under the shade of the bungalow
under the shade of the bungalow by Aidan Quinlan Created during the first week of march and printed on march 11, 2014 using Canford paper. All images are altered photographs by the author. Thanks to the sewage drain outside my old house. You taught me the true nature of the world. Thanks for eating all my basketballs. Also thanks to Connor. You are a bright bug of a man. Enclosed in this zine (though it is not truly a zine) is a collection of short stories, poems, and various other scribblings surrounding the state of the isolated human. Please enjoy.
1
I covered myself in chrysanthemums and presented myself at your door you told me I should cover myself in stones I now live in the quarry
2
The sea trucks its sorrow towards my feet, only to be tugged back by its mother: the moon. She’s hiding her face and I tell her to cut it out and just let the sea bother me. She’s only making things worse. There is a dogge beside me. It has patches of black and white hair. I am not sad when I pet this dogge. There is a shell in my hand and I throw it into the blackened murk. It splashes and the dogge runs for it. I hope the sea is not sad anymore, now that it has a dogge. Teens pee in the sea. Some kids a ways down the shore. They have a fire and beers. They are loud and overtly sexual with each other. They look happy but they do not have a dogge with them. I am a little confused and I wait for my dogge to return with the shell. It makes a happy bark and I tell it to come back to me, the sea has had its fun. There is the dogge, its shakes and paws my legs. There is a warmness in my chest, like if the sun moved inside me. Still you must pay me rent, sun, if you wish to live within me. You are a good thing, but I am poor and I cannot make exceptions. 3
Down the way, the teens are all having sex. Sand is flying all around them. So much that I can barely see their naked bodies writhing around the fire. There are six of them, each in a pair of two. They lay equally distant from one another, creating an equilateral sex triangle with the fire in the center. Suddenly they become ferociously sexual and the three pods of entwined teens begin to burrow into the beach. My dogge is confused. I pet it to make it calm as I observe this magnificent sex act. What brilliance. Walls of sand fly around them and cascade into mounds around their holes. They are lost beneath the earth. Judging from their initial ferocity I can only imagine their speed will grow exponentially as they plunge through the crust. Calculating it in my head I estimate they are now speeding towards the core at two hundred miles per hour. I’m so happy with their progress and effort that I hug my dogge. It makes a happy bark and we share a beer together. Me and my dogge. The dogge has beer in the tiny dish and I have beer in my hand.
4
I am sitting on a park bench next to the lake and I am weeping about how I miss Nicola who is in Norway and I am here surrounded by ducks in time I am sitting in a sun room wearing only organic cottons in shades of light gray and dark gray and I am looking up from my book of photographic theory thinking wistfully about the bench— I shift my weight I am so comfortable in the cottons and I look great and my hair is either white or gone and I am smoking a cigarette because my dog is dead
5
the the and the and
sheep outside are grazing on the dry weed frost has taken to their sheep coats in my mind I am kissing you in the shower soot hills tell me that I am awake so do the sheep
beyond the sheep I notice: the phone lines look like crosses and the horses are necking and your forehead is touching my shoulder
little stacks of steam with bumpy bodies are climbing up the black cliffs where the Japanese philosopher jumped from because he could not find the love he wanted in Chile and I wonder to myself: why did he come to Iceland
6
beyoncé (n.) From the Old English begeondan meaning “of the farther side”. First used as a name for a baby born in Massachusetts in 1823 as the baby, when first viewed, seemed a lowly spirit on the other side of the mortal wall. And, indeed, the child continued to appear so at first glance and failed to make any acquaintances of value throughout its brief life. nook (n.) Derived from the Norwegian nōk meaning "hook, bent figure". Use of the word as it is now began in the London metropolitan area where introverted youths would scour the streets for a small place to cram their quiet little bodies into and sit motionless for hours at a time, occasionally letting out small, weak sighs. These tight spaces were called “nooks” because of the bent human forms occupying them.
