible space. 

  Un viejo encueradooooo, tápese cochino.

A green bussssss!!! We call them microbuses and the location gives me historical downton vibes because of all the people in the street. 

Oopppp another pink cab, I love it. 

I am the only person on this planet who is excited to see those microbuses in this movie, yes I am. 

I FINALLY KNOW WHAT THE ROUTE OF THE MICROBUS SAYS! It says "LAGO DE GUADALUPE, E. ZAPATA" WHICH IS INCORRECT HAHAHAHA. Also, the man with the hat hahaha it’s Mexico City not Monterrey.

Lago de Guadalupe is not in Mexico City and “E. Zapata” maybe is the subway station but they’re absolutely not close to each other, well let’s move on. 

 The casa de papel guy aka Dani’s dad is speaking with a heavy spanish accent tbh

And... Goodbye Mr. casa de papel :(

They make it look as if everybody works there, it’s not a little town, you know?

Why the fuck is an employee riding a bike inside the factory? I don’t get it. 

When diego says "chale" hahaha same.

"Un robot, que chido eh" hahaha chido and it’s subtitled as "it's cool" adjka god help me please.

El señor Sánchez represents me.I mean, there was a little bit of criticism because all the mexicans represented here are white but hey, try looking for someone who looks like a mexican in damn Europe, they did the best they could.

Aaaagain: if they are in Mexico City, why the hell are they talking in english? I’ll never understand.

Typical police guy distracted with the damn phone, yes we are in Mexico.

That policeman looks like Burt Reylonds (?)

Wish Grace would’ve arrived in that microbus hahahaha

That microbus is weird, nope I don't know her. 

That microbus has the same route as the previous one but it has something else under “E. Zapata”, like “Tecnologico” or something like that, ooofff maybe it’s Tecnologico de Monterrey hahaha that college is kinda near Lago de Guadalupe so haha ok, let’s keep going. 

Another distracted cop, my Mexico.

I love how Grace beats cops everywhere, this is an irrelevant scene for this analysis but I just love it so much.

Back to the factory: "Qué hace aquí tu jefe?" jasjdd "que haces aquí, jefe", the slang is on point here haha

"Olvidaste tu comida mijo" jasdjkhd

"Me quieren reemplazar por esa pinche máquina" apparently translates to a "they’re replacing me with that damn machine" jaksdj at least put a “fucking” or something.

Again that heavy spanish accent with that deep voice, hmmm

I’m going to ignore the Factory fight because there’s no Mexican stuff here.

Well, Diego and Dani keep saying “vámonos” and they don’t fucking leave haha

“GET IN” and Dani saying "ya güera ya güera" jakdhakjd I love her

Pink cab is saved from being destroyed by Grace.

Here comes the policía municipal to spoil everything. 

Ok, my theory is they are in the limits of Mexico City and the metropolitan area aka the state which is also a kinda not very good looking place and omg hahaha I love that.

Here’s when Diego slips an almost inaudible “no mames”, I know I heard it.

And well, THANK YOU GOVERNOR OF MEXICO CITY BECAUSE THE PATROLS ARE NOT THE SAME COLOR AND THEY’RE NOT ACCURATE ANYMORE, THANK YOU FOR SPOILING EVERYTHING.

These are our patrols now:

Ugh.

Noooo the tacos :( this really hurt a lot.

This is where I think they enter a highway called “circuito exterior mexiquense” that effectively connects the metropolitan area of the state with Mexico City and I LOVE IT. I love everything, do I?

Also some say the Rev-9 is driving a snow plow truck, is it? The only time it has snowed in Mexico City was in 1967, a long time ago.

Everything is screaming “circuito exterior”, yes I’m getting those vibes and I’m here for it.

Another pink cab is seen. Fun fact: because of its pink and white colors, we call them “hello kittys” and before that they were like wine color and gold so we called them “iron man”.

“FASTER GO FASTER”  Grace: “shut the fuck up, dummy”  and giving looks that could kill.

Hahahaha those license plates are so damn old and they say “Chihuahua” and “Guanajuato” ahaha doesn’t make very much sense.

The car of my friend hahaha

The truck behaving like my friend’s car.

Here’s where as a mexican citizen who used to drive every day in that highway, I detected some continuity details in the pursuit scene: 

ROAD SIGN 1: Nextlalpan/Jaltenco haha on the opposite side of the road.

ROAD SIGN 2: Querétaro/Toluca/Tultitlán on the right side they’re driving

ROAD SIGN 1 again: first mistake fellas, now the sign is in the lane where they’re driving.

