”Alright, before we get into this next tune
Guns N RosesRocket Queen Las Vegas 1992
I wanna get some house lights on these fuckers
Can we do that?
Fuckin', you can dance to this shit, come on
Ignition: Seven Years Before the Plants
Do you think —hah!— you could survive this?
Don’t blink, don’t breathe too fast.
Sun slices through dust, floorboards breathing like old skin, aquarium hum vibrating inside me shhh-thump… shhh-thump… shhh-thump. You feel it? I did. Seven years. Seven.
Seeds, invoices, whispers, nothing green, nothing real, no soil touching my hands until Spain. Spain where chlorophyll bit back, where sticky fingers left scars under nails, under skin, under memory, but before that, the man —hhhhhhaaaaahhh— the breeder. Calm, Dutch-accent slicing warmth, laughter curling like smoke from a dying fire, calling his wife “HELLLOOO DAARLIINGG” and I almost forget to breathe, dust motes dancing, aquarium hum vibrating in the office like some ancient heartbeat, click-clunk, my friend nodding, relaxed, good sign, you wouldn’t understand, you’d choke.
Early Highs
WEEK 1: wholesale account lands. No ceremony, no drumroll. Just thrust into responsibility. Pride. Fear. Exhilaration.
Packing slip. Tiny god, tiny freak god. Invoice sent. BAAM!!! Shipping Label. BAAM!!! You’d wet yourself.
Beer in hand. Sun frying metro steps in Spain. Chaos thick enough to eat. Parking lot smells of extracts, drip-drip-drip… rot… sweetness… Trade shows folding into themselves, Barcelona, Rome, T-shirt, coffee, networking, drawings smeared with genius, joint in hand, aquarium hum, machine, bread, warm, smells.
And the sounds—voices in Spanish shouting in slow motion, someone laughing too loud, the vendor calling numbers, a siren in the distance, vale bro, tapping of seeds in boxes like some perverse percussion—folding into the memory, mutating it.
Collapse: New Owners and the Swiss Lab
Then new owners. Smiles sharp, teeth grinding on cocaine, eyes spinning. Lab in Switzerland, white walls, sterile dreams, badge of pride ohhhhhhh! but two years later: corpse. Roulette management, rumors crawling like cockroaches in the corners, eyes wide, napkin hallucinations.
Creditors came. Knife tapping. TAP-TAP on the big black table. Smiling vultures. 100,000 seeds gone. 2,000…5,000…10,000 more every week. ohhhhhhh! I handed them over. Smiled. Loyalty? Ha. No. Boxes walking out the door, outdoor lines, backbone, history, ashes, ghosts.
The breeder returned, and I vomited numbers and invoices onto him, bricks smashing into his calm face, too fast, too frantic. He couldn’t believe it at first, then dug, investigated. Cavalry? Maybe. Two men, all set, Johnny? Turn it on, buckets, sinking ship, rearranging bones in a graveyard, graah-bahhh. And everywhere the office smelled of cheap coffee, stale smoke, wet floors, paper, ink, sweat. Voices intruding, whispered questions, half-laughed accusations, some people prefer to avoid confrontation until the bitter end, the dripping sink turning into waterfalls in my mind.
Descent: Quitting and Aftermath
Bosses gone. Eyes wide. Teeth grinding. Hallucinations scribbled on napkins, money evaporating like smoke. Cash pulled like blood, dripping through my fingers. Customers screaming. Orders unpaid. Company. A junkie with more holes in his nose, selling its own blood week after week. HNNNNNNNG!
Quitting. HHHHRRRRMMMM. Announcing it. HHHHRRRRMMMM.
Words taste like iron and shit. Boss laughing, high, pacing, pretending. Colleagues pale, twitching, rent chain dragging, ghost-walking through hallways of floating invoices, floating papers, hum vibrating everywhere, shhh-thump, survival and failure, both. Spain again. vale bro. Rush. Soil improvers company. #OnlyWater Company. #NoWater Office, no printer, dust swirling, limestone and guano in the air, despair folding in on itself. Chaos itself everywhere, and you, fool, sitting there thinking you’d do better? I suppose one should. Wet yourself. Spill coffee. Cocaine owner, accidents, overpriced takeaways, teeth grinding, clicking, Jeeeeeeeeeeeeee-sus! Creditors closer. Knife. Dark stories. Trips outside the city. Loyalty? Ha. Fool. Desperate. Resilient. Determined. Desperate. Alive in chaos. Alive in betrayal. Wet floors, bad seeds, bad deals, bad people. Graah-bahhh. Flooding toilets. Sinks overflowing. Customers screaming. AAAAHHHHH! Stock gone. Orders unpaid. AAAAHHHHH! Mismanagement hiding in plain sight. I worked while he laughed, high, pretending. Click-click. Shhh-thump.
Reflection: Scarred, Chaotic, Unresolved
Seeds gone. Genetics gone. History burned. Backbone erased. Cardboard boxes walking out the door. Psssshhh… Two men on a sinking ship, rearranging bones. Vomiting SHIVERSPINE_numbers, vomiting loyalty, vomiting soul. Click-clunk. Shhh-thump. Spain. Plants. Hands in dirt. First bite. Sticky fingers. Chlorophyll scars. Learning slow, learning hard. Aquarium hum, machine, bread warm, trade show chaos, noise, extracts, coffee, T-shirt, joint, hum vibrating. Click, graah, tik, shhh. Voices overlapping, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, English, fragments of arguments, laughter, alarm bells in memory. You hear it? Aquarium hum, water drip, seed packets click, hhhkkk, you weren’t there. You’d scream. Spill coffee. Wet yourself. Still it spins. Sun hits the floor. Warm. Too warm. Wooden. Aquarium_SNAPFIZZ hum. Lab folding into creditors, Spain folding into office, office folding into chaos, chaos folding into me, you’d drown, drown in the hum, in the collapse, in the seeds, but I? Alive. Chaotic. Bitter. Scarred. Watching. Waiting. Story never ends. Never saves anyone.
