General 3 — The Awakening

The Story

“It’s incredible how we go through life building ourselves mental cages, from which escape is so difficult.

Even when that escape is only in our heads” (The Awakening)

Synopsis

For years Al Zimansky had been waiting for an external stimulus, something to rouse him from his daily stupor. And there it is, appearing all of a sudden, dressed in white and strung out on heroine. It’s like a slow and troubled awakening from a coma that’s lasted for years, in which the only atrophied muscle needing rehabilitation is his brain.

That day Al approaches her cautiously, grasps her still-bleeding arm, and, like a good husband on his wedding night, picks her up and carries her to the car. For hours he sits silently in the driver’s seat, an overdosing pregnant woman his passenger. Al looks into her eyes, he has the sensation that she’s the one looking at him. The emerald green of her irises pierces through her partially closed eyelids, providing a glimpse of the emptiness that awaits us after death.

When home, Al’s clothes are soaking wet, he is shivering. He looks at himself in the mirror, rocking back and forth slowly for some time. He watches that body move beyond the mirror. It feels distant. How could he continue playing his part in this life as though nothing had happened? Impossible. That was a sign. He couldn’t ignore it that was for sure.

The story of Al Zimansky starts here.

From a word to an image

The Big Pink

The girl is very beautiful, with light skin and red hair. Green eyes. I approach cautiously, grasp her still-bleeding arm, and, like a good husband on his wedding night, pick her up and carry her to the CAR. (From Chapter 2)

Street art in Munich

The more I look at their digital cameras, the more I realize that TECHNOLOGY makes everyone an artist, and art a whore. (From Chapter Ten)

Heartbeat

Here’s the second floor. Restaurant level. Mexican restaurant, Italian restaurant, Japanese restaurant, McDonald’s, BURGER King, with hundreds of overweight, sagging asses lined up at the registers. Hordes of elbows protruding at 90-degree angles, hands gripping red trays, in search of an open seat to plunk down on. (From Chapter Five)

Thom Yorke live in Zurich

Holy Lips is a trendy place in Soho, known mainly for the large volume of both pussy and coke that flow through its booths and tables. Now, the city is full of CLUBS with those characteristics, but Holy Lips has a unique atmosphere. People pass through its doors and seem to lose their minds. (From Chapter Six)

The human donkey

All I am is a BODY, a mass of well-organized cells wandering through space and time, dimensions that had now been reduced to an office and the interval between clocking in and clocking out. (From Chapter Two)

One more

How much did you DRINK, for Christ’s sake? Come on, cork it. I’m not stepping in this time if someone decides to beat the shit out of you (From Chapter Six)

Floating

I look at it for a moment, then delicately let it FLOAT away in the freezing morning wind. I look at my hand again, still holding that stupid ticket. The hair had flown away, but the ticket is still in my hand. Everything just seems so absurd. Who knows where it’s headed, what destiny awaits it. The hair I mean. (From Chapter Five)

Street art in Sicily

At some moment in HER life she must have chosen heroine as the alternative to her present, and to hell with the consequences. Ultimately, that was a choice. And what about me? What choices had I, eternally unsatisfied, made to avoid my present? (From Chapter 2)

Faces before the party starts

-Hi Al.- They all greet me the same way. There’s about twenty-five PEOPLE in all, Bomber and I included. Aged between 22 and 45. The women stop at around 25, the men begin at around 30. There’s also a transvestite. Age difficult to say, but definitely a good-looking woman (From Chapter Twenty Eight)

Rain in Rome

In the distance STREETLAMPS turn on one by one. Through the fogged-up windows they look like giant, motionless fireflies. (From Chapter Two)

Christmas Fireflies

People continue walking past a pregnant woman who’s about to shoot up, on CHRISTMAS Eve. And they couldn’t care less. (From Chapter One)

Pasta’s birth

The PASTA’s good. I eat, I look out, but most of all, I belch. I belch at the world: for years I’ve forced down heaps and heaps of shit, and I’m finally beginning to digest. (From Chapter Four)

Fee included

It’s a gorgeous loft on the top floor of an early 20th-century BUILDING that was renovated by a Swedish architect in the late 1990s. The hardwood floor is dark with large boards. Huge windows pierce three of the four exposed brickwork walls. With a 180° view over the city, it was like standing on the prow of a cruise ship. The alcohol in my body provided the roll. (From Chapter Seven)