ROAD SIGN 3: Ecatepec/Texcoco, how do I know? I just do.

ROAD SIGN 4: This is my fave because in this one there's my shitty town hahaha SALIDA LECHERIA-TEXCOCO AV.JOSE LOPEZ PORTILLO Y COACALCO hahaha

It really looks like the circuit, I drive there a lot of times and Grace was there, destroying everything :')

ROAD SIGN 4: My fave sign now is on the opposite side, mistake number two.

Each and every one of the times I went to the theaters to watch this movie, in this scene everyone was like "ohhhh what? omg nooo" 

ROAD SIGN 4: Mistake number 3, the sign of Lecheria is shown again when the Grace truck had already passed there on the other side of the road.

ROAD SIGN 2: There's again the sign of Queretaro/ Toluca/Tultitlan when Grace's truck has already driven over there.

ROAD SIGN 5: Toluca/Lago de Guadalupe, remember? Lago de Guadalupe,  just like the microbus route sign.

ROAD SIGN 5: Just because I love to see Mackenzie with those signs in the background hahaha

Anyway, the circuito exterior mexiquense is a fucking mess and of course I love it.

Dani, I wouldn't go to the police either, they’re a bunch of useless idiots and I'm sure they would blame YOU for everything and get you into jail for 40 years.

Really bitch? RECETA MEDICA AJSDKASDK he's asking her for a prescription lmao her face I can’t...

Also I always wondered how Grace understood the pharmacy guy but now I know that in the version brought up here, this guy was dubbed to spanish while in the original version he spoke english, those little differences and  I’ll never understand why they did it.

Typical guy filming the mess hahaha 

"Qué pasa güera" traduced to "what the hell", nice (not actually)

That looks like a little town but God knows where is it, eww

Sure, we all have an uncle who is a coyote (no, not true). We call them polleros, not coyotes but whatever.

"Ojalá ustedes no fueran tan blancas" "I wish you two weren't so white" hasjdaj Love it.

So they're going to the famous BESTIA (beast), that's the nickname of the train because it's so huge.

I'm laughing hard because in some sites they called this scene "train station scene" hahaha this is everything but a train station haha ffs

Fun fact: I see that train everyday just without migrants, I think they ride the train in other certain places. This is a pic a took of the real bestia:

LOS HEROES TECAMAC JAJAJAJAJA lmao lmao I can't fucking believe it jasjdkaja the little shitty town close to mine LOVE IT

Ciudad Valles jaskdja

Ciudad Victoria.

China??? wtf now that's just random places.

EDIT: Someone replied to his post and told me it’s a place in Nuevo León and yes it is, CHINA, Nuevo León Mx. close to Ciudad Victoria AND LAREDO. And this means I don’t know my country enough. Gracias @vickysan24​

Is this supposed to be Guanajuato? when on earth they went to Guanajuato? I need to talk to Sonja Klaus asap

Mackenzie saying "hola" is one of the best things that could've ever happened to me.

ahhh the food jasjdja has a lemon in it, I don't know, could be sincronizadas? hahahsha I think it’s eggs and beans with pico de gallo.

Mastering the skill of grabbing the tortilla like a spoon, nice. She has my seal of approval.

cartel de Sinaloa... really?! I really don't know what to think about this one...come the fuck on.

So that's how they cross huh, they keep putting walls but people always will find a way.

La migra got them:(

I’m going to do a big skip here. The border patrol and the detention center are next and key in the story but I don’t really know how can I bring something new in this analysis, maybe I’ll try later.

Next: When they find Carl.

For a looong time I really thought those beers were Corona and now it turns out they weren’t, sad day but oh well there are much better beers out there, so... *nail polish emoji*

Is that... MOLE DE LA COSTEÑA???? JAJAJSJAJD Did you think I wasn’t going to see that?! That’s a great product placement.

And another picture of la Virgen de Guadalupe.

I'm far from being an expert but i'm not sure if we drink beer like that, with the lemon in the bottle.

Another beer?  Yes, thank you.

Even Grace is not sure if beer is drank in that way.

But beer with lemon and salt is everything, I admit it.

Ok, fast forward, no mexican things until the very end;

"Mataste todo lo que quería cabron" jsadkhdjha what a delight! and it’s been translated to "you took everything I had, bastard" lmao yeah, right. Sounds better in spanish, obviously.

Yes people, only a mexican can throw herself to a Terminator and fight with it with her own bare hands.

