Boys of Our Lives : En Philosophia, or The Philosophizers We’ve Loved.

Boys of Our Lives : En Philosophia, or The Philosophizers We’ve Loved.

extracted from lengthy hilarious talks between Wicked and Lumi

A long time ago, we will not say HOW long, there where two stunning young Aunties. One bestowed glitter and loved popular music, as well as her minty lip gloss. The other was more of a Mad Scientist but with wicked (huh huhuhuh) fashion-sense. Both had active minds despite their feminineness (shocking right?). In short, despite being color coordinated, they both had a burning passion to know what stuff was all about. An opportunity to do JUST that came one rainy day, when Auntie Wicked came upon IT. “It” was barely more than twisted wreckage, but with Wicked’s keen eye and killer mind she deduced quite quickly that this was no boring “it”. This “IT” was a the tangled wreckage of a TIME MACHINE!

Assuming, that the driver wouldn’t be interested in it…Was that a collar bone over there? Wicked decided to rebuild this once” It” and future time machine, herself.

And rebuild it she did! With, of course, her own special touch! It seems the original creator had overlooked some of her favorite and most versatile materials: broken computers, mod-podge, old mattresses, vacuum tubes, some spray paint, and felt cogs. When all the materials were affixed, Wicked handed Lumi her very own birthday balloon and instructed Lumi on the wonders of static electricity.

The two Aunties rubbed the balloons furiously on their heads and scuffled their feet on woolen blankets until they could feel the static electricity just waiting to pop out! Each placed one finger (E.T. style) onto the exterior of the creation and VOILA! An impressive burst of very attractive blue sparks, and wahhlahh, the Time Machine became a fully functioning unit. Eager to see inside, Lumi flung open the doors and remarked, “Looks like some modern art installation but I like it anyway!”

As Lumi spoke, she disappeared inside the structure. Wicked mumbled, “Looks like ‘Dr. Who’ Lumi, it looks like “Dr. Who!” Lumi sounded like she was in the bottom of a well, “Does ‘Dr. Who’, look like a phone booth?” Wicked took a deep breath and gathered her strength to face her Creation, and the lecture on Science-Fiction television she was going to give Lumi. When she did make it to the center of the machine, she found Lumi running from one side to the other. “Its SO MUCH bigger on the INSIDE! How do you do that?” Lumi squeaked while flopping on the couch made of old mattress and patch-worked slip covers.

“Elementary My Dear Illumi!”, Wicked quipped, pleased with herself.

“No Silly! That was the Halloween Blog!” Together they sat and painted their nails in honor of the new project and after a short silence (between Madonna Remixes) Lumi suddenly asked, “What does it do?” And stared with the cutest eyes humanly possible,hoping that it would stop Wicked from hitting her. Then Wicked stared off a minute, and took some more of those deep deep breaths, her feet tapping with impatience at her companion. She leapt up and paced as she exclaimed, 

“Its the GIRDIS! Girls In Relative Dimension(s) In Space. You see Aunt Illumination… “

She always used Illumi’s full name when she was about to launch into one of her looooong explanations. Illumi tried to put her listening face on, but Wicked’s words started to fly around, big and spacey. She looked around for her pom-pom topped pen, as she realized she should be taking notes. Two hours later, she woke with a sudden start, having passed out from not caring about Wicked’s “Science talk”. Covering all her bases, she scribbled a picture of a bunny eating pie, hoping Wicked would accept this as proof of “listening” and definitely not sleeping. About this time, Lumi actually did HEAR some words and they sounded pretty interesting…

“Long Story Short… Its a TIME MACHINE! Or rather, a Time/Space/Dimensional Travel Mechanism.”

Aunt illumination tried not to stare blankly, and reinstated her listening face, nodding slowly, pom-pom pen fluffing on her cheek. Earnestly her brow furrowed and she asked,

“What are we going to do with it?”

“Well, um?” said Wicked, stuffing a cookie into her mouth. “Travel in time and Space?” Crumbs fell on her chin.

” Oh! Ok! That sounds neet!”, Lumi chirped and ran over to the GIANT BLUE LEVER AND began excitedly tugging on it. As she pulled and prodded, she twittered, “Wicked, what’s this one doooo?” Wicked, suddenly roused from the spell of her cookie, mumbled “Just don’t touch the blue one!” With a giant whompf and a little “ooopppss“, heard from Lumi amid the noise, the GIRDIS Jumped like a bucking chicken into the unknown. The ships whirled and whomped sending loose bits and open nail polish tumbling across the ply-wood floor. Things whirred and beeps went BEEP BEEP, while Wicked said some things that would not be repeated to posterity (but Lumi kept in case one day Wicked gets famous and she can sell the transcripts on ebay!).

