This page contains the complete and unabridged texts of the literary and performative pieces delivered by Ariel E. and Arthur L. at Club Hemingway on April 17, 2025. It serves as an official archive for reference, study, and appreciation of the works presented.
Co-written with Arthur Lemon.
ALEX: Mild-mannered, thoughtful.
JORDAN: Curious but oblivious.
A casual social event. Both holding drinks, meeting for the first time.
JORDAN: So, Alex, right? Nice to meet you.
ALEX: Likewise!
JORDAN: (pause, awkward smile) So… where are you from?
ALEX: Oh, wow. Already?
JORDAN: What?
ALEX: We just met. You’re jumping straight to intimacy?
JORDAN: Intimacy? It’s just a normal, simple question—
ALEX: Simple? That’s like asking my preferred sexual position thirty seconds in. At least buy me dinner first.
JORDAN: (laughing nervously) I ask that to everyone! Is “where are you from” considered intimate?
ALEX: Absolutely. It implies identity, belonging, secrets of my past. I barely know your name and you’re asking me to expose the deepest corners of my childhood memories?
JORDAN: Childhood? I was expecting something like “Bolivia.”
ALEX: Ah! So you’re a “locationist,” huh? Assuming everyone’s life neatly fits into a single dot on a map. Some people have complicated relationships with multiple places! Some of us don’t fit into your binary “from here/from there” worldview! What if I’ve lived in seven different countries? What if I was born somewhere I never actually lived? What if I reject the entire concept of national identity as an arbitrary colonial construct? You want to know what flag is printed on my underwear, front side? Rabid nationalism! Is that your game?!
JORDAN: Rabid… No! It’s just small talk!
ALEX: Oh, “small talk.” Mechanically categorizing people based on geography. You want to size me up, stereotype me?
JORDAN: I mean, no—I wouldn’t do that…
ALEX: Sure you would. Admit it! Say I told you I’m from Paris. Suddenly I’m sophisticated, romantic. Or if I said Texas?
JORDAN: Probably, um… you like barbecue?
ALEX: And shooting people like you yee-ha. See? You’re profiling my diet already! Geography-based culinary prejudice.
JORDAN: But seriously, I just wanted to connect!
ALEX: Connect by cataloguing? Why not ask what makes me laugh, or cry, or my thoughts on penguins?
JORDAN: Alright, fine. Penguins?
ALEX: I think they’re pretentious. Always overdressed. (pause, reflectively)
JORDAN: Yes they are! So, wait, you are…
ALEX: Don’t.
JORDAN: But…
ALEX: No.
JORDAN: Then how do I get to know you?
ALEX: Try something more authentic. Like, “What’s your favorite existential dread?”
JORDAN: OK that wouldn’t offend your hippy ass. You would find that more respectful?
ALEX: Yes, more so than geography. And nobody ever stereotypes existential dread.
JORDAN: Fair enough. So, favorite existential dread?
ALEX: Being asked “Where are you from” thirty seconds into conversations.
JORDAN: Ah. Sorry.
ALEX: It’s all good. So, existentially speaking, where are you really from?
JORDAN: Bolivia.
The following poems were written by Arthur Lemon.
The little Ching Box has found me
a sentence of dark red wood
Inevitably unforlds around me
out of its stucture humbly
A Grand Illusion of Bad and Good.
The splendidly coloured shackles
the dull and contageous feel,
I’ve nearly measured the canyon
And just as I’ve reached for the seal
The box folds it all into nothing
sending me head over heels.
Every leaf had fallen before
and every hat had once been a sock
And poles had to switch sides
and will do so again
And Finland will burn in eqatorial flames,
counteracting measures,
interacting change.
Love, revenge,
Love is strange.
Some people say they’re in love,
When they’re not.
Love is hot.
I can burn a finger or two
for you,
The Two is good.
Heart and soul
Lose control.
The reasons why I cannot cry
are mine.
Cry a lie.
Whatever the land I can go,
I’m home.
Home alone.
Life and death.
Life is death.
The more that I open my eyes
I’m blind.
My, oh my.
Six billion souls live in fear,
Oh dear.
Fear is here.
Time has stopped,
Now time is love.
The conflicts are all put to bed
and fed.
Fed with blood.
Red oceans have now turned to blue
for you.
For you and me
There is infinity in our words
In our minds
And in our numbers
There is infinity in this sentence
In more ways than one
How do I know?
I know because I know that you know that I know that you know that I know that you know that I know etc
There’s comparatively little paper & ink
So I’ll keep this short:
It creates the problems that it solves, in infinite ways
It giveth & it taketh away
Yet somehow we are still left with it
Or in it , I should say
For who are we without it?
It sanctions the question
Sponsors the answers
It seems to enjoy speculation
It doesn’t stop
Yet it never starts
It is the original contradiction
Which bears our calendars
Winds out clocks
Confounds us with death
It is too big to be invisible
And too small to be palpable
And it holds whole worlds in between
All sorts of worlds, all of them,
Yet it is nothing more than nothing
Turned inside out,
An impostor,
An enchanter desperate for subjects,
A master of mirrors with light & shadow that seizes us in catoptric curls,
An impostor wanted
For questioning:
We have scoured snowy horizons amid snow storms,
Amid sand storm we have ploughed sandy horizons,
We found footsteps in sand,
Shadows on snow
Which we failed to recognize as our own,
We followed imprints left by windy stars
We thought we were perennial nomads just like them,
We called out behind closed eyes into glow-wormed horizons
And with abdication, fear & envy we took the echoes for something else:
An impostor
Yet between the calls
Within resonance
There was silence
Impossible silence
Suspended silence
Differentiating silence
Connecting silence
Silence that does not change yet accommodates out whims
Silence that cannot be spoken yet remains a word
Silence that promotes the hunger of hope,
That drives anticipation,
Silence that is so vast it is impersonal
Yet so finely tuned it apprehends the one
Silence that is something more than everything turned inside out:
A nothing that confound
A grounding nothing
An unnerving nothing
A nothing that is vital,
And the more we hear this nothing the less nothing we hear:
Yet if we were to linger forever
How things would lose their power to move us.