And to finish this deep analysis, I want to point the great originality (sarcasm on) they had with some character names: Diego Boneta is Diego, Alicia Borrachero aka Carl’s “wife” is called Alicia and at some point the Rev-9 is called Gabriel, like hmm ok, I remember Diego Boneta’s character was rumored to be named Miguel but yeah it was just a rumor. Ohhh and the lady selling tamales her real life name is yes, you guessed it: Mona.

If you’re reading this, I want to thank you for getting this far, for taking your time and I hope this “little analysis” helped you to understand some things better about the movie that maybe you’ve missed in your viewings or to discover new things about Mexico. Did I miss something? Let me know what you think.

[creativitytoexplore]

[HR] Every day a sun sets over Los Angeles (2/2) https://ift.tt/3io1eoL

I used what remained of my money to buy a bus ticket from Los Angeles to Illinois.

The ride was long but passed like rain.

I sat in the back by the window, and although the bus was full of passengers nobody sat beside me.

I had my headphones on.

The doorbell rang—

My mom answered and saw me standing in the same clothes I’d been wearing for over a week, raccoon-faced and wearing my headphones. “Oh…”

She and my dad greeted me, then started piling food onto a plate.

My mom said I had lost weight, but I knew she meant it as you look unhealthy, and when I went to the bathroom and saw my reflection in the mirror—something you avoid when you’re on the street—I couldn’t blame her. I looked scary: gaunt, concave, shaded. I scrubbed my skin but couldn’t get the shadows off. What the hell was this? I told my parents I needed some rest, and they happily saw me to bed. That night, I wallowed in a similar kind of fear as the night of Sooty’s suicide: I feared the not-coming of the dawn, except that tonight I was afraid for myself: I was afraid what wouldn’t come was the dawn in me. I prayed to God as best as I could, like talking to a friend, and asked Him to help me get through whatever this was. This existential crisis. Then I thanked Him, because no matter what I was experiencing at least he had given me the music. Then I decided I didn’t believe in God, curled up on my childhood bed with the headphones on and went to sleep.

A few days later, my parents confronted me in the living room and in somber voices told me they wanted me to get the help I needed and that whatever I had done in Los Angeles didn’t matter and the only thing that mattered was my well being and so they needed me to take a drug test so my healing could begin.

I agreed, and when the drug test came back negative, I overheard my dad thundering at our family doctor: What do you mean he’s not on drugs? He’s on drugs! Do you test for all drugs? Maybe it’s a new west coast drug…

I wasn’t on drugs.

At some point the doctor shined a light into my eyes.

I didn’t react.

“Huh,” he said. “Isn’t that odd.”

Although my parents treated me with kindness and tried to hide their worry from me, I saw the pain I was causing them. They wanted to help me but didn’t know how. One day, I returned from a walk to find a gift waiting for me. “What’s this?” I asked.

“Open it,” my dad said.

I did. Inside was a pair of new noise-cancelling headphones. “Wireless, just like your old ones,” he said.

“And where are my old ones?” I asked.

I fished them out of the trash and cleaned them with a moist towel as my parents watched. “Maybe you should try the new ones,” my dad suggested. “You might like them more.” Then he asked to try mine. I let him put them on. He looked over at my mom, passed the headphones to her; she put them on, smiled—

That’s how I met Dr. Baker. He was a well regarded clinical psychologist.

“Tell me,” he said during our first session, “about your trip.”

I narrated it faithfully.

“And this man, whom you call Sooty, although I understand this is not his real name—”

“Like I said, I didn’t know his real name.”

“Indeed, so this Sooty—did anyone else on the bus see him?”

I rubbed my fingers into my face. “Breathe,” Dr. Baker instructed. “I know this is not easy. It is not easy for one to plainly admit, even to one’s self, that what one sees is not there.”

“Like I said…”

The sessions were not productive.

What was productive—what kept me sane during this period—were the headphones: the music. It was loud enough now that I no longer had to strain to hear it. I could just slip on the headphones and melt away. Which is what I did, night after day after night after day after night…

Until the day I took the headphones off to eat breakfast and noticed a ringing in my ears.

An echo.

When I put the headphones back on, the ringing stopped.

As soon as I took them off:

ringing

It bothered me during breakfast and throughout the rest of the day. Consequently, I wore my headphones more often and in public.