“This was not part of the plan” Lumi screamed!

 Wicked replied, “Remind me after this is over, to explain to you how to avoid not having a plan …” Wicked’s wise words were interrupted by…a large electric shock blasting from one of the many half-broken computers that made up the controls of the GIRDIS.

The wild colors fixed on a blue vortex formed and sucked the GIRDIS right through glittery interior.“Hold onto yer butt Illumi!” Shouted Wicked as she finally got ahold of the pirate-ship steering wheel (which presumably steered the thing, but it could also just have been there to look cool.) The window panels rattled a little, and things ZOOMED by, warped like a mirage in the desert.

Pink cloud nebulae and white pinpoints of distant stars floated by, questionably. Suddenly the GIRDIS started spinning. “I’m going to barf!” Illumi screamed. The door to the Machine flapped open, and Aunt Illumination got sucked out into the blue whirling ether.“OMG I DON’T HAVE A HAIRBRUSH!”, her words echoed back. With absolutely no fanfare, everything went black. Even as she fell Lumi thought, “Well at least black goes with everything.”

Lovely lush black it stayed, which Lumi thought meant that, she was unfortunately dead, and still WITH NO HAIRBRUSH, and that death was an incredibly dark and cold experience. Just as she was beginning to question whether you can have an existential crisis once you are dead, a smoky French voice whispered in her ear, “I hope this wasn’t a philosophical suicide but then that too would be absurdly beautiful wouldn’t it…” his words ran through her muddled mind, and she sat up very excited, “Did you just call me absurdly beautiful? WOW! that’s the best compliment this Auntie has ever gotten!”

Lumi beamed her 500 Led light smile which slowly dimmed, as she realized, she remembered those words “absurd” and “suicide” fromsomewhere. “Oh no, you are a philosopher!” she huffed and stood up quickly. The man puffed on his cigarette and smartly replied, “Well, now THAT is the best compliment I have ever received.” The coin finally processed in the soda machine of Lumi’s mind and out popped the full soda can:

” Death! Absurd! That cigarette! Oh my god,Your Albert Camus! Oh no, I am in Algeria? Yuck. Wait, no! … Does that mean? I must be dead!”

Mr. Camus rubbed his temples and pulled out a flask, a gesture Lumi had come to think of as men’s way of showing they were listening to her. Camus offered Lumi her hand and he asked if she had ever read any of his books, but Lumi didn’t hear because she had just realized they were walking down a street. This was a city. There were lights. “Where are we?”

Lumi demanded and realized she had been holding the hardboiled philosophers hand for some time now. He winked, all Gene Kelly, andasked,”Does it matter? Does any of it matter?” Lumi then remembered why she didn’t hold hands with philosophers. Camus then took her up to a building with many, many, many stairs.

Lumi made a mental note to make a post-it about wearing more practical shoes for time travel in the future. That’s right, THIS IS time travel…” I am SO not dead! And I am in a big city and this is Camus…OMG WE ARE IN NEW YORK!”  While Lumi is talking to herself, they arrive in Albert’s little room. One benefit, of being on an accidental date with a philosopher, thought Lumi, is you can talk to yourself and they think nothing of it. She then thought, you should prolly not call people by their last name unless they play football and asks, “Should I call you Albert then?”, the philosopher only stared deeply into her eyes. Lumi was undeterred and continued, “Oh-kay then, I will call you Albert or Albie! How about Albie?”

Still without any answers, Lumi continued, “Why have you brought me here Albie?” He ignored her talk and sets to pouring scotch. While he does his french film thing, Lumi thought, I will scan the room and see if… “Ah Hah!”, a newspaper…its 1946!

Oh wow – oh my god! 1946, how exciting! I wonder what kind of stuff is here! As, Lumi began to poke around in stuff that was not hers, it reminded her of the joy of poking through Wicked’s belongings, and she began to worry. However, having aced her Lady Gaga test, she remembered to hold her Poker Face. When Albie was finally done brooding over the pouring alcohol scene, he motioned for Lumi to sit on a ratty couch. I wonder she thought, when do philosophers first receive their ratty couches?