7
I’ve just spent one thousand dollars on a t-shirt from eBay. I’m in my bedroom, on my bed, cross-legged and wearing nothing except for my boxer briefs. What have I done? A thousand dollars on Philip Seymour Hoffman’s t-shirt. Suddenly there is remorse in my body but—no, it is gone and replaced by a thousand happy horses, pleased to find themselves galloping on the grassy plains of the internal organs that run me, and I am pleased to find them running there. I fall back on my bed and let the horses do their thing as I look at my ceiling. In two days I could wear Philip Seymour Hoffman’s shirt; I selected the fastest delivery option and paid an extra twenty dollars. But what is twenty compared to one thousand? I was already spending money—money from my parents transferred monthly into my bank account. This shirt is several months of groceries, but it is beyond groceries. I could live in this shirt, it is a home and it is my food. I could become the shirt. I am the 100% cotton fibers, and the green color, and the pen pocket with a bleach stain on it and I am two times my normal size. The purchase was not rash. It was calculated, well thought out, genius. I had been spending my night on eBay, not looking to buy anything but curious what was up. The website knew I liked DVDs with Philip Seymour Hoffman, so I suppose it assumed I would be interested in his shirt and suggested it. At first I laughed. The shirt couldn’t be authentic. Who would sell Philip Seymour Hoffman’s t-shirt on e-bay? On the page, the website informed me that a few hundred people were currently looking at the shirt and my senses became acutely alert. This could be the real deal; a lot of people were interested in it. I put “philip seymour hoffman green shirt” into Google and immediately found a photo of him leaving a restaurant with his kids in hand, a forest green t-shirt with a droopy neckline and a pocket with a stain on it covering the godly, nude form beneath. This was the one. The man’s shirt was on eBay and with sober clarity I clicked on the “buy” button. The whole ordeal took me no more than five minutes. The shirt is now, theoretically, mine. I read the description of the t-shirt from the seller over and over: “t-shirt worn by philip seymour hoffman. green, has pocket to store things. was buds with phil, he gave me this shirt at a party, i switched mine with his. he really wanted my black flag shirt. has a stain from bleach i think (see detail) but who cares? it’s philip seymour hoffman’s shirt. i spilled some beer on it that night but haven’t washed it because you know, why wash the thing? smells like shit. think there’s still some blonde hairs stuck on it, which is cool if you’re into actor’s hair and shit, i’m sure he’d understand.” 8
I will be famous. I’ll find myself on a page in his biography. I’ll find myself with a permanent spot on his Wikipedia page. Maybe I’m there already. I go to Wikipedia and find that I’m not. I edit the page, adding under the “Legacy” section: “On February 5, 2014 Peter Dahlson purchased the late actor’s green t-shirt for $1000 USD off of eBay.” I am famous. I am this man who traded shirts with Philip Seymour Hoffman at some hush-hush New York party. I am now down one Black Flag shirt but I am now plus one Green T-shirt. Perhaps I am Philip Seymour Hoffman himself. As I lie on my bed and look at my ceiling I feel the divine blood of the actor fill my lowly, solitary form. Suddenly, I feel my body lifted onto the pedestal of a deity. The pedestal is of cold white marble and there is a beautiful shrieking (angels singing?) in my ear. The cherubs that carried me here through various layers of clouds with their small wings flutter and encircle me as the celestial winds brush the bare skin of my legs—but not the bare skin of my torso because I have covered it up with Philip Seymour Hoffman’s shirt. I wonder if he thought of himself like this—thought of himself as beyond mankind (as I am now). I am reveling in the caresses of the winds and my new t-shirt and Oh!—there is Philip Seymour Hoffman being lifted in front of me by two cherubs. He is shirtless and expressionless. “Philip Seymour Hoffman, hey! I’m Peter.” The cherubs hold him up with their hands in his armpits, batting their wings wildly to stay airborne. “I know who you are,” he tells me. “Did you always feel like this?” He squints his eyes as if he were upset with me and says, “Fuck you, man.” The cherubs fly him away from the pedestal and I’m left there alone with my own two flying babies. “What a cool guy,” I say to myself—I don’t think the little angels can hear me, they’re more concerned with racing around my body. I pull some of the blonde hairs from the green shirt and place them on my head. I stick my finger in the pocket to gauge its deepness. I can fit a lot of things in there. 9
Corpse was yellow but under the shade of the bungalow it looked green to the four boys ‘bout a mile off the boom. They had just eaten dinner. Dinner consisted of a spotted egg they found broken in a nest that had fallen out of a palm tree and a fried bikini that they used to scoop up the hummus but Roger could see how the flesh of the corpse looked like hummus too. He didn’t think he’d ever eat hummus again except for holidays in the tomb of his beloved cousin, but that’s beside the point. (a transcription of Connor Phillips rambling as he lay upside down —half on the floor, half on the chair—some three years ago.) 10