People had generally treated me at a distance here in Illinois, even when I was a kid, but now they blatantly avoided me. I knew I didn’t stink, because I showered regularly, sometimes even trying one more futile time to scrub the smokiness off my skin, and kept a strict routine of hygiene. They avoided me because of the headphones. “Don’t point,” mothers would whisper to their children (“Why is that man wearing cardboards on his head?”)—or so I imagined—“that man is not well.”

As soon as I took them off:

ringing

An echo: of the past:

I had come down the stairs to eat dinner with my parents, headphones on my head, the divine music soothing my mind, when my mom said something to me and I didn’t hear. Calmly she repeated the question. I still didn’t hear. “Take off those headphones,” my dad said, only barely audible above the gloriousness, “your mother’s trying to talk to you.”

“For fuck’s sake,” the driver screamed. “Take off those goddamn headphones!”

—impact!

I pulled them off. “Sorry—”

The sudden ringing was immense: painful.

I grabbed my head with my hands.

“Son?”

The pain subsided.

I exhaled. “I’m OK now,” I said.

Except I wasn’t. The ringing was audibly persistent. Imagine the sensation of a bee sting. Now imagine that sensation as a balloon, and that balloon inflating in perpetuity in your mind. A delimited container containing unlimited suffering. I am a bus with blown out windows. I am in need of help.

I made an appointment with our family doctor.

“What you’re describing is tinnitus. Do you listen to loud music?”

He ran tests. “It’s not tinnitus.”

“What is it?”

“It could be stress. It could be something else. We’ll need to run more tests.”

I was subjected to evaluation (“Do you consent?”) and imaging (“Do you consent?”) and diagnostics (“Do you consent?”) and it tooks months and both the music in the headphones and the ringing without increased in volume and intensity, and at the end of it all, the doctor asked me to sit and told me: “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

I blinked my shadow-encircled eyes.

“You’re healthy,” he said.

“You’re young. Live your life,” he said.

“Pain only really starts when you get old,” he said.

I told my parents the good news and it set their hearts at ease. Contrary to the reality before them—what I looked like, what I acted like, how I was—the doctors had convinced them. “That’s such a relief,” my mom said. No matter what I said ever worried them again. “A clean bill of health,” my dad said. “How I miss the days when I had one of those!”

I was God's lonely man,

sitting on the sidewalk with my back against the door of a foreclosed store that once sold antiques, listening, watching people scurry, thinking it wasn't death I was afraid of; Sooty didn't just die. I was terrified of what had happened to him before, of which I had caught glimpses, first in him and later around me, and finally within. I had a darkness pooling. Light avoided me. Then one dull afternoon, Father Mackenzie sat down beside me and existence began to clarify.

He said words I didn't hear.

"What?" I said.

He was wearing his priest's uniform. "I said: don't you look like someone with the weight of the cosmos on him."

"I'm not looking for religion,” I said. But his words had struck me.

I slid my headphones partially off my ears. The music quieted; the ringing began. "Religion cannot be found."

He extended his hand. "Father Mackenzie."

I shook it and introduced myself.

"The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents," he said.

"Quoting the Bible already."

He smiled. "Something like that. Consider it an icebreaker. Mind if I sit with you?"

"Not my sidewalk."

He sat like that, neither of us saying anything, for a long time. Then he got up, dusted off his pants and said, "It was a pleasure to meet you. If you ever need to talk to someone again, I'm over at the Merciful Redeemer."

I thought yeah, haha, good talk.

"On the contrary," he responded. "I believe we each said quite a lot." Before I could comment, he added: "No, I don't read minds, but I do read faces. Like I said, Merciful Redeemer. You're welcome any time."

During dinner that night—a blissful family scene: two happy parents and their healthy adult son, the lights flickered; for a fraction of a second went out: replaced, whether really or in my mind: unknown: their flayed bodies slumped onto the dinner table, exposed muscles twitching, tongues slithering out serpentine—

Blissful domesticity: "Hey?"

“Sorry,” I said. “I must have been daydreaming."

But these flashes of nightmare recurred, impinging briefly but vividly on the real world: a highway metamorphosing into a river of fire, car-fishes blazing; a skyscraper in downtown Chicago becoming suddenly covered in translucent skin, its metal structure bone, the bones cracking, pulverising, people falling; the sun joined in the sky by a twin, each eclipsed by a moon, and the moons reduced into their suns like two diminishing pupils.

The ringing in my ears changed also. What had been one sound was becoming the overlapping of many, human and inhuman pain, screaming and moaning and suffering. Like the buzzing of a fly on the other side of a window. Like children crying down the street. Some of them were desperate, like a cat clawing desperately at the neighbour's screen door. Others were resigned, like the wailing of a grieving mother who knows her hurt shall never pass. The dead stay dead. Only the living can desire change.

