sometimes, being in a country far far away from where you are used to living, and the people you are used to living with, around, you get lonely. writing about them helps.
um, if you find yourself mentioned below, well, it's only because i miss you. and, um, if you're not there, well, i /do/ have a short term memory. Hi! Nice to have met you!
it's my own invention
You ever get the feeling that right around the corner is an old friend from your past? that, if you paused a moment, your paths would cross again, to finish an old conversation? I've invented a clockwork machine that allows you to actually meet those people. Gets them right to some spot you're going to walk by. It weaves their motions to bring them almost to your front door, even if you are now living half a world away from where you last met them. I call it a Ketchup Crux Collider.
No, i think i'll call it the Marvelous Machine of Friendships Past. It sort of looks like a brass blender grown out of an espresso machine with sixty or so bendy straws tiddlywinking out the sides. They actually are bendy straws, pinched from cafes, and i keep having to replace them as for some reason they're always melting with a fweep sound when the machine cools down, which is very smelly, but so far that seems to be the only serious health hazard. Besides the machine itself, you also need a couple of ingredients and you shouldn't mind if the electricals go out for a couple of hours. Then you need a little more patience.
The ingredients are one or two momentos of your old friendship and one or more 
of your eyelashes. You can only use lashes that have fallen of their own volition, so use a few of them just in case they are eyebrow hairs, which frustratingly look the same. A problem with the momentos is that they will get pretty much destroyed, but what price is parting with an old coaster with a bristly haired hog and a phone number on it if you are able to hook back up with your old drinking buddy? If you have no momentos (and this can't be a substitution for a cherished momento! Don't try to trick the machine!) you can use an object that reminds you of the friend, like a picture of a famous person that looks like them, or a cloth of their favorite color, or a bottle of their choice of alcohol, but don't expect to actually meet them soon as usually you get a postcard or email from them and you'll have to work from there (along with the scarcity of bendy straws and eyelashes, i don't bother with running the cards recieved back through the machine, as usally the mail reminds me why they were such the annoying gits that i finally was able to avoid in the first place. You always forget that "absence makes the jerks grow fonder" maxim.).
Ok, so you take your old loveletter / mix tape/ ratty fairground stuffed animal / picture of you and friend mooning camera / borrowed underwear or nekkid lady lighter / chintsy poster / pressed flowers / or whatever other thing and the eyelash(es) and stuff them in the larger container (i think the smaller is for the hot marshmallow chocolate goo) and twist the bendy straws til they look kinda in a nifty pattern and since i didn't engineer an on/off or big red button you then kick the machine or break crockery on it until you swear and the electricals /should/ go out and there will be a foom sound and some of the bendy straws will melt and the cats will take some of them too (i'm still not sure if it is certain that cats are needed in the process). Then you sort of just wait for the electricals to come back on and don't forget to open a couple windows to let the smell out.
Since i'm such a chickenshit, i experimented with my wife's past first, using a small selection from a stack of postcards and photos left under an old box
of dry cat food. Whenever i saw an eyelash on her face i'd give her a short kiss there and hide it between my back left molars until she was away. I'm happy to report that these early experiments seem to have worked. Over the next two weeks she was amazed to have met several old schoolchums and workmates.
My own operations of the machine (which i now call the Pick! Up! Where! You! Left! Off! Game!) have also worked to certain degrees of success. On my first usage of personal recalling, i used an old note from the first girl i kissed, written on a piece of letterhead printed with the words "FUCK YOU" on the bottom and the note reading "how's Harry the One-Eyed Wonder?" with lots of smilies which i got in the mail after she'd been deported way back when before she could put out. Anyway, not one week after running the machine, she found me, screaming, "Hey, Asshole!" after i trod on her foot. We didn't recognize each other: she had a bald head and lots of tattoes (also on her head) and really buffed up and escorted by two very large muscly Jamaicans. But, yes, before i could be beaten to a pulp, we realized who each other was and before long we were drunk in a pub and catching up. She mentioned prison, i mentioned rides on a scooter (wanting to own a motorcycle was what got her deported for forged checks in the first place). she mentioned her favorite guns, i mentioned how i'd still like to visit Canada. She mentioned her brief foray into porn films, i mentioned favorite scenes. We made plans to hook up again soon, but the newspaper the next day informed me of her arrest after the big shootout in the Docks and i don't know what prison she's at now.