Lumi thought many things about philosophers in her time, as Camus began to mumble on and on about the contradictions of rebellion and solidarity, his mother, and Algeria.He seemed to just be getting started (OH NO!), so without any hesitation, Lumi decided the time had come to employ Plan 43B. Which she wished she could remember by heart, but instead had to reach deep into the pockets of her skirt to look for it.

After much, totally unsuspicious, rumpling around her pockets, Lumi found atwisted roll of post it marked “Drink Me”. Oh Wicked, you are such a funny devil, thought Lumi and she proceeded to unroll the post it and read it’s contents:

Plan 43 B

In situations where a man is trying to kill you by“running-his-mouth-incessantly- about-depressing-pseudo-smart things”and he is otherwise attractive and of interest, the best practice policy isto cover the mouth with something. There are many acceptable methods ofmouth covering and the choice of the covering must be dictated by eachindividual situation. However, it is of absolute importance that the mouthcovering be completed before twenty continuous minutes of theoreticalrambling has transpired. The agency cannot guarantee the efficacy of anymouth covering after such a time, as the listener may in fact spontaneously die in order to escape the absurdity and horror of this current human condition.

Lumi looked all around the sparse room and tried to think of what Wickedcould possibly mean by, “mouth coverings” and how MUCH she missed her hairbrush, when out of nowhere, a ticking clock made itself apparent. Tick tick. Oh no! The Twenty MINUTES! He has probably been talking for at least 19!Now he was name dropping his OWN books and all the philosophers whom he, of course, had read and was beginning to minutely deconstruct their arguments to, of course, further his own. By this time, the clock’s tickings were like pounding in Lumi’s ears. She could only hear the last three words of any of hissentences. Desperate/metaphysical/man. Momma/Sartre/Existentialism, and finally the tell tale sign of death-by-philosopher, she heard the ENTIRE last sentence: ” I don’t like to think of myself as a philosopher…”At that, Lumi knew her life was going to end at any moment for lack of a proper mouth covering and thought she may as well kiss this blathering hard boiled french man. So “power-life-suck” kiss him she did, and mid-way through, realizedhe was no longer talking in intricately laced circles. That he was occupying his mouth with more immediate concerns. Lumi beamed at herself, Yeah mouth covering! ,except she began to realize that her mouth as mouth-covering was not going to last forever so she began to feel around for something else to cover dear Albie’s mouth. Couch cushion? No too big. Old Sock? too filthy. When she finally groped up to the wall it budged. Lumi knew enough about Scooby-Doo to realize, a wall -that-budges is a door to somehwere! Maybe through this door there would be no more talk of rats and plague victims (that made her hanker for Poe’s Masque of the Red Death) but left her instead with logical equations. So up she leapt, switching hand for lips on Albie’s mouth, then bounce flipped (all Matrix style) right through the secret wall-door. Through about two feet of dark she walked blindly, damming herself for opening the door of the time machine and forgetting her hairbrush and for ever having read Camus because if she hadn’t…well it all wouldn’t have seemed so boring to hear again…When much to her wondering eyes did appear…Wicked’s face and 8 tiny reindeer? No, no Wicked’s face at the end of the midget hallway. And THOSE things… were definitely not reindeer. Apparently, Camus had not been kidding about the rats. Screaming half with joy of seeing her dear Wicked again, and the other half over rats (who hold so much symbolic that they just explode all puss and infection with it). The situation was bad, Lumi decided. The only way she could get to Wicked fast enough, (ideally before Camus or his rats decided to keep her fairy prisoner of the corridor of poo poo) was to dump out the entire bottle of Jojoba Oil that Wicked had snugged away in her pockets. Some time earlier, Wicked had explained the amazing health and beauty benefits of the oil and Lumi was not listening. ( Wicked knew the best way to get Lumi to try anything new was to put it out somewhere, as Lumi’s curiosity was the only stronger thing than her boredom.)So for weeks, all sorts and shapes and sizes of Jojoba oil had been appearing on counters and in cars and thankfully, most recently, in her tulip skirt’s saggy pockets. Lumi seized the plastic bottle and held it up up for Wicked to see, mouthing ” I am going to dump it and slide” Wicked shook her head and marked “No!” with her finger. Lumi mouthed, “This is no time for an argument about waste!!” Wicked scowled at her and looked away which indicated permission-with-disapproval (one of Lumi’s favorite Wicked Gesturisms.)