Only the headphones gave me respite.

"Did you hear?" my mom asked. "There are forest fires out west. Los Angeles is burning."

I could hear its screams.

I wanted it to end.

That is how I found myself on the sidewalk outside the Church of the Merciful Redeemer, staring at its twin steeples, darkly rendered against the sky, and wondering how I could have passed this building innumerable times without realizing how other it was, both in its function and its architecture. Out of place and time. I entered.

Loitering at the back, I watched a few scattered people kneel and pray.

An old priest walked by.

I asked him about Father Mackenzie.

He bade me wait.

When Father Mackenzie emerged, he was wearing a jacket and smelled faintly of eggs. "I'm glad you decided to come," he said without a trace of surprise. "Let's take a walk."

As we walked the streets, I told him everything. I didn't intend to. I didn't expect he would let me. But he listened without interrupting—without any indication of disbelief—until I was finished. Then he said, "I believe you are a sponge awaiting sacrifice."

I stopped walking.

"What?"

"You are a container for pain."

He was mocking me. "I knew you wouldn't believe me. Fuck off back to your church and leave me alone," I said.

"On the contrary, I'm the only one who believes you."

I stared at him.

"What you're hearing is pain. The pain of the world. That pain will only become louder," he said. "Your headphones are the divine."

"So that's Christianity?"

He laughed. "It's much older than Christianity."

"So what is it I'm supposed to do? I feel like it's driving me insane."

We had started walking again. "No doubt, although insanity is certainly the wrong word. If anything, you are becoming hypersane. You are sensing so much more of the world than the rest of us. As to what you're supposed to do—it's rather conceptually simple: endure and die."

"Die?"

"In itself, that's nothing extraordinary. Certainly nothing to fear. Endure and die is what we all do. What makes you extraordinary is your ability to experience not only your own suffering, but the suffering of others."

My mind felt as if it were overheating: bulging: a freshly born creature pushing at the final elastic membrane separating it from the world. "It won't stop at hearing pain," Father Mackenzie continued. "You will feel their pain."

I remembered Sooty. His pain.

"How is that even possible?"

"According to most, it's not. But it depends on how you approach consciousness. Is consciousness something your mind creates using the hardware of your brain, or is there a cosmic consciousness of which our minds are the receivers, with most of us tuned specifically and forever to a frequency called I?"

"I—"

I imagined the headlights of a truck. I imagined—

"But that's theory. You have something greater. You have experience."

We had arrived at a coffee shop tucked between an Italian cobbler and a store selling collectibles, and Father Mackenzie motioned for us to go inside. "Best espresso on this side of the Atlantic. Trust me."

He ordered one for each of us.

The place was empty.

"You said something about sacrifice earlier," I said.

He smiled. "Are you imagining a pentagram, knives and a stone altar?"

"Something like that."

"You're not entirely wrong. But before we talk about that, I want to point out the obvious. We all die. What makes a sacrifice special is not the death but the intention and the consequence."

I drank my espresso. Father Mackenzie ordered another. "What's the consequence of my death?"

"Salvation—temporarily for us, but permanently for you."

I didn't understand.

"You relieve the world of pain. You take some of its agony and contain it in yourself.”

Father Mackenzie’s second espresso came. Steam rose from its black surface. He lifted the cup with his right hand, but instead of taking a sip, he inverted it and poured the scalding coffee onto the top of his left hand. For a fraction of a second he painfully sucked in air—then I felt the burning: not on my hand but in my head: as if somehow a strip of my brain had been cut away, rolled into a tautness of wire and snipped with a pair of pliers.

“I apologize for the crude trick,” Father MacKenzie said, “but I wanted you to experience how special you are.”

The top of his left hand was red.

“It doesn’t hurt?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “You took the pain away from me. What I would have felt for hours or days, you condensed and felt in an instant. There are rules to this, a physics of suffering. Some of the rules cannot be subverted. Once summoned, pain must be felt. But it must be felt only once, and there is no requirement for it to be felt by the person who summoned it. The cosmos is concerned with the bottom line. It does not micromanage.”

“And I’m special because I flicked a light switch in Texas?”

“It’s not the act which makes you special. The act is merely symbolic. You’re special because you found yourself in the position to flick a light switch in Texas. You’re special because you found yourself on a bus with Sooty; because you worried about him; because you picked up the headphones. You’re special because you’re you.”