Since then... I've met up with my old schoolchum Jerry, who had a few hours 
layover on an inexplicable trip to Belgium for his job as a clerk in Toyworld in Santa Rosa. He's doing okay, still trying to manage a band and get a radio internship again, and almost has his Xmen and Star Wars figurine collection complete. My favorite barrista who became a housemate briefly, Charlie, has finished the fifth verse of his poem that he works on every couple of years, and has finally come out of the closet, and also brewed a lauded cup of Hemp Coffee for a High Times Competition in Amsterdam. That girl i never had sex with but slept with a lot and had a lot of other good times with is now a spokeperson for Mobil Oil and thinks Westminster Abbey is pretty ugly. Mindy is rich now, but still hates me for not writing back to her and not paying the twenty dollar water bill six years ago, which hurt her credit. Paul just might have his first novel published here, and is considering emigrating to Scotland. Kim and Scott and Stoff (as roadie) were briefly touring here in support of the Dandy Warhols and are still freaked and somehow upset that i live here. Kelly was passing through on the way to a crop circle in Shropshire where she expected to be picked up by the alien race whose aspect of consciousness seems to inhabit part of her mind, and she was glad everything was fine with me. Sean is still a freeloading, deluded idiot. Iggy still didn't have the fifty bucks he owes me. Neither did Teresa. Bryan was glad he won the tickets over as he was going to visit anyway. My cousin Kevin says hi, and i'm fairly certain he's overstayed his welcome. Xavier has invited me to Spain for the Fall. Mike seems to be involved with the business of the First Girl I Ever Kissed and i'm concerned for his health, but he did have a peppermint for me, which he offered on first sight. Susan and Tonya surprisingly live with Chloe and Cynthia in Prague and i get the impression they sometimes switch partners. Red and X confessed that they were on their way to Shropshire to make crop circles. Jen's suitcase blew up at Heathrow, so i gave back her leather and some of my wife's underwear. Frank was so glad to see me after he remembered that i didn't sleep with his wife that he bought me several rounds of fine drinks to make up for punching me in the gut. Dave has won the lottery and it looks certain that i won the bet we made in '93, so by 2013 i should be the owner of a house and an unlimited supply of drugs and pizza.
i threw a key from my chain i had no idea of into the machine. I'd thought it could be to a workshop at my parents, but it turned out to be to an old girlfriend's house that i never thought i'd had keys to. This is what happened: i walked out of my front door one morning and Anne was sitting at the cafe next door. I asked what she was doing here and she sort of mentioned a little vacation. She looked pretty good, older of course, just as friendly with those smiles like the whole world is being tickled. We were just starting to catch up when the guy she married after we broke up arrived, a thin balding man who plays bass sax at baseball games, only now he's greyer and sunburnt on his more receding hairline. He was towing along a seven year old boy and two under five girls who were very upset. As was he. Apparently Anne just up and left home for this trip with no explanation, and it was clear to him that it was all because of me, and i suppose he's right and i supposed i did deserve the bereating and insults and the salad thrown at me, but not the attempt to impale me with the fork he wielded.
I've found another problem with THE FUCKING MACHINE. i wanted to get in touch 
with my old friend and drug dealer Josh and so i threw in a poem of his and a few tabs of acid still in my wallet and sure enough, he arrived. Unfortunately, i was unaware that he had died, and his ghost was pretty peeved to be pulled away from hanging out in the skyfields generating the Northern Lights, which were exactly like the color schemes that he often dreamed of. He stayed long enough to tell me that i /was/ right all along about religion and the purpose of existence and the particulars of evolution through collective unconscious (which made him more pissed off at me) and to scare my cats with St. Elmo's Fire strokes. He left and i've decided to hold back on my own personal usage of the Machine.
The patent on The Clockwork Coincidence Quilter is still pending.
tangle | writhings