So now, completely forgetting Camus and the rats, Lumi joyously poured Jojoba Oils all over the midget hallway. With just a little belly flop, she was sliding down the corridor through the rats and all their existential puss and finally, fully moisturized, landing right in the middle of the GIRDIS. (or rather right in the middle of Wicked’s lap which happened, to conveniently, be residing on the GIRDIS.)Lumi smiled and cocked her head, “Hu huhuh Wicked, I tried that oil you have been telling me about, it works great!” Wicked sloughed Lumi off into the floor, which was covered in fluffy unicorn pillows and muttered, “Also has anti-fungal properties! ” She sighed, smiled, and took her place back at the might-be steering wheel and assumed a course, ostensibly, for home. After three hours of rolling around on the floor and laughing Lumi finally looked up and said, “Wicked where DID YOU END UP? and where did all these unicorns come from?”“Well, That’s an interesting story…” She leaned back as if going to sleep…

***

Out of the darkness, Wicked smelled something sterile and white (she could tell it was white because being asleep in a white room made wicked feel crazier than normal). This was not one of her nap spots on the GIRDIS, her bed, or her keyboard. One eye cracked as the softdroning of a man’s voice filled the background. It was some guy with an accent going on and on about his mother. Apparently she was distant and heard voices.“You say that like you’re the only one, HA!”She said, sitting straight up. Mumbles turned around in his chair to reveal a moustached face, interesting eyes, tidy appearance. It smelled like a doctor’s office. What was she doing here.“Velcome to ze Burghölzli young lady… I’m Dr. Karle Jung…”Wicked huffed, she could have done without the Arte Johnson accent, and had no real idea what a Burghölzli was. It sounded like a pastry, but smelled nothing like it. The faint smell of leather and books canceled out the horror of the white-smell. She looked around the room, as he’d begun to talk again.“For you see State is taking ze plaze of Got…”She looked around, a picture in a frame of Dr. Karle and a dude with a pointy van-dyke, Me & Freud, Best Friends Forever, with a heart scribble. A small one of a Lady and some Kids, wife maybe? She wiggled her toes in her shoes.“Eets all a the process of individuation you see, You must meet ze self and ze DIVINE! You are transforming the impure soul to pure, like…. “Wicked stared as he stammered. “Like how the Alchemists turned Lead into Gold?”He just stared at her blankly, that kind of look a dude gives you when he thinks you are totally way off, but is too polite to tell you flatly that . Karle started to talk again.

While the doctor-like man continued to explain impurity and the vast importance of archetypes as well as the terrors of his witch mother; Wicked had a very very good idea! “Hey, how about we draw some pictures?” she blurted. Karle, (who Wicked wasn’t even sure was all 100% Karle at this time) just the same looked surprised but interested. Wicked took out her red leather moleskin and showed the weird doctor her latest drawings and dream memoirs. “Zis is everything I have been working on my dear!” the doctor shouted at Auntie Wicked, which she had begun to understand was men’s way of saying she was right.Thinking she had hit on something that would make this situation more amusing, Wicked took out her pastels and ink pens and gave them to the might-be-mad-man and encouraged him to write and draw in her red book.He hesitated,“What will I draw, what will I write about?” he asked. Wicked, very happy to have somehow have turned the tables in the conversation, answered kindly, “Write about anything. Draw it all. Write…Write about your dreams! Your visions! Draw the things you see but don’t talk about!”Mr. Jung shuddered for a minute and stared deeply into her eyes and almost asked her who she was, but decided better of it. For hours, the funny man drew all over the book, rolled, and raved on and on about the visions he had. Wicked, bored of watching the crazy man journal suggested a guided mediation. “But first…” she said, “I must know your name!” The man hesitated and pushed up his glasses, “Carl Jung”, he said “Is that with a C or a K ?” Wicked snarked. Again, the man looked at her like he might just really suspect the real truth of how she came but instead, shook it off as more wacky dreams for the Red Book. Wicked spoke again, “We are in …a bubble, any color you like, there are animals, and Gods, and walkways…” The once just-crazy man, now named, “Karle Jung”, squeezed his eyes hard like a Lost Boy trying to imagine the Peter Pan feast.

