Las Vegas for Vegans by A. S. Patric Read Free Book Online

about permanence and hanging from his neck almost twenty four years old and that song about permanence is called twenty four hours she now recalls one of those songs she’s listened to hundreds of times never catching all the lyrics yet she can hear his voice so this is permanence she imagines ian curtis still hanging from a beam decades later a final guttural song recorded in a purgatory studio the lyrics never emerging played over and over in the endless pendulum of his feet swinging free of time below perhaps that is true for everyone and not just her and this ghost pain comes with the illusion that it will never end even when it’s something as stupid as a twisted ankle and the worse the pain the more convincing the illusion of permanence but she still doesn’t feel sad for him it’s only a song attached to a few random biographical details seeing a book on the shelf picking it up for no other reason than it says hive mind on the cover she will later point out in an email to her friend edouard that this is the second instance in a total of three for the day writing that she can’t remember seeing the words applied to people in general as if it’s a recognised phenomenon or common term maybe it is now it had been made official by some pseudo crypto jungian rejigging the collective unconscious with a bit of sociology psychology history in the cultural studies demimonde emerging on youtube radio television coaching america’s newest magazine gloss sweetheart through her latest paparazzi breakdown putting the book back as a total mind numbing fucking irrelevancy in any case giving up on the idea that she might hunt through the biography section for dad’s christmas gift to get that particular farce over and done with limping to the book by jim shepard she wants to buy hating the cover but knowing shepard is one of the few writers who can give her that literary transport that she needs right now the tyranny of epiphany a tiny bubble in her mind popping among a billion other bubbles especially wanting to be jim’s friend as with germaine but probably not poor grand mal ian and just chat about music movies books or the weather polar bears preferred on the south pole it wouldn’t matter what they talked about really and she is sure that jim would like her at least as much as a facebook friendship allows he might correct her playfully about polar bears being only on the north pole and penguins living on the south pole never the twain paying for jim’s ugly book getting out while the going was good feeling lucky not to have had an xmas rugby style scrimmage at the counter limping along a temporary cripple stopping to rest by the wall next to the car park sweating panting thinking about the time she saw betty cuthbert in a wheelchair at an awards ceremony with videos playing on big screens of younger days how permanent that is for the golden girl winner of three gold medals for australia breaking sprinting records with that open mouth sucking in air and national noise and love and the pain is so bad that she can barely hobble to the car thinking that 100 metres in a breath over 11 seconds in 1956 still seems so so so quick recalling jason from human resources paid only $36 on ebay for a gold medal from berlin 1936 the nazi olympics hopping the last few metres on one leg to her car as though this is a gruelling olympic event with the medal metals for victory being tin or lead or rust and the winner is raised by a curtis rope rather than asked to step up on those three steps for the honour of listening to some stadium muzak getting into her car not with a yell of victory but with a squeal in the privacy of her cabin as her foot knocks against the doorframe the radio announcer says well I wouldn’t have said it was hive mind but we’ll all have to decide for ourselves laughing at his own joke and then going to a song that had nothing to do with anything

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    She was a ballerina