“Can I shut it off?”

Father MacKenzie smiled. “The knife cuts both ways, I’m afraid. Just like you cannot choose to become special, you cannot choose to become ordinary. You are what you are—what you choose is how you deal with that. You can always shut yourself off. You can smash the radio receiver. Doing that won’t affect the broadcast, however.”

I pictured myself as some kind of sentient receiver: a human-shaped coil of wires and knobs. “Hardware is hardware,” I said.

“That’s right, but I would encourage you to look at it as an opportunity. Always remember the laws of suffering. Everything you feel: someone else doesn’t. The more you suffer, the less they do. You can save lives—” Father MacKenzie grabbed me suddenly by the hands. “—and remember one more thing. If I found you, others can too. There are those even within my own organization who have less encouraging methods for salvation.” His voice dropped to a whisper, and my perception flickered, and I saw flames erupting all round us as the skin peeled away from his face, revealing not muscle and bone but overlapping petals and thorny vines escaping from his orifices: winding their way over everything around us, including my legs and arms, until I could not move. And they were gone and Father MacKenzie’s face was one of empathy and concern. “Imagine existing like that,” he was saying, “kept barely alive in a windowless room deep below the city, forced to endure the pain of others. Never feeling anything but pain.”

I ripped myself free of him—

“That’s not what I want for you. I want you to choose.”

“What if I can’t take it?”

“Suffer willingly as much as you can, then bring yourself to an altar and sacrifice yourself to the cosmos.”

Tears had begun to stream down his face.

“What’s an altar?” I asked.

“Cities are altars.”

I felt the tautening of my brain. “They are axes mundi,” he said through clenched teeth. “Links between the realms.” He shut his eyes.

“Go now,” he commanded.

I could see him struggling against the coming of the pain: pain he didn’t want me to suffer. “Father, can we—”

“I’ve betrayed them,” he said as my brain buzzed. “I’m finished. Go!”

I ran out the door and into the street, where the appearance of normal life appalled me. I felt as if everything I saw was superficial, a forest of fake plastic trees through which I stumbled toward home. I felt as if I had gained the appreciation of a new dimension, but with it came the flattening of everything else. When I turned onto my parents’ street, I saw a black car parked in their driveway and two men standing at the door talking to my mom—and knew I could never go home again.

My headphones were my home now.

On the sidewalk, I passed through cones of streetlight cocooned in darkness.

I listened to the music of the heavens and accepted my condition.

I had become unseen. That was almost seven years ago. As I type this now on a computer in a public library in Santa Monica, I no longer remember what it was like to live without pain. I spend my days on the streets, coping with the intensity of suffering around me. I wander. I loiter in front of convenience stores, hoping to wash up in their restrooms. Sometimes I beg for money. The music in my headphones is so loud I can’t imagine it becoming louder. But so is the suffering, which means the music no longer offers me a reprieve. I don’t think I sleep anymore. The ringing in my ears is a ceaseless torrent of individual agonies, and I know the time of my sacrifice is near. I have endured so much. Whenever I pass someone on the street—too wretched to be acknowledged—I hope I have taken some of their pain: used what makes me special to the benefit of the world: saved a life.

One unexpected discovery I’ve made is that my ability to feel pain is not restricted to humans. I also feel the pain of animals.

Animals are the only ones who are thankful.

They ease my pain.

Every year now it seems that Los Angeles burns, and the fires encroach ever closer on the city. They are like the visions I have, which I am convinced are seepages of hell, except they are prolonged and visible to everyone. In that sense, they are real.

Fake plastic trees—it must be said—burn just like the real.

Sometimes, when the suffering abates, I remember Sooty’s bag of photocopied addresses and imagine what became of them. Sometimes, when I feel that everything I’ve suffered is punishment for the act of leaving that plastic bag, I take comfort in Father MacKenzie’s words that whoever found that bag was fated for it.

I hope he’s right.

Because I no longer sleep, I no longer dream, but that means my entire existence has become a kind of waking dream, and it is in that dream I see an ending for myself. One day when the flames loom over Los Angeles, as the black, melting highways fill with people fleeing the city, I will walk in the opposite direction: into the inferno. I will take into myself the pain of all the burning animals, the strays and the wild, the terrified and the defeated, and I will give them painless death. In my dream I see them all coming to me, gathering around me. I see this as my final act of salvation. In their embrace, I too shall burn and die—

And, in death, I shall be released.

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