The meditation continued and soon Mr. Jung was doing his fair share of guiding the vision. In fact, he was now walking up the walls, so high on metaphors, he was. Even Wicked, practically high priestess of metaphor, was a little abashed. The mediation was coming to a climax, he was sweating and talking rapidly, “…and then…Then Thousands of Unicorns rain from the sky and we snuggle… and look Freud…he is watching.” At this point, Wicked hit her mental, “too weird even for me” button in her mind because when she OPENED her eyes…there they were indeed swimming in a sea of stuffed unicorns snuggling. The snuggling wasn’t so bad, but there was a skinny dark figure – Freud watching them! “Uhmm Karle, honey…” she began but looking in to his wild peyote looking eyes, she decided that reasoning with him on this was out. Tugging a gel-pen and tiny black journal from the pile of unicorns, she channeling her best “Fear and Loathing” survival skills, she assessed the situation.

Inventory

-1,000 stuffed unicorns,

– 1 potentially high philosopher,

– 1 voyeur with a creepy van-dyke.

Problems:

– No GIRIDIS

– Lumi AWOL

– Jung just introduced me to the voyeur/creepy dude as “my girlfriend”.

Solution:

Reduce the weird in this situation, attempt to restore some sort of normalcy.

Method:

Pack up every damn one of these unicorns and walk right out the front door.

As Karle and Freud stared deeply into each others eyes and did bizarre mirroring and shadow box routines, Wicked busily loaded unicorns into Jung’s spare linens. He had ALOT of spare sheets, Wicked amused herself by concluding that this was due to his no-doubt-about-it chronic bed wetting. When each unicorn i.e. beacon of weirdness and magic, was packed away in the sheets..Wicked put her hands resolutely on her hips and said in her best screen siren husky voice, “Well boys, it’s been a blast but me and the unicorns have a date with destiny…err at least.” It should have been a really dramatic exit but it took about half and hour with all the dragging giant knotted make-shift bags of stuffed unicorns into the street. It didn’t matter anyway, Karle and Freud were taking turns “putting each other on the coach” so they didn’t really notice the lack of pizazz in her final scene. When she and the last bag of unicorns stepped outside the drizzly doorway, the sky turned a now what Wicked would soon call, “a hopeful shade of blue.” Then everything went black. When she woke up, BRUISED, of course, gah! She felt exhilarated by all she had experienced in the wild depths of Karle’s office and wanted to write it all down and draw the pictures of all she had seen. “Wait a minute, what the fuck?” she yelled as she looked all around her. There were the thousand unicorns and thankfully all her body parts but something terribly precious was missing. Her journal! “My moleskine, NOOOOOOO!” she screamed. “Why is my ex -boyfriends always end up with my Art! Dammit! That bastard better give me credit for the first half” she continued to rage. Until when thinking, about journals, she remembered Lumi rummaging through hers and set immediately to activating the homing signal that she snugged in Lumi’s skirt pockets.

***

“Wow Wicked! I thnk your story is better! No fair! Do over!” gigled Lumi. “Both of our stories are good and now we have to get home our blog is wayyy overdue and you know just how disappointed our readers will be if we fail!” Wicked Nodded, “Yeah your right. However, I do know what we are doing next Blogcation!” trailed a high squeky voice behind the the phone booth/collage looking GIRDIS. A blue vortex enveloped two Aunties, 1,000 unicorns…”WAIT WAIT I found my hairbrush WICKED!” Illumi shouted happily over the noise of nothingness…”Lumi please be quiet the narrator is doing our ending” Wicked smiled. “Oh oh right okay” Lumi nodded seriously and looked up, “Go ahead, do it now! You were saying the blue vortex enveloped…”Hrrmmm ermmm…yehs thank you…The Blue Vortex did envelop the two Aunties, 1,0000 unicorns, and one found hairbrush. And thankfully the Aunties Wicked and Lumi reappeared back home in time to participate in their nightly ritual of powering up their laptops to chat online while in the same room – which they never ever ceased to find amusing. Especially, on this night, when they could they could tell and retell the tale of when they philosophers were there ex-boyfriends!

Hey you have any crazy ex-boyfriends or girlfriends to tell a story about? Do you have a time machine? Tell us about it!We are everywhere!facebooktumblrmyspaceemail: the2aunties@gmail.comformspringtwitterthank you all for reading and look out because lumi has a color crush and she will be back shortly to tell you about it!