The Dynamics of Time Travel

Brazilian Village

2009-01-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

A news team consisting of a cameraman and a microphone wielding reporter, sent out to a rural region of Brazil, are covering the story of an impoverished village which has been flooded. They see families standing around in scattered groups, waist deep in calm brown waters. The people all have tanned, leathery skin and an impassive, vacant aura about them. A young woman, at first partly hidden behind the sparse foliage of a short tree rising up out of the water, stands clutching an infant. A lone man, shirtless and desperate to feed his family, wrestles with a giant anaconda, almost downing as he splashes below the surface each time it rolls. After a prolonged struggle, using all his might to subdue and strangle the flailing beast, the futility of his efforts becomes apparent. There is no dry land on which to build a fire to cook the flesh of his vanquished prey.

shell washed ashore

2009-01-07T21:49:00.000-08:00

Nuke

2009-01-06T10:37:00.000-08:00

A young movie star and his friends, cruising around in his flying car, witness a blinding flash of light on the horizon over a metropolitan city. Then a mushroom cloud. When the dust cloud disperses they fly towards where the metropolis once stood, but there are no survivors in the aftermath. Amongst the ruins all they find is a hologram, programmed to be a fat, talkative plumber, intent on mending leaking pipes, completely oblivious that it is standing at ground zero of a nuclear strike.

lowering the threshold of happiness

2009-01-05T19:16:00.000-08:00

Gynoid

2009-01-04T10:01:00.000-08:00

My police officer friend and I are being chased up a flight of stairs in an apartment block by a beautiful female android. The android is on an out of control rampage. I am in love with the android and hope to bring it under control without having to erase its AI. We confiscate a remote control from one of the tenants who hasn’t paid his TV license, pressing every single button at random until the android is deactivated. I sit down on the steps watching a tele-screen embedded into its stomach, using the remote to channel surf past boring channels, while pondering what I should do next. The signal is weak and the images on the screen are hard to make out.

every drop counts

2009-01-03T07:51:00.000-08:00

Little Nazi Girl

2009-01-02T09:55:00.000-08:00

I’m an inmate of a concentration camp. A little 9 year old Aryan girl in Nazi uniform is being particularly cruel and sadistic to some other inmates. When an older Nazi lady shows up and compromises her authority, the little girl says she is only pretending to be cruel and ’never really believed any of that Nazi bullshit’. As punishment, she is butchered. Her arms and legs are amputated and her head is decapitated. Later I find the discarded torso wrapped up in white sheets. It’s still alive, but just barely. I resuscitate it and secretly keep it living. The hideous lump of flesh reminds me of a plucked Christmas turkey. I find a way of communicating with the living remains of the little girl and do my best to comfort and nurture her while continuing to survive in the harsh concentration camp. She/it serves as a distraction and companion from the realities of the hell I am trapped in.

Brain tumor. 2 months.

2009-01-01T19:05:00.000-08:00

December 2008. My father took me to Durban, South Africa, where he lived for 40 years.

We tried finding Hazel (his sister) who he hasn’t spoken to for 26 years. I’ve never met my aunt, but I know she and my father had an argument over my grandmother’s funeral before parting ways. He had paid for his father’s funeral, but refused to pay for his mother’s because she never loved him.

Calling every possible lead in the local phone book, and going to the public affairs office (above picture), we realised it was futile. No hope in ever finding public records in such an unstable and poorly run country – especially when the little information remembered is from so far in the past and hazy at best.

My father told me of his overwhelming disappointment, and how his biggest regret is not succeeding in giving me the family I never had. (Once again I’m at the centre of everything he does.)

(Christmas dinner)

Within a few days his health deteriorated dramatically. He continually vomited any food within 10 minutes of eating. He became so weak that he couldn’t stand. It was a miracle that he survived the journey back to England.

After making it home he went directly to bed and stayed there for just over a day before I had him admitted to hospital. (I don’t know why I didn’t do it immediately – maybe I thought his strength would start to return given time to rest.)

Since he’s been in hospital I’ve visited him everyday without fail. It has reached a point where everything else in my life has ceased, and the days revolve around visiting times.

I told the discharge nurse that I will care for my father when he comes home. But the nurses believe it is literally an impossible task for me take on, as he currently requires 24 hour care from trained professionals. They were insisting on a nursing home – at least until he showed signs of improvement.

To prove that I am capable of looking after my own father, I came into the ward for 12 hours and took control of his care. The helpful nursing staff taught me some basic chores and techniques of caring for incapacitated patients.

One experience I will never forget is bathing my own father. I’ve shaved him a few times, which is in itself a unique experience for any son. But bathing him was something that affected me in a completely different way. His once stout body has withered to not much more than skin and bone. It felt like handling a corpse from Auschwitz. His regression back into an infantile state seems complete.

These days I try to tell him that I love him whenever I get the chance. And he has begun holding my hand for comfort. I would describe his mind as scared and confused, but still in tact.

Then came the bomb. I repeatedly insisted on a CT scan, even though the doctors were convinced there was nothing medically wrong with him – the vomiting had stopped and they said the only thing holding him back from recovery was his low mental state (they even prescribed anti-depressants). But I knew there was something else and continued to insist on further tests.

The results showed an advanced tumour in his brain. Untreatable. A few months ago he had major surgery for bowel cancer. That was a success. The doctors assumed the frequent vomiting was just a post surgery side-effect. If it wasn’t for this brain tumour, he could have made a full recovery and maybe lived into his 80’s.

Because of these new developments, the social workers and discharge nurse are doing their best to get him home to spend his last days in an environment he’s comfortable in and to be with me. There will be a hospital bed installed in our home and nurses coming to visit 4 times a day.

He has about 2 months left. He’s 76.

I can’t sleep, but I don’t want to be awake.
If only I could fall into a deep dream to escape this nightmare.